Yeah, I hate that.

Seriously, every spoiler-free article and headline talked about how fulfilling and complete the final season and specifically episode was. I couldn’t find a single negative response to it and in doing some hasty research, I couldn’t find much against the show in general. Here was a show on HBO which critics and fans alike loved and which had been running for the past six years or so. And I’d never fucking heard of it!

I’d been burned by an HBO show before (FUCKING SOPRANOS SUCKED ASS!), but I finally broke down and watched the first season during the tail end of March.

Last week, I watched the final episode of the fifth, and final, season.

One of the top 10 shows of my lifetime? Most likely.

The beauty in the show is it’s realism. The good guys have huge flaws. The bad guys aren’t 100% evil. This isn’t some episode of 24 where all the bad guys speak in a Russian accent and Jack Bauer is God. This is real, where the good guys don’t always win, the bad guys don’t always lose, and sometimes you forget who in the hell is on which side much less who you’re “supposed” to be rooting for.

I told my brother it was like LOST, but in the real world. Everything everybody does screws over somebody else. The police, judges, lawyers, businessmen, politicians, dope dealers, crack addicts, children, teachers, dock workers, and everyday citizens all affect one another. If you think LOST weaves character stories together, you ain’t seen shit yet.

If you’ve already seen every episode, then please feel free to click the “more” link below. Otherwise, go watch the entire first season (their seasons are only 10 or 12 episodes long), become hooked, watch the rest of them, and then come read what I’ve written below.

And just in case you’re too fucking lazy to click on the link above, here’s a short recap from Wikipedia to let you know what the hell you’re about to get yourself sucked into.

The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland. Created, produced, and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon, the series was broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States. The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002 and ended on March 9, 2008, with 60 episodes airing over the course of its five seasons.

Each season of The Wire focuses on a different facet of the city of Baltimore. They are, in order: the drug trade, the port, the city bureaucracy, the school system, and the print news media. The large cast consists mainly of character actors who are little known for their other roles. Simon has said that despite its presentation as a crime drama, the show is “really about the American city, and about how we live together. It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how…whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.”

Despite never seeing great commercial success or winning any major television awards, The Wire has frequently been cited by critics as one of the greatest television series of all time. The show is recognized for its realistic portrayal of urban life, artistic ambitions, and uncommonly deep exploration of sociological themes.

Central to the structure and plot of the show is the use of electronic surveillance and wiretap technologies by the police—hence the title The Wire. Salon.com described the title as a metaphor for the viewer’s experience: the wiretaps provide the police with access to a secret world, just as the show does for the viewer.

Without further a due (I still get a small kick out of that)…

HOLY SHIT! YES, YES, YES, AND MORE YES. THAT’S HOW YOU DO A FINAL SEASON!

I’m honestly having trouble trying to process all of the information right now. In fact, if you just watched all five seasons in a short span like I did, you’re probably having even more trouble digesting it all. By the way, did you notice all the throw backs in the final few cut-scenes? I loved the random, show of a chess board. D’Angelo deserved better.

My favorite characters overall? Carver, Bubbles, Omar, Lester, Daniels, Bodie, Sydnor, Pryzbylewski, Bunny, and McNulty. Seriously, how the fuck can you not like ANY of them? When I look at them as a whole, I see one common thread: Competence. Go figure, with my absolute love for the trait. Good or bad, each and every one of them was amazing at what they did and I can respect that.

Watching Bodie and Omar get killed was rough. I kinda saw Bodie’s coming, but Omar! FUCK! I LOVED him and I’m pretty sure I was meant to.

On the flip side? I almost cried when Bubbles was sitting down to dinner with his sister upstairs. After watching him for five seasons, I wanted him to get clean more than anything else. Seriously, a nuclear bomb could have gone off in those final seconds, vaporizing all of Baltimore minus Bubble’s house, and I probably would have been okay with that.

Herc? Templeton? Levy? Clay? Hey guys, guess what? FUCK YOU! ALL OF YOU!

I loved how Michael was the heir apparent to Omar. I loved how Chris and Weebay took the fall like true soldiers. I loved how Sydnor is the new McNulty. I love how it foreshadowed Marlow getting absolutely fucked by being unable to leave the street. Most of all, I loved how McNulty and Lester and Daniels and Greggs and Bunk were all able to stand by their convictions, respect one another for it, and all come out smiling.

Nothing changes though, does it?

Let’s go back to the people I love, though. First off, Carver. Honestly, did ANYBODY grow more over the course of this show than he did? Come on, I dare you to find somebody to replace Carver with the “Most Growth” award. During the first season, he’s bowing to Hurk’s peer pressure and stealing drug money. By the final episode, he’s not only learned how to do police work, but he’s actually evolved into giving a shit about the work itself.

Omar was the shit. Seriously, he could have killed everybody on the show and I still would have loved him. But that wasn’t Omar, he wouldn’t have done that. He had a mother fucking code, a strict honor, and he stood by it. He knew the rules of the game and he never strayed from his convictions. There’s something to be said for that. Hell, he wasn’t even greedy. He knew there weren’t many options in life for a guy like him and so he took the highest path he could. I can respect the hell out of that.

When Bubbles tried to hang himself at the end of season 4, I just about lost it. When he sat down to dinner upstairs, I finally did. How could you not love Bubbles? I can tell you, if I was in the same shoes he was in season 1, I don’t know if I would be able to climb out of them. Every episode he was trying to better himself, even if it was only by pushing a cart around town and selling toilet paper. There were only one or two things I absolutely wanted to see before the end of the series and Bubbles coming upstairs was at the very top of that list.

I like to think that Lester, Greggs, Bunk, and McNulty all remained friends. I think they would have, especially given the police sendoff McNulty received and the way him and Lester forgave Greggs. They all did what they thought was right, whether it be breaking the rules to get a crime solved, standing silent by a good friend, or calling them out on their bullshit. Yet in the end, they all kinda looked at each other and saw only respect for one another. That’s downright cool.

Same for Daniels. He overlooked and covered up for a lot of things, but he finally drew the line at juking the numbers. Good on him.

I hated seeing how only one of the “kids” made it out of the hood with Bunny, but again, you gotta admit that’s the most realistic way it would have gone down. I think seeing Dukie swindle Presbo and then become the new Bubbles was the worst. Here’s to hoping he at least has the same outcome. Presbo only being in the last episode of season 5 was a travesty, but I liked how he had grown into a true teacher.

I gotta say I didn’t see the Sydnor being McNulty’s clone coming, but after I saw it…well, yeah, I buy it. Sydnor ate a lot of shit during his days, and if you remember, he was a hot-shot up and coming that Daniels begged for in the first season. After the homeless murders, he’s been around the block a few times and knows how the game is played. Lester and McNulty taught the boy well and while I wouldn’t have predicted it beforehand, I totally buy him filling McNulty’s shoes.

And then we’ve finally got McNulty. In the very end, I don’t know what he ended up doing with himself. I’m glad he got out of police work altogether. He was okay after the Barksdale case ended (kinda) and I think the only true way to get away from the thrill and the rush of police work was to get out of it all together. I honestly can’t see him doing a damn thing else, but then again, I never foresaw a lot of things on this show. He was a great character though, doing whatever he pleased and damned the consequences. Plus he looks just like my Uncle Mike, which is kinda weird.

It’s tough trying to recap 50+ hours of television and dozens of characters in one post. I just wanted to get this all out of my system for my own benefit. I basically just sat down and pounded all of this out in a few minutes and now that I have, it feels good – almost like I can accept that the show is truly over.

There are only a handful of shows that are so well written and put together that I actually give a rat’s ass about the characters and story. Kudos to The Wire for nudging their way into the group.

Fuck you, CBS.

I could sit here and tout a countless array of argument as to how inept the current heads of television are. I could mention how TiVO and iTunes and bittorrent and DVR aren’t factored into Neilson ratings. I could reference the great YouTube debate or link to all the thousands of words I’ve written here on Shyzer mentioning how much money they’re losing every day they refuse to recognize the new ways of media consumption. But it’s all been said a million times before by just as many people.

Jericho was one of the few character driven shows on TV that didn’t employ a trite and vapid setting of doctors sleeping with each other or lawyers standing up for the common man. No matter what CBS wanted the show to be, Jericho understood that no matter how fantastic the story line was, the sci fi was only a setting and not a story in and of itself. The fact that shows like LOST and Battlestar Galactica have the same understanding only further exemplifies the type of company Jericho kept.

The bottom line is Jericho not only had a proven rabid fanbase, but had a handful of brand new episodes at a time when television was starving for new material. From two months, as the writers strike dragged on and every show had exhausted their supply of fresh material, CBS had the opportunity to move up the release date and showcase Jericho against the crap that every other network was scrambling to pump out. Instead, CBS not only killed an early release, but buried the show at it’s historically worst time on it’s historically worst day. They never wanted Jericho to succeed this second time around and in effect had no qualms about giving their fans a giant “fuck you.”

Yet I’m not pissed. These past seven episodes were beyond perfect. In ten years, we’ll casually laugh at how stupid we were in the past to have so many open-ended & slow driven shows. We’ll remember that it all started to change when shows like BSG and LOST not only refused to let the networks renew them for countless seasons, but demanded they be ended on their own terms – amazing ratings be damned! Networks will realize how successful these types of shows are, how much better written they are than the average show. Along the way, one network will finale realize the goldmine that is TV on Demand and suddenly shows will no longer be canceled due to poor Neilson ratings alone.

And then we’ll remember that show that not only came back from the dead because of it’s fans, but that managed to squeeze an entire season into only seven episodes. And we’ll remember how fucking awesome that show was and how long before it’s time it truly was.

Thanks for every damn episode, Jericho.

Any history major at USC was (and may still be, I’m too lazy to look it up) required to take a class titled History 300: The Historian’s Craft. Ugh. Shoot me now. The name of the class alone brought up images of stiff and musty old white professors in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches who talk with the same excitement in their voice as a person reading a technical manual. The only redeeming idea for the class was the outside chance that maybe my professor would smoke a pipe. He didn’t.

The class itself was mind numbingly boring, yet in hindsight kind of important. Basically, it was created to help weed out the idiots who didn’t know how to properly research a history paper or assignment and thus, the entire semester was spent emphasizing the importance of primary sources. For instance, if I was writing a paper on George Washington, I couldn’t simply quote some of the many books that have been written about him in the twentieth century. I’d have to research and pull up actual papers and essays Washington had wrote or newspaper articles from the time. Good God, I can’t tell you how many times my professor told me I needed primary sources. I could have gotten an interview with Jesus himself for a paper on the origins of Christianity and my professor still would have chided me for not getting a sit down with God.

So why am I telling you this? Oh, no big reason, other than to explain why 1421 is one of the shoddiest pieces of “history” reporting and research I’ve ever read. For those of you fortunate to have never read this trash written by Gavin Menzies (though by book sales numbers, far too many of you HAVE read this), the basic premise is that a massive Chinese fleet left port in 1421 and not only sailed around the world, but accurately mapped it as well. Australia, India, Africa, Antarctica, South & North America – you name it, the Chinese supposedly sailed there decades, if not centuries, before any Europeans.

I say supposedly because there’s about as much primary evidence for this having happened as there is for me being the first human to teleport to the surface of the moon and establishing the first galactic Starbucks.

The book (and subsequent PBS “documentary”) is littered with paragraphs that are meant to confuse the reader. He continually tosses in references to his own expertise in navigation and cartography, though the only qualifications shown are a mention here and there that he served in the Royal Navy of Britain. Awesome, I went to high school for four years, I’m therefore an expert in English literature. Whenever Menzies finally decides to stake a claim, he passes off conjecture as fact. Take for instance the following quote, which I kid you not, was selected by opening the book to a random page:

In talking about why the Chinese would have bothered mapping Antarctica: Why had the Chinese bothered to do so? I began to wonder if they really had gone there. Then the answer that I should have seen at once suddenly came to me. They had chosen to sail to Antarctica in order to get underneath Crucis Alpha, the leading star of the Southern Cross. I could only shake me head in wonder at the skill and sophistication of these Chinese mariners of so many centuries ago…

NO! Stop shaking your head, damnit! THAT’S NOT A FACT! Please show me one piece of evidence that proves they sailed there to check out the stars. One journal entry, one letter home, one anything that clearly says, “why did we sail into all these icebergs again? Oh yeah, so we could check out some stars.” Until then, saying they went there is simply Menzies’ best guess! Just because they might have wanted to map the southern stars, there’s no PROOF that’s why they traveled to the South Pole when they did. My best guess is that Amelia Earhart simply crashed in the Pacific and maybe survived for a month or two on a deserted island, but I have no proof that events unfolded this way, so I could never say it was fact. Maybe she really was spying on Japan, maybe she landed and led a normal life out of the spotlight, maybe she was captured by aliens, who the hell knows. I certainly don’t and neither does Menzies.

Here, let’s flip to another page. In fact, let’s look at the claim that Chinese sailors not only made port in my foreign hometown – Newcastle, Australia – but also left behind ruins.

On evidence found near Newcastle of early Chinese fleet activity: In 1965, sand-miners unearthed a huge wooden rudder from this site; some said it was 40 feet high. If this description was even remotely accurate, it eliminates the possibility of an unknown Portuguese or Dutch voyage.

Okay, excuse me while I go punch myself in the face so as to alleviate some of this frustration I have pent up now. What do you mean IF it’s accurate? This happened barely 40 years prior – GO INTERVIEW SOMEBODY WHO WAS AT THE UNEARTHING! If you can’t find anybody who was there, then say so! And where the hell is this rudder? Did it vanish? Did they stick it back in the ground? Who the hell knows because Heaven forbid Menzies does some actually research and investigating.

The book is FULL of baseless “facts” like these. Menzies constantly cites “accounts” by many famous European explorers of encountering things that in hindsight don’t fit the historically accepted timeline, such as plant and animal life that’s only indigenous to Asia or how they found a map in Europe that already had the world mapped out for them before they set off to explore it. The only problem is that Menzies doesn’t reference any of these accounts! He provides not a shred of proof that any of these European explorers actually had these accounts. Come on! I can do that, Christ. Did you know that Columbus once talked about how shocked he was to encounter magical dragons protecting a gumdrop village in Cuba? Oh yeah, Columbus loved it there. The space aliens who supplied the village with endless amounts of chocolate milk treated him like royalty. Oh, you never heard of this tale? Don’t worry, it totally happened, Columbus once talked about it to his buddies.

