Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

So, I know I haven't posted in, like, decades. Which means you have either a) forgotten that my blog was still in your RSS reader or b) not forgotten and have been curled up in a corner wearing the same pair of underwear for the past three years waiting for me to impart some wisdom on you again.

If you're in the latter, I hate to disappoint you yet again, but this one isn't going to do anything for your mental state. For everyone else, please put your seat backs up and stow away your tray tables, because you're in for one hell of a ride.

First, I realize that out of the context of the rest of this epic film, which my wife and I made the point of watching in its entirety today, this scene makes no sense at all. But within the context of the rest of the movie, I can assure you that it still makes absolutely no sense.

But really, if you could have seen some of the other special effects they pulled off in this movie, your mind would already be so blown that you'd have no problem just accepting that a shark could catch a 747 flying at full speed at cloud level. If it helps, keep in mind that the flight attendant was telling people to get ready for landing, so they were probably flying slower than full speed, anyway.

It really is a damn shame that this movie didn't win some sort of award. I mean, it would have been my personal vote for Best Picture and Best Visual Effects, as well as Best Supporting Actor for Mr. I'm-Getting-Married-In-Two-Days for that completely genuine look of shock. His delivery was just impeccable.

Hell, if nothing else, they should have given this thing props for the title alone. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. That's the actual title. Seriously, go look it up. And if you really want to get into it, it appears that there's a "Making of" show as well as a sequel, appropriately titled Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus.

I'll wrap it up before I get too excited and accidentally drop in any spoilers. Instead, I'll just say that you have got to figure out a way to watch these examples of classic cinematographic genius. After all, they just came out with one more in the amazing "Descriptive-Name-of-Giant-Monster-Thing vs. Descriptive-Name-of-Giant-Other-Monster" series, and this time there's a crisis in the Florida Everglades.

Enjoy!

You throw like a girl

Oh, don't get all upset. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Need proof? Check out my friend Amanda's new blog.

Speaking of sports, flag football playoffs started last night. We won. And who had a TD reception? That's right, you bet I did. It's because I'm just generally awesome. I also had two interceptions for TDs. Ok, not really, that was some other guy on our team, but still...we're pretty badass.

It's Friday night. Peace out, homies!

Le sigh...

I'm experiencing writer's block, and not just on the blogatron machine. I'm writing something for something else and I've literally been in the middle of a sentence for the past hour - it's like I made a plot twist and the loop went the right way, and now it's stuck in a knot that I can't get undone.

Also, I just realized I've been using the dogosaur as a footrest for the past half hour. Oh well.

I work with crazy scientist people

Not really, but I do work at a large research university where professors do all kinds of smart people stuff that I'll never understand.

For example, this colloquium was included in our daily list of campus events:

(Physics Colloquium) Exotic Quantum Phenomena and Topological Phases in Spin-Orbit-Coupled Systems

ID: 53580

When: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Where: Physics : 1410
Event Type(s): Colloquium

The recent discovery of topological phases of matter in solid-state systems has captured the imagination of physicists around the world with tantalizing properties such as protected boundary modes, exotic electromagnetic response, and possible non-Abelian excitations, which have potential applications ranging from semiconductor spintronics to topological quantum computing and quantum sensing. 

Despite the exotic nature of these states, they may occur in a variety of conventional material systems, where the internal spin degree of freedom of the electron is coupled to its motion. In this talk, Victor Galitski, UMD, will review recent theoretical progress in understanding exotic phases and phenomena that arise in such spin-orbit-coupled systems. Basic concepts of topological insulating states will be emphasized. *** Full Abstract at: http://www.umdphysics.umd.edu/events/physicscolloquia/462-exotic-quantum-phenomena-and-topological-phases-in-spin-orbit-coupled-systems.html

Website: www.umdphysics.umd.edu/events/physicscolloquia.html

So, aside from the fact that I don't even know what a colloquium is (or how to spell it before this exact moment -  watch out WordFeud opponents!), what the hell is this colloquium even about?

I got curious and Googled "exotic quantum phenomena." According to the National Science Foundation, this has something to do with wedding cakes.

Okay, so I Googled "exotic wedding cakes" and, just for fun, used the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. I wasn't actually feeling lucky, but I figured what the hell, it couldn't hurt, right? Wrong - it most certainly could hurt. I'm not saying I'm a wedding cake aficionado (whats up WordFeud?), but damn, these cakes look like someone walked into Michael's with a blender and a family-size bottle of Ex-Lax.

Here's the very first cake they show on there. 

Seriously?

