It’s been a memorable Olympics, no one can argue with that. What with Phelps shattering records and grabbing more gold than a 49er, China hosting the games for the first time, or Bolt making his world record 100m dash look easy. All those things will stick in my mind for a long, long time. But one thing that I will always remember, which shocked and amazed me, one thing I will for ever tell my children about, nay, not just my children, but my children’s children. Something so stupefyingly amazing that my jaw hit the floor the instant I saw it. I know your thinking the exact thing I am, so feel free to say it with me. Olympic Floor Reporting.

Oh yes. These people, like the athletes they interview, are the crem del a cream, the best of the best, the filet mignons in the world of reporting so often filled with just hamburger. These titans of inquiry get right to the questions, and ask them with the most brutal honesty. Their blunt truthfulness would make the most hardened person quiver and quake at the mere breath that comes from their mouths.

Now some of you maybe be thinking this is just one of my exaggerations, a mere hyperbole that carries about as much credence as a politician. But no dear friend, I am nether exaggerating nor stretching the truth. These reporters are ruthless asking machines, think of them as terminators but with microphones. Read the rest…

I don’t fly often, in fact before last Thursday I have flown a grand total of 4 flights. After this weekend I proud to say I have doubled that number. And when your such a novice to flying as I am, it’s an experience. Yep, it’s one, big, bumpy, delaying experience.

My first flight to Cleveland had no big issues on it. I was surprised when they offered us a drink, as I thought with the airlines trying to trim back on costs they would have cut these from the flights, but nope, they were still handing out drinks. Score. Though the one fun thing is your up about 20 billion miles in the air, and no, that’s not an exaggeration… well, maybe a slight one. Anyway, your up above the clouds, and I’m looking around my little 40-50 seat airplane, thinking about how small this plane is and how high I am, and of course about the laws of gravity. Did you know that acceleration do to gravity is 9.8 m/s squared. I did, and it went through my mind many a time.

Read the rest…

In my previous rambling about clowns, I touched on the fact that clowns are not like regular people, and there for regular people tend to distrust and dislike them. I called this idea “The Inhuman clown.” I also mentioned that I was going to talk about children and the Inhuman clown, which is what I’m actually going to discuss now.

So to find America’s root of disdain for the Bozos of the world, we must first look to America’s history with clowns. When does the average American first come into contact with clowns? It’s at a very early age. Just so happens it is the developmental stages of childhood, when your making memories that will impact the way you act as you grow to become an adult.

Generally what happens at this point is you are dragged to a birthday party for a kid you don’t even know, but you parents work with their parents. You’re tired, cranky, and quite frankly don’t care about this kid, and all you really want to do is take the present you brought him and be off with it yourself. Don’t worry, i think everyone has been there.

Then, out from some corner of a house or back yard, as if from the shadows, comes some man dressed up in odd attire, wearing big floppy shoes that he can barely move around in, and doing strange nonsensical things. He starts to blow up ballons and make little animals out of them and giving them to you and every one around you.

Hmmmmm…. stranger danger?
Read the rest…

One could say, with very little contradiction, that people generally don’t like clowns. If you happen to love clowns, I’m sorry, but you are in the minority, if you really really love clowns, chances are you are a clown yourself, and therefore beyond saving.

But why? Why do we hate clowns? A clowns only purpose in life is to make people laugh, it is their job to bring joy to people’s lives. So why do we fear, despise, and otherwise loath these make up wearing fools? For those highly astute readers out there, you may have noticed I wrote “Part 1″ next to the title, which means I believe it to be multiple reasons, and I’m gonna talk about each one and give each one an entry. Yes, I think this subject is THAT important, after all, our nations security is at stake… well, our 4 year old’s birthday parties anyway.

Ok, so the first factor I’m going to look at is what I like to call “The Inhuman Clown.” Have you ever looked at a clown? These guys are not normal, in any stretch of the imagination. They do weird things, like fly kites with fans, wear big floppy shoes, throw pies, some of them appear to be mute. The whole clown race is different from the rest of us, it appears as though their world works by a different set of rules, even the rules of matter seem to bend around them, ever see 20 clowns pile out of a clown car?

Some people think this is funny. Others think it’s weird. Figuring in the fact that half of the people who would laugh at this stuff are parents trying to get their kids to laugh at a circus (which will be in another post for the future.). So it’s really this weirdness that turns us off. And you can see this type of stuff happen all the time. Why do people not trust people of different ethnic backgrounds? Part of it is social pressures, background, etc, but an underlying factor, which maybe small, is that that other group “isn’t like us.”

