Today marks the 15th day since I said I’d post daily. Since then, I’ve made 12 posts, missed four days (because I’m not counting this one) and posted twice on one day. That means I’m three posts behind and need to make 18 posts before 12:01am March 7th in order for it to be an even 30 posts in 30 days.
Honestly, I figured I’d be farther behind at this point in time. Go me 
There are only a small handful of things in this world that I haven’t been able to locate via Google. An old childhood friend, an actual cure for my back pain, and after tonight, a basic effing March Madness tournament script. For one of the biggest and most anticipated sporting events in the country, there is a surprisingly huge lack of user generated content for it. The few scripts I’ve been able to find have been by seedy gambling companies charging $300 per download, made for stupid Halo 2 tournaments, or written in the archaic code of Perl. Ugh.
I can install a trillion different sodoku or Vegas poker scripts. Are you telling me there isn’t one nerd out there who also enjoys college basketball? Everybody just waits until ESPN posts their blank file on-line and then prints it out? Nobody has come up with the idea before to hold a similar tournament on-line before and thought to themselves, “gee, this would be a lot easier if I could have a program on-line do this for me!” I find that hard to believe.
In other Goob related news, I can’t find the cord that connects my digital camera to my computer. Anybody know where it is?
EDIT: Hey, click the image below. Come on, do it! How awesome is that?
Everything below this line is simply a long winded message describing the fact that I’m loving how people are leaving comments on Shyzer again. I’d love to say I write for some altruistic reason, but deep down I’m just another attention whore. 
In an effort to add a little thank you to all the people who take the time out of their day to comment on Shyzer, I sat down tonight with the goal of adding a “Recent Comments” box to the sidebar. In it, I want to show the last 7 comments left here on Shyzer. Why? Well, for starters, a lot of people go back and make comments on posts a few days old and I wanted to make sure other people saw them. I also wanted to stick in an added bonus for anybody with a site of their own, as their name would contain a link to their site.
However, in the process of doing all this, I discovered that Wordpress widgets aren’t retardedly stupid like I’d previous thought. Instead, they’re pretty damn awesome. As a result, the sidebar will look goofy for the rest of tonight as I properly style each default widget that Wordpress comes with. Why would I care if the widget’s look decent, even if I don’t use them myself? Because I want to one day release this theme as a free Wordpress theme for others to download
And yes, since I’ve spent a few hours teaching myself how these widgets work (and more importantly, how to freaking style them!), this totally counts as today’s post.
I just managed to watch last night’s episode of The Daily Show since I wasn’t able to 24 hours ago. There’s something about enjoying a few too many margaritas that prohibits me from being able to comprehend and absorb an episode of my favorite television show, much less remember how to operate a TV remote. The guy Jon Stewart interviewed had recently written a book about how the Internet and computers have invaded a bit too much of our lives (not in a 1984-esque sense but more of a “it’s taking the place of daily interaction with the people we love”). Jon started to defend the Internet, blah blah blah, but it got me thinking.
I’ve gotten to the point where I first look for certain things and activities off the Internet before succumbing to find them on the internet. Let me explain.
If I need the address of a local pizza joint or the date and location of James Monroe’s birth, I turn to Google (actually, Blingo as I’ve won $75 from them in the past few months alone). If I need directions to Tulsa, I turn to Mapquest. If the Mariners played a home game the previous night, I know ESPN.com will be there to back me up as soon as I want the score.
These are all pointless and small obscurities that in years past would have taken far too long to locate or find out. I would have had to find my copy of the Yellow Pages or drive to the library to use their encyclopedia Britannica or rely on a friend to not give me false info. For the information I was gleaning, the action of obtaining it was too time-consuming or difficult. These are situations where the Internet is a freaking Godsend.
But the Internet isn’t usually applauded for these types of actions. When people speak fondly of it, they reference examples such as how it’s now easier to find a marriage partner or stay in touch with family or discuss a specific topic with other like-minded individuals, like politics or quantum physics. And frankly, these are areas of my life where I don’t want the Internet invading.