Menzies does try to explain why he has such few primary sources. There was a great purge of exploration knowledge in China (though in reality it wasn’t nearly as bad as he makes it sound. In fact, there are still surviving primary sources from that era that Menzies either ignored or chose to leave out because they didn’t support his claims), or the DNA analysis hasn’t come back yet (THEN WAIT TO PUBLISH THE FUCKING BOOK!), or carbon dating on the ship wreckage was inconclusive, or no Chinese artifacts in the Americas have been found yet despite many people’s best efforts, or… Hell, whenever he actually goes out on the limb and references an actual source, there’s a decent chance that source is fake! He makes reference to a museum that doesn’t exist (page 220, the Kedumba Nature Museum in Katoomba, Australia) and to make matters even more hilariously frustrating, such a museum never existed in the first place.

Why didn’t the Chinese sail to Europe? They partied with effing penguins, but they couldn’t figure out how to find the center of civilization at the time? If the Chinese had settled amongst all so many Native American tribes, how come they didn’t have immunities to European diseases? Why didn’t the Chinese set up a single tribute colony, which was supposedly the whole purpose of their trip? How is it that Menzies is allowed to use ancient tales and superstitions by Native Americans (long ago, yellow people came from the sea…) as support for the “fact” that the Chinese showed up, but I’m not allowed to use them to support my hypothesis that a magical dragon kingdom of gumdrops and lollypop lanes did in fact exist?

To be fair, I haven’t finished the book. I say that only to point out that I doubt I’ll make it all the way through. After 200+ pages, there’s only so much I can take.

As humans, we hate not knowing something. It goes against our innate nature and I can most definitely sympathize with people who hate not knowing what happened in our past. I want to know just as much as the next guy whether or not the Chinese actually discovered the New World before Columbus. But people need to understand one simple fact, especially when it comes to teaching history: It’s far better to say you don’t know something than to pass off your assumptions and speculations as fact.

There aren’t many times when I voluntarily give up the Internet for prolonged periods. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any such occasions right off the top of my head. That is, excluding the week leading up to July 21, 2007.

To say that I was a little paranoid about being spoiled the ending of the final Harry Potter book would be an understatement. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that people on the Internet are assholes, myself included. Some more often than others, but trust me, the fact remains. If you spend more than an hour a day on the Internet, there will be a point somewhere along the line where you’ll purposefully be a dick just for the hell of it. And when the entire HP book ends up on the Internet over a week before it’s actual release date, you didn’t have to have an active imagination to know what would follow.

So, with that said, Only click the link below if you’ve finished the Harry Potter Heptalogy, because otherwise you’re going to be spoiled. For you see, I surprisingly don’t want to be a dick right now.

Just to clarify once more, THERE ARE SPOILERS COMING UP SO UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW THE FINAL BOOK ENDS, STOP READING NOW, YOU FREAKING MORON! I know it’s been well over 7 months since the book came out, but hell, you never know.

Ok, so let’s just get a few things out of the way. I’ve already read the book three times and I’ve loved it every time. In fact, let’s just list some of the awesomeness:

• Neville finally completing his transformation from a bumbling tool to a hardcore, pure metal badass who isn’t afraid of anything. HOLY CHRIST, DID I LOVE THAT! In fact, I was probably hoping for that to happen more than anything else, even more so than Harry living at the end. From his shittyness at casting magic (which, albeit, got better after he broke his dad’s old wand in the 5th book. Turns out that wasn’t the best fit wand for him) to his parents (yeah, Harry’s might have been dead, but his were basically dead as well) to him not even having any real friends. Sure, he was friends with Harry, but Harry never treated him like Ron or Hermione. I didn’t care if JKR killed Harry off, just as long as she redeemed and validated Neville. And did she ever.
• The brutal killing of Hedwig destroyed me. I went to bed after reading that chapter and if you remember, JKR teased us into thinking Hagrid might be dead as well. So as I curled up for the night, I couldn’t have cared less that the bumbling Hagrid was dead. I couldn’t think of anything else beyond the fact that Harry had just exploded his freaking pet in his effort to escape the Death Eaters. And they say these are children’s books…
• The fact that Dudley maned up was awesome. It was a tad too Hallmark for some, but you can’t say that you saw it coming. I fully expected the Dursleys as a whole to remain assholes to the very end.
• Snape’s Redemption. I. Did. Not. See. That. Coming. At fucking all. I thought JKR was going to let Dumbledore’s blind faith in Snape be his ultimate worst mistake in life, yet even that proved to be yet another of his brilliant moves. Learning of his past didn’t excuse the fact that he was a total dick to Harry for no good reason, but it did at least explain it. He might not have been a good man, but at least he was trying to be.
• “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” – Hahahaha, eat it Bellatrix.
• All the loose ends were tied up. I mean, everything got a shout out if not an out right finality to it. From Shunpike being revealed as an actual Deatheater to Harry & Co. traveling to pretty much all the locations we’d ever seen in the books to the very last chapter where we learned what finally happened to heroes. Most times I enjoy endings where there’s at least some wiggle room for interpretation and imagining what actually happened, but for some reason it felt better being told what happened with everybody involved with this story.
• People died. Yeah, I hated reading about all the deaths, especially Lupin’s and Tonk’s. But they were necessary! You can’t have a believable war without people dying, it’s as simple as that. JKR was never afraid of killing people off in the past, which was a good thing, but I was still a little scared she might pull her punches and make the final battle a little too pie in the sky.
• And speaking of the final battle. I was so damn afraid it was going to be a letdown, but as soon as McGonagall had the suits of armor spring to life and take up defensive perimeters, I knew it was gonna rock. I would have liked to see a little Lupin-Greyback werewolf action, but all in all that’s my only criticism of the battle. And when you’ve got over a decade and seven books of buildup to said battle and that’s the only drawback to it, then you know it was good. I mean, everybody showed up to fight! As people kept coming through the portrait into the Room of Requirement, I kept yelping out with joy and my heart started racing faster and faster. From start to finish, it was freaking awesome, from the cavalry of desks to the portraits screaming out battle reports to Trelawny raining down fortune telling orbs – awesome, awesome, awesome.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting about, as I only had two of those bullets above typed before an hour ago. But I wanted to get this post up just as a small thank you to JKR. Our parents had Star Wars and their parents had Lord of the Rings, but up until the Harry Potter saga, my generation didn’t have an epic fantasy tale to fall in love with and call our own. For that reason alone, JKR will forever have my gratitude and appreciation. It’s not easy writing fantasy (trust me, I know) and the fact that she was able to create such a vivid and rich world is nothing short of brilliant and amazing. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

Basically, the story goes as such. We started our adventure in Chile, where we planned on staying for a week. After that, it was off to Buenos Aires for a week and then back home. Easy, quick, and smooth – well, so went the plan. Alex brought with him a Lonely Planet travel guide for Chile and I brought down a Frommer’s Argentina & Chile 3rd edition travel guide. And let’s just say that it took all of 10 minutes for us to realize that the only thing I’d brought along was a hunk of paper that was going to slow us down.

My first discovery that Frommer’s sucks is when I flipped it open to look at the map inside and found a grand total of one map for Santiago.

One. Map.

Alex flipped his book open and not only was his map far larger than mine, but each subsequent page was a zoomed in map with much more detail (ie, STREETS) of all the local burrows. But the alarmingly lack of street information wasn’t even the worst of Frommer’s inefficiency. We wanted to take the subway that afternoon and as I opened my book, I saw on the inside front cover a beautiful color map of Buenos Aires’ subway system. Fantastic! We were saved! But you know me, always running around assuming things that aren’t true. So you can imagine my surprise when I flipped to the back cover and found a beautiful…Travelocity advertisement? What the hell?! No Santiago subway map in the entire book? Welcome to Frommer’s!

But Goob, you might be saying to yourself, you’re a Master Navigator (that almost sounds dirty.) You don’t need a stinking map! And you’re right! I didn’t need a map, seeing as how Alex’s Lonely Planet had plenty! What I did need were reviews and suggestions on things to do. You know, the kind of thing you’d expect a travel guide to have, right? Wrong, because Frommer’s has nothing like that!

Actually, I should clarify. The book does have recommendations on things to do and see. But unlike Alex’s Lonely Planet guide where each tourist spot had a rough overview on what to see, how to get there, and when to go, Frommer’s is more in the style of “Here’s a cool place, go there.” That’s it. No instructions on the best way to get there, why it’s a good spot, or who might enjoy it best. It was like I was reading the damn Yellow Pages.

And I particularly enjoyed the following golden gem from Frommer’s own website:

I’m dissatisfied with my guide. Can I get a refund?

Book refunds or exchanges are dependent on the policy of the retail or online store from which the book was purchased. Frommer’s does not provide refunds or exchanges for books that were purchased from a retail vendor.

Yep, because it’s Books-A-Million’s fault that Frommer’s guide books suck! It has nothing to do with the fact that FROMMER TRAVEL GUIDES ARE ABSOLUTELY ABYSMAL TO BEGIN WITH!

So, if you haven’t quite caught on to the subtle hints I’ve been occasionally dropping, I’ll say this. If you enjoy stress-free vacations and not wasting money on glorified paperweights, then please, for the love of God, never buy a Frommer’s Travel Guide. The sooner this company is taken out back behind the shed, the better for us all. No wonder American’s rarely travel outside of the country. They’ve got travel guides like these making them want to beat their heads in with a tack hammer.

And by anything, I seriously mean anything. I just reviewed the latest Simpsons movie. All you have to do is record yourself talking for a minimum of 60 seconds and then upload the video. Most reviews only pay out $2, but there are a few special categories that pay out $10. Electronics is the big one. In the past few days, I’ve reviewed three cell phones, two digital camera, two different iPods, an xbox 360, the xbox wireless remote, a nintendo wii, a nintendo wii remote. That’s 11 items right there, netting me $110, and they all probably took me a max of 90 minutes to review and upload. And when I think about it, there are plenty more electronics I can review. My TV’s, DVD player, my three laptops, my desktop computer, my computer speakers, my universal remote control, etc.

This site has been around for over a year and I can’t believe that I just now found it. At midnight tonight, the sports equipment, pets, and baby products categories drop from $10 to $2, so I’m cramming as many of those videos in as I can right now. But if you want some quick money, just sign up and review a few electronics and be done with it. Of course, read that HIF post I made and the post I made on Hey, It’s The Forums! as well for more info, because there are more than just electronics that you can review for $10 (cars and travel destinations off the top of my head. I think a review of Myrtle Beach is in order!) There’s also a giant ass thread on Something Awful that’s been going on for over a year, which is where I found out about this site. Hundreds of people there have been paid out and there’s a HUGE tips and faq guide on there, which is very helpful.

And I thank you all for signing up under me. If you do so and then upload just 1 video, I make $5, which I’ll be using to create a big contest on HIF to give shit away.

KO Hit.net is such a site.

Basically, some guy in Europe decided he could make money just by hosting an ass load of music that people could download for free. I know there are a lot of sites like that out there, but far too many of them are in Russian (which I guess isn’t a problem for Fellner anymore), or contain tons of porn advertisements or even spyware and viruses. But KO Hit doesn’t have any of that and it’s a heck of a lot easier to use compared to booting up Limewire when you just want to download one song.

The search feature is a little wacky, but it works best if you just type in the artist’s name and then find the song from there. You can even listen to the songs first before downloading them, which helps when you have no idea what the name is of the song you want.

So check out KO Hit if you feel your iPod’s been a little bland lately. Of course…uh….you know, you should only download songs that you already legally own and whatnot. Because if there’s one thing we here at Shyzer Industries won’t stand for, it’s stealing. Well that and allowing Bob Costas on TV.

Man, he’s such a douche.

It’s not. And it’s not.

The problem was that the movie wasn’t anything like the trailers made it out to be. It’s a drama that goes on and on about how we can’t communicate with other people who have the same feelings, emotions, blah blah blah. It was basically three poorly connected stories going on at once. It’s as if I was watching three separate mini-movies that kept cutting away just when I started to tolerate them. To make matters worse, half of the characters acted as if they had a learning disability that put them on par with 4 year old with Down’s Syndrome. Just because you’re a fish out of water doesn’t mean you have to act like an idiot, despite what this movie tries to teach you.

In fact, you know it’s a shitty movie on the screen when you find that you don’t give a shit whether any of the major characters to live or die. What rubbish.

The Good: Jericho – Present day America. Major cities suddenly nuked by an unknown enemy. And a small town full of seemingly half genius, half dumbass citizens. Yeah, it’s a somewhat weak premise, and it’s a “family” show despite the nuclear holocaust, and some of the plot holes are so glaring, you have to wear sunglasses while watching. But if you can get past all that, it’s actually not a bad hour of television. We’ve all dreamed about what we’d do if the end of the world happened in out life time and so it’s fun in the sense that every step of the way, you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “Man, I never would have thought to do that!” It won’t be winning any awards any time soon, but it’s not being canceled and people are tuning in, which says enough.

The Bad: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – I wanted this show to be good. I still do. The premise of a behind-the-scenes-of-SNL type comedy/drama from the creator of The West Wing sounded great. But if Aaron Sorkin doesn’t get off his high horse soon and immediately stop writing condescending episodes in between bad plot lines, myself and the other 28 viewers left will ultimately flip the channel. So why do I still keep coming back for more? Because of the actors. Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry have some of the best chemistry between each other, almost to the level of Scrubs’ Zach Braff and Donald Faison. It’s fun watching Perry finally be able to play the serious & witty role, and play it quite well I might add. It’s lucky (and rare) that despite his work on Friends, he managed to not get typecast as the goofy, sidekick guy only to watch his career go down the tube years later.

The Ugly: Daybreak – What do you get when you mix Groundhog Day, 24, and a sack full of shit together? Daybreak. ABC couldn’t have pimped this show any more than they did and it still flopped pitifully. The only thing missing from making this the ultimate crapfest were the writers of LOST – oh wait, that’s right, this aired in the same time spot as LOST did. No wonder.

