The Number 23

So, over the weekend, I saw the new film The Number 23 ,which stars Jim Carrey as a man driven to madness by the persistence of the number 23 in his world, or perhaps in the greater nature of things altogether. I did some research, and there are in fact studies about the odd statistical frequency of this number in mathematics. But is it cause for a freak-out? Just deal with it, dude. It's a number. Kurt Cobain died in 1994. 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 23. WHOA. Hmm.... but it was April 8th. 4 + 8 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 35. Bummer.

I found myself trying to find at least one 23 in my own life and came up empty. Not a birthdate, anniversary, or even dentist appointment came up 23. Does this mean I am immortal? I'm going to bet YES.

Return of the Beavers

"Beavers return to New York City after 200 years

NEW YORK (AP) -- Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents have not been seen in the flesh here for as many as 200 years -- until this week.

Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal itself.

"It had to happen because beaver populations are expanding, and their habitats are shrinking," said Dietland Muller-Schwarze, a beaver expert at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. "We're probably going to see more of them in the future." "

(Excerpt from http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/23/beaver.bronx.ap/index.html)

Instead of Liberal Arts...

I dreamt last night that I was back in college. Instead of majoring in Liberal Arts, I decided to do something else for the first 2 years to help me figure out what to focus on...

I sat in my boxers in a big, red, plastic tub full of water and slid around campus in it. Just slid all over the place. Everyone thought I was so cool because nobody else was doing it.

Then I went into a park and started a conversation with another student. He asked "Are those scorpions?" Turns out we were both covered in tiny brown scorpions. I screamed and screamed and woke up drenched in sweat.

So just like that, I go from the coolest guy on campus to being covered in stinging scorpions.

Get a Life

Man, I used to love this show!

So, We Have 30 Years to Live.....

"U.N. urged to take action on asteroid threat

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters)—An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036."

I, for one, am gonna start drinking more.

(Excerpt from Associated Press article http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/19/asteroid.deflector.reut/index.html. Photo courtesy of www.thunderbolts.info.)

To Sir, With No Love

I'm not knocking English gentry or American broadcasting, but I am knocking our sycophantic disc jockeys and ass-kissing TV-tabloid hosts who insist on prefacing Elton John with Sir. Yes, he's a knight—in the United Kingdom. And I respect that John "earned" his knighthood through admirable charity work. On this side of the pond, however, Elton's a pudgy, half-crazed pop singer who ruined a string of excellent songs with the musical abomination known as "Crocodile Rock."

Yet ever since Queen Elizabeth tapped John's shoulders with a sword, obsequious talking heads in this country kow-tow to English protocol as if the American Revolution never took place. There's nothing knightly about an out-of-control spend-a-holic who admitted to dropping almost £300,000 on flowers.

And look at that photo. Is that the stuff of knighthood? Had Sir Francis Drake sailed into battle dressed as Donald Duck, the Oxford English Dictionary would be written in Spanish.

Sir Paul McCartney? Hey, just for "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," I'll call Paul His Royal Highness and let him use my back as a step-stool for climbing into his Rolls. But as for Elton John...well, DJs and broadcasters, this is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, not the Land of the Spree and the Home of the Knave—this madman across the water doesn't rate a Sir on these shores.

Crappin' Lightning

"A WOMAN has suffered severe burning to her anus after being struck by lightning that hit her in the mouth and passed right through her body.

Natasha Timarovic, 27, was cleaning her teeth in her home in the Croatian city of Zadar when lightning struck the building. She said: 'I had just put my mouth under the tap to rinse away the toothpaste when the lightning must have struck the building. I don't remember much after that, but I was later told that the lightning had travelled down the water pipe and struck me on the mouth, passing through my body. It was incredibly painful, I felt it pass through my torso and then I don't remember much at all.'

Doctors at the city hospital where she was treated for burns to the mouth and rear said: 'The accident is bizarre but not impossible.'
She was wearing rubber bathroom shoes at the time and so instead of earthing through her feet it appears the electricity shot out of her backside," a medic told local newspaper, 24 Sata. "

(Excerpt from "Lightning Exits Woman's Bottom", http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20548077-13762,00.html)

Happy Birthdayyy, Mister Prezzzidennnt...

Born this day in a backwoods Kentucky log cabin in 1809, Abraham Lincoln overcame glaring deficiencies in facial-hair maintenance to become America's tallest -- and thus greatest -- president. Had he not been tragically assassinated in 1865, Honest Abe would today be celebrating his 198th birthday. If not for that fateful shot, such wisdom could our nation be gleaning right now from Mr. Lincoln.

Well, so long as Katie Couric wasn't asking the questions...