Well not quite invading. I’ve met friends on the Internet whom I’d never give up. I’ve become members (and created one!) of tight-knit communities that are downright awesome. And while Fellner hates me for never calling him, at least we have some fun on each other’s Facebook walls. The point is I just don’t want to rely on the Internet for said actions and events.
Take LOST, for instance (and believe you me after the stuff I read today, this very topic is going to get it’s own post in the near future). I love the show. I love talking about it with Clay and Juls right as the episode ends. I love dissecting it and trying to find the hidden meanings surgically planted throughout the episodes. But if I want to get into some real mind blowing debates and conversations about the philosophical oddities of our Lostie’s names or the dark matter theory, I have to turn to the Internet. No offense to Clay and Juls, of course.
Some people would point out that without the Internet, I wouldn’t be able to have these debates and discussions in the first place. They’re absolutely correct. The Internet didn’t make smart people vanish from real life. I should be grateful, therefore, that I’m able to even have these debates in the first place. So let’s take it back a notch. How about political debates? Well, not many of my friends are into politics, so onto the Internet I go. How about baseball? Eh, again, most fans you run into in real life can hardly tell you the starting lineup of their favorite team, much less talk intelligently about WAR or OBP. You name it and, sadly, you’re going to get better results turning to the Internet than you are turning to real life people. But somewhere along the line, people have stopped even trying to find the good results offline and have instead come to believe they can only be found online.
Let’s be clear here. If my choices are lose touch with old friends or stay vaguely in touch via infrequent e-mails, I’ll of course take the latter. I don’t give a shit that I’ve forgotten how to quickly locate something in a library just by looking at the numbers. I looked at a map the other day and it took me a minute to see the clearest route to where I was going. These are skills that, while nice to have, are quickly growing obsolete due to the Internet. And they’re skills I won’t miss.
But I don’t want to forget how to read the body language of a person I’m meeting for the first time. I don’t want to lose my game for picking up hot chicks (insert joke about me having no game here). I don’t want to never go to family functions or out to the bar with the guys simply because I talked to them on Facebook already this week. There’s something about human interaction that we don’t think much about. WebMD will never be able to fully diagnose you. I can download all the music I want, but it’ll never be as good as going to the local hole in the wall and catching a live show every once in a while. And no matter how much porn is available within five keystrokes of any site you’re on, I promise you the real thing is much more entertaining.
The Internet is great for a lot of things, but I think people these day not only use it, but rely on it for a little too much. Let’s just all try and keep this in mind, okay?
Whenever I’m doing my daily morning routine, I like to have a little background noise to keep me occupied and conscious of the time. I’ve tried flipping on CNN or Good Morning America, but surprisingly I’m a bit anti-news until I get at least a pound of coffee into my system. So I stick with ESPN 2 and simply watch Mike & Mike for all my sports news and commentary, which isn’t too shabby when you consider the last time I watched an episode of Sports Center circa 2002.
But yesterday I just couldn’t stomach it anymore. The turning point came when all three of the talking heads on screen unanimously agreed that Roger Clemens wouldn’t and shouldn’t ever be allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame now.
Wait a minute…what?!
First off, I have no love for Clemens other than my general respect for his skills. He’s never pitched an inning for my beloved Mariners and on the contrary, I can think of at least four games off the top of my head where he either knocked them out of the playoffs or utterly destroyed them in a regular game. So in baseball terms, he’s like Albert Pujols - I like to watch him play if I catch him on ESPN, but if he’s up against the M’s, he can go screw himself. Whereas Ichiro could strangle a pack of puppies on national television and I’d still think of him as nothing short of the second coming of Jesus.
So that said, how in the hell can you say he doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame now? Because of some accuasations, no matter how true they may be?! If that’s the law of the land now, then perfect, because I’d like to go ahead and say that Derek Jeter is taking steroids and has been ever since he was 5. There, now his career and reputation should be forever tarnished and ruined. Awesome.
I watched Clemens on CSPAN yesterday and yes, he appeared nervous, shifty, and pretty much gave off the general aura that he was lying / covering up. So what?! I don’t get it. So the man cheated. We’ve established the facts that A) steroids were part of baseball for many years. Not just amongst the superstars, but all the way down to the scrubs of the league. and B) MLB knew about it and turned a blind eye. So why is it that we can cherry-pick a few big names and simply destroy their reputations?
