Debate Drinking Game

Ruben put a presidental debate drink game today. Hilarious. Please DO try this at home:)

More Respect for NPR

This morning NPR played part of an interview with Rod Stewart. No big deal, except that they played this line from the interview: "I had more fun and shagged more girls during that time than any other time in my life."

In doing so, I do believe that NPR became the first publicly funded media here in the US to broadcast anyone saying the word "shag":)

Return of the King

Dear God! The "special extended edition" of the Return of the King DVD will include another 50 minutes of footage. That will make the entire movie four hours and ten minutes long! I'll need a catheter just to make it through the entire movie in one sitting.

Of course, you know I will be asking Sue to be my Santa and get it for me for Christmas (it will be released Dec 14). I'm just whining for the sake of writing another blog entry:)

Savage Nation Frightens Me

As some of you know, I tend to be a non-music radio listener. I started with just listening to NPR on the way to work, but during the day the NPR station here in Huntsville never plays anything but classical music. So to get my fix, I switch over to AM radio during those times.

For those who don't listen to AM radio, it is a interesting sort of listen. Most know that the rank of talk show host typically only goes to folks who are pretty hard-core right-wing conservative. Interestingly, there is actually a relationship between how early you are on in the day and how conservative you are required to be. For example, here in Huntsville the AM 770 station plays the following shows:

Noon - Rush Limbaugh - Rush is better than the rest of them, although he will still resort to name calling, scare tactics, and general twisting of words whenever it suits the point he is trying to make. However, he at least has some good points to make. I can usually listen to this for about 30 minutes or so before I want to call the station. The worst thing about this show is that he makes some fine points, but always seems to take them too far.

3:00 pm - Sean Hannity - Way more conservative. Interestingly, this guy is a complete dick when hosting the show alone, but is always very nice to any guest he has; even the Democrat ones (probably because he needs them to actually come back once in a while). I can only listen to this one for about 10 minutes before I have to turn it off.

7:00 pm - Michael Savage - Worst of the whole lot. He is a Pat Buchanan conservative ( just like regular conservative, except he also adds in a fear of foreigners and is in favor of isolationism). I swear this next part is true and that I heard it with my own ears: last week he said anyone who was not in favor of the words "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance must be a "sexual deviant". Usually I cannot make it home before this guy makes me yell at the radio.

Of course, the people who call into these shows are amusing as well:) Yesterday I was listening and someone called in to say the answer to the problems in Iraq was to just wipe out various cities one at a time until the population comes under control... and host thought it was a good idea! I've heard the same idea floated around about the Palestine/Israel problem as well on talk radio. Wow.... That would be like the government telling us that every time someone was convicted of a murder, they would wipe out everyone on the same block... Scary stuff man...

Sue report

Hello all. I thought I would report in. It is the 4th week of school and damn am I tired! They sure keep us buried in paperwork in nursing school. I guess it is just practice for the real world. Anywho, this past weekend I went to Birmingham, AL to the Children's hospital as part of my Pediatric rotation. It was ok, but the floors I was on in the hospital were a little slow. One day we had a Jerry Springer family and I thought my family was screwed up? They were 10 times as bad as any problem I have. The children's hospital is pretty cool. It has every specialty you can think of and they even have a stem cell unit where they do transplants. The whole place is decorated very cute and colorful. It is a great place for kids to go when they are sick. It was kind of hard to see all of those sick kids ecspecially the young ones on the cancer floor, but there are so many great nurses and doctors there that really take care of them. Birmingham is a great city. Unfortunately me and the girls I was with were unable to party too hard since we had to get up at 5:00 each morning and do homework, but Friday and Saturday night we went and ate and drank downtown. The nights were so nice and cool that we sat on the patios and just took in the surroundings. We made the best out of our school excursion, but now I am home and have tons of homework to do! Argh! Some serious partying will need to occur soon to release some stress. Later.

We Are Still Here

Hurricane Ivan came through the area last night. We lost power for about 4 hours last night, which sucks! I was thinking that I missed a lot of good TV because of that storm, but then I remembered that the local NBC station interrupts with weather reports every three minute anyways:) The local weather guy was worried that there might be tornados, but in the end there was just a lot of wind and rain. My backyard is covered in tree/brush debris and our large growth of ivy fell over. Otherwise all is good here.

FYI: My jeep is like a giant sail in high winds. Driving home in that sort of weather is...well lets just say "challenging".

Work Sucks

Work sucks today. Nothing but mind-numbing code that does nothing but move bits from one location to another. But at least di.fm is finally working again today (at least the mp3 streams are working. The WMA streams always seem to be busy when I want to listen to them). The Hard House music I am listening to right now on di.fm sure is making work easier to deal with:)

Speaking of streaming music, MSN had a bunch of links to 80's Radio links. I tried each one for a few minutes, and it only reinforced my theory that there was no good rock/pop music made in the 80's ( I used to say no good music..PERIOD.., but I had to modify that after listening to some of the music played at that 80's party with Wes's possie).

Death of Hockey

Say it is not so!!!! Another F$%$ing lock out? DAMN IT!

For those unaware, I love hockey. Some of my earliest memories are sitting with my old man watching the Red Wings take on the Edmonton Oilers in the playoffs each year. The Wings invariably lost, but it was still a great bonding experience...

Seems the owners want a salary cap for the league, and the player have said, "over our dead bodies". Its hard to feel sorry for the players, given that the average salary is now just under $2 million a year, and 2/3 of the teams in the league are losing money. Still, I can understand the players' position. It is not their fault that the owners overpay them:)

But Hockey is quickly moving towards Baseball in terms of team balance. It NEEDS a salary cap. The great teams like the Red Wings, Philadelphia, and Colorado can afford $40 million+ payrolls. Most of the rest of the teams cannot. So we are quickly approaching a situation like baseball: teams will spend insane amounts of money for a year, make it to the playoffs, then dismantle the team the next year.