The Great: Heroes – I’ll be completely honest here. I hated this show at first. Had I written this post back in October, Heroes would have enjoyed the spot above all to itself. But thankfully, I watched more than just the first two episodes and soon fell in love with the whole show. We all grew up with X-Men comics and cartoons. But even outside of X-Men, we all have a favorite superhero and the one thing they each have in common is the fact that they have some sort of cool super power! But for most of us, we fell in love with a character who had already mastered their powers and who was using them against the forces of evil in the world. Never has there been a story where we actually get to follow these heroes transforming right before our eyes – until now. Few of the characters in Heroes have even come close to harnessing their powers, much less mastering them. We’re able to watch as they struggle to fit their newfound changes into their normal life. At the same time, we get to watch as a few of them discover that the dark side might be a more lucrative path. Will the good guys band together? Will they learn to mesh their powers together in order to stop the impending nuclear blast? Chances are they will, but it’s still fun as hell to watch.

So go fire up your favorite downloading program and catch a few episodes of these days, minus the craptacular one mentioned above. Hopefully you won’t be too disappointed.

NOTE: I recently found an old article I wrote for Circle of Jerks almost two years ago. It’s a bit mean, but then again it was for a site where the domain name proudly proclaims the authors are Jerks I found it funny, I remember it being pretty fun, if not a change in pace, to write and since it’s no longer on-line over on Stan’s site (slacker!), I thought I’d repost it here for any of you who missed it the first time around. Enjoy.

It would be great to say that I waited to write this post until the eve of the release of Star Wars III. It would also be great to say that I then decided to wait until the movie had been out for a week or two before writing this post. Alas, the truth is that Stan mentioned I should write something on this topic, so I decided to pull an Angela and ignore my responsibilities for at least three weeks. In fact, Stan finally got to the point where he no longer expected me to upload this story, so he took me off the “In The Works” list. That’s procrastination at its finest, my friends.

I’ve always viewed myself as a conveyor of information. Any time I’ve ever found something cool or interesting, I like to pass it along to others in an effort to spread around the Great Cup ‘O Knowledge. This is not one of those occasions.

By now, though, you should be saying to yourself, “Goob, just what in the hell are you talking about?” Glad you asked. With the latest release of a Star Wars movie, we’ve all been reminded of one of the most glaring stains on human civilization: the existence of Star Wars nerds, fans, and freaks alike. They come out in droves, shamelessly supporting their idiotic support for a series of movies that they claim “inspire” them to get out of bed every morning. They line up for hours, nay, days before the release of the movie, dressed in full regalia, just so that they can say they saw the first showing in their hometown of Crap Town, USA. They beam as news reporters interview them for their human interest stories on the 6 o’clock news, unwitting to the fact that their interviews remind each and every one of us normal people how lucky we are not to be one of them.

And with the influx of the Internet into our everyday lives, us Normal people are now bombarded with Their websites. You know the types. The ones that carry on twenty page conversations over why Han Solo should have never been able to use a lightsaber in Episode 5. The ones that try to follow Princess Amidala’s wardrobe in an effort to see what kind of “mood” she’s in throughout the movies. Or the ones that try and explain just how a lightsaber works.

I wish I was making this up. However, in the interest of science and making fun of Star Wars Nerds throughout the world, I ventured through the above site and meticulously made fun of it each step of the way. Join me, if you will, in doing the same.

The opening page contains the following introduction: “Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina.” Chances also are that whoever wrote that is still living in his or her – ok, let’s be real here, his – parent’s basement with George Lucas posters on the wall. I spend many a hours at the local cantina and I have seen a drunk 400 pound man eat an entire jar of pickled eggs, a drunk girl make out with four guys at once in the back alley, and this one guy who could swallow a shot glass and regurgitate it with the liquid still in it! Yet I have never seen a lightsaber. Not once.

Buried at the bottom of page 2 is the following: “Lightsabers are only a figment of George Lucas’ imagination, of course. This is an entirely fictional article, based on information in Star Wars movies and books.”

You don’t say! Really!? Nooooooo. I’m shocked, honestly, I am. You mean to tell me they’re not real?! You mean to tell me that hundreds and thousands of thousands of people worldwide devote their time, energy, and lives to studying and writing Internet How Stuff Works Guides about a fictitious movie? I’m flabbergasted. Now if only these people would do the same in realizing that they are wasting their lives and do something productive! I’m sure there are some homeless people down the street that could use some food. Why don’t you people go use The Force and feed them? Or if you want a bigger challenge, I think the continent of Africa could even use some food. Put down that twentieth Twinkie you’re about to eat and airmail it to Rwanda, you loser!

On page three, we are treated to the following image:

Aside from the fact that it looks like the chick is about to be mugged in broad daylight by a Mexican biker, my favorite part of the photo has to his weapon of choice. A tire iron? How does that lady know he was about to mug her? He could have been offering to fix her flat. Stupid whore. Somebody take that fictional lightsaber away from her and banish her from ever appearing on the Internet again. While you do that, I’m gonna go find that Mexican biker because my left rear tire looks a little low on air.

I’m not ever going to talk about the 4th page, which has a detailed picture of the “inner workings” of a lightsaber. I’ll just leave it at this. Somebody, somewhere, actually took the time to not only learn how this made up product “works,” but they also created a photoshop picture of it to share with others. Somebody get this man a Life.

Page 5 greets us with a collection of high tech sounding phrases to make us Normal people feel overwhelmed. Diatium power cells, power vortex rings, crystal energy chambers, arc waves, activation matrixes, virgins who will never be laid, etc. Okay, so maybe I made up that last one, but it should be somewhere on that page, describing those who actually believe in this shit.

Later in the article, I found myself reading that, “A lightsaber completely blows away a can of pepper spray as a deterrent in muggings or robberies.” Really? Because trust me, the next time I go to rob somebody and they pull out a lightsaber to protect them, I’m going to swat away their little PlaySkool toy and get on with my thievery and evilness. A blast of pepper spray might actually put a halt to me trying to steal somebody’s valuables, but a glow-in-the-dark plastic sword is going to only stop me if I fall on the floor laughing at the person.

And humor me here, if you will. Take a look at this picture:

Does this not look exactly like our favorite Mexican Christ Puncher’s member?! This only leads me to believe that he not only felt threatened enough by our overzealous bitch in the first photo to not change her tire, but that he used his tire iron to beat her and steal her lightsaber. Thankfully, he’s putting it to good use trimming hedges and not attacking other would be Good Samaritans, but it makes me wonder. If these lightsabers are so powerful, how come it couldn’t beat an illegal immigrant with a freaking tire iron? Seriously, these Star Wars nerds will spend years pointing out continuity errors in movies, but won’t even take the time to proof read one of their lame articles.

Thankfully, the last page has finally arrived. On it are more “uses” for a lightsaber, but sadly, all I could focus on were the continuity errors they all contained, especially the one where no shadow was displayed on the back wall while the guy heats up his coffee. Oh no – I’ve already started to become one of Them. First off I’m bitching about a poor photoshop job of a lightsaber and the next minute I’ll find myself whining over how Obi-wan Kenobi’s outfit changed from one scene to another in the latest movie. Thankfully, I caught myself in time and can now go back to beating up Star Wars Fans and stealing their lunch money.

They still believe The Force can protect them when in reality, the force from my fist ensures that I’ll be eating this afternoon. On second thought, let’s keep these morons around.

Once you sit through an hour of television like that, you don’t just go back and turn on The Daily Show or 24. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Thank you, Ron Moore. You truly are a genius in the midst of a field with far too many hacks.

I rarely ever vouch for something I have little control over. I don’t like the thought of saying something is great only to turn around later and see it’s total crap. Movies and books are one thing, for if I watch or read one and love it enough to recommend it to people, it’s rarely going to change. No matter how many years later I suggest it, the movie isn’t going to have changed nor will the book have gone through another round of editing. But then you’ve got the oh-so-fickle world of television.

When I first watched LOST, I was excited. Just the general plot was something that I’d imagined about in my brain for years, something that I’d actually begun to write about and ponder turning it into a real story. And then before I knew it, ABC was actually coming out with a show just like the one in my head and I couldn’t wait! And to be fully honest, that first season was dynamite. It was exciting, explosive, mysterious, and fun. I told everybody I knew about it. I stayed up one night in my kitchen, blowing off hanging out at the bars with my friends, to tell my brother all about what he’d missed and why it was so great. I got my dad hooked, my other two siblings, my mom. Anybody who would listen to me, I went on and on about the show.

And now I wish I could go back, tell them that what I saw that first season wasn’t the final product and that if they were smart, they’d stay far, far away from this show.

It’s hard watching something you love deteriorate into a bulky mass of nothingness and incoherency. It’s like I’m watching my grandmother suffer through Alzheimer’s all over again. Actually, it’s more than that. A part of me was invested in this show. I wanted it to succeed, in small part to validate all the time I’ve put into it. But now it’s become an abusive relationship where every other week I hear over and over, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby, I swear! I promise to never do it again! Until now, I’ve always accepted its apology, welcomed it back into my life every Wednesday night, and wound up getting hurt time and time again.

Well not anymore. This show has Jumped the Shark. Or, as I like to call it now, Shook the Bunny.

There’s just so much wrong with this show, it’s not even funny. From day 1, the writers have claimed that A) They have the entire first 4 seasons completely mapped out and B) Everything will be realistically and scientifically explained in the end. If you still believe either one of those is true, I’ve got some wonderful tourist packages to Iraq you might be interested in.

The writers (from here on out called TPTB: The Powers That Be) clearly have no preplanned story arc. They’re all over the place. They spend an entire season assimilating a group of characters only to kill them all off in a pointless need to shock and awe us. They refuse to either drop the flashbacks or use them to teach us something new, instead opting to drive home the point that Jack has daddy issues and that Sawyer is a con man. We. Get. It. Hell, they even constantly bring up new questions without even so much as a sniff of an answer to any of the previous ones they brought up.

Here’s a little tip. Constantly arising new questions that make us forget all about the ones you posed last year doesn’t equal good storytelling. It makes you look like bad writers who can’t come up with decent answers.

Don’t believe me? Check out this message board post where fans of LOST spend 31 pages talking about all the unanswered questions. And it’s not even the fact that there are so many that’s frustrating, it’s the method they’ve now adopted in doing so. It’d be one thing if they asked a question and then constantly dangled it in front of us, like they did with “what’s in the hatch?” But now they simply ask a question, forget about it for a year, and then suddenly bring it up again and expect us to get excited. Sorry guys, but it doesn’t work that way.

Everything they’ve revealed so far has been such a letdown. I don’t think they could have built the Others up any more than they did and all we get is this? Some kidnappings, fish biscuits, and a “will you fix my spine? Only if you want to, though!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I used to be TERRIFIED of the Others. Now, they remind me of a weird cult that loves Kool Aide. Nothing they do makes sense, none of their actions are logical, and the illogicalness of it all has served no purpose whatsoever. Way to drop the ball on this one.

Think of it this way. You have a spinal tumor. It is terminal. You are desperate for medical help and surgical care. A spinal surgeon “falls from the sky”. You:

A) Race over to him, befriend him, help him, and ask for his help.
B) Send others to race over to him, beat the shit out of him and his friends, kill a few random folks, kidnap all the children, kidnap him, and keep him locked in an oversized aquarium.

And the Others are geniuses… how?

But it’s not only the Others who don’t act normally. Even the Losties are pure idiots. Almost every episode something will happen and either nobody questions it or somebody keeps it a secret. I don’t want to watch a show full of morons. That’s not fun, it’s frustrating.

Even the writing on an episode to episode basis has deteriorated. My head still hurts from where all those religious symbolism anvils crashed into my skull last night. We get it. You took Intro to Philosophy freshman year. Good on ya, bruthas. But that doesn’t mean you have to dust off those old English assignments analyzing the passage for color symbolism and try to out-allegory Hawthorne. Stick to what worked during the first season, for Christ’s sake. Actually, I guess I should be thankful they haven’t given any character the initials J.C. and suspicious scars on their palms. Then again, we really don’t know anything about the new characters, so I won’t hold my breath.

All of this finally came to the boiling point for me when they killed Eko last night. A full season of assimilating the Tailies into the show only to not use them at all in the plotline and then kill them off? Where is the Master Plan in that?! You’ve told us from day 1 that it’s going to be similar to Stephen King’s The Stand, with there being two different main factions. First you try to set up a Jack vs. Locke, then you try a Cave vs. Beach or Beach vs. Hatch scenario. You’ve already failed at the Losties vs. the Others and I guess we can kiss those hints of Eko’s religious group vs. Locke’s nuthouse fate camp down the drain. Now? It’s none of them and you still can’t figure out what the hell you’re trying to accomplish with this show.

I can understand killing Boone to give Locke his Great Test o’ Faith. I can understand killing Ana Lucia in a seemingly shocker twist in a season finale. But to write off Eko, Walt, Michael, Shannon, and Libby just because you can’t think of any better storylines for them is pointless and lazy. Stop introducing new characters if you don’t even know what to do with the one’s you’ve got! I swear, I don’t know how anybody could believe TPTB aren’t writing this show on the fly and making it up as they go along!

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a TV show that’s both entertaining and intelligent without insulting it’s audience.

I guess you can say this is my apology to all those out there who had to listen to me talk about LOST so much. If you want a part comedy, part drama that makes Law & Order look like a high school production of Macbeth, check out Boston Legal. Scrubs is by far the best comedy on television these days, whenever it actually IS in the lineup. Heroes is also one of the better new shows this year, although they are already teetering on succumbing to the LOST factor.

And then you’ve got Battlestar Galactica. A show which hasn’t had an equal on the airwaves in the past year. A show which not only is well planned and well written, but well acted. A show that if push came to shove and I was forced to pick only one series to watch for the next 5 years, it would be spoken by my lips in a matter of seconds.

Trust me, if you were one of the chosen that I mistakenly turned onto LOST, please accept my sincere apologies and spend your time more wisely on Battlestar Galactica. You won’t be disappointed.

I must have listened to that song 100 times within the next 48 hours. Ok, according to my iPod, it was actually only 54. Still, you get my point. But the story doesn’t end there, folks. As I listened to the song, I knew there was something eerily familiar about it. The song was by an artist named Imogen Heap, but the more I listened to it, the more it sounded like Frou Frou. Many of you probably have no idea who Frou Frou is, but back in 2004 one of their songs was not only in the movie Garden State, but was also the song used in all the previews and commercials. In fact, one their songs, Hear Me Out*, is prominently featured in the new I-swear-it’s-coming-one-of-these-days-even-though-I’ve-worked-on-it-for-over-three-years-now section on Shyzer known as Shlyircs. The only reason I tell you any of this is because finally it dawned on me that “Imogen Heap was simply the chick from Frou Frou,” which clearly meant she was now flying solo and hence there was a whole new CD out there just waiting for me to devour.