Why are we punishing these guys now for what they did in the past? It’s akin to punishing me right now for buying beer on a Sunday four years ago back in South Carolina. Technically it was against the law, but everybody else was doing it and the cops basically gave me a high five as I walked out of the store with my brew. So why should I be punished for that now? It makes no sense.
I guess this boils down to one thing: players using steroids. And you know what? I don’t give a shit.
Two of my favorite baseball seasons to date were the 2000 and 2001 years, where the Seattle Mariners were led by three main players. Ichiro Suzuki, who is probably the epitome of somebody who would never touch steroids, Edgar Martinez, one of the purest hitters of my generation, and Bret Boone, who at that point in his career was a walking syringe. Ok, I know Ichiro didn’t join Seattle until the 2001 season, but I’m trying to make a point here. What point? That baseball fans don’t give a shit about players who use steroids as long as they’re on they’re favorite team! If Seattle wins the World Series and then it’s later revealed that the only reason they were able to pull it off was because they drank the blood of unicorns, don’t expect the upper Northwest to throw up their collective arms in protest. I wouldn’t be asking how soon we could add an asterisk to the record books, but instead where I could buy some more damned unicorns at.
Some might argue that because of all the recent hullabaloo, we have stricter and tougher anti-steroid policies in place now. Fantastic! But, like most other laws, it’s a rule that shouldn’t be retroactive. What these players did was look for an advantage in a competitive environment, find it, and then have it sanctioned through the complacency of MLB bigwigs.
Others argue this entire debate should be about larger things than just the players involved, like how kids look up and emulate their heroes and how if we don’t punish them for what they did, we might be saying to the youth of today that taking steroids is okay. First off, if a kid starts taking steroids and dies because so, I don’t think the first finger we point should be at Sammy Sosa. Where the hell were his parents? Why is Sammy “raising” the kid?! What about the kid’s coach, who has daily interactions with the child and would see first hand that something is up? Why is it that we always go straight for the most recognizable and famous figure whenever a travesty is committed, even if that person only played a small role in the whole ordeal?
But what about the integrity of the game? What these players did in the 1990s and early 2000s was shatter records that had withstood the test of time and been set by players who had been competing fairly. Well to that argument, all I have to do is point to one of my favorite books, Ball Four
Baseball players cheated and got away with it. There’s no way to tell who cheated and who didn’t. There’s not even any accurate way to tell if somebody cheated even though we’re pretty, kinda, really, super sure that they did.
So why are we wasting our time with this again?
My first filler post in a week…not too shabby for me at all. This post will be removed tomorrow though and two posts will take it’s place. Until then!
I really want to meet the heads of Warner Brothers and give them hearty pats on the back for delivering to us five outstanding Harry Potter films to date. They sure have been spectacular!
Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Oh, yes, I see where I screwed up. I accidentally typed “pats on the back” when I meant to type “kicks in the crotch.” Whoops. Rookie mistake. The keys are like right next to each other.
Honestly, by the time the 7th film rolls around, I fully expect that when you go into the theater or rent it from Blockbuster, you’ll be given a complementary tack hammer to bludgeon yourself with once you’ve finally become bored and/or disappointed. Which, judging by the track record of the recent films, should be somewhere around the 12 minute mark for the average fan.
I didn’t think there was any way imaginable to screw up such an amazing story, but you proved me wrong, WB! Thank you for reminding me that the impossible still happens every day! Fucking idiots…
This “review” of what websites looked like back in 1996 is easily the funniest thing I’ve yet to find in this early new year. In fact, it reminded me of a post I’d half completed over two years ago and so I went back and finished it up. But before you read anything else, please, please click that link above and read it. It’s been ten minutes and I’m still cackling uncontrollably.
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A lot can change in 10 years.
I’ve written a little about how much has changed from since I was a “kid” and now, especially with regards to technology. But I wanted to share a quick story with you.