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Thursday morning while I was cooking some delicious scrambled eggs, I over heard something on the radio that made me start to laugh my ass off. An enraged mother of a softball player called to talk about her daughter and her team being reprimanded by the school for wearing a softball sweatshirt with the word “Yahtzee” on the back. Yep, apparently Yahtzee has a sexual connotation to it.

Really? Of all the things you could be upset about as a school administrator, you choose a phrase used by the softball team over and over again? I remember high school, very well, trust me, kids say far, far worse things. They also do far worse things, some of the time at school.

So when I was driving into work I started to think of a list of items the school should also ban, because they carry a sexual connotation to them, and therefore, aught to be banned. So i now present the Webster School District list of words you can no longer use and their more appropriate replacement words or phrases.

Superman: It is the name of a sexual act, and so will now be replaced with “Strong Flying Alien with Cape.” Should martin manhunter become a sexual innuendo, he will be known as “Strong Green Flying Alien with Cape.” 

Yahoo: Could be used as a sexual innuendo, now called “Old man of the search engines.”

Cougar: A nickname for a older woman who seduces younger men. (See Desperate Housewives). New name is “Big American Cat.”

Read the rest…

I’ve worked in retail for a long time now, 5 years. It’s my side job that I’m currently using to help pay for gas. But I can say, in those 5 years of toiling with highly disheveled tables of folded shirts, i have found a many interesting thing. So, with out further adieu, a fun and wacky list of things you can find while working in a retail clothing store.

Beer Bottle:
Yep, that’s right, I found a glass bear bottle hiding away in a wall of denim once. Not sure why it was there, but apparently my store now does bottle returns. Can’t blame whoever left it though, being at that place makes me want to drink too.

Used cigarette:
This was the most recent, and it really had me scratching my head. My only guess is that someone lit up and didn’t want to waist a perfectly good cigarette and so let it go cold and just held on to it. Unfortunately for him… and me, he (I’m assuming it was a he, it was in the men’s department, thought it could be a she) desided to leave it in the store. All that hard work of saving a stick, all for nothing.

Used Underwear:
I’m sure anyone who read this instantly said to themselves one of two things. Ether you said “that’s sick” or “how did you know it was used?” If I answer the latter, you will say the former. Lets just say they were a pair of women’s underwear that we sealed in a bag and threw away using a stick and about 3 layers of rubber gloves.

Read the rest…

Ahhh, yes, the Canadian Goose. Many associate this bird’s yearly migration with the coming and leaving of winter. Often their nasally, honking cackle is welcomed by frozen citizens of sub arctic suburbia as there return means a general chance at thawing out their frostbitten feet during the sunny Sundays of spring.  

Once more these handsome birds, with their elegant black plumage, their white distinctive chin strapping, and adorable little wattle, make a fine Christmas meal. Or any meal for that matter. It doesn’t have to be for Christmas, goose just tastes good. So what’s not to like about these picturesque aves? One of the symbols of our northern neighbors and their remote unseen beauty.

Anyone who lives by them will tell you this… Canadian geese are bastards. And I don’t mean that they have no father, they are just all around jack holes of the animal world. That’s right, in study asking who was the biggest jack ass, all the animals agreed it was the Canadian Goose, that’s right, they beat the donkey. And when you’re more of an ass than the ass’s name sake… that’s saying something. Read the rest…

So you’ve just been thrown out of your comfortable bed by what appears to be a series of small earth quakes followed by a roar in the distance. If you live in New York, Tokyo, or any other ocean side city, there is a chance you are experiencing a giant monster attack (If you do not live in a ocean side city, the chance of a giant monster attack is much smaller, however, it’s best to assume the worst). The first rule of thumb in a GMA (Giant Monster Attack) situation is never, under any circumstances, panic. The second rule of thumb is information is your best weapon. Thus your first stop should be to your window to asses the situation out side. Try to figure out the direction and distance of the initial attack, in all likely hood it was coming from the sea. Next is to determine the quickest path to get out of your building and out into the streets. The best way to handle this is the same way you would if your building was on fire.

Now that your on the streets it’s important to know what you are dealing with. Most giant monsters are freaks of nature, and so pinpointing various traits of them is difficult, but they generally have various attributes in common.