It was as if I’d picked up that $10 bill only to notice there was an extra zero on the end of all the tens, or the spare ticket my buddy had for the game was a box seat, or as I watched the hot chick move in, I spotted no wedding ring. And yet the story doesn’t even end there.

About a year ago, Blink 182 announced they were going on hiatus, which we all know is the secret word for “breaking up never to return and make new music.” Now, while this may have pleased some people, it was semi-tragic to those of us who loved Blink. Their music wasn’t just soothing; it was a staple in my development and upbringing. In fact, if I were forced to pick my favorite band, Blink would give Collective Soul a run for their money. But to be honest, I wasn’t that worried. Back in 2003, two of the members of Blink branched off on a little side project called Box Car Racer, which was brilliant (and again, even more prominently featured on Shlyrics than Frou Frou.) I held out hope that with Blink on hiatus, they both might return to Box Car and simply take that up full time. But sadly, I read last July that each and every member of Box Car had no desire to return, stating it had simply been a fun little band they had no desire of growing. And with that, I gave up all hope of hearing any new Blink music.

And then three nights ago Clay fell asleep with the TV still on and I randomly turned off my iPod exactly at the right moment. Suddenly, that $100 bill had become $1000. Those box seats were for game 7 of the World Series. The hot chick was not only single, but heavily attracted to me.

As soon as I switched my iPod off and got up to do the same to the TV, I froze. We all know the only time MTV plays music videos is between 1 and 4 AM and seeing as how I was the only person still awake in the house, it’s safe the say it was right around that time frame. It didn’t even take me 10 seconds to identify the voice coming from the TV. It was Tom DeLonge, the singer from Box Car, the singer from Blink. It turns out the reason he had no desire to grow Box Car was simply because he wanted to start yet another bad, one that was bigger and better. And yet as I listened to their music, in my mind, I was listening to a new Blink CD yet again, albeit one that was a little more advanced and mature, both in lyrics and sound. Thankfully the torrents were running well that night and within minutes, I had 12 songs on my desktop by Angels & Airwaves and I must say, I don’t think I’ll be deleting a single one of them.*

It’s not every day that you find $1000 on the floor. Or get free box seats to the World Series. Or get to take a smoking hot neighbor out for dinner. Or in this case, discover some of the best songs since Coldplay’s X & Y album. But in each and every case, you learn to appreciate the random event and thank your deity of choice for delivering such a special treat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to jam.

* – AVA and Hear Me Out can now be heard on Shyzer Radio

And on a side note, I don’t think any show in recent memory has better used obscure music than Scrubs. I have no idea how many songs from my playlist I first discovered from an episode, but suffice to say I think the cream of the crop was the ending song last week from The Fray titled “How To Save A Life,” which you can conveniently find over on Shyzer Radio.

The show was called Battlestar Galactica and as they say, the third time’s a charm.

In 2003, NBC was again looking to fill its lineup and was approached by a group of writers who wanted to remake the old series into a 3-hour miniseries, except with a few twists. And by few twists I mean completely overhauling the series, such as turning the bad guy (who was named Count Baltar. COUNT fucking Baltar. Pure 70s right there, folks) into a quasi-good guy, recasting several key characters from male to female, and basically rewriting and changing the entire script from start to finish. NBC gave it the green light and later that year, it aired with little advance advertising or promotions. You can imagine the network’s shock when critics nationwide loved it and ratings proved it to be the highest-rated cable miniseries of the year. For those of you who missed it, the plot unfolded as such: A group of 12 planets housed the human race and their names ranged from Caprica to Scorpia to Virgon: variations of today’s zodiac signs. We soon learn that 40 years ago, our friends had been involved in a bloody and violent war with the Cylons, a group of machines that had been created to serve the humans, but who eventually rose up and revolted. At the end of the war, a cease fire was signed and the Cylons left to find their own home world. They were never heard from again, life slowly returned to normal, and human society began to revert back to a peacetime environment.

Turns out, that’s what the Cylons wanted. As we watch, they sneak back into the colonies using different models of human androids they’ve created and utterly decimate the planets with nuclear weapons during a surprise invasion, killing everything and anything in their path. A relatively small group of survivors meet up in space and, accompanied by the only military battleship that was able to avoid being destroyed, realize that the war is now over – the humans have lost. Not knowing what to do, the survivors recount an old myth that says when their ancestors first came and founded these colonies, there was actually a 13th group that was sent to a far away planet.

Realizing they have no other choice but to run into the unknown, our rag-tag group of survivors escape one last time from a Cylon attack and head out into the depths of space to find the mythical planet of Earth.

It didn’t take long for the Sci Fi Channel to jump at the opportunity and buy the rights to the story and characters. After seeing how much people loved the new version, they had visions of turning it back into a TV show and in January 2005, 13-trial episodes began to air, picking up right where the 2003 miniseries left off. TIME magazine soon declared it one of the six best drama series on television and the show won an ungodly amount of hardware that would give Desperate Housewives or LOST a run for their money. Season 1 eventually wrapped up on a LOST-esque type cliffhanger, but last night, Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers. There’s no hanging on the cliff anymore, we’ve been kicked right over the edge and sent tumbling into the black abyss. And we have to wait until fucking October for season 3 to start.

If you want a show filled with violence, sex, and car chases, this isn’t for you. Oh, there are plenty of sweet battle scenes and scantily clad babes and hunks, trust me on that. But there’s also so much more. One of the unique aspects of this show is the use of religion and mythology, in both the classic form and with a new twist. The humans believe in a more Greek and Roman system and believe in the multiple Gods of Cobol. The Cylons, a group of robots and human androids remember, actually believe in One God, The God. It’s truly a refreshing twist on things, running against the grain that most shows and movies portray of the godless, evil robots putting the moral humans up against the death wall only to have an act of God spare the humans and save the day. Another nice twist is the Cylons understanding and almost mastery of human emotions. These aren’t just bland toasters, these robots think and feel and have needs of their own. The writers also make use of science fiction to examine contemporary social, moral, and ethical issues in allegory and yet in the midst of all this, they also manage to keep you guessing and on your toes with every episode. Plus it’s nice to see a show that doesn’t run with the “Look how powerful the humans are now!” storyline and instead stick with a “Holy Christ, our race is about to be extinct and we have no idea what we’re doing” theme.

But in the end, the show basically boils down to one thing: Hope. These people have nothing but hope keeping them alive; hope that they can stay ahead of the Cylon army that’s chasing them for just another day, hope that their supplies won’t run out before it’s too late, hope that Earth is something more than just a myth. Hope.

So if you find you have a long weekend (ok, it might take you a full week or two actually) of nothing to do and trust in my judgment of the current Top 10 Shows on Television, head on down to Blockbuster and rent the miniseries / first 2 seasons on DVD. You’ve got until next October and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Oh yeah, I think I should also go ahead and crown Battlestar Galactica as having the best theme music and opening sequence, possible of all time. They picked the perfect song and clips to depict nothing but absolute despair and desperation and I literally get goose bumps every time I see/hear it.

That’s right, literally.

And then last month, the trap was laid. It started sometime during the trial audition episodes where people sing their hearts and souls out only to be ridiculed, embarrassed, and flee from the building with only a trail of crushed dreams following them. Oh, and the FOX cameramen are there too, because talk about good television! But then this rocker dude sporting some cool facial hair and a wicked cowboy hat walked into the room and caught my attention. And then the little girl named London or Moscow or whatever walked in the room and belted out a Dixie Chicks song that brought back heaps of memories. Before I knew it, some guy with gray hair who looked old enough to be my dad was staring at me through the screen and while he looked to be having a seizure while singing, some wonderful southern soul music was flowing from him and before I knew it, I was watching the Hollywood finals cheering for the few favorites I had.

The Hollywood finals should have been the end of it. I should have seen what was going on and solved the problem right then and there. I should have realized that my arm had been caught in whatever trap had been laid and therefore chewed the limb off in order to save the rest of my body, but that’s not quite what happened. Instead, I figured I was smarter than your average wild animal and that I could use my other free arm to save myself!

Don’t ever let anybody tell you again that animals are stupid.

Yes, thanks to Katharine McPhee’s performance on Tuesday night and Taylor Hicks’ last night, I’ve officially been fully sucked into the vortex of hell that is otherwise called American Idol. [Quick aside, if Katharine ever wants to change her name to Hotty McHot, I fully endorse her decision and will pay the cost of filing the proper paperwork with the courts. Dear Christ, the looks she gives the camera while singing could make the entire gay population of Philadelphia switch sides. Also the fact that Hicks gave three shout outs to his "Soul Patrol" fans on the Internet makes him that much more awesome.] I’d never really listened to Elton John’s Levon before hearing Hicks sing it last night, but let’s just say my iPod has already grown tired of playing it since I stuck it on there about a day ago. The real kicker to proving there’s no turning back for me now is that if you were to look at the outgoing call list on my cell phone, it wouldn’t be a proud moment for me.

Yes, for me, I’ll take the commercials during the Olympics over the Super Bowl any day. NIKE and Gatorade always come through with an extraordinary commercial of their own and in fact, my all time favorite commercial was made by NIKE back during the 2002 Winter Olympics. The Super Bowl may be prime real-estate for brainless, crude commercials, but the Olympics are where you can find the poetic and inspirational commercials. Oh yeah, and in-between them there’s usually some weird sporting events you can watch, if that’s what tickles your fancy.

Of course, the ultimate commercial gift for me this month would be another Wintery dose of Kerri Walsh and Misty May. Oh yeah.

Back when our local cable provider first picked it up, it was a big moment in the Geek Department of my life. I was no longer forced to rely upon “books” or “teachers” to learn about history – good ole’ TV could start pumping into my room and I could absorb as much of it as humanly possible before switching over to Comedy Central late at night to catch those hot Girls Gone Wild commercials.

But now? Now my stomach cringes any time I flip over to channel 70. Somewhere along the way, they succumbed to what I call the “24 Hour News Syndrome.” Out with the trash went responsible reporting and actual…oh, what’s the word…facts. In turn, they started airing sensational pieces that are meant to entertain, truth be damned. Gone are the days of airing episodes based on documents and speeches and the like and in are the days of interviewing authors of horribly written books who think they know what they’re talking about because they’re run a blog on the subject for the past 4 years.

I’m guessing they did for the same reason every other network has made the switch – ratings. I can only imagine how few people watched a channel dedicated to nothing but dead people and things that happened 500 years ago. But even with that said, The History Channel took a giant and messy dump on those of us who loved them back in the day and who appreciate that F word I spoke of earlier. Out of the shows I watched this week, I counted somewhere along the lines of 25+ major blatant and outright mistakes and/or lies and this is considering the fact that I’m nowhere near excellently versed in many of these fields. To make matters worse, I’ve Googled a few of the “experts” they’ve had on their show and the only thing a few of these guys seem to be experts in is tricking television networks into thinking their experts in something.

When somebody watches a show like Inside Edition or anything on MTV, they know (at least, they should know) that whatever they’re seeing is for entertainment purposes only and that for all they know, it’s completely scripted and fake. But when you watch a station like The Discovery Channel of The History Channel, you would hope to have a shred of truth in whatever you’re watching. To The History Channel’s credit, I guess, they’ve gotten better at making things entertaining without outright lying. For instance, in most episodes and specials (such as the Little Ice Age a few weeks back and the one last night about secret organizations), for 58 minutes they air conspiracy theories, ludicrous claims, and wild accusations. Then, in the closing minutes, they say something along the lines of “Some historians, however, disagree with these findings and therefore the debate will go on forever.” Wow, thanks for showing us both sides and giving us a full view on the subject, guys. I would have hated it if I’d only gotten to hear about the view held by 0.00001% of historians, but luckily for me you tossed in that final sentence to give those 99.99999% of people a voice.

I’m not saying the minority shouldn’t have a voice for who knows how much of history we’ve screwed up and gotten wrong. But don’t pass off what they say as complete truth. My faith in the American publics intelligence isn’t that strong and frankly, if you don’t spell out for them that what you’re saying is simple the opinion and views held by only a small number, then they may start to think that what you’re saying is what actually happened in the past. And if there’s one thing that I can’t stand more than green beans or Laura Bush’s face, it’s people who rewrite history.

So fucking stop it. Now. Thanks.

I’ve uploaded the clip here to Shyzer and even though it’s 12 MB, I’d highly suggest you download it to at least watch it once, if for no other reason than it’s highly entertaining. Right off the bat, you can see Letterman dipping his pencil in O’Reilly’s drink and stirring it around for a bit. Five minutes later, O’Reilly asks is that’s his drink, Letterman answers yes with a grin, and the crowd laughs as he takes a big gulp.

But what I really want to take a closer look at is the technique Bill O’Reilly has seemed to master – the art of deceptive implication. About ten seconds before the seven minute marker, O’Reilly is trying to explain to Letterman why he detests Cindy Sheehan. Listen to him carefully:

We believe that the United States, particularly the military, are doing a noble thing. A noble thing. The soldiers and Marines are noble. They are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan; called the insurgents freedom fighters, we don’t like that.

Now look at that quote again and more importantly, listen to the way he says it in the clip. This is classic O’Reilly chicanery. He starts off by praising the United States, the military, and the soldiers. He calls them noble three times in a row in order to strike the sympathetic chord within his viewers. He’s baiting us for his next sentence so that our brains will subtly make the inference on our own.

They are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan; called the insurgents freedom fighters, we don’t like that.

Do you see what he did there? Do you hear the two heavy and drawn out pauses he makes in his voice so that we are given the impression that Cindy Sheehan is calling our soldiers terrorists? If not, allow me to show you. This is what he’s saying, broken down even further:

“Our noble soldiers are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan (pause long enough for us to make the assumption that Sheehan is calling our troops terrorists); called the insurgents freedom fights, we don’t like that (again, long pause so our brain can wrap it up.)”

It’s the same method the Bush Administration used for linking Iraq and 9/11 back in 2003. This is not some awkward sentence that O’Reilly is stumbling over. When read, it loses some of its power, because you can see by the punctuation that he is saying Sheehan called the insurgents freedom fighters instead of calling American soldiers terrorists. However, when spoken and combined with the right mixture of pauses and innuendos, it’s a powerful tool of deception. He never comes out and says that Sheehan called our troops terrorists. He knows that if he does that, he can be called out for it by others for spreading false lies. So what does he do? He speaks with sentences that would make an English Lit teacher cringe, but that make the American viewers at home think he’s saying what he won’t come out and say. And I must say, he’s amazingly superb at it.