My earliest memory of on-line gaming was back when I was in 7th grade. It was the end of 1995 and my dad had just built a new computer which at the time was smokin’ awesome but if it was sitting in my room today, would be around the 19th most powerful electronic in a 10 foot radius. A few days later, he bought a game called Air Warrior and installed it, to which I quickly became addicted. Yet beyond that, I never touched a computer for any other reason.
By the 8th grade, my dad bought a new service known as AOL, which provided blistering surfing speeds of up to 56kb/sec. I would sign onto my account whenever I had the chance, only to realize there was nothing really to do and quickly grow bored with the whole experience. The only person I knew that had an account as well was a snobby girl from school, so the IM feature was of little useless to me. Oh, you could go into chat rooms and play .wav files of Homer saying Doh and cars crashing. So there was that. Or you could go in the religious chat rooms and just type “satan satan satan” over and over and watch people get immensely angry at you. Actually, you can still do that today, but I digress.
It was around this time that companies began advertising their websites in television commercials. I don’t know if anybody really remembers this, but I clearly do, if for no other reason than I started writing them down.
That’s right, I had a notebook where I wrote down all the websites I saw on TV since I was that desperate to find something to do on the Internet. Each page was filled with nothing more than lines of random companies with their websites next to them.
Pepsi - www.pepsi.com
Sunny D - www.sunnydelight.com
Nike - www.nike.com
You know you’ve got a brilliant piece of technology that people are starving to use when they’ve resorting to going to Sunny Delight’s website. I just wish the purple juice had had a page, I would have been all over that.
By 9th grade, I no longer needed my notebook. Lycos and Excite had finally entered my life and with a few (ok, a lot of) mouse clicks, I was able to find at least something somewhat interesting on the Internet during my alloted hour of computer time every day. It wasn’t until the 10th grade that the wonders of AIM finally burst onto the scene. Actually, I only had AIM for a few months that year before getting in trouble with my dad. My punishment? He “deleted” the program by taking the icon off the desktop.
Think about that for a second. I was a 10th grader in high school and was convinced that AIM had been removed from my computer simply because the icon was no longer there. Wow.
I remember starting an angelfire page in the 11th grade. When we were moving right before I went into 12th grade, Napster had just been ordered to shut down and thus I loaded my computer up and schlepped it across town to our old house since it still had Internet, hooked everything up, and sat on the floor in an empty room for about 5 hours so that I could download maybe 30 songs on dial up. For you see, when Napster was finally shut down, file sharing would finally be eradicated!
Now? I’ve got cell phones. Myspace. X-Box 360. Facebook. Google. AIMSKYPEMSNYAHOO. And I don’t bat an eye when it comes to not only understanding it all, but knowing how to work it. I’ve come to expect my cell phone to not just give me directions if I’m lost, but to also let me know where the nearest pizza joint is since driving makes me hungry. I carry in my pocket a thumb drive with more space on it than was on the first three computers my family owned - combined.
All in the span of 10 years. I can’t freaking wait to see what we’ll have in 2017.
When most people think about Poland’s contribution to the Allied resistance against the Nazi, the usually recall something about the Germans kicking a bunch of Polish ass to start the war off and that’s about it. Some of you might even recount the tales of Polish cavalry gallantly being slaughtered against German tanks and how the entire Polish air force was destroyed on the first day then smile like an idiot. Hooray American education system!
I don’t get much quality time with you and your computer screen, therefore I can’t re-teach all of History to you. No, I must focus on only the greatest parts that you may have missed. Scratch that. I’m talking about the most awesome, existence-shattering, mind-blowing, not quite sure if you’ll be able to scoop your jaw off the floor types stories out there.
Honour Sought for ‘Soldier Bear’
A campaign has been launched to build a permanent memorial to a bear which spent much of its life in Scotland - after fighting in World War II. The bear - named Voytek - was adopted in the Middle East by Polish troops in 1943, becoming much more than a mascot. The large animal even helped their armed forces to carry ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Voytek - known as the Soldier Bear - later lived near Hutton in the Borders and ended his days at Edinburgh Zoo. He was found wandering in the hills of Iran by Polish soldiers in 1943. They adopted him and as he grew he was trained to carry heavy mortar rounds. When Polish forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to “enlist” him. So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign. He saw action at Monte Cassino before being billeted - along with about 3,000 other Polish troops - at the army camp in the Scottish Borders. The soldiers who were stationed with him say that he was easy to get along with.
