The best kegerator on campus

Goodbye, round two

Back to Rice today.

Thanks for the amazing summer, PCB kids. Houston, I'll see you tomorrow.

Big things

Ben's monitor setup. Thirty-seven inches of fun, which happens to be the name of the porn me and Matt watched last night.

Oh my God, Phil has applied the Figure Four! This match is over!

Fecal warfare

I figured it out. Today, after downing my two scoops of delicious whey protein powder I had the runs like I always do. And in the bathroom, amidst the copies of Popular Science and the obscure engineering magazines that no one cares about (like OHMS MONTHLY! ZIP! ZOOM! BAM! RESISTANCE!), I figured out how to solve the crisis in the Middle East.

It's complicated, so stick with me here.

The US Military is always complaining about not having the correct tools for urban warfare against the Islamic fundamentalists. Even though they're holding out oodles of my paycheck to pay for research and development of unmanned drones, cannons, dazzlers, sparklers, and tanks that shoot rubber tire shreds, I don't really think they've figured it out yet. After all, how do you battle someone who willingly straps a bomb to his back and builds a base in an elementary school? I'll tell you how.

Use their culture against them with a weapon of high supply and low demand.

"Now whoa whoa whoa," you might say. "That seems like a pipe dream. What are we going to do, throw yellow ribbon car magnets at them?"

Close. We're going to sling our poo.

Before you dismiss my idea as pie (or poop) in the sky, consider this. As any Muslim will gladly tell you before blowing up the plane you're both traveling on, people of Islam are highly conscious of their dignity. Especially the fundamentalists. These are people that kill themselves over eating pork. These are people that kill themselves over praying two degrees off from Mecca. They're highly susceptible to having their dignity squashed, unlike Americans.

And as Americans, I don't think we're above driving our enemies to suicide by using their culture and religion and way of life against them. We're kind of like the opposite of them. So, for your viewing pleasure, I present to you a guide to weapons that will win in a Muslim world.

Ammunition. Every weapons outlined will be loaded with 50mm Standard Issue Defication (SID). Every SID round consists of at least 60% pork byproduct with the other 40% differing according to the diet of the SID producer. Most SID will come from deployed soldiers fed a steady diet of truly American hot dogs, hamburgers, high proof grain alcohol, rainwater, and bits of the King James Bible. Americans back home can also donate to the cause by unloading their septic tank at the nearest military base or recruiting center or Baptist church. Rather than gunpowder or HE, the SID uses compressed cow methane to propel its projectile.

The Fecal Flack Cannon. Quite a weapon to behold, the Fecal Flack Cannon is a modified version of the anti-aircraft flack cannon weapon. This version, however, is used as a mid-range crowd control device lobbing pounds of brown matter up to one mile.

Mud Mortar. Also a long range device, this mortar device is operated by a team of infantry front-loading SID into the breach. Has a ten foot kill zone on impact with a thirty foot radius of projectile shit.

The Shit Shotgun. Preferred choice of close-combat infantry, the shit shotgun shoots large slugs of SID or capsules of SID pellets. In urban combat situations, the Shit Shotgun has no equal.

Standard Issue Poo-retta. Considering that every soldier needs a standard issue backup weapon, this short-range pistol is the last resort in the war on terror.

JDAM (Joint Directed Ass Munition). For our Allies in the Air, the JDAM is the latest in guided bomb technology. A series of navigation systems guide the JDAM to its target, where a spray of feces is released over the surrounding area. Key to knocking out food supplies and large concentrations of enemies.

If you have any more ideas, please forward them to me. Yes, yes, you can thank me for saving the world later. Right now, I have to draft a letter to Donald Rumsfeld.

The logistics of easy livin'

As many of you know, I'm heading back to Rice in less than two weeks. Yes, it's a land of cliche Asian girls and problem sets that border if not cross the definition of ridiculous-- it's hard and stressful at times. But I tend to remedy my stresses though a complex system of lies, enablers, substances, and prime time television shows. Crucial to this system is my choice of living arrangement and the people that I surround myself with. This year, I'm living in the section of my residence known as "the 90's" with fifteen of my friends from last year. All of us are former residents of Long Hall: the party hell that shifted the heads of every key administrator on campus. Basically, we're setting up the same shop in a different location.