The problem with O’Reilly is that he rarely places himself in situations as the one that occurred on Letterman. On his show, if somebody begins to disprove what he’s saying, he essentially drowns out their voice by screaming at them about how American is under attack. He did appear on The Daily Show, which I’ll give him credit for doing so, but even then Jon Stewart went much softer on him then I would have hoped for. It seems he prefers to let O’Reilly make an ass of himself on his own show and then just laugh along at the absurdity of it. (For a great example of this, check out this clip from about a month ago.) But like I said, O’Reilly rarely places himself in a situation where somebody could, let’s say, pounce on the Ridgeview, Wisconsin example he so proudly paraded as an example of the “war on Christmas” that liberals were waging. If you only took O’Reilly’s word for it, you’d be left with the impression that a school board in Wisconsin had changed the lyrics of “Silent Night” to “Cold in the Night” in order to be politically correct. In reality, the “Cold in the Night” version is part of a coherent children’s musical written in 1988 called “The Little Tree’s Christmas Story.” As with other musicals, the words to some traditional Christmas songs were tailored to tell the tree’s story. Of course, after all the negative attention and publicity O’Reilly has focused upon the school, they are going back and redoing the musical with the carols’ tradition tunes, which will in essence render the musical incomprehensible. Bravo, O’Reilly. Bravo.

The examples go on and on and Letterman clearly proved in this exchange that he’s no Jon Stewart by hiding behind the thin veil of “I’m not smart enough to debate you,” but he also confronted O’Reilly on almost every talking point he tried to bring up, which is rare for main stream talk show hosts in this day and age. I only wish Letterman’s staff had done some homework and given him some examples and cases where O’Reilly has flat out lied on his television program. The interview would have been even more powerful had it ended with O’Reilly tripping over himself and his past quotes, but alas, I’ll take what I can get and appreciate every second of Letterman holding his ground. Especially when you remember the fact that The Late Show isn’t supposed to be some political debate forum, but instead a place for celebrities to pitch their latest book or movie.

All in, this clip at least proves that (A) Letterman can still be entertaining from time to time, (B) Not all crap goes unchecked, and (C) Bill O’Reilly is still amazingly ignorant.

And just as a little side note for O’Reilly, since this has always been a pet peeve of mine. It’s M-eye-6, not M-1-6, as in Military Intelligence (section) 6. When’s the last time anybody called the Central Intelligence Agency C-1-A?

And then while I was over in Australia, I stumbled onto a message board that had lists of all the free stuff you could get from these companies and I was astounded. IPods, desktop and laptop computers, digital cameras, flatscreen monitors and televisions, video game systems and games, even designer handbags for the ladies – you name it, you can get it for free. I made a mental note to look into it again when I got back to the states and I did just that. I signed up for a few sites, began getting / buying referrals and started going “green” on a few sites in December. (Going green is slang for getting all your refs, having your account go through the normal review process, and be approved for your freebie prize)

When I got back from picking up Colton at school today, look what I found on my doorstep.

The shipping time was actually remarkable fast. None of that 6 to 8 weeks bullshit. I went green on Dec 28 and they tried to deliver it yesterday. I filled out the form telling them to leave it and now today I’ve got myself a 30 GB, black, video iPod.

If anybody is actually interested in getting into the oh-so-lucrative market of getting stuff for free, I’d suggest starting by reading the walkthrough found over on Hey, It’s Free. (link since removed) The one I wrote in that post a year and a half ago is a bit dated since it was written, well, a year and a half ago. One Hey, It’s Free, there is not only an up-to-date walkthrough, but a Tips & Tricks section, an offers rating, and a FAQ about the freebie world.

Also, if you are going to sign up for a freepay site, don’t just go to www.freewhatever.com and create an account. Try and sign up under somebody else so that you become a referral for them. It’s pointless just to sign up without becoming a referral because then you are essentially making it harder for other people to get their freebie and it doesn’t help you or hurt you either way, so why not just help out somebody else? If you don’t know anybody who is signed up for the site you want to sign up for, leave a comment here and I can give you my ref link since I’m signed up for just about every site there is I’d certainly appreciate it!

They allow this on C-Span?! During prime time television? SWEET! If they talked like this in the Senate, I certainly would watch more often.

I only found out one week ago that business and first class passengers get free alcohol. I’m not sure if I can forgive my mom for forgetting to tell me this little tidbit.

I did, however, get lit on the flight home from Zurich. I feel as if I’ve redeemed myself. Slightly.

And that, in a nutshell, was Zurich. Series after series of funny, now classic, inside jokes that seemed as if they were never-ending and which kept us going from the minute wheels were down until the minute they were back up 25 hours later. I initially started this post by typing out a list of funny things that occurred, because they were many and plentiful. However, after about the tenth item I typed, I realized they were all only funny if you were there and that the only people laughing at this post would have been myself, Mom, and Jeff. So I scrapped that and reverted back to a post form that never fails…recapping the highlights of the trip.

We landed around 0700 after a completely sober trip on my part. This turned out to be a good thing, because I think I experienced and appreciated Switzerland a little bit more while sober compared to being drunk. Jeff and I had been sitting in first class, so we managed to shoot off the plane first and beat the crowd to the Customs line. After having my passport glanced at and swiped, I began to walk away before I remembered about the stamp. You see, most of Europe doesn’t even stamp your passport anymore since there’s really no security reason to anymore. Everything is swiped, scanned, and digitalized so that the stamps are now a formality. Well, I like them dammit, so Ive started asking for them everywhere I go.

Once through, we met up with my mom and at my behest, caught the train into town instead of opting to ride in the hotel shuttle van. The way I see it, Ive only got one day in the country and dammit if I don’t want to ride their public transportation at least once. But I must say, their rail system dominated any other Ive ever ridden on. Clean, smooth, efficient.

One thing kept confusing me. Everywhere I looked, I saw German words. Signs, advertisements, even spoken around me. I finally leaned over and asked Jeff why everybody was speaking German and he looked confused. “Don’t they speak Swiss here,” I asked, and that’s when the laughter came. Apparently Swiss isn’t even a fucking language, but I sure as hell thought it was. I mean, every other small country over there practically has their own language…Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, Dutch…so why the hell were the Swiss so lazy and not able to come up with their own? Needless to say, though, asking if there was anybody who could interpret Swiss for me became running joke # 29 of the trip.

But back to the German point, it surprised me how German the town was on the outside and how stereotypical Swiss it was on the inside. For instance, all the buildings were very German, very Prussian. I eventually expected to see the Reichstag pop up over the horizon. The insides of places though were very sleek, very modern, very Ikea. Kind of what you expect from a modern, European country and I have to say, the mixture of the old school architecture and the new school furnishing was actually pretty cool. I could definitely get used to that.

Anyways, once my keen sense of navigation got us on the correct train (after translating the Swiss in my head, no less!), we made our way to the hotel and dropped our bags off, changed clothes, and shot back out the door. We grabbed a few coffees, walked along the streets for a while, and finally decided to take a short train ride up to the foothill mountains to do a little hiking. Remember, these were the foothills of the Alps, so you could replace the phrase “foothill mountains” with “exact replica of the Rockies” and you’d have just about the same thing. The hike itself was long since we took the planetary trail, which basically meant every kilometer or so they had a monument to one of the nine planets. But the hike was worth it for nothing other then the amazing view it gave of the city and of the Alps. We started the hike around 1400 and didn’t finish until after sunset, so the entire time we had a shot of the sun setting behind the Alps and the whole time I couldn’t help but stare at them in pure awe and simply marvel at their sheer size. Every time I glanced at them, it was a humbling feeling just to imagine trying to cross them on foot as we were doing in the small foothills. And yet all I could keep thinking of was Hannibal cutting right through them, circling around behind Rome during the Second Punic Wars. I kept thinking about how he somehow led an army of 38,000 men through them and, oh yeah, how he brought along a few thousand elephants just to make it a bit challenging. And yet here we were, looking at a map, trying to read signs in Swiss with nondescript arrows, racing against the sun, and wondering if we were gonna make it. You’ve heard it before, but its moments like those that make me thankful I studied history.

Once we made our way down, we caught a train back into to town, went shopping at an arts and crafts fair for a few hours, and called it a night. While at the fair, we of course bought as much Swiss food as we could and one such delicious beverage we consumed was gluvine. Basically, its hot, spiced wine that I loved. My mom and Jeff hate it, as did just about every other crew member we asked about it later on, but I for one found it soothing. I’m usually not a fan of wine nor warm alcohol, but I could definitely see why it could be appealing to those in Switzerland, what with all the freezing ass weather and hypothermia and whatnot.

Like I said, after that, we went back to the room, woke up the next morning, and flew home. That was my Zurich trip in a day. There’s no better way to experience a place and I can’t wait for our next trip (Argentina?)

And if you hear any stories about me drinking all the Jack minibottles on the flight home, puking in a barf bag, and then bringing it to my mom in the first class galley, don’t believe them. Totally exaggerated / made up.

Phone Swarm

So far I’ve called about 9 or 10 times and only have 1 person actually pick up. Still a cool concept though. In fact, I should record myself calling it and having random conversaions with strangers then put it on Shyzer.

Transparent Screens – These are by far the coolest looking desktops ever. What people did was take a picture of the wall or whatever that is behind their monitor, then set that as their desktop. Then if you get all the angles correct, it looks as if you are looking through your computer. My two favorites are this one and this one.

Fly Guy – I just like the music on this, but it’s fun to play around with for 10 minutes or so. You can pretty much interact with anything, some producing good results, some bad.

Freecycle – This site is awesome. It’s kinda like craigslist, but everything here is for free. Just pick your state and then find your city and join the corresponding Yahoo group and then check it every day or so to see if anybody is giving away anything you can use. 50% of it is junk, but after using it for a few months, I’ve gotten a brand new printer and speakers for my computer that a lady didn’t want. They came with her Dell computer and she already had a set that she liked. I’ve also gotten a few others things for around the house, so it’s actually worth it.

The Random Vin Diesel Fact has provided me with a near total of 40 total hours of laughter. It’s just so damn random it’s funny.

And finally, I’ll leave you with two of the best commericals I’ve seen in 2005. Two guys painting a house and two guys killing some bees. Enjoy.

I had held off on doing so for a while. Back in April when I first started testing sites, I thought that if by the time I was finished and the casino offers were still around, I’d try them then. I didn’t want to lose heaps of money just to learn if it was worth it or not, but come last week, I had no choice. The casino offers were still prevalent as hell in the freebie world and since so many people swore by them, I figured why not. I was skeptical, but I created an account with Neteller (a rival of paypal), synced it up with my bank account, and put $20 in it. Then I picked a casino site, deposited the money into it, and crossed my fingers.

Boy was I ever surprised. After a few hours of playing, the guy I signed up under sent me $50 via paypal. As soon as I had the money, I looked at my earnings and realized I was up to $32 after only playing the nickel and dime poker tables for a few hours. I cashed out, realized I had just made $62 in about two hours, and thought there might actually be sometime worthwhile here.

Even had I gambled my $20 away, I still would have been up $30 after being paid by the guy I signed up under. The reason he could afford to pay me money is because he’s an affiliate of the casino sites. They pay him over $100 for every person he sends to their site that deposits a minimum of $XX amount. He then in turn keeps half, sends me my half, and I can either gamble the money away or just pull it out. The reason the casino companies pay him so much is because they are banking on the fact that I’ll decide to gamble my initial investment, lose it, get hooked, deposit more money, lose it, deposit more money, lose it……

So the key is simple. Don’t let yourself deposit more money. Go into it knowing that you are simply going to be satisfied with your $50 or $75 profit and don’t go looking for more. Don’t be greedy. Some sites require you to play so many times or wager so much before you can withdraw your money, but that’s easy if you just play the nickel and dime poker tables or blackjack. I gotta say, after this experience, I am a converted skeptic. I’ve only encountered two casino sites that weren’t worth it and that I lost money on ($10 at both of them), but the rest have made it more than worth my while. I’m still amazed that you can even make money in the casino world, just as long as you don’t get greedy.

And with that said, I’m off to play 10 more games of bingo so I can cashout!

See the link “Video Games” over there on the left? Now honestly, how many of you have actually read through any of that? I probably haven’t updated any of those pages in well over a year (but they don’t really need updating per say) and most of the writing I did on them was some of the earliest stuff I did, but it’s still an important piece of Shyzer to me because it’s an important piece of my life. I grew up on video games and played them religiously. I was the kid who knew every cheat code there was and who my friends called up when they couldn’t beat the boss on level 4 of their game. I’d give any video game a shot once or twice if I came across it, but I soon began to seek out those rare video games that were an actual experience, one that you would remember years down the road.

When the printing press was invented back in 1450 (HA! I didn’t even have to Google that. See, I’m putting that History Degree to work every day!), critics felt it was going to be the end of verbal storytelling. When movies debuted in the early twentieth century, many critics felt they would be the end of books and the art of novels and stories. Well, as I scan my desk right now, I see three books stacked up on top of a DVD and earlier this evening I told a bedtime story about Pokemon to my little brother as he was drifting to sleep. The point I’m trying to make is that neither the art of storytelling nor the art of great novels and books was lost. All three mediums are still thriving and are fully accepted in society as an acceptable way to tell a story, from the awarding of Pulitzer and Booker Awards, to the Oscars, to….well, I’m sure we all have our favorite story told to us by our grandmothers when we were little.

However, there is one genre that is still viewed by many as “childish,” not appreciated for what it can produce, and thought of as pointless clutter. I’m of course talking about video games. But thankfully, this stereotype is starting to fade as more and more amazing video games are produced – not amazing due to their graphics or amount of killing and carnage, but amazing due to their stories. I don’t say this lightly, but I have played a few video games in my life that would rival some of my favorite books in terms of the story, character development, plots, and pure emotions involved. I’ve grown attached to characters in video games just as strongly as I did to the characters from The Stand. I’ve had the water works act up when things have happened in video games just like I did when…well, I can’t ruin that part of Harry Potter. You get the gist of what I’m saying though.