Mount Drinkmore salutes the Great Emancipator. As a tribute to our carved-in-granite counterpart, we'll be playing quarters -- using pennies, of course -- for shots of Kentucky bourbon, after which we'll discuss in-depth the Second Battle of Bull Run, using a Civil War chess set to investigate why Union General Pope failed to castle his troops when Stonewall Jackson made a decisive flanking maneuver.

(Photo courtesy Abraham Lincoln Art Gallery.)

Nothing like...

...having a waitress spill a beer on you!

"Next one is on me," she says.

I'm wondering if she's just saying that and if she'll forget or claim ignorance because the bar is packed and LOUD, and in that kind of atmosphere, you can't hold anyone to anything.

"How you guys doing?" she asks.

"I'll take THAT BEER now," I say—implying that she knows damned well what beer I'm talking about. The free one I've got coming to me. And lo and behold, I get a fresh, free beer placed on the table before me. It's mine and mine alone. A new frontier. And when the bill comes, it's minus 1 beer. The free one. The one I drank for free.

James Earl Jones/Vader Overdubs

Listen with earphones if you're at work!

Love Them Fatsuits!; Or, What the Hell Is Wrong With Eddie Murphy?

Once upon a time, Eddie Murphy was a spunky, up-and-coming comic whose edgy, profanity-laden routines were enjoyed by all. Then, somewhere in the early 1990s, something changed. He discovered fatsuits. No one knows how or why this had such a profound effect on his life, but it did—and for whatever reason, monomania set in. First, there was The Nutty Professor. Note, Jerry Lewis did not wear a fatsuit in the original, but Eddie Murphy felt the film was screaming for one. He felt this about all films, actually. He then moved on to The Nutty Professor 2. He was really expanding his range in the fatsuit now, playing several characters in fatsuits within the same scene!

Martin Lawrence, feeling that Eddie Murphy had found the Holy Grail of comedy and that there was no turning back, rolled out his own brand of fatsuit movies with Big Momma's House. Sure, these were clearly B-level fatsuit movies, but, hey, they were enough to get us through the drought between the Eddie Murphy versions.

Now Eddie's back with Norbit, in what's sure to be hilarious look at a spineless loser with a morbidly obese wife. Be on the lookout for Norbit 2, or perhaps a remake of The Absent-Minded Professor in which he invents a Flubber fatsuit.

(Photos copyright Paramount and Dreamworks Pictures.)

My Last Meal on Death Row

It is well known that prisoners on death row are allowed to request whatever they wish for their "last meal" as a kind of consolation prize for the whole execution thing. But what if your final meal never ended? It's the loophole of a lifetime: 974,000 cheeseburgers. At 10 minutes a burger, this will take them 1,111.8721 years to finish. Well beyond their normal lifespans! As long you don't choke to death as you chuckle while eating and seeing the warden tapping his watch impatiently, you'll be sitting pretty.

Dream: Book Cloning

So I have a dream in a drunken haze of my friend Brendan's (Dr. Strangehug) birthday. It starts out with science granting us a marvelous new way of copying books. It's a huge vat of clear goo. You submerge the book you have into it, and 20 minutes later, an exact copy of the book is created next to it, except it's on that crappy computer paper from the 1980s and it's stapled together. I say, "Cool!" when I see this happen, but the person teaching me is more skeptical, saying, "Yeah, well, it ain't so great. If you don't let it dry all the way, the ink smears."

Then there is a campaign to stop book piracy using this method. As if kids downloading the new Justin Timberlake song are gonna start running off copies of Moby Dick to screw the evil book industry. At the end, I remember thinking, "What if I put something ELSE in the gel?"

Photo copyright www.central.tafe.wa.edu.au

Wing Bowl Training Regimen

Every day of the week before Wing Bowl, one competitive eater consumed:

1 gallon of water
5 lb of pasta with butter
2 heads of lettuce

Groundhog Day

Guy in top hat: "Now, let's see if Phil can see his own shadow!"

crowd cheers

Phil: "Oh God. Somebody please help me! They're keeping me locked in this box all year long. They feed me gruel and poke me with sticks. I haven't seen my family in years!"

Guy in top hat: "It looks like Phil saw his shadow, folks."

crowd cheers

Phil: "NO! Don't put me back in the box! NOT THE BOX!!!"

John Lennon: Evil

"She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah"...words from a maniacal devil of a man, strangely beloved by millions. It was just uncovered by the Christian Web site wayoflife.org recently that John Lennon was a "profane and brawling street youth." In other words, like every teenager in the history of the world! That bastard. But there's more: "He tried to frighten old people." Please note it says he tried to frighten them. It doesn't say he was successful. The switching of their pills with M&M's and 3AM surprise screaming room invasions were all just tests. After the old people regained consciousness and control of their bodily functions, I am sure they had a good laugh about it and maybe even thanked John. You can read more about his reign of terror here:

http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/evil-legacy-johnlennon.html