So then, what is a giant monster?
A giant monster is any form of Megafauna that is over 10 stories tall. They are often amphibious and arrive at large cities via the sea. However, as some monsters maybe the byproduct of nuclear testing, they can also arrive via the desert. They are inexplicably drawn to large buildings and power lines, or anything else that has a high potential for massive amounts of destruction.

Your best bet to survive a GMA is to simply be where the monster isn’t. Avoid major power lines, gas lines, and buildings. Your main goal should be to get as far inland as possible, and always remember, it’s better to move underground than over bridges. If trapped in New York City, the best coarse of action is to exit the city via the Lincoln Tunnel.

Once you get your bearings and figure out the best way to get out of the city, start moving that way. Moving in groups is always better, but small bands, about 3-8 people seems to be a good number. Make sure you have at least one person who’s personality is duller than yours (Sometimes referred to as the supporting team member, or second banana). If anything should happen in your trip, these people will generally go first, and as the saying goes, you don’t have to out run the giant monster, just the slowest person in your party.

If you should come across any types of useful items, feel free to take them. Chances are the military has been called in by this point, and so you may come across some dropped weapons. If you can carry them, bring them, keep in mind the higher the fire power, the better, but anything less than a bazooka will have little to no affect on a giant monster, a bazooka will only act as a small nuisance.

Should you come across a sporting goods store, you’ve basically hit the jackpot. First you should make your way to the camping section and secure a small back pack, not a hiking bag, but a day pack. Grab your standard survival gear, such as first aid, water bottle, high protein energy bars. Take the opportunity to grab some new cloths, I recommend a nice sturdy pair of cargo shorts, the more you can carry the better. Also grab a color that will blend you into your surroundings. So if you are in a city (which is highly likely) grab muted grays or a stone color of some sort. You should replace your shirt with some form of hunting shirt that blocks your sent. To giant monsters, humans are small, and it may have a hard time seeing you, but don’t let your large amounts of body oder give away your position. Also, feel free to cover yourself with a cover sent or sent neutralizer. They do sell a skunk cover sent, and if you get the chance, I would recommend using it.
Read the rest…

Out of any question I’m asked of something I’ve made, the most frequent one has to be “how did you do that?” Sometimes it’s a simple answer, sometimes it’s a generally complicated one requiring some advanced acknowledge in whatever it was I did in the first place to understand. For those of you wondering what the other often asked questions of me are, they are “where is the fitting room?” “How can you not spell?” “Do you have change for a buck?” And my personal favorite (this one came up at school a lot) “look at that person… is that a guy a or a girl?”

In case your wondering, the answer to the last question 70% of the time is a guy.

But the how did you do that question, it comes up a lot. And I think a lot of people in a field like mine, or any field really, are kind of hesitant to answer it. And it’s not because we see ourselves as magicians, that our work is constantly clocked in a vial of secrecy. Simply because we already know your not going to understand. Think about it, are you going to understand something like “Well, substituting movie clips with points we can then turn around and change the bitmap of the point every enter frame, which will create an animation look with out having to use the processing power required to draw a movie clip. This will create the ability to add up to 20% more actors on our stage, and also the points have all that we need to perform the required vector math to create seek and flee algorithms for the actors on our stage.”

Cus if you really want to know how we did something, that’s the type of answer your gonna get back. And that’s a big problem with technical people, we just can’t communicate what it is we do with other people. And I think that’s really sad, because if someone is willing to take the time to ask, we might as well take the time to communicate what it is we did in a form that people with out 4 years of technical experience are going to be able to understand. So example, all that crap I said before, I’m gonna re write it now in layman’s terms using things we all know and use almost every day, cars.

“Ok, so we got a bunch of movie clips that are like semi trucks, they’re big and slow but they carry a lot of information, kind of like freight. Problem is, in this case we don’t need all that freight, and the big trucks are slowing us down, but the reason we would use them is because they look like trucks, and they have GPSs in them. However, if we were to replace the trucks with little hybrid sports cars that also have a GPS on it, and just attach a really big flat screen tv to them and display a picture of a tractor tailor that changes in time with the car’s movement, we can run a lot more cars than trucks using the same amount of fuel, and getting the same effect.”