But like I said, this stereotyping of video games is thankfully ending as more and more great story telling games are becoming popular. Sure the genre has a long way to go before society fully accepts and embraces it and starts awarding awards to it, but video game companies are already recognizing the potential. Full symphony orchestras like the Boston Pops and the London Symphony Orchestra as well as popular bands and artists are working on soundtracks for video games. Writers and creative minds are employed in the thousands by various companies to help write script and dialogues for games. And graphic artists are continuing to improve their work on scenery and surroundings, all in the name of producing a brilliant storytelling experience.

But what started the trend? What swung the pendulum from only video game “nerds” appreciating these games to companies and mass amounts of people? Well if you’ve read my video games section, you know the answer to this is Final Fantasy VII. I won’t go into the whole spiel about how that game achieved this, because I’ve already done it on the page I just linked. But what I will say is that since 1997, I’ve dreamt of a sequel. I’ve waited patiently for a sequel. I’ve on some occasions prayed for a sequel instead of for good health or prosperity or any of that other good stuff.

On September 14th, my waiting and prayers will be answered in the form of a DVD titled Final Fantasy: Advent Children. (click the download button to go to a page where you can view the 2:30 trailer. Simply unbelievable stuff!). I’ll take a sequel in the form of a movie over nothing any day of the week. I honestly was skeptical of them actually completing and releasing this because as I said at the start of this short post that seemingly grew into a long ramble of my view on things, I heard about this almost two years ago. In mid 2003, Square announced that it was working on the project and that it would be completed by Summer 2004. Well, when that date rolled around, they said they were still working on it, but that it would be completed by January 2005. When I returned from Australia and it still wasn’t out, I started to lose hope, but then the announcement came that retailers were now being shipped the DVD and ordered to sell on the upcoming 14th. And trust me, I will be the first in line at our local Wal-Mart when the clock strikes midnight on September 14th.

But to make matters even more exciting, there is this little video of the opening sequence to Final Fantasy VII that was remade with current graphic technology and released by Sony. Why’s it so exciting? Well, I think that question is answered right around the minute mark of that video clip.

One can only dream.

Remember the post I made a little over one year ago talking about Freeipods.com? For those of you who weren’t with us then and are too lazy to click the link, I discussed in it how successful and legitimate the site was and how I was on the verge of obtaining my own iPod for free. Well, like I said, I received my free iPod with little to no hassle whatsoever and since then, numerous amounts of companies have capitalized on the success known as the “freebie craze.”

There are sites where you can obtain free digital camera and free laptops. You can obtain free flatscreen monitors and TVs and even free desktop computers. And for the ladies out there, you can even get free Louis Vuitton or Gucci handbags. You can receive pure cash via Paypal or even computer or car parts to add onto your current hardware. The possibilities are seemingly endless.

So why do I bring all this up one year later? Well, as I said, there are plenty of legitimate companies out there. But for every safe site out there, there are five dodgy ones that I wouldn’t go near. It’s quite easy for anybody to start one of these sites and in the end they never send out the free prizes they promise. As well, there are many trial offers that I would suggest staying away from (DAMN AOL!) and so I decided that with the explosion of popularity in the freebie craze, people might find it useful to have a centralized location to receive news, tips, help, and suggestions along the way. I’ve been getting free prizes for over a year now and I felt that the knowledge I picked up along the way shouldn’t go to waste, so I created Hey, It’s Free! On it, you can find a walkthrough, tips, message boards, offer suggestions, and reviews of many of the popular sites. I’ll let you know which ones to go near, which ones to avoid, and the best ways to get your freebie prizes.

And to show that I know what I’m talking about, the Grand Opening Post on Hey, It’s Free! gives you a simple walkthrough on how to get a brand new free DVD! So if you’re interested in getting a free ipod, x-box, or good ‘ole cash, go check out Hey, It’s Free! Heck, it’s worth your while just to go and get the free DVD, so what are you waiting for?!

Seriously, add his site to your bookmarks and start going to it daily. If you like my style of writing and humor, then you will certainly appreciate his. I’ll be looking to try and contribute maybe three or four articles a month on there. I uploaded my first article just moments ago and hopefully it will be a place where I can be a bit cruder than I am on here. Either way, go check it out and let us know what you think. The more feedback we get, the better!

I want to share with you all a little secret I stumbled across a while ago. It’s a wonderful website that goes by the name Post Secret and it’s one of the most emotionally stirring sites I’ve come across in quite a while. The concept is so amazingly simple, I’m surprised it hadn’t been thought of before. People find or make a postcard, write out their deepest and darkest secrets, and then send them in. They are then posted, anonymously, for the world to see and read.

The owner receives almost 20 postcards a day, so the site is updated pretty regularly. Of course, not all of the postcards make it on the site, but one of the real tragedies of the site is that the owner feels there should be no need for an archive. So, after a while, the secrets are bumped off the main site forever.

I’ve probably read each secret at least twice and there have been a small handful that I’ve connected with rather strongly. Some are shocking, some are funny, and some are troublesome. But in the end, all of them are equally powerful and moving and when you hit the bottom of the page, you will find yourself craving just one more.

Its sites like these that make me remember just how wonderful this great contraption we call the Internet can truly be.

Two days ago I saw the latest episode of LOST (or, at least the latest episode at that time since we’re about a week behind in downloading them over on this side of the pond.) I won’t give away any of the details since I know Waynus hasn’t seen it yet, but I will say this. Somebody needs to give Terry O’Quinn an award. Fast.

In fact, last week’s episode was so amazing that this week, people here at Uni speed rushed the download of the latest episode. So instead of waiting close to a week, I was able to watch it last night. All I’ll say is that whoever gives O’Quinn an award needs to give another one to Matthew Fox.

And is it just me or does the music seem to be leaps and bounds beyond most other TV shows? It seems that almost every week I’m ripping at least one orchestral track off the show onto my iPod and usually I end up ripping the closing song they play as well. I fell asleep last night listening to the end part of this week’s episode just playing over and over on repeat and the night before I had done the same with last week’s episode. If anybody would be interested in rips I’ve made, let me know and I’ll get them up onto the media page.

And I know I’m a bit late on this, but one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, died on March 31. He made his living through mainly one-liner jokes instead of the usual monologue or drawn out style that most comedians use. In fact, I found a copy of one of his CDs on the net, so I’m putting it here on Shyzer, but you need to download it within a day or two, because I’ll be taking it down soon due to bandwidth limits. If you like it, go check out his website and buy a few CDs. They’ll keep you laughing for years to come.

And with that, I’m off to bed.

[EDIT] Yep, it’s still great the second time around. Especially since you know everything that might happen in the movie and can see all the jokes coming. [/EDIT]

This past summer, I stumbled across a lineup of the upcoming fall television season and I have to admit I was unimpressed with most of the new shows. A Friends spin-off, something about families trading parents, and far too many “reality” shows. Whoopdie-doo. Then I happened to see ABC’s lineup and something caught my eye. The extremely short tagline said something to do about a group of airplane survivors stranded on a deserted island and suddenly there was hope. Maybe this new season might actually produce something besides “HIS FATHER’S THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY!” I did a little more prodding and found that the show was called Lost and that it would indeed revolve around the plot of a group of 46 survivors of a horrible plane wreck. The more I thought about it, the cooler the concept sounded to me and so I have to admit that going into the series premier, my expectations were dangerously high.

They have yet to be let down.

The series premier started off with a bang. Literally. The viewers found themselves looking through the eyes of Jack as he shook off the dizziness and tried to figure out just what in the hell had happened to him. He runs out onto a beachhead where he and the viewers are greeted with hysterically screaming and injured victims, the low wheezing and sputtering of a now useless plane engine, and bloodied corpses strewn across the area. Luckily, Jack remembers that he is a doctor and begins rounding up people as fast as he can. He managed to save as few people, but some are just beyond his skills. Oh yeah, and the engine sucks in a retard who runs up to it, thereby causing the engine to explode and rain fiery shrapnel down upon the survivors. Whoops.

As the episode progresses, you finally meet a few of the soon-to-be main cast members. They are as follows.

• Jack – Mentioned earlier, the doctor and arguably main character.
• Kate – The first person Jack managed to save, which results in her forming a special bond with him. Could love be in the air? Well, if so, Jack most certainly isn’t catching her drifts. Oh, and she’s HOT!!
• Sayid – A former member of the Iraqi Republican Guard, he now is a US citizen who is a whiz with the electronics. It’s his idea to gut whatever electronics there are and build a distress signal box. I’ll let ya know how that turned out. His accent is pretty cool too.
• Hurley – He too quickly takes a liking to Jack and has become his defacto right hand man. He’s a big man who certainly livens things up with his sense of humor. He gets maybe 20 lines an episode and somehow comes away with the feeling that he stole each and every scene he was in.
• Shannon and Boone – She’s 20, he’s 22, and their siblings who love to hate each other. She’s what you might call a “stuck up, pampered, rich bitch” while you can tell he was the black sheep of the family who hated money and just wanted to be normal.
• Sawyer – The man you want to love, but know there’s no way in hell you ever will. The very next day after crashing, Sawyer could be found digging through the personal belongings of cargo area looking for money, watches, laptops, and anything else of value. He’s also a sexist pig and lets it be known he has his eyes set on Kate.
• Walt and Michael – Finally, some people of color! Walt is the (12 year old?) son of Michael (yes, he’s the same actor who played Link in The Matrix), although they don’t really know each other. Quickly after Walt’s birth, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Sydney. You quickly find out that his mom died and that Michael had went to pick Walt up to come live with him in the states. I smell awkwardness! Oh yeah, Walt has a dog named Vincent who also survived the crash. He’s cool.
• Jin and Sun – More minorities! Although, these two are Korean and don’t speak a lick of English! More on them in a little bit.
• Charlie – Yes, Charlie was one of the hobbits in LOTR. Move on you nerds. In Lost, Charlie plays the roll of an ex-rock star. His band was awesome in early 90s, but has since fallen on hard times. Charlie is also a drug addict who is about to unwilling go through rehab thanks to the fact that he only has a week’s worth of crack in his luggage.
• Claire – She’s pregnant, she’s alone, she’s cute, and she’s about to pop. Damn. Good thing there’s a doctor on the island. But wait a minute; the producers are toying with killing her! NOOO!
• Locke – Ah, Locke. I saved the best for last. Locke is probably one of the coolest characters on television in a long time. The producers of the show continually make him out to be a good guy (He tracked and found Walt-s dog Vincent, he-s shown the group how to hunt and live off the land, and he helped Charlie get over his drug addiction.) Yet at the same time, they continually make him out to be the bad guy as well by zooming the camera in on his eerie grin and playing spooky music at the end of his scenes. He’s probably the oldest guy on the island, easily the oldest out of all the main character and he seems to want to stay on the island. He keeps talking about his “miracle” and nobody knows what in the hell he is talking about. But mostly he’s just damn cool.

The subsequent episodes take a neat spin. From episode 2 up until now and probably for the rest of the year, they have focused not only on the trials and tribulations of the survivors, but on one certain person’s background. Again, here is the character list and what we have learned about each character so far from their personal episode.

• Jack – He was on his way back home to the US after traveling to Sydney. Why was he there? To pick up his dead father and bring his body home. We also learn that when Jack was younger, his dad used to beat him and tell him he was too dumb to become a doctor, so of course he’s got some issues there.
• Kate – In probably the first real twist of the show, we learn that sweet, (and HOT) Kate was being “escorted” back to the US by a Federal Marshall. Jack is the only person who saw her mug shot and when Kate tries to tell him why she’s a convict, he cuts her off telling her he doesn’t want to know.
• Sayid – As stated earlier, Sayid worked as an interrogator for the Iraqi Republican Guard. However, one day he is forced to interrogate a Kurdish childhood girlfriend of his and she is able to show him the evilness in what he does. At the end of the episode, we see him shoot his boss and smuggle her out of the detention facility, but we don’t know how he managed to escape or what he did after he got out. He also carries with him a picture of the girl, who he says is dead.
• Hurley – No episode yet.
• Shannon and Boone – No episode yet.
• Sawyer – Not surprisingly, Sawyer was a con artist in his previous life. He finds married women, seduces them, and then swindles the family out of thousands of dollars though some fake “oil investment” plan. However, near the end of the episode, we see him just about to steal twenty thousand dollars when the couple’s child walks in the room. He freezes, drops the money, and runs out of the house. Back on the island, Kate finds a letter that Sawyer carries with him postmarked back in 1976. It’s written by a child to a “Mr. Sawyer” and vows revenge. Apparently this “Mr. Sawyer” stole money from the child’s family and forced his parents to commit suicide. Kate puts two and two together and realizes that the letter was indeed written by Sawyer himself and that somewhere along the line, he simply became “Mr. Sawyer.”
• Walt and Michael – No episode yet.
• Jin and Sun – Jin is a lowly waiter who manages to win the heart of Sun, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. To marry Sun and receive her father’s blessings, Jin goes to work for her dad. Over the years, things get rough and Sun realizes that Jin’s job for her father is killing their relationship. She secretly learns English and plans to leave him while they are at the airport when she suddenly realizes that everything he did and suffered through was out of love for her, so she decides to get on the plane with him and stick it out.
• Charlie – His flashback spans over about a decade. It starts off with him as the good little boy who can play a mean guitar. His older brother pleads and pleads with him to start a rock band and when they do, they are an instant him. Charlie has no interest in drugs, but he catches his older brother with them and eventually starts taking them himself. Since then, the band broke up and Charlie’s brother got himself cleaned up, married, and settled down with kids while Charlie is still in the gutter and trying to “bring the band back.”
• Claire – Her episode was last week and DAMN! Claire is the Australian Cutie who learned 9 months before getting on the plane that not even birth control pills are 100%. The boy who knocks her up freaks and runs off, leaving here with no choice but to have the baby and give him up for adoption. Meanwhile, she goes to a psychic just for kicks, but he freaks out and demands that she keep the baby. Shocked (since she’s only 2 months pregnant), she demands to know why and he pretty much tells her that the baby will become the next Hitler without her loving influence. He keeps telling her that nobody but her can keep this child from becoming evil and so she runs out of his office. For the next 7 months, he keeps calling and showing up at her house pleading with her to keep the baby and just before she is to sign the adoption papers, she goes to him just to hear him out and see what his plan is. He hands her $10,000 and a plane ticket for later that day. He tells her that she must take THIS plane and no other plane to LA and that when she gets there, a loving couple will adopt the baby. She gets on the plane and of course it crashes. As she is telling Charlie her story, she makes the remark of “Well, I guess he wasn’t too psychic since I’ll never see that couple now” and then it dawns on her. There never was any couple. The psychic knew the plane was going to crash and by getting her on that plane, he forced her into keeping the baby.
• Locke – Locke! Again, I saved the best for last. In Locke’s episode, we see that in his past life he was a Nobody. He worked in a small cubicle, played RISK during his lunch break by himself, and was made fun of by everybody he came into contact with. He acts as if he is somebody of importance, somebody destined to greatness, but every time he brings this up, they laugh at him. We see that he is extremely excited about his upcoming trip to Australia where he is going to partake in a three week trek through the Outback on a tour. Later, we see him in the Australian office being rejected for the trek and he is outraged, saying he has looked forward to and trained for this for over three years. The agent responds with “Yeah, but you didn’t tell us about your ‘condition’” and the camera pans out to show how he is sitting in a wheelchair. At the close of his episode, we relive the tragic plane crash again and find Locke lying on the beach. As he comes to, he sits and up notices that his shows were blown off. And then his toes wiggle. His eyes grown huge as he slowly lifts his legs in the air and pulls himself up to stand. Someway, somehow, the crash “cured” him and enabled him to walk again.

