Hello Nashville!

Bazookaluca's 2008 World Tour brings him to Nashville this Labor Day weekend, so get ready my Tennessee friends! I expect a hero's welcome to my adopted home town and nothing less than a parade will do (although I will settle for a handshake and a soft pat on the ass.)

If you think that you might like to see me while I'm in town then, by all means, give me a holler by phone or any other means that you see fit.

See you on Central time...

Indomitable

If success achieved in Olympic competition is any indication of the particular skills that nations possess, then I advise you not to fuck with an Italian.

If an event involved violence, bodily harm or weapons, we had it down:

Boxing: Men (Super Heavy) - Gold
Boxing: Men (Heavy) - Silver
Boxing: Men (Fly) - Bronze
Greco-Roman Wrestling: Men (84Kg) - Gold
Taekwondo: Men (80Kg) - Silver
Judo: Women (57Kg) - Gold
Archery: Men's Team - Silver
Shooting: Men's Trap - Silver
Shooting: Men's Double Trap - Silver
Shooting: Women's Skeet - Gold
Fencing: Women's Individual Foil - Gold
Fencing: Women's Team Foil - Bronze
Fencing: Men's Individual Foil - Bronze
Fencing: Men's Individual Epee - Gold
Fencing: Men's Team Epee - Bronze
Fencing: Men's Team Sabre - Bronze

And don't even think about running, 'cause we'll catch you, no matter if by land or sea:

Athletics: Men's 50Km Walk - Gold
Athletics: Women's 20km Walk - Bronze
Road Cycling: Men's Road Race - Silver
Road Cycling: Women's Road Race - Bronze
Swimming: Women's 200m Freestyle - Gold
Swimming: Women's 800m Freestyle - Silver
Flat Water Canoe/Kayak: Men's Kayak Double 1000m - Bronze
Flat Water Canoe/Kayak: Women's Kayak Single 500m Women - Silver
Rowing: Men's Quadruple Sculls - Silver
Sailing: Men's One person Dingy - Bronze
Sailing: Women's Windsurfer Mistral - Silver

So keep that in mind the next time you feel like mouthing off to me or I'll unleash my trap shooting skills and hunt you down in my dingy. No doubt.

Justified

He was my guy all along...

WARNING: Not All That You See On Television Is Real

I ran across this article on IMDb: Italians Call For Ban On Medical Dramas

I can't wait for the Robotic Industries Association to follow suit and go after shows like Battlestar Galactica, The Sarah Connors Chronicles and Futurama.

Perhaps they should run a disclaimer before these shows:

The robots, androids, humanoids and/or machines depicted in the following program may not reflect the current state of innovation in Robotic Sciences. If the images and/or sounds of the aforementioned program cause you to momentarily suspend reality and escape to an imaginative world where robots are either (a) your loyal friend, (b) your sworn enemy, (c) your compliant servant, (d) your willing lover, (e) a prosthetic appendage, and/or (f) anything else that you can think of, please don't adjust your expectations of the current robotic field to that of a complete work of fiction. We're trying here, okay?! Do you know how hard it is to make a goddam pile of metal, plastic and wires climb some stairs? It's pretty fucking hard, all right?! Give us a break here...

No One Escapes With Their Dignity Intact

I don't know if this grappling move has an official name, but "three-fingered rectal underhook" comes to mind...

Simple-y Overblown

I saw Tropic Thunder this past weekend.

I found that the recent hubbub over jokes at the expense of developmentally disabled individuals is, well, retarded.

First of all, Tropic Thunder isn't even the first film starring Ben Stiller to make fun of mentally impaired persons. There's Something About Mary comes to mind as an earlier example. Remember the whole Warren, "Have you seen my baseball" shtick? That was way more exploitative.

Plus, Tropic Thunder makes fun of Hollywood's fixation with rewarding actors who play retards more than the retards themselves. Did I say retards? I meant, "mentally differently-abled." Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking.

Rather than griping with the questionable humor of Tropic Thunder, respected groups like The Arc of the United States and Seguin Services should be protesting more worthwhile offenses, such as a certain US president giving retards a bad name for nearly a decade now.

