Okay, okay. I know it has been a while...let's just say that I have been uninspired to blog. However, in the spirit of the season I have decided to share some of my favorite chunks of holiday-inspired multimedia. Nothing too big, I just wanted to share a smile and maybe a little alternative crank with a great back beat.
This is easily the coolest rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas I have ever heard.
Please check it out.
I figured we might go again. I have been inspired by the witty comment of Sir-Dance-Alot. Oh no wait, that is the other Tallahassee guy. Anyway...enjoy.
This is awesome! Now please. Please. Somebody come up with something funny to say about this.
Have you ever read "The New Yorker?" On the last page of every edition they show a cartoon and readers submit funny captions. The funniest caption wins. I saw the photo above and thought to myself that this was a funny punchline waiting to happen.
If you can think of a funny caption describing this photo please submit your entry in the comments section. There may be a prize for the funniest entry.
Or I might ridicule your lack of wit. Come on and take a chance.
You can do it. I believe in you.
I really don't want to beat the Mitt Romney thing in the ground, but it was pretty cool to meet a potential POTUS. I just had to post this. Damn that guy in the background is good looking.
And no, I didn't Photoshop this. Although I must admit that the first time I saw this photo I thought, "Man, it looks like I could have Photoshopped this!"
I didn't.
Promise.
I had the unique opportunity to meet the possible future President of the United States, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Being something of a political junkie, I have watched all of the Republican and Democrat candidate debates. Mitt Romney has been the one candidate that has stood out more than any other. I attended a small support rally during one of the debates which lead to an invitation to former Florida Speaker of the House Allan Bense's home to meet Governor Romney. It is difficult to express how impressive this man is. I intend to write extensively on the subject of Presidential candidates over the course of the next year so I will not go in to detail on individual issues right now. However; I urge you to check this guy out. Don't let the Mormon buzz scare you away before you give him a fair shake. You might be surprised. I certainly was.
Here is a link to more information on Mitt Romney for President.
Have you ever wondered if you were racist? Kelly turned me on to a site called Project Implicit. It was developed by the Harvard Psych Department and it has a short test that you might find interesting. It takes about 3 minutes to take the test and I thought it was very cool. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
Kelly and I decided to go see a movie last night. We were torn between "Bug" and "Mr. Brooks." I had anticipated both movies being pretty good but I had no idea what I was in for with the decision to see "Mr. Brooks."
This movie was amazingly well written and acted. It was graphic and violent and disturbing. I freaking loved it. This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill thriller. If you have the time and the means I can not recommend this film enough. Please go check it out and let me know how you liked it.
Unless of course you didn't like it...if that is the case, keep your mouth shut and try not to spread your crazy dementia around to the rest of us.
I know it has been a while since I posted anything. Oh well, life is busy. However, today I read something that caused me to brush off the old soapbox. I would first like to say that I am a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber...and I love it. The reasons I love it are numerous, but for those of you who have ever spent a significant amount of time in a car in Panama City, I need not explain it further.
Earlier this year Sirius and XM (the only other satellite radio provider in North America) announced a merger that would join both companies. This is probably going to be good for me an about 13 1/2 million other people. What many people do not know is that satellite radio content is not governed by the FCC. This, subsequently, is why Howard Stern moved to Sirius. Well, that and a few hundred million other reasons.
It is estimated that he cleared 200 mil in stock bonuses by meeting subscriber quotas. Who the hell cares, I do not listen to his crap. This is pertinent to my current bother. Stern is called a "Shock Jock" for pushing the limits of terrestrial broadcast regulations and more importantly good taste. He is not alone in his Endeavour of political incorrectness.
XM hosts a pair of Stern wanna-be's known as Opie and Anthony. Recently, XM suspended the pair's morning show for comments they made on an uncensored channel. This has outraged many subscribers and sponsors and XM is dealing with a substantial backlash.
I do agree that if you sell your service as "uncensored" then maybe you should not reprove your staff for saying something widely considered as unspeakable. You are asking for it XM! Lift the suspension. You made your bed...
On the other hand. What the hell where these idiots thinking. They put an incredibly offensive homeless man on the mike and laughed hysterically as he made comments regarding the rape and beating of Condoleezza Rice.