But, of course, most of the show is centered around their daily lives on the island. You learn that the plane, traveling from Sydney to LA, ran into some foul weather. The dieing pilot uses his last breath to explain that the transceiver was knocked out of commission and that the plane was flown hundred of miles off course in an attempt to get around the storm. So, in short, nobody on the outside world knows about the plane’s diversion and therefore, they’re unlikely to search where the survivors now are. There are apparently other people who have been stranded on this island before hand since a few skeletal remains have been found. Sayid managed to pick up a French distress signal that’s been broadcasting continuously from the island for the past 16 years, but he was attacked by an unknown assailant before he could locate its source. Oh, yeah, and when nighttime falls, ear piercing roars can be heard from deep within the jungle as treetops are visibly pushed over and stomped to the ground. Fun stuff!

So, getting back to my original point, remember how I said this show was loosely based on The Stand? Well, the similarities are already beginning to take shape. Jack, being the reasonable thinker that he is, realizes that some newly discovered caves would offer better protection that the beach. He also finds a fresh water spring nearby, which further encourages him to move. However, the rest of the survivors aren’t so sure since they don’t want to abandon the beach and give up hope in being rescued. He does, however, convince a small chunk of people to come with him and finally, we begin to see the separation that occurred in The Stand. As of now, Hurley, Walt and Michael, Jin and Sun, Charlie, and Locke have joined Jack, as well as some other, unknown people.

The rest have stayed on the beach and frankly, this show just seems to get better and better each and every week. The music is outstanding (I’ve already downloaded many episode and ripped about six songs straight to my iPod since they are all orchestral pieces I have no way of finding the names to.) The camera work and acting is light years above and beyond other “dramas” like ER, Law & Order, or C.S.I. And the flashbacks are the added touch that seals the deal. So, if my rambling here hasn’t already convinced you to give the show a try, well…give the damn show a try! There’s one more episode tonight before the Holiday Break (ABC @ 8:00) and I promise if you just give it a try, you’ll become addicted.

I swear, ABC should pay me for pimping this damn show out so much.

Today I wrapped up reading what might be one of the best books I’ve ever read. It all started with ABC’s new show Lost, which I absolutely love, but that post’s for later this week. As I was browsing the message boards over at TV Without Pity, I found that Lost had finally received enough acclaim to warrant it’s own section. While slowly crawling through all the pages of posts, I stumbled across a discussion over an interview one of the show’s creators had given, where he divulged that the basis for the whole show was loosely pulled from a Stephen King novel titled The Stand. I read a few pages of the interview and of the discussion on the message board and twenty minutes later I had ordered a copy off E-Bay.

It finally arrived about a week later, all 1136 pages of, with its coverless front and its dog-eared corners. I tore into it that very night and it seems like I’ve yet to put it down. Until today, that is. The first chapter fires off like a rocket and you quickly learn what the book is about. A military germ warfare facility has a little mishap, the computer safety system has a little lapse, and a sentry is caught a little off guard. Before you know it, a nasty strain of the flu is released into the world that has a mortality rate hovering around 99.6%. Whoops.

The survivors soon find themselves scattered across the country and searching for each other, among other things. As they slowly begin to migrate together, a weird and unexplainable force begins to show them their paths. On the one hand, they could draw towards Her, in Nebraska, where the smell of corn is sickly sweet and where God has given Her the strength to live on. Or, they could go to Him, the Walkin’ Man, the Dude, the Dark Imp. With his red, cold eye and his dark, astounding powers. With his control over nature and his warm, bountiful, electrified Las Vegas. With his promises and his electricity and his stability and his…

The rest of the novel plays out the scenario. Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness. Her versus Him. But honestly, the book wouldn’t be considered spectacular without something else, like say some memorable characters. And by the end of the novel, you find yourself calling everybody your friend. I’m not joking. I punched and dented the wall when one of the characters died in an assassination. I launched the book across the room when another character was sent out on a suicide mission. When another character passed on, I simply laid the book across my chest, grabbed the pillow lying beside me, and screamed into it. And when I finished the book, I realized that I wanted another one. I didn’t care anymore about the surrounding situations in the book, I cared about the characters. I cared about my friends. I wanted reassurance that they would survive, that they wouldn’t meet the same fate that some of my other friends had met. I wanted to see how the rest of their lives turned out, after the apocalyptic battle had finally resolved itself. I wanted to make sure they were alright, that they were happy. I just wanted to see them again.

I wanted to see the ever silent Nick Andros, who always seemed to hear what needed to be heard.
Good ‘ole East Texas himself, Stu Redmond, who was there from the start at the TEXACO.
Larry Underwood, who ain’t no nice guy, right?
Baldy Glen Bateman, who proved Sociology had its uses.
Sweet mother Abigail Freemantle, who still made her own bread to this day.
Amazing wild Joe, or whatever his name might actually be, and his “gift.”
Giggly Fran Goldsmith and her undying love for…well, I won’t spoil that.
Pimply, misunderstood Harold Lauder and his knack for never quite understanding them back.
Quiet Nadine Cross and her stark white hair, who knew what she had to do, but not how to do it.
Country boy Ralph Brentner, who reminded Larry to Fear No Evil.
The Judge. Dayna. Lucy. Doc. Lloyd. Trashcan Man.
Even burley Kojax himself, who always knew deep down he was a good dog.

And then there was Tom. Tom Cullen, who loved his matchbox car garage and who loved Nicky even more. Tom Cullen, who knew how to spell illegal, and Boulder, and DeeDee Packalotte. Tom Cullen, who just wanted to go back home where people loved him, laws yes. I honestly don’t think there has ever been a more likeable character in the history of novels. He may have been playing with a few cards short of a deck, but he more then made up for it in other ways.

The copy I ended up buying was the 1990 version, the Uncut and Unabridged version. King had originally released the book back in the late 70s and had been forced to cut out quite a bit. In his later version, he added some 300 pages and after I finished reading the book, I wanted to see if I could find a site that listed all the changes he had made. I never did find such a list anywhere on the Internet, but I did stumble upon a message board where somebody commented that chapter 38 hadn’t been in the original. As my eyes flickered across the computer screen and onto the chapter number, my heart instantly froze over and my chest suddenly felt as if somebody had knocked the wind out of me. It might seem silly that out of a book with 70 some odd chapters, I would remember chapter 38, but I did. Out of all the chapters, 38 was the only one I knew by its number. 38 was the only one where I found tears streaming down my face, where I found myself ripped from the story and sent spiraling into my mind only to fall right back into the tale. 38 told the story of Sam Tauber.

  As the superflu epidemic wound down, there was a second epidemic that lasted roughly two weeks. This epidemic was most common in technological societies such as the United States, least common in underdeveloped countries such as Peru or Senegal. In the United States the second epidemic took about 16 percent of the superflu survivors. In places like Peru and Senegal, no more than 3 percent. The second epidemic had no name because the symptoms differed wildly from case to case. A sociologist like Glen Bateman might have called this second epidemic “natural death” or “those ole emergency room blues.” In a strictly Darwinian sense, it was the final cut – the unkindest cut of all, some might have said.

  Sam Tauber was five and a half years old. His mother had died on June the twenty-fourth in the Murfreesboro, Georgia, General Hospital. On the twenty-fifth, his father and younger sister, two-year-old April, had died. On June the twenty-seventh, his older brother Mike had died, leaving Sam to shift for himself.

  Sam had been in shock ever since the death of his mother. He wandered carelessly up and down the streets of Murfreesboro, eating when he was hungry, sometimes crying. After a while he stopped crying, because crying did no good. It didn’t bring the people back. At night his sleep was broken by horrible nightmares in which Papa and April and Mike died over and over, their faces swollen black, a terrible rattling sound in their chests as they strangled on their own snot.

  At quarter of ten on the morning of July 2, Sam wandered into a field of wild blackberries behind Hattie Reynolds’s house. Bemused and vacant-eyed, he zigzagged among blackberry bushes that were almost twice as tall as he was, picking the berries and eating them until his lips and chin were smeared black. The thorns ripped at his clothes and sometimes at his bare flesh, but he barely noticed. Bees hummed drowsily around him. He never saw the old and rotted well-cover half buried in tall grass and blackberry creepers. It gave under his weight with a grinding, splintering crash and Sam plunged twenty feet down the rock-lined shaft to the dry bottom, where he broke both his legs. He died twenty hours later, as much from fear and misery as from shock and hunger and dehydration.

I must have read that intro to chapter 38 ten, probably twenty times. Each and every time I finished, my mind would race to Colton. Each and every time, I thought to myself, “if something like this really happened, that could happen to Colty. He could be all alone, looking for Pikachu, simply wanting to see a familiar face.” I then would try and shift my focus away from those thoughts and I would always find myself wondering had I been in the book, would I have maybe saved Sam? Would I have somehow been in Georgia and stumbled across him before he tumbled down to his grisly death? Probably not. It’s a fair bet that if something like that ever happened, I would instinctively head north. Away from Georgia. Leaving Sam…

I finally jumped on the computer and punched in mapquest. I asked it to locate for me Murfreesboro, Georgia. I wanted to see how far away it was from here, because I wanted to know how far I’d be traveling on my first day if such a plague were to strike this planet during my lifetime. But to my surprise, it told me no such place existed. As I sat staring at the screen where mapquest patiently waited for me to choose between Murfreesboro, TN, AK, or NC, I realized that Sam wasn’t real. It was the first time I finally let such a thought seep into my mind and take root, but it didn’t seem to warm me over much. I suddenly wanted to hold Colty in my arms, see for myself that he was alive, and promise that I would never let such a thing happen to him. As I finally began to regain my composure, I clicked the option for Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Mapquest immediately pulled up a nice map of a small, rural town and it took me a few zoom-outs to see where it rested. North-east of Raleigh, on some random, secondary highway that was far off the path of any destination I’ve ever embarked upon. But seeing the map was still comforting in a sort of queer way and I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t until later that I finally understood. It was because if there ever is a large scale tragedy and I ever do decide to head north, it will be to Virginia to pick up my siblings. To pick up Colty. And Clay. And Jules…

But not before making a short pit stop on the way. Just north-east of Raleigh. Just down a little secondary highway. Just in case.

Only a good book can do this to a man. Laws yes.

I find it funny when people say they have trouble watching the Olympics. I never have understood how anybody can find it boring to watch the best of the best athletes that the world has to offer perform jaw dropping physical feats that should somehow be illegal. I never have quite wrapped my head around the fact that some people find it boring to watch The Thorpedo (which is easily the coolest nickname in the history of mankind. Hands down.) sped across the length of a swimming pool faster then any man ever before him. I don’t get how some people, like a kid in my class, find it stupid to watch men’s gymnastics since all they are doing is “flipping around a few times.” Oh really? That’s it? Huh. From where I’m sitting they are flawlessly performing aerobatic flips over and over that only 0.0001% of people on this planet can do. But I’m sure that you’re in that percentage, right? I can tell from those bulging biceps of yours that you could easily handle your own on the pommel horse my dear friend.

I enjoy just watching the athletes. Watching their pure emotions, both high and low, is enough to make you get out there and do a few wind-sprints of your own. Watching Paula Radcliff, who holds the world record for a woman’s marathon and who has failed repeatedly to win a gold in Olympic games, stop just three miles short of the finish in the marathon to watching Svetlana Khorkina fail to win the all around gold that has eluded her for entire illustrious career. Halfway through the competition, NBC played a short clip where they interviewed Khorkina and asked her how badly she wanted to win the gold. Her response? “I want to win gold as much as I want to mother my own child.” Ouch.

But nothing has been more excruciating to watch then the face of Matt Emmons after he lost the gold medal in the 50-meter three-position rifle event. Heading into the final shot, Emmons had such a commendable lead, all he had to do was hit the target, anywhere on the target, and the medal was his. He lined up his shot, took aim, and pulled the trigger. As the shot pierced the target well near the center, Emmons smiled in elation as he realized he had just won the gold. But the electronic scoring machine didn’t light up, so the judges met to confer and try to see what the problem was. When the came back to deliver the news to Emmons, it was heartbreaking.

He had shot the target in Lane 3, instead of shooting the target in his Lane 2. He was awarded a score of zero, dropping him to eighth place overall with no more shots to try and make up the difference.

But the pictures of Mariel Zagunis, the nineteen-year-old American who didn’t even have a high enough world ranking to go to the Olympics, as she won gold in fencing will never leave my mind. Originally not on the Olympic squad, she only was allowed to compete when a Nigerian team decided not to show. She went on to prove that just because somebody’s world ranking is low, it doesn’t mean they can’t win on any given day. And anybody who couldn’t muster up the emotion to cheer for the Iraqi soccer team honestly has no soul. Here’s a team that was airlifted out of a capital city under attack, had no real coach for the past year, and decisively decimated every opponent they faced in the Olympics. Now they have a chance to win the bronze medal for their home country. Simply amazing. But the best part? We’ve still got a few more days of action for more events like this to happen.