“He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him,” said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp. “He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer - he drank a bottle of beer like any man.”
When the troops were demobilised, Voytek spent his last days at Edinburgh Zoo. Mr Karolewski went back to see him on a couple of occasions and found he still responded to the Polish language.
“I went to Edinburgh Zoo once or twice when Voytek was there,” he said. “And as soon as I mentioned his name he would sit on his backside and shake his head wanting a cigarette. It wasn’t easy to throw a cigarette to him - all the attempts I made until he eventually got one.”
Voytek was a major attraction at the zoo until his death in 1963. Eyemouth High School teacher Garry Paulin is now writing a new book, telling the bear’s remarkable story.
‘Totally amazing’
Local campaigner Aileen Orr would like to see a memorial created at Holyrood to the bear she says was part of both the community and the area’s history. She first heard about Voytek as a child from her grandfather, who served with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
“I thought he had made it up to be quite honest but it was only when I got married and came here that I knew in fact he was here, Voytek was here,” she said. “When I heard from the community that so few people knew about him I began to actually research the facts. It is just amazing, the story is totally amazing.”
Holy. Christ.
So a group of Polish soldiers, after recuperating from their captivity in Russian, finds an Iranian bear and takes it with them through Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy to help them kill German Nazis before finally letting the bear live out his days in a Scottish zoo.
And people say History is boring.
But the story doesn’t just end at “OMG! A crazy bear killed Germans!” Oh no, there’s an even more in depth story about Voytek and his crazy-ass owners, which has some tidbits about this seemingly mythical beast that frankly I wish I had been able to make up myself.
During the most crucial phase of the battle, when pockets of men were cut off on the mountainside desperately in need of supplies, Voytek, who all this time had been watching his comrades frantically loading heavy boxes of ammunition, came over to the trucks, stood on his hind legs in front of the supervising officer and stretched out his paws toward him. It was as if he was saying: “I can do this. Let me help you”. The officer handed the animal the heavy box and watched in wonder as Voytek loaded it effortlessly onto the truck.
Backwards and forwards he continued, time and time again, carrying heavy shells, artillery boxes and food sacks from truck to truck, from one waiting man to another, effortlessly. The deafening noise of the explosions and gunfire did not seem to worry him. Each artillery box held four 23 lbs live shells; some even weighed more than a hundred. He never dropped a single one. And still he went on repeatedly, all day and every day until the monastery was finally taken.
—
Although he was world-famous, the bear of Monte Cassino was forced to spent his last years behind bars in Edinburgh’s Zoological gardens. Artists came to sketch him and sculptors to make statues of him. Sometimes his old army friends arrived to visit him, leaping over the barriers to wrestle and play with him in the bear enclosure (to the utter horror of all the visitors and zoo officials).
The farthest I’ve gotten my dogs to helping me in a real battle is when they’ll lick Colton’s face as I hold him down and tickle him for hours on end.
Oh screw it, there’s not a single thing I could write that would make this story any more awesome or entertaining, so I’ll just stop trying. I should be referencing Stephen Colbert or the hilarity of men having enough confidence to get a wild bear drunk in their midst, yet I’m still stuck on the fact that A FUCKING BEAR HELPED BEAT THE NAZIS. Eat it, Hitler.
Goob + the flu = perfect excuse to sleep all day and watch crummy old movies on TV.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I did spend a little time on the computer today and as a result, discovered Angry Video Game Nerd. Basically, it’s a guy playing old NES games while swearing and pointing out how much they sucked. Anybody who grew up in the 80s needs to watch some of them, ESPECIALLY the Ghostbusters one. It’s a tad long, but chock full of truth and laughs.
If you want, go ahead and picture me playing with all the toys he shows at the beginning of the video as I recognized each and every one of them.
Edit #1: Here’s his review of Independence Day, a video game my siblings might remember. So damn accurate!