The damn pleats aren't even straight! Really? A three-tier pleated chocolate cake with some frumpy looking flowers and extra-long butt-hairs sticking out of the top is your idea of an exotic cake? 

Ok, maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe there are better cakes further down the page. So I'll use my little scroll-wheel thingy, and viola!

Wait a minute.

Your cake is in an effing basket.

And it's not even a cake. What the hell is that? You can't just take a bunch of Cherry Jubilee Andes mints, put them in a basket, and call it a cake.

Also, did I mention that this cake is in an effing BASKET?





Ahh, but I digress. Looks like I had too many non-Abelian excitations for breakfast.

We need to get back to the crux of the matter, which of course is the dangerous presence of topological phases in spin-orbit-coupled systems. After all, despite the exotic nature of these states, they occur in a variety of conventional material systems. That's right, we could see this stuff even in any of those material systems that you have laying around your house. I don't have anything to worry about, though, because I live a conventional-material-system-free lifestyle. Just say no, kids.

Well, I guess it's back to Google. At the risk of making my computer explode, let's see if we can find out exactly what a spin-orbit-coupled system looks like. Google Images to the rescue!

Hmm, so dum-dee-doo...there's a bunch of stuff I can't really understand, some cool looking 3-D graphics, a picture of Saturn, and then...

...this guy.

Who is this man of mystery? And why is he the poster child of spin-orbit-coupled systems? WHY?? I MUST KNOW NOW!

As it turns out, Masayuki Yamamoto is affiliated with the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Hamburg. His focus is on electron transport blah blah Rashba coupling and wave packets of something else.

Wait a minute. A Japanese guy? In GERMANY? Doing things that I DON'T UNDERSTAND? AAAAAAUUUGH! ACTIVATE ALL CAPS AND XENOPHOBIC TENDENCIES!! IT'S ZEE GERMANS!

But wait, I guess not all Germans are bad. Oh wait, that was about World War II? Yeah, okay, I guess the Germans were pretty bad back then. Maybe he should appeal to his Japanese roots. Or, maybe not.

I know, I know, that was like 65 years ago, and we're all happy one world now. I should probably focus more on reading the entire event description before I go jumping to conclusions and Googling my way into a corner that I can't figure out how to write out of so I can end this post already.

After all, by not reading the entire colloquium description, I missed that it would be emphasizing basic concepts of topological insulating states.

So instead, I guess I'll just leave you with this, courtesy of my friend Lindsey, whose dog can be seen below getting assaulted by Squishy (in her younger, more form-fitting years).

Enjoy, y'all!

Cut and Paste

The blog post here from Hyperbole and a Half is amazing.

I hope that one day I can make posts that awesome. Until then, I'll just have to link to them.

Nom o'clock!

Today, I had lunch. It involved the biggest apple of all time.

Here are some photos, with associated office-y stuff around for scale. Mind you, these are full-size office-y stuffs. I have no use for mini staplers and mini staple removers and mini legal pads in my life.

You'll notice a hippo hiding behind my business cards...there's a good reason for that.

Because when said hippo ventured out from behind the business cards, 

the damn apple was big enough to eat the hippo!

So, in the end, there's actually a moral to this whole story involving foam hippos, oversized apples, and blogging at work. Clearly, I didn't learn it, but I do have football-shaped Oreo cookies to make up for it.

Noms!

I'm lazy

I know, I know. It's been a while. I promise I'll quit being so busy and get on my ass again soon to put something new here.

But, I was just looking at the stats for this blog, and it's pretty awesome that I'm getting web traffic from Guatemala. I mean, I know why - it's because I'm awesome (and possibly because I have awesome friends who had the balls to get the hell outta Dodge). But probably mostly because I'm awesome.

Random Music Stuf

Oh hey.

So now that no one's in the office I got around to listening to the new Cee-Lo song, which I'm not going to embed because it's totally NSFPMA (not safe for pretty much anywhere (jeez, stay up on your interwebs acronyms, will ya?)). Not only is the song pure genius, the entire video is properly punctuated all the way through! A+, sir.

As as I was watching that, I also came across another Cee-Lo song that I can post here. Yes, I'm behind the times, what with you kids and your noise-box music changing every five minutes, but this song is also amazing and totally appropriate after last weekend.

The hook is the best part of the whole song, because the man stole my vocal cords to hit that note:

Georgia
You'll always be home to me
Georgia
I belong to you
And yes you belong to me
When they ask me where I'm from
I'm proud to say that I'm your son

Enjoy!

You're not quite Eleanor, are you?