In our effort to make this year as easy-going as possible, I have tried to arrange several projects to augment the 90's into a sort of debauched paradise. After all, with sixteen college-aged, hard-to-please hooligans living under the same roof, we've got to plan accordingly.

1. The Kegerator. My good buddy Russ has convinced me-- as well as anyone else willing to listen-- that our days of beer-filled mini fridges are over. As cliche as modifying a fridge to hold a keg of frothy brew really is, it makes practical sense. Buying a keg is cheaper and more efficient than buying 48 cans of beer. It allows us to make short runs once a week (your mileage may differ) rather than runs on a semi-daily basis. Makes sense to me.
2. The Jesus Ashtray. I think this makes sense, too.
3. Digital Cable. It's no secret that most of us living in the 90's are huge fans of TV. House, Nip/Tuck, and 24 are all staples of our brainless television diet. And you can't forget the HBO series, either, like Entourage and Sopranos. Or Weeds, on Showtime. And we like watching sports. This kind of demand for quality television requires the quality that only digital cable can provide to a...
4. Large HDTV. Look, okay. I know I may be going a little bit overboard with this whole TV thing. Realize that I have needs, though... needs that can be split financially with fifteen other people who have my same needs. I NEED TO SEE THINGS IN HIGH DEFINITION. Whether we end up buying or renting our big HDTV, I'm going to be reveling in the stubble on Dr. Greg House's face and the busting veins on Jack Bauer's temple.
5. Girls making out with other girls.

I have the biggest plans. 200% bigger than your plans.

So, more about those tickets

I think it's a prime childhood fantasy to make a ticket eater gobble up a string of tickets that reaches all across an arcade. Friday night, Matt made it a distict reality by winning three grand prizes on this rediculously easy game. It went something like this...

Here's where it starts. I think it took Matt a grand total of five tries to hit each grand prize which spit out more tickets than any child should be entitled to.

Yes, it extends all the way from one end of the arcade to the other.

After the string of tickets broke partway through, we decided to have a ticket eater race. Here's Kevin and Matt loading each end of the ticket eater.

Almost done...

End result.

Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that the time leading up to Friday night is some of the most boring time I've ever lived. But boy, once those Friday nights get rolling...

Snitches get stiches!

For life!

We won a lot of tickets. They raced. More pics tomorrow.

Small sausage

The lunch of champions. And by champions, I mean poor white trash with no other option.

We can thank Jon Stewart for this one

Let's get today's topic of discussion out on the floor like a bad dance move.

A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of Americans age 18 to 24 found Bush's approval rating was 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving and 28 percent with no opinion. That compares to a 40 percent approval rating among Americans of all ages in a separate Bloomberg/Times poll.

Perhaps more amusing than the fact that this is news to anyone is the slew of typical partisan five-year-oldery on Digg. Anyone who has taken a step out of their house and onto a true college campus would tell you that, duh, kids are liberal. And less surprising than the fact that kids are liberal is the fact that kids hate W. I mean, haven't you heard that new Anti-Flag song? Dawg, it's ill.

Even if it's not news it still makes me happy that today's youth, as a whole, are against the guy. It says a lot about the future of the country: maybe my demographic isn't as retarded as I have always assumed it to be. Maybe there's a chance that at least some inch of liberalism will carry over twenty years from now where, possibly, people will be moderate and level-headed voters.

Or, you know, candy corn will blow out of my ass and propel me to the moon.

Let's be real: Vietnam went on for years and turned a vast majority of youth in American into acid-touting hippies. And now those same youth have grown up, nestled into McMansions, and thrown yellow ribbons on the backs of their Escalades. This generation doesn't even possess an iota of the liberal attitude of yesteryear and yet somehow "experts" expect that the American of the future will vote liberal? Stop. Snorting. Glue.

The only way that liberals will ever pull a stronghold over America again is a complete retooling that will force American youth to hold on to their liberal values through their 30's. And that'll happen when Barrack Obama rides a flying car that runs on turds through my bedroom window and invites me to fly with him to Never Never Land.

God, it sucks being a pessimist.

But hey, in other news, Michael Moore doesn't like movies.

Think of the children!

On your handy list of "people who would write a long thesis about the evils of Evangelical Christianity and its affects on the youth of America," I know that David Byrne (formerly of Talking Heads) is scribbled in at the top. I know he's at the top of mine (nestled on top of names such as Elvis Costello and the zombie corpse of Ol' Dirty Bastard) so it comes to no surprise that ol' David whipped out this piece on his own journal a couple days ago.

In it, he details what he calls "American Madrassas," or Christian camps that mirror Saudi-financed Islamic brainwashing camps known as madrassas in the Middle East. Here's a little tantalizing tidbit.

Naturally, the kids being so young, there is no questioning of any kind — they simply accept what grownups Fischer and the others say — they get pumped up, agitated, they memorize right wing and Jesus slogans and shout them back obediently. They become part of a support group — a warm, safe, comfortable feeling for anyone, for any social animal, for you and me. No one strays or gets out of line even the slightest bit.

Suddenly, I'm having flashbacks of my sophomore year of high school.

This kind of shit makes me think twice about having a kid. I don't really doubt my own ability to parent a child. I would of course choose a worthy and capable woman to parent my demon spawn with me, I would have the resources available to bring the child up in a comfortable-though-not-spoiled environment, and I would teach the kid not to march to the drum of his teachers and classmates. But watching it (it being right-wing indoctrination) happen to my own friends time and time again, there's only so much a few parents can do in the face of nationwide fanaticism.

What happens if my kid goes over to Billy's house and watches some Fox News? What happens if he joins the ROTC?

Okay, those things aren't so bad for a child, I guess. But it's a progressive process, and at this juncture in my life I would feel like having a right-wing child would be on par to failing as a parent. Maybe that's why I'm not a parent... yet.

Not really a recap of events

I woke up on Matt's couch looking like this. I think this is the start of a beautiful new hair style!

Maybe Suri is already in rehab...

So part of my daily routine when I get to work is to catch myself up on the daily news. Lately this has been a depressing chore. People killing people killing children killing dogs killing whatever-- that's all the news is these days. So logically, my brain has started to ignore the words "dead" and "killed" sort of like how your brain filters out background noise when you're in a crowded place. So I'm on CNN and the only link that my mathematical mind allowed me to see was this.

Articles about Suri Cruise are always a win-win situation. I encourage you to read them whenever you get the chance. If you're not up on the hub-ub about Suri, let me give you a military style debriefing

• Tom Cruise and Nicole... no, somebody... um, Katie Holmes had a baby named Suri.
• Suri is Latin for "big," like Tom's horse teeth or the empty space between Katie's head. It's also Arabic for "holy war" and German for "Neo-Nazi" and French for "Freedom Fries."
• The Liberal Media, being the child molesters that they are, want nothing more than a body shot of baby Suri that they can proliferate in supermarkets nationwide.
  
• Tom and Katie (or probably just Tom since Katie's busy being audited(tm)) want to protect his devil spawn from media exploitation. Because it's a good idea to hide your children from the public.
• And since the public hasn't received any pictures of Suri, the new theory is that the child doesn't exist, just like the wind... or God. The idea is that Suri is simply a publicity stunt... like God.

Now back to why this is a win-win situation for all parties interested. If Suri turns out to be fake and the whole thing was indeed a publicity stunt then... shit. Do I have to explain why that would be awesome? If it was indeed faked, Tom Cruise would be forever shunned and blacklisted and be demoted to B-List celebrity status because he FAKED HAVING A BABY. They wouldn't even let him play himself in the retarded movie about how he FAKED HAVING A BABY. Katie Holmes would be forced to work the streets for money after FAKING HAVING A BABY, solving the problem of Matt's virginity outright. In fact, I'm pretty sure great thing would happen if Suri was faked. The problems of the universe would untangle, the countries of the world would respect America, the Middle East would come to a lasting peace, and cars would run on the golden farts of flying pigs.

But what if Suri turns out to be real? That doesn't really bother me, either. First, there's always going to be lasting suspicion that Suri is not the child of Tom and Katie, meaning that the media will always preface stories about her with "Possibly nonexistent child Suri Cruise..." no matter if there's a body and a blood test and a letter from L. Ron himself. Second, Tom and Katie will always look like giant cuntballs for not just showing the world their child. Have you opened a Sunday paper recently? There is a fucking SECTION OF THE SUNDAY PAPER DEDICATED TO SHOWING OFF NEWBORNS. Every new parent in this country does it. You've got to be shitting in my cereal if you're telling me two proud parents like Tom and Katie didn't want to show off their perfect little angle... err angel.

I would really love to take this opportunity to take a jab at Mel Gibson but, shit, I think he's already being gassed and roasted as it is. I think I'll just watch from the sidelines as his career gets Blitzballed.

Of Black Turtlenecks and Acid-Wash Jeans

So close your eyes for a moment and picture an event that calls together two of the world's most hated bodies: uppity geeks and journalists. This event is like a yearly sermon on the mount with the Jesus of Dickdom presiding over a sea of mop-headed nerds juiced on Starbucks and donning second-hand Armani jackets on top of ironic print T-shirts. The nerds are there to praise their prophet and reaffirm their large egos through what could only be called the largest technology circle jerk know to man. And the journalists-- just like eager pornographers ready to make a buck-- are ready to chronicle this ridiculous event, water it down, and feed it to the hungry masses.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

WWDC '06

This ridiculous gathering of Mac Addicts, bloggers, foreign press, and anyone who gets off on watching Steve Jobs move his hands around is the most sickening moment of the year for me and the biggest reason that I am so anti-Apple. It's not the technology that pisses me off, nor the snazzy interfacing, but the niche factor. The fact that owning an Apple product makes people feel like they're part of some grand movement or, even worse, the hippest hipster in town makes me gag. And when you get thousands of Apple addicts in one place for one big conference, well, I'm wondering why we can't pull a Dresden firebombing on the city of San Francisco.

One of the worst things about WWDC is, in fact, the hype leading up to it. People have been masturbating for the past 360-something days about what's going to be unveiled at THIS conference. An iPod phone? A new Nano? A giant Apple vibrator? Steve Jobs could probably shit in a bag on stage and throw it at the crowd and it would be hailed as the next big thing. In essence it doesn't matter what is released because people will praise it regardless.

It says a lot about the human race, actually: that if you polish plastic correctly, you can make anything into a staple of American consumerism.

The fanaticism, the blind worship by the media: it all comes to a head at WWDC.

Worldwide Dickhead Conference

I work hard for the money

People think I'm a katamari hell-bent on picking up every vice known to man and to some extent, they're right. It's just a matter of time until I'm on my knees in a crummy toilet stall clinching a belt between my teeth and shooting gerbil feces into my corrupted veins with a turkey baster because I've done everything else. But until that time comes I'll enjoy the newest little time-wasting vice that I've discovered: finances and investing.

Back as far as I can remember, which is a dwindling number due to the rotting of my brain, I've wanted to make my money work hard-- harder than sitting in a savings account gathering $.70 a month in interest. The idea that I can basically throw my money at a broker or a mutual fund and wait for them to hand me more money has always been alluring. I like to imagine myself as a Viking god in a Norse ship, beating a huge drum as dollar bills franticly push the oars and row me to paradise. That's was the dream at least.

So I started this summer on a mission: a mission to put away some of my hard-earned cash money into something safe yet fruitful. I read books by men millions of dollars older than me and scores of years wiser than me. I did research because that's what I get off on. I formulated a plan. I talked to people at work about what they do with their money. I wrote a lot of buzzwords on the back of my hand, like "diversification" and "diversify" and "diversity." The consensus was that I should break my investments into two categories.

• Big money in something steady and dependable, like a diverse mutual fund.
• Not so much money in something I'm familiar with

So I settled on Schwab Core Equity as my big boat and Raytheon as my small, rabid moneymaker. The idea is that the steady, dependable core equity will offset any losses that Raytheon might endure in the short run in order to keep me calm about my money. In reality, both investments are pretty dependable. If the equity fund ever gave out, well, that would mean that America fell under completely. If Raytheon ever gave out that would mean that America was done fighting wars. Hahahah, yeah, right. If it wasn't so complicated, I would totally invest in the Vice Fund, but Schwab has higher standards that to make that available to me.

So I dropped a sizable chunk (read: around half) of my monay into these investments, buying a lot more mutual fund than warmongering death company because I'm a giant pussy.

And how's it been going? Well, if you're actually man enough to click on those links up yonder, you'll see that everything's been on a downward slope SINCE I STARTED INVESTING. This has caused me much distress, since I've lost about $50 so far, but fuck, I can't let that get to me. I'm in this for the long haul. And when those babies start paying out dividends and Raytheon sends me a flying robot, I'll be the boss of the town.

Besides, it's something to do at work.

What a sammich...

Say hello to the Luthor.