Yet anybody who knows me knows that my favorite sport during these Olympics is easily Beach Volleyball. It has been the only sport so far to sell out every game in Athens, which that in and of itself is simply amazing given the fact that attendance at all the other events is abysmal. Yet after watching a game or two of beach volleyball, one can easily see why people flock to it in droves. They much see, in person, the amazing duo of Misty May and Kerri Walsh (okay, maybe they’re there for the game or their country and not just these two women. But that’s why I’d be there damnit. These girls are awesome). I marvel at how Walsh can look so good while dominating every opponent she faces. Some of the plays I’ve seen her pull off during the past week have simply left me sitting there shaking my head in disbelief and awe. She just has….it. She has that quality that makes you go “Damn, I bet she is cool” and you know even as the words come out of your mouth that she is. I don’t even know how to properly explain it. You just have to watch her in action, watch her demeanor and expressions. She knows what she wants, she knows she can get it, and she knows she’s gonna work as hard as possible for it. And after a week of watching her beat up on the opposition, I was able to watch her rightfully win the gold medal tonight. I can’t wait to see her play in person.

99% of these athletes will never been in the spotlight again. Sure, they might show up in Beijing in 2008 and maybe even New York or whoever grabs the 2012 games, but for the majority of them, this is it. This is what they have been training for their entire lives. After this, it’s off to train in obscurity again or go find a “real job” to finally start making a living. I don’t think it’s too much to pay them just a tad bit of respect and watch their handiwork for a week or two, do you?

The track and field events are just now starting to get underway and before you know it, the closing ceremonies will be occurring and you’ll realize that you missed some remarkable sporting events over the past few weeks. So I suggest that if you haven’t done so already, flip on over to NBC or one of their sister channels and check out a few minutes of whatever is on. Seriously, it doesn’t even matter what sport it is or what countries are playing. Just watch. You won’t be disappointed.

Seriously, could Cube Man have been any damn cooler? The whole history of Greece was amazingly portrayed, the music was impeccable, and watching the faces on all 11,000 of the athletes was simply humbling. But Cube Man – I don’t know why, but that entire “evolution of man” scene was downright astounding to me. In fact, I’m staying up tonight until around 3:30 AM just to watch the beginning part over again and record it.

I’ll probably get another post up later tomorrow or Sunday, but then I’m gonna be without Internet for a few days. The countdown has finally begun =)

Simpsons, Pokemon, and Bill Cosby. Are any other three items combined funnier then these?

You think you fight above stupid shit with your girlfriend? This guy feels your pain all too well.

Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on – let me make sure you’ve got the inflection here: Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. ‘Who’s she?’, ‘Why did he get shot?’, ‘I thought that one was on their side?’, ‘Is that a bomb’ – ‘JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!‘

And finally, I have to plug this movie. It’s not every day that I see a movie that immediately cracks into my Top 25 Movies Ever list, but this one sure shot up the charts quickly. The basic premise is a Fahrenheit 451 meets The Matrix type movie. It’s the future, human emotion is outlawed, and a small underground is fighting to preserve such items as artwork, literature, and music. The action scenes don’t even come close to those in The Matrix, but the acting and emotions portrayed by the characters are far and above superior. In fact, I honestly can say I would have rather seen Christian Bale portray the character of Neo over Keanu Reeves. Seriously, if you have a night to burn or have access to Kazaa Lite, go rent / download Equilibrium. You won’t be disappointed.

[EDIT]This post is amazingly outdated at this point. Most of the info below is no longer valid, but the gist of the post is still the same. If you have a few bucks and a few friends, you can get a free iPod. If you’re still interested after reading this post, click one of the image above and get started![/EDIT]

I’ve never liked scams. In fact, I have yet to find anybody who genuinely thought being scammed out of money or time could be called an enjoyable experience. Which is why I tend to take almost everything I read on the net with not just a grain of salt, but a whole damn truckload of salt.

So as you can imagine, when I saw a site offering free iPods, I laughed and moved on. Maybe I should have done a little more research back then.

My sudden shift in attitude came earlier this week while I was talking to some fellow clan members. I’m sure many of you don’t know, but there is an on-line video game based on the Matrix coming out this fall. As you can imagine, people began making clans and websites in preparation for the game once it finally came out. One such clan even went so far as to make an extremely difficult test and application process to weed out the idiots, which means that those of us in the clan are pretty tight-knit and don’t try to screw with each other. Therefore, when I saw one of them posting that his friend had actually gotten a free iPod from some website, I decided to listen to him and do some research of my own.

Well I’ve done my research can say with a straight face that this looks to be a legit operation here. The site is located over at www.freeipods.com and is run by a company called Gratis Internet. They specialize in online pay-for-performance acquisitions and are even a member of the Better Business Bureau. I’ve been able to go back and trace many of their older offers they ran and frankly, there are tons of satisfied customers and only a few people that talk of being disappointed.

But enough about all of that. I’m sure you are sitting there saying to yourself, “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DAMN IPOD?! HOW DO I GET IT?!” Quite easily. In fact, it only takes three simple steps.

First, create an account at freeipods. (But don’t do it yet you idiot! Wait until you’ve read of all this before you run off all half-cocked thinking you’ve got everything under control!)

Second, you choose one of the links on freeipod’s site, click it, and sign up with THAT company. (Calm down you idiots! No, you don’t need a credit card or have to pay a dime if you do the E-Bay offer!)

Third, you get 5 other people to do it.

So why would I be making this long-ass post if that was all you had to do? I mean, couldn’t you have just found that information on freeipod’s site? Of course you could have. But could you have found this easy ass guide I’m about to give you on their site? No, I didn’t think so.

Being the cheap poor person that I am, I quickly realized that there might be some hidden charges here. I mean, you never know what a company will just start charging you when you sign up for a new account with them and as I scrolled down the list of links you could click, I marked them off. AOL will give you a thousand free months but of course they want your credit card. Columbia House will dump mounds of CDs in your lap, just as long as you buy five for $35.00 a year later. E-Bay will….wait a minute.

E-BAY! See, I’ve been selling and buying things on E-Bay for years and if there is one thing that I learned early on, it was that you need not a single credit card to make an account and start buying things on E-Bay. And what’s this I see? All you have to do is make an account and “bid” on something? You don’t have to actually “win” the item? Oh this is gonna be sweet…

That’s right. Freeipods gets a referral bonus from E-Bay for every basic account created! All you have to do is give them your name, e-mail, and address and you are in! Once through with that, you just have to become the highest bidder on an item. Notice I didn’t say win. For instance, I did a quick search on E-Bay for digital cameras and found hundreds of them starting off at 0.01 cents. I made a bid of 0.25 cents, became the highest bidder, and was done. Of course, somebody came behind me and bid $50.00, meaning I didn’t win the digital camera for a quarter, but that’s the beauty of it all. That’s what is supposed to happen!

“But Goob,” you might be saying, “E-Bay won’t let you use a free e-mail account like Yahoo of Hotmail. What should I do?” Well that’s easy. Go to Yoggin.com or Big Puns. Or heck, if you own your own website, just make up a new e-mail account and use that!

That’s it! You’re done! Now all you have to do is get five friends to do it! Without much effort, I got a fellow clan member to sign up and do the E-Bay offer within minutes of asking him. In fact, I planned on just going down my buddy list and getting four friends to do it for me as well before I realized that I should share the wealth. Why get my friends to help me when I could easily help them get their own iPod as well.

Which is where this whole post comes into play. I want to help everybody get an iPod so this is what we are gonna do. I still need four more referrals since I decided to wait and ask people here in my post. My referral link is right here [link has since been removed], so click it and THEN make your account. I’ll get credited with a referral, you’ll have your account, and everybody wins. But like I said, I want to help my friends get five referrals as well.

So, if you click my link and sign up, say something in the comments of this post! Let me know you signed up using my link and then go ahead and post YOUR referral link. I’ll post those here on Shyzer and send them to all my friends until YOU have your five referrals. I’ve got plenty of clan members who are waiting for the rest of us to sign up before they sign up so that they don’t lose people a referral and honestly, if you think about it, how hard is it to get five people to do this for you? I’m looking at my buddy list right now and see 10 or 15 people who I know would take five minutes out of their lives to do me a favor, even if they didn’t want an iPod or not. So do me the favor, click my link, do the E-Bay thing, and then leave a comment with your referral link so that I can help you!

Here’s a few tips you might want to consider when making your accounts: Make sure YOU USE THE SAME HOME ADDRESS for signing up for E-Bay as you used for signing up at freeipods.com. This makes the verification process quicker and you will get credited sooner. If you are waiting to be credited on the e-Bay offer, you may or may not get credit for it until after the auction you bid on is over. So if the auction you bid on lasts for a week, don’t expect the e-Bay offer to be credited to you right away after bidding, give it awhile. And finally, it’s best not to have your referrals signed up using the same IP address as you. So getting someone in your house, using the same internet connection as you, signed up as your referral is a BAD IDEA. They will check to make sure they are indeed unique referrals and if they suspect that you’re cheating, then no IPOD for you. And it goes without saying, don’t try to sign up 5 extra times pretending to be your referrals. At least, not from your own home. =)

A great site for tons of information and links (including multiple sites where people photoed the iPod as it arrived at their house) is over at Forever Geeks. I suggest anybody who wants further proof to go check it out.

Seriously, if you find yourself to be a baseball fan without a team to cheer for, it’ll only take a few weeks of reading Batgirl’s site to turn you into a Twins fan.

I suggest you do the same.

Anyways, I came across a few things that some of you might find interesting. I’m sure you’ve all heard how some songs have hidden meanings in them if you play certain parts of them backwards. Well, I came across three such sites that flip a famous song and…well, you can see for yourself. The Queen and Spears songs might be a little bit of a stretch, but the Zeppelin one is just downright spooky.

Led Zeppelin

Queen

Britney Spears

I’m working on my subpages (namely the Mariners one). It’s in shambles right now with nothing but a lot of broken links, but it’s slowly coming along. I’m going away for the weekend, so I’ll try to post once more before I go or maybe type something up and post it while I’m away. We’ll see.

Wrong. All I can say is:
Plus
Equals

You won’t believe me until you finally try it for yourself, which is why I was skeptic until I actually went out with Fitz and Tucker to watch it with a bunch of other people. See, there’s this rumor that’s floating out there these days that says this: If you watch the Wizard of Oz with the sound turned down while simultaneously playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, you’ll quickly see that they go together. And I’m not talking “yeah, it kind of sounds like it could go along with the movie as a sound track or something” together. I’m talking “Holy shit, did you just see and hear that?! There’s NO WAY that could be coincidence!” or “DUDE! Listen to the lyrics! WOAH!” together.

You really have to see it to believe it. Keying up the CD and movie together in sync is by far the most important part, but once you’ve got it, you can sit back, relax, and be amazed at just how similar the two are. I’m sure you’ve all heard the CD before (and if you haven’t, what the hell is wrong with you?) and you can remember just how strange and random it is. There’s bells, whistles, odd clinks and clanks throughout the tracks. And while the CD is pretty short (hovers around 45 minutes), there are hardly any words to most of the songs and even when there are words, they appear to be totally random.

Not when you listen to it while watching the movie. Every time Dorothy falls, a loud clang will happen RIGHT AS she falls. Door and windows opening during the movie go hand in hand with creaking and squeaking noises from the tracks. If you know a little background about the movie (such as, at the time of its release, it was by far the most expensive movie ever to be created) you’ll be treated to even more surprises. Take for instance the scene where Dorothy wakes up in Oz and the movie is suddenly in color. Right at that moment, the song “Money” starts playing, which is filled with sounds of cash registers opening and closing.

The fact that Pink Floyd won’t confirm or deny the accusations only helps fuel the fire. Some say that if you put the CD on repeat and let it run through the whole movie, it keeps playing in sync, but I found that one to be a bit of a stretch. However, I would agree to put the CD on a loop so that you go through the whole CD and then start back over with the first two songs again. After that, it tapers off and there really isn’t anything cool, but still. I’m telling you folks, if you ever get a chance to witness this feat firsthand, be sure to. You won’t regret it.

One thing you’ll quickly notice from hanging out with the guys is that they love the card game Spades. It’s quite addictive and the rules are pretty simple to learn, but you can go somewhere else to learn them. All you need to know is this. Most games you play to 500. First team there wins. You can go into the negatives and usually, the lowest you’ll ever get is around –200 or so. During a REALLY bad game you might hit –500, but that is so rare only a handful of people can actually attest to witnessing such an event. Oh yeah, the Ace of Spades trumps all. Nothing can beat it. That was something I should have kept in mind.

I’m going to share with you a recent game that took place where I made history. That’s right folks, me and Johnny scored what is possibly the lowest score ever in the history of Spades. We came, we saw, we sucked. I couldn’t stop laughing by the end of that game. To my credit, I could have SWORN that Ace of Spades was an Ace of Clubs. Johnny’s expression as I laid down that Ace was priceless.

”You meant to do that, right? That was uh, like, part of your plan, RIGHT?! This is some strategy I’ve never heard of, RIGHT?!?!?

Hell, I’m proud of that -1454. You’ll never see a score like that again. Good times =)

“Sitting in his plane, company commander Thomas Meehan scribbled a short note to his wife. ‘Dearest Anne: In a few hours I’m going to take the best company of men in the world into France. We’ll give the bastards hell. Strangely I’m not particularly scared but in my heart is a terrific longing to hold you in my arms.’
‘I love you Sweetheart – Forever. Your Tom.’”

“Meehan handed the not through the open door to a friend on the plane’s crew and told him to get it to Anne. At 0110, the planes passed over the coast and into a cloud bank. The lead plane in stick 66, flown by Lt. Harold Cappelluto, was hit with bullets going through it and out the top, throwing sparks. The plane maintained course and speed for a moment or two, then did a slow wingover to the right. Pilot Frank DeFlita, just behind, remembered that ‘Cappelluto’s landing lights came on, and it appeared they were going to make it, when the plane hit a hedgerow and exploded.’ It was the plance carrying Lieutenant Meehan and the rest of the company headquarters section. Easy Company had not put one man into combat yet, and it had already lost platoon leader Schmitz, company commander Meehan, and its first sergeant.”

For those of you who haven’t heard, The History Channel is showing Band of Brothers this week. Starting at 9:00 each night, they are airing about 75 minutes worth of the series until they finish it off early next week. It’s an amazing mini-series that follows the book quite well and is guaranteed to stir a few emotions deep inside of you. I highly suggest you tune in if at all possible.