Needless to say, my favorite part of Tropic Thunder didn't involve any of the aforementioned retard-bashing, but rather, gratuitous violence towards children. Now, that's funny!

The 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony

If you didn't catch the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics than you missed a pretty impressive demonstration of what $300 million and an eagerness to impress can accomplish.

Whereas opening ceremonies of the past have generally felt histrionic and pompous, this one came off like a true wuxia epic. Fireworks, the world's largest LED screen and a cast of 22,000 performers precisely synchronized with choreography that would make a Filipino prisoner green with envy managed to impress even the most jaded of viewers (e.g., me). I especially liked the opening of the show with the 2008 Fou drummers banging away on their LED-embedded drums. The Tai Chi performance was also a highlight and a true marvel of choreography on a mass scale.

I really got to hand it to the directors of the ceremonies, famed Chinese film makers Zhang Yimou and Zhang Jigang. They may have pulled off the biggest spectacle in human history on 08/08/08 at 8pm.

And if you happen to share in the Chinese belief that the number eight is lucky, then also look out for these future lottery winners.

Random Query

Is it weird that the 2008 Chinese national basketball team has three players who are over 7 feet tall and the US team has none?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Next thing we know, a black dude will be the world's best golfer...

Comcast Must Die!

Comcast is testing our patience.

Adrienne and I have been without cable and internet at our new place for two weeks. Comcast missed the first appointment to come set everything up because they didn't update my current phone number in their system, even though I had previously notified them three, count them, three times about the change (by phone and online). Adrienne waited all day for them to show up or call, but nothing. So of course, they had to set up another appointment --aaand it was for a full six days later.

They actually showed up for that one, but not in the original window they had given us of 11am-3pm. They showed up at 5:30pm. What the fuck? Adrienne wasted her whole day waiting for them --aaagain.

This time they hooked up the cable, but not with our full channel package (no HBO or Showtime) and they had to give us a new cable box, so we lost all the things we had recorded on our old DVR. The technician also set up the internet and assured me that their servers were currently down but that it would start working again later on last night --buuut of course, it never did.

So today, I got in touch with Comcast again (for what feels like the 30th time) and they told me that they diagnosed a non-specific(?) malfunction and would have to send out another technician --aaand that they couldn't do it until Monday from 3-5pm.

So I'm going to have to leave work early on Monday to go wait for them at home because Adrienne will be in Portland at the time. I get paid hourly, so I'm going to lose money by doing this.

Comcast is now taking food from the mouths of my imaginary children.

All I want to be able to do is watch television while concurrently surfing on the internet. It's all I ask for.

I no longer want to have to walk down the block with my laptop to use the first available unsecure wireless connection. I don't want to go down to the Edgewood Caribou Coffee and pretend to drink coffee for an hour so I can check my goddam email and the half dozen social networking sites I belong to.

I also run an online business from my home, which is kind of hard to do without the internet.

I'm seriously considering getting the Dish and DSL right about now. Just the thought of paying Comcast good money for their crappy service after all this makes me very angry.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

The Pursuit Of Normalcy

Hello all,

Lately I've been neglecting my blog worse than a Spears/Federline spawn. Luckily in my case it's not because of a genetic predisposition to infantile negligence --I've just been preoccupied.

First off, I just moved to a new apartment in the Kirkwood area and, as you can imagine, the move threw my life into a convoluted head-spin filled with boxes and packing tape for a couple of weeks. I'm just now recovering from trying to fit 1,100 sq. ft. of crap into a 850 sq. ft. place. But the apartment (technically a duplex) is shaping up quite well and I only have a couple of boxes of crap that I don't know where to cram, so it's all good. I still don't have the internet or cable because Comcast is trying to keep me from pursuing happiness, but hopefully it'll all be back to normal by next week.

Also, a day after I moved into the new place I got the pleasant surprise of a job offer at an online media measurement company called BigChampagne. Yes, I know, weird name. But they are truly on the cutting edge of media market research and I'm excited to now be a part of their company (and to get a steady paycheck again). Plus, it's located right downtown on the 22nd floor of an office building, so I get to feel like I'm a stock broker or something.

I'm sure I'll get back to blogging on a regular basis soon, so fear not, my faithful little blog-reading bunnies, I have not forsaken you.