I had a blast at my friends Chris & Mel's wedding this past weekend. It was good to be home...or roughly 100-ish miles from home. There really should be a law against the display of Auburn and 'Bama logos anywhere in the Great State of Georgia. Or at least some sort of special tax on it. Instead of a SPLOST, we could call it the Special Levy on Alabama Teams - the SPLAT tax.

But I digress. Home. Wedding. Happy people. It was fun seeing old friends, making new ones, and giving Chris a chance to return the favor of making me feel like a slightly inadequate groomsman at the wedding. We both have wives that just plan too damn well, and based on the actual weddings, make us way too damn happy. Aww, I'm being all cutsie. Please. It's 8:45pm and I still have four hours left at work - I have to pass the time somehow, and you're going to suffer for it.

Anyway, I don't really want to talk about Chris & Mel. They're cool an all, but now they're married and off to wherever, and it's back to me. Besides, Chris hasn't even updated his blog since March. It's so old, I'm not even going to link to it - and he has his own domain and everything. Fancy boy.

I decided to be a moderate badass for the weekend and see if I could rent some sort of car that was a little more upscale than the Yugo disguised as a Chevy Aveo.

Unfortunately, I don't have the magical soil that makes the crabgrass in my yard suddenly turn into flowers that bloom $100 bills, so I couldn't get that Aston Martin I really wanted.

Good thing I already got a chance to drive someone else's V12 Vanquish at the ho-tel (holla!).

Hey! Quit looking at the damn car. Back to me.

I was pretty surprised when I found that I could rent a Ford Mustang for just under $40 a day. Sure, not the craziest vehicle known to man, but the new ones are okay looking and hey, what the hell, right? Besides, Hertz's description and photo made it seem like it'd at least be a step up from the disturbingly catchy hamster mover.

Still, I had my doubts. To me, renting a sports car that's listed as one of 78 within the "Fun Collection" would probably end up being a similar experience to riding on that back bar of a shopping cart while making your way through the parking lot. When you get on it seems like it'd be a lot of fun, but then you realize that the thing has zero creature comforts built-in and you can't go nearly as fast as you'd like. And to top it all off, you've now just given up the ability to fit that 64-pack of toilet paper in the trunk.

So, I was kind of surprised when I walked up to a shiny 2011 Mustang and opened the door to find this:

I mean, damn. Leather? Creepy voice command bluetooth lady in the stereo? Functional seating for 4? Oh wait, scratch that last part. The half-inch gap between the front of the rear seats and the back of my front seat, even accounting for my ridiculously short legs, tells me that you couldn't fit a half-price baby clown in the back seat of this thing, let alone an actual person. Sure, there's a seat belt back there, but you'd have to just arrange some clothes in the figure of a person and strap them in if you wanted to try to get in the HOV lane.

This is getting boring. I forgot how I was planning on getting to this, but by far my favorite part of this car is the fact that you can set the dashboard lights, halo lights, and ambience lights (why does Blogger think I misspelled ambience?) to whatever color you want. Not just a handful of preselected colors, either, you can actually get into the damn RGBs and change them to whatever the hell you want. I made an attempt at puke green and canned corn before just settling on a nice Russian-submarine-in-battle-conditions red.

The best part? If you try to change any of these settings while you're driving down the road, creepy voice command lady turns off your radio and yells at you for trying to fiddle with things while you're driving. Literally, everything turns off and she says something like, "For your safety, you cannot access this function while driving. Please stop the vehicle in a safe location in order to continue. Otherwise I'll effing cut you. Please shut the hell up and I'll give you the commands from now on."

I was going to leave y'all with a wonderful recording of my new friend Madam Sync, but alas, the interwebs have failed me tonight. So instead, I'll leave you with a classic documentary chronicling some guy's dilemma with local wildlife and leave you to pontificate on the intersections of and conflict between man and nature. Enjoy!

Let's get FOXY!!!!!!!!!!

At the risk of this blog becoming a wasteland of stupid emails that I get, I couldn't resist sharing another message we just got from the semi-literate folks at our old gym/pit sweat depository/sketchy place sending 587346.99% APR credit card offers out of its back office (no offense to legitimate hawkers of 587346.99% APR credit cards).

Further ado is probably appropriate here, but it's the end of the day and I'm only running at about 80%, so here goes:

Let's get FOXY!!!!!!!!!!

OK- so school is almost back in session, the days of summer are slowly coming to an end and your daily routine is slowly creeping back in!! Wow - time does fly!!

