* Day 3 of our blog experiment finds me perplexed. Yesterday's lone image appears incorrectly formatted when I look at it in Internet Explorer at work. And the video won't show up. At home (on Firefox) things look like I want. So if the blog looks goofy, I guess you should just download Firefox. It'll be faster than me trying to figure out why IE is staging a revolt.
* I am repulsed by the fact that Zanies defeated iO in the Golden Local contest. I said if iO lost, I would say something mean about your pet. Since you didn't hold up your end of the bargain, here goes... Your pet is dumb. It is dumber than all the other animals of its breed. You might want to check to see if your pet has been huffing paint. Because it is dumb.
You now owe me at least one visit to iO to watch me perform with Whiskey Rebellion. Failure to do so will result in further tauntings of your pets.
* Thanks to the New Economy™, we're all swearing more. Things are so bad, our network is changing the name of our sister station to MFNBC.
* The average employee spends 2.8 hours a day worrying about job concerns. Personally, this was less of a problem before the NBC brass started calling me every 15 minutes to whisper, "We're gonna fire you... (click)"
But I don't think that captures Wisconsin all that well. Here are a few more appropriate slogans for our northern neighbor...
Wisconsin: The ironic vacation destination.
Come to Minnesota's less exciting sibling!
Because you've gotta drive through us to get to Canada.
Cheese + Cows = Memories
Now hospitable a full two weeks out of the year!
If something catches fire, there's the potential for excitement.
See the land real explorers moved through on their way to the Pacific.
We know you made a wrong turn. Just hang on a sec before going back the way you came.
See that 50th state you've been putting off all these years!
Wisconsin: Because you're white.
* Congratulations to the Nintendo Wii game "House of the Dead: Overkill." It features the F word 189 times, making it the most profane game ever. Also featuring the F word 189 times: me, when I saw you failed to help iO win the Golden Local.
* Turns out "The Wizard of Oz" is way deeper than you realized. "The Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer and the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan." Our modern equivalent: Jar Jar Binks is George W. Bush.
* Journalism is dying. "Consumers are gravitating to the work of individual writers and voices, and away somewhat from the institutional brand." I guess that's where I come in. If you want news delivered by a man with one hand on a keyboard and the other with his finger on the trigger pointed at his temple, welcome home.
* Brother #1: "Hey, bro! Did you drink my Coke?" Brother #2:BANG! BANG! BANG!
* Researchers now know why you forget good jokes but remember corny ones. Probably because of all that time you spend at Zanies, listening to the same joke about airplanes over and over. (I'll let go of this Golden Local thing... someday.)
* All out of news, ABC dispatches someone to test infomercial products, like the ShamWow and Mighty Mendit. My mom bought a ShamWow and says it sucks. I make it a rule not to buy anything hyped by a man whose entire circulatory system is visible in his neck. Headset is another red flag. The ShamWow guy is just one step up from the laid-back Southern guys selling samurai swords in the middle of the night.
* Preparing your mind for a certain behavior increases (by as much as 50%) the chance that you'll pull that behavior off. Funny. I've spent the last decade preparing to punch Kenny G in the throat and I've never had the pleasure.
* Do not be alarmed, but a bat rode the shuttle Discovery into space. Of course this will give rise to an ultra-powerful race of space vampires, but I believe we have the technology to defeat them. Though the government denies it, we've been fighting space vampires since the 1980s, as evidenced by this surveillance video.
A further examination of the space vampire phenomena can be found in the frequent SciFi Channel staple "Dracula 3000: Infinite Darkness." Basically, it's "Alien" with vampires.
A salvage ship finds a larger ship floating in space. Obviously, the salvage crew boards to check things out. The crew includes Casper Van Dien as our intrepid Captain Van Helsing, Erika Eleniak as the second-in-command, Coolio(!) as an intergalactic marijuana enthusiast named "187," and Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr. as the big muscle-y guy. Oh, and there's a smart guy in a wheelchair named "The Professor."
Anyway, Coolio wants to search the deserted ship for weed and he finds a bunch of coffins in the cargo hold. While opening one, he cuts his hand and bleeds into the coffin. But not to worry - the casket only contains dust.
On second thought, worry. The blood in the dust somehow turns into/summons/teleports Dracula to the ship. It's one of the worst all-time Draculas. Seriously, he looks like your Uncle Ted in pale makeup and a Halloween cape. Anyway, Dracula eventually converts or kills everyone except for two people. And, disobeying all horror movie laws, they're not the two people you're expecting.
In a further disobedience of horror movie law, the ending is the most abrupt and inappropriate of anything I've ever seen. It's like they ran out of money for a big finale and brought in a really bad stand-up comic to write 30 seconds of dialogue to get them out of it. I laughed for at least a minute, then rewound the ending just to see it again. Seriously, amazingly bad, and worth every minute you'll waste on it.