In case your wondering, no, I didn’t make stuff up off the top of my head to illustrate my point, that’s an actual trick I learned in flash to create a bunch of “movie clips” that move really really fast (we’re talking up to 500 “movie clips” on a screen at once).

So that’s the trick, I find, is figuring out a way to explain what your doing to the person your explaining it to. A person, for the most part, isn’t stupid (some are, but most aren’t), they are just ill informed about what your doing. Of course, you need to use your discretion when doing this. If a professor of aeronautics asked you how you made a paper air plane, you’re probably OK using all the technical terms about lift, drag, paper physics… umm… weight, air pressure, gremlins…

If a kid asks you how a paper air plane flies, then your probably wanna go into metaphor mode. If a 3 year old… better off just saying you did it with magic, besides, at three he’s probably not going to retain things to tell him anyway. I mean, my uncle told my brother red was green when he was a kid and he turned out to be a graphic designer, telling them things are magic at that age.

Though there is a psychological theory, I don’t exactly know what it’s called, but it’s almost like a Pavlovian type thing. And that’s this, if someone does something, and it something unrelated happens, the person will pair the two and think they are related, like the whole bell ringing dogs of drool. So here’s a fun trick to play on people at the office, especially people you don’t like. If you get called over to fix their computer, or what not, perform some ridiculous action while actually fixing the problem. Like try shaking the monitor and kicking the computer, then jiggle the head set of there phone a bit. Then watch as they slowly start doing it over time.

When it doesn’t work for them you can even go as far to say “did you try jiggling the head set?” Then of course they say yes, you come over, fix it, then jiggle the head set, and, TADA! it works. And as you walk away and they ask “how did you do that,” you turn, grin, and say “With magic, lots of magic with voodoo, wizardry, and lies thrown in for good measure.”

So a few days ago I got in my car to begin my drive home. And right as I pulled out of my parking lot, on to the street and waited for the little red light to turn green, it hit me. Oh crap, I got to piss.

It appears as though at work I had made the idiotic move of drinking two bottles of water before I had to leave, and didn’t use the bathroom before getting in my car. I drink a lot at work, mainly because it’s the only time I actually want to drink water, so I down as much of it as I can, to keep myself hydrated and flush and crap out of me.

Anyway, after about a few minutes, I realized I was going to have to make a mad dash to get home, cus when you got to go, that’s it, you got to go. Of course, this is the point in time I got stuck behind an elderly gentlemen driving at a nice leisurely pace of 30 in a 40. 30 in a 40? This is no time to smell the roses man! I need to get home so i don’t explode.

And that always happens to, and I’m not sure why. You notice when ever you don’t need to be somewhere and your driving a reasonable speed, maybe like 5 over, you always get that jerk behind you who rides your bumper and just has to go 90mph. But when ever you need to be somewhere, you always get stuck behind the old guy going 10 under. I don’t know why that is, just one of life’s cruel ironies I guess.

So the old guy finally turns off to a different road, only for me to get stuck behind a van doing the same thing. I start to think, maybe it’s me, maybe my speedometer is off, and my internal ability to judge speed is thrown out of whack by my urgent need to get home. But just then up comes the guy who needs to do 90 and begins to ride my bumper, apparently that will make the guy ahead of me go faster. I guess it makes sense.

But wait, what’s that slowly moving up the hill ahead of us. Two bikers? Riding side by side? Oh, Bonus!

Now normally the way things work on back road driving is the bikers like to ride in the middle of the road, but the not jerk bikers will pull over to give you room so you can go around them. I have had bikers ride out in front of me when I’ve come up to them, but these guys weren’t the jerk bikers, cus right when they herd us coming (if you’ve never been biking on the road, you can hear a car coming up behind you) they pulled right over for us. But Duffs Magee in the van ahead of me (not supposed to rhym but it does anyway) didn’t want to go around them. So we crawl up the hill at 5 mph.

Lucky for me at the top of the hill I was able to go around the bikers and the van, and mr 90 soon went around me. But the next stretch of road I had to deal with has a surface not unlike the moon’s. Which, let me tell you, when you really got to go, driving over that type of surface is not fun, not fun at all. But the good thing is I know I’ve learned a valuable lesson, and I’m hoping all of you reading this have too… and that’s this simple truth of life. Slow drivers are inexplicably drawn to people who are in a rush to get some where, so i suggest you try to make sure you always give yourself ample amounts of time to get where you want to go, so you can avoid old man 10 under.