Also, unlike baseball, basketball, and football, hockey does not have a huge national TV contract to even out some of the individual teams' revenue. Hockey's TV contract is such a joke that I read that Arena football gets about as much money from their national TV contract as hockey:(

Christmas in September

Sue and I went shopping at Sam's Club today. They already have an aisle of Christmas items out! Worse, they had a CD player out playing songs from NSync's Christmas album. So I found myself wandering aisles singing, "Here comes Santa Claus. Here comes Santa Cl... DAMN IT!!". Stupid catchy chorus...

Movie reviews

This past weekend Eric and I rented some older movies, but we thought that they were pretty good flicks.

The first one we rented was Stark Raving Mad with Sean William Scott playing a good, bad guy. It also has Lou Diamond Phillips and Dave Foley in it. It is about Scott's character who is repaying a debt of his dead brother back to Phillip's character. He is trying to rob a bank by having a big rave party in the club right next door to cover their work on the bank. It is a comedy and the soundtrack rocks since it is all John Digweed! Actually, I bought the two disc soundtrack thinking that it was just a Digweed album and then I found out that there was a movie of the same name. I looked it up on the web to find out what it was about and it looked good so we checked it out. I recommend it.

The other movie we rented was Pieces of April with Katie Holmes. It is a smaller, low key movie, but I enjoyed it. Maybe it is because I loved Dawson's Creek, but don't hold that against me like Eric does. Katie Holmes plays a character that is very different from Joey Potter in this movie. She is a goth dressed chick that lives on the poor side of NYC. The movie is about her inviting her family over for Thanksgiving dinner since she has not seen them in a long time. Her mother and her never got along and now that her mom is dying of breast cancer she wants to do something for her family so that she can see her mom again and try to fix their relationship. Most of the movie is Holme's character trying to make dinner which she has never done and meeting some interesting neighbors in her building including Sean Hayes as a weird, uptight, OCD man. Her family is very weird and as they drive in to the city, they try many times to turn around and not go at all. I would recommend this movie, I really enjoyed it and the end is a little suprise.

Yet More Random stuff

• Does anyone else find it weird that we get labor day off from work? I am not even sure how the government proposed this holiday with a straight face.





Government Weenie: "As a way of honoring the hard work of everyone in this country, we have decided to have everyone NOT work on the same day..."




• The Genesis spacecraft crashed into the desert today. This has got to suck for NASA. Four years you wait around for this thing to return to earth. You spend millions of dollars paying folks to track its return, and then... SPLAT!!!!! Quite the bummer. I'm pissed when I miss the first five minutes of Scrubs (best show on TV FYI). I can't even begin to imagine this sort of let down...




• The political machines sure are running full tilt at this point. I have to admit it is starting to get to me. I don't WANT to be cynical towards the entire political process. Really, I don't. But Christ this negative campaining is starting to make me bitter and depressed with the whole lot. All this crap about Kerry 30 years ago (Was he shot, not shot; Did he deserve all these purple hearts) is a waste of time. All this crap about Bush 30 years ago (did he serve all his guard time) is a waste of time. I don't care about the decisions you made 30 years ago. I care about decisions you have made while in office.
  
  Ditto with the war in Iraq. I don't care what you WOULD have done differently. I don't care that you think it was a mistake. I CARE about how you are going to improve the situation, because just leaving is not a good option at this point.
  
  TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING ISSUES!!! Sweet lord is that too much to ask? I want to hear about your stand on abortion, the deficit, how to make the country safer, how to help the 1 million plus people who dropped under the poverty line. I want to know about your stand on military spending, the environment, the patriot act, and the war on drugs.




• I came to a rather startling conclusion the other night. I'm a moderate republican. No really, its true. I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Classic definition of a moderate republican. I really wish John McCain could get elected. But noooooooo.....Typical political crap. You can't get on one of the two tickets without appeasing the base (the hard-core left or the hard-core right). But you cannot get elected with appealing to the center line independents. Hence why nearly every president since Bush Sr has had to the do the double-face act for America.
  

Hurricane Coverage

Am I the only person in the US who does not think Hurricane Frances should be covered by the 24-hour news guys ever 8-10 minutes? How much can you say about a storm?

Every broadcast is exactly the same, "Well, its windy and rainy here in <insert city name>. People should be taking shelter. Back to you.". Repeat in a loop for 5-10 minutes as needed.

I love the shots they have of people in the storm too:) Because of the rain and wind, the camera lens is always covered in water before the person on camera can even show up on CNN.

TV Anchorperson: "Well, it appears we have some sort of blur on the screen talking about rain and weather...."

I know it is a slow news day and all, but sheesh...

Review: Pizza Inn

For those who don't live in Huntsville/Madison, this blog is not going to mean much. For everyone else, read on.

Sue and I went to that new Pizza Inn restaurant on Hughes Road behind the Wendy's today. If you have never been, DO NOT GO. I generally love any place that give you as much pizza as you like. But the pizza at Pizza Inn was just awful. Much worse than even CiCi's, which is not saying much.

Normally I would not blog about something like this, but I wanted to be sure no one else suffered like Sue and I suffered today:)

Schwarzenegger = McCarthy

Man, I love this one... Apparently Schwarzenegger's recollection of his time in Austria is a little ...uh....foggy :)

CNN.com - Historians dispute Schwarzenegger's convention comments