Here is my problem:
I like some music that is very hard. I mean rugged, industrial, Nine Inch Nails kind of jam. I do not like all of it. What I especially do not like is music that is hard for the sake of being hard. That sucks. If you want to be hard, be hard, just be good first. As long as it is good I will listen to it hard, soft, or in the middle.
These two morning show jackasses need to follow the same rules. Some of the funniest things I have ever heard happened to be the raunchiest things I have ever heard. Some were not. The point however, is the same. Funny is funny, clean or dirty. But just because some dirty things are funny does not mean dirty is a suitable replacement for substance any more than hard is. Anyone can say something provocative to get a rise out of people. They could talk about eating babies or something equally deplorable, but if they do it only because they lack the talent to say something tangible then they should be shot.
If you have XM, cut them a break. It needed to be done. If you are XM, think about how you market your service. Otherwise you might offer up some second-rate imbecile and get yourself bit in the ass. Damn that stings.
Ancient Chinese Proverb: "A closed mouth gathers no foot."
If you have not had a chance to watch the BBC/Discovery Channel series "Planet Earth", I can not recommend it enough. If I had a friend who did not own a television, I would tell him to buy one so that he could watch this. This is the most amazing camara work ever done. You can find all the information you need pertaining to Planet Earth by clicking here.
If you have watched it please let me know what you thought by posting comments below.
I felt compelled to write something. That is not necessarily a good thing considering I am at a loss for anything substantive to write about.
I am still here. I just have writer's block.
Oh yeah, GO SEE 300. It was amazing.
All the time I worked at Winn Dixie in high school...wasted. Why the hell couldn't I (or one of my friends) thought of this first?? Brilliant.
I really do think that I am more than a little overdue on commenting on the New Orleans fiasco considering it is my home state. Could I say any more than this? I think not. Except to post an amazing essay written by Reverend Jesse Lee Patterson. I would like a give a little 'what, what shout-out' to James Thayer for the funny pic and my mom Cathy Merchant for the essay. Enjoy.
Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:
What would you do?
What would you do if you were black?
Sadly, the two questions don’t have the same answer.
To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect then from danger. The, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.
For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you’re black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you’ll probably wait for the government to save you.
This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crises would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.
No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, Welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.
Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on “racist” President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government’s proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America “overseeing” billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.
O course, if these two men were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first in the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin’s job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin’s wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, “recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city’s emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city’s poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.”
One wonders how there was “no way” for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You’ve probably seen it by now the photo showing 200 parked buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?
Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleanians into the Superdome and the city’s convention center. We know how that plan turned out.
About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let the blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave the blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.
President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans’ black community taken action, most would have been out of harm’s way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves. All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was black’s moral poverty not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans. Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not to depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.
The Rev. Jesse Lee Patterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of “Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America.
I am sitting with my oldest best friend James Thayer who just made an interesting observation. FSU beat UCLA, UCLA beat USC, USC beat Michigan. Do you see where this is going? By this logic FSU should be ranked at least #3 in the final rankings!! I agree with him 100%. Of course, if the BCS used my personal rankings system (and I have lobbied them repeatedly to my dismay) there would only be one rank: #1. And surprisingly, FSU would dominate this ranking until the extinction of mankind. That is just my humble opinion.
You have to be kidding me. For those of you who have not noticed, I am something of an FSU fan. I also started a new job back in June working with two U of F grads who happen to be big football fans. I started this job in the same calender year that consisted not only of FSU's worst season in my lifetime (except 1976), but more importantly the same year that those Gator hacks win the National Championship. As I previously stated: "You have got to be kidding me!" My life has been a living hell for the last four days. Only eight and a half months until football season.
GO NOLES!
Well the holidays are over. FSU kicked the crap out of UCLA. I got the flu the day after Christmas. The eight hour drive from Louisiana took twelve hours in the worst weather imaginable. FSU kicked the crap out of UCLA. 
Oh wait, I think I mentioned that once before. I received the first two seasons of "Frasier" (one of my favorite television shows) on DVD. We had a great visit but we were glad to get home and back into the groove.
Oh, before I go, one last thing...
GO BUCKEYE'S!!!!
I apologize for my lengthy hiatus, I have been out of town and then sick. I have much to blog about so stay tuned.