So let's mix it up a little and get FOXY!!!
Yes! Foxy!! Foxy Fitness will add a some excitement to your life!
Come to our seminar on September 16th at 7:00pm and find out how we define "foxy"!!
We will discuss things like false dieting, metabolism, strength training and will reveal some serious Myth Busters!!

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)!!!! Do what now????

Yup - all that and much more!!

You want more free stuff? Ok, ok: Participate in the seminar and give us the contact information for three of your friends, that you think could use a little "foxy" in their lives and receive a free [GYM NAME] T-Shirt.

Give us a call or stop by the front desk to sign up for Seminar!

Cheers,
 The [GYM NAME] Team

Le sigh.

It's weird. I feel like they swooped in and replaced regular exclamation points with rogue, anti-exclamation points that look exactly like regular exclamation points but just make me want to vomit into my lap, and then I get depressed that these exclamation points are making me reject the lunch I just paid $6.17 for (and I didn't even get chips!).

Maybe the "Thermic Effect" of my food actually caused the vomiting. (TEF)!!!! Man, I actually need to go to this seminar. Lord knows what the long term effects of (TEF)!!!! could be! And hey, I could definitely use a little "foxy" in my life.

If you're still not convinced, here's the kicker. You can't afford to not go to the seminar, because it's not just any ordinary Foxy Fitness seminar. (Do what now????) Oh no, it's a Seminar.


That's right folks, a Seminar with a capital S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See y'all on the 16th!


Cheers,
the words about stuf team (TEF)!!!!

Milestone (get it?)

Mobile blogging, huh? This seems like it's more trouble than it's worth, but we'll see how it turns out. I suppose it'll at least be a good thumb exercise.

Also, if you're ever wondering just how many apostrophes you use in a normal sentence, try typing on a phone keyboard that you have to hit twelve different buttons on to make punctuation show up. Or just count, and skip the newfangled phone/computer/brain implant thing.

Speaking of counting, the whole point of this post was to announce to the world that my truck just broke the magical 150,000 mile mark. Woohoo! Maybe I'll have a party.

If only the Dogosaur hadn't stolen my Party Pants...

An observation

We have some animals living with us. Some of you probably know them.

Here's my dog:

She looks just like any other ordinary, happy dog, as evidenced here. She pretty much just wants to hang out, chew a bone when she feels like it, and maybe take a crap every now and then. Probably her worst trait is that her farts are considered weapons of mass destruction in some jurisdictions.

Then there's our other "pet." I'm pretty sure we need to call the Smithsonian, because it looks like we live with an effing dinosaur.

This thing is essentially pure evil. Sometimes I wake up, and it's standing there, in the dark, staring at me with its beady little eyes. I can just feel it plotting something sinister, like hiding my Party Pants until I agree to feed it no less than 2 pounds of room temperature USDA Choice steak every day.

Little does it know (Sidebar: Did you ever see that Stranger Than Fiction movie with Will Ferrell where he comes to some realization about the plot twist because the narrator says "little did he know"? No? Well you should. It's quite an excellent film.), I'm already in the market for a new pair of Party Pants.

Haha! Beat that, Dogosaurus Mud!

Tailgate Party!! (Party Pants required)

So, I just got the following email from a local gym that my wife and I have had some issues with in the past. We are no longer members, but we still receive their emails. It reads:

Less than 1 Month before PARTY TIME!!!!

Thanks for checking out our recent Tailgate Party Invitation!! We hope you are as excited about the event as we are!!! Make sure you collect as many raffle tickets as possible before then!!
Its easy as 1, 2, 3...well, actually even easier than that!
Stop by or give us a call and we will help you to win one of the amazing Grand Prizes!!

So get those Party Pants cleaned up and get ready for a great Party at [GYM NAME] on September 13th!!

Hey - don't forget to check us out on Facebook too!!! Become a fan an receive $1,- off on a Smoothie!!

Cheers,
The [GYM NAME] Team

First of all, while I’m amazed they used the right “it’s,” I can't help but think that it only marginally makes up for the excessive capitalization, exclamation point diarrhea, and the fact that we can become Facebook fans “an receive $1,- off on a Smoothie!!”

And all I can think is: A Smoothie!!,- off $1...1,2,3 Party Pants!!!! OMFGLOLWTFROFLBBQ!@!%^$#%^&!

Unfortunately, I can’t go, as I have no Party Pants. Oh well. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

A real blog...

My wife just told me I should have a "real" blog instead of a joke blog. Apparently she already thinks this blog is a joke. Discuss.

I has a blog!

I'm not sure why, but I decided to start a blog. So, y'know, I can ramble on about random topics intermittently throughout whenever.

To get us started, I give you this epic introduction: