For some reason I can't get enough of these Chicago reaction shots. It's like everyone in the city was suddenly dumped three seconds before they were about to propose. Not that I like to revel in other people's misery (okay, maybe a little) but it's all very humorous to me.

"I can't believe it," said Parker, whose hometown is the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Ill. "We sent Obama and Oprah. We had a lot of people behind our bid. I'm disappointed but it will be great to go to Rio."

Candace Parker in USA Today

I mean, how can you go wrong when you send Oprah somewhere? Oprah for fucks sake!

I'm not normally one to post about search referrals, but when they're amusing, they're amusing, so what can you do? It also lets you see how few people get here via web searches, but whatever I never claimed to be popular:

Keywords	Visits	% visits
hammerhead sharks	7	36.84%
hot sister	2	10.53%
canadian bills joke	1	5.26%

Hey it's the yearly Shacknews White Elephant thingy where a bunch of nerds on the internet give another nerd something hilarious or possibly something totally useless! Either way it's kind of fun. Sadly I have been slacking on my gift giving this year (though I plan to remedy that soon) but I weirdly enough received mine from someone I actually know in real life. How crazy is that? Anyway he sent me some items which may or may not include a large, pink dildo and some tampons. Kind of takes the meaning of 'better to give than receive' to a whole other level.

Strangely enough after much soul searching I think I might actually be looking forward to The Golden Army more than The Dark Knight even though I would consider Batman Begins superior to Hellboy and they both have retained their cast and director. Crazy. I will see both. Also on a related note Wanted is not a very good movie (but tolerable once it makes you lose your mind) and WALL-E is amazing. That is all.

I don't even want to say anything about this, because really, anything I can think of will inevitably make it less funny. In fact I should probably just stop talking now. From here.

I seldom use the 'article' feature of my blog because I never have much that can't be stuck into a standard update. However, I feel that I finally have a story that may be at least partially worthy of this feature. Behold, A Tale of Two E-Mails! It's a story of uh, some guy who thought that my e-mail address was his for a couple months. I shit you not. Check it!

So here's an amusing anecdote:

Marmite is a genius

After me saying about being unable to get a copy of GTAIV, he sent the "preorder phone text" to my mobile for me to try and get a copy.

So on the way home I walked into a game, showed the text and said "I've just got the message about my preorder, I've been unable to find my receipt though" to which they responded "You must be Greg Stephens, you're the last one to get your preorder", to which I replied "Yes, yes I am"

So I now have my copy of GTA IV, because Marmite is AWESOME.

From this Shacknews comment. Greg Stephens of Nottingham, UK is gonna be pissed!

If you haven't seen it, this video 'Overdrift' is pretty much the greatest thing in the history of the internet:


There's also a teaser for part two but who knows when the actual thing is coming.

So Fiddy's first game, Bulletproof, was a commercial success (though a critical failure), meaning a second game must be made. IGN has an interview with producer Aaron Blean where he details 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Can anyone else say game of the year?


I swear you could not make this shit up if you tried:

[W]hat's inspired the title is, 50 and G-Unit are putting on a sold-out performance somewhere in a fictional Middle Eastern setting. This is where the 'blood on the sand' comes in. They put on the performance; the people are pleased, but the concert promoter stiffs them and doesn't give 50 and G-Unit their payment.

So, of course, 50 isn't going to leave until he gets paid, so he hassles the concert promoter, [saying] if he doesn't come up with the money now, there will be consequences. And instead, the promoter offers him a very valuable gift – something that's valuable to this particular country – a diamond encrusted skull.

So 50 gets the skull, and as he's about to leave this war-torn country, when they're ambushed and the skull is taken. They escape the ambush, but they're without the skull. So 50's motivated to get what belongs to him. So basically, throughout the game, he's trying to track these people down and find out who they are and why he was ambushed.

Fuck it, Game of the Decade! I am calling this shit right now.

Stuff White People Like may just be the greatest web site in the long and storied history of the Internetweb. Hilarious and even awesomely painful at times, I don't think you will find a better collection of suggestions with which to ensnare and catch your very own white person.

And now we have the things nightmares are made of! Okay so back in like, I don't even know, probably October or something, myself and dahanese decided it would be awesome to take a vacation this summer! Yay. So after weighing our options and expenses we decided on a resort called Sandals in Jamacia (Negril, to be specific, a town about 90 minutes west of Montigo Bay). All is well, right? Anyway it's scheduled for August 14th - 19th. Great. The night before we're both really tired so we set dual alarms for 5:30am in order to catch our 9am flight with Air Jamacia.

Only her alarm is set for 5:30pm, and mine is set for 5:30am but not actually set to 'on'. Big problems. We wake up at 6:30am in a complete panic and rush to the airport as quickly as possible. We get there at maybe 7:30am and are eventually told that our flight is full and since we missed the window to get on our flight (which we have paid for and even have seat assignments) then we're pretty much fucked.

In anticipation of the long delayed Simpsons Movie I decided to sift through the bowels of SNPP.com and pick out my personal favorite episodes. Okay there are 300-something episodes, so that's kind of a tough task, though I will admit I stopped being thorough after season 11.

Some quick facts about my initial compilation (if you don't care, then go here), which contained sixty-four episodes, mostly based on quotes and funny moments that have stuck with me. Episodes from every season from 2 - 12 are there. Season 12 has the least with 1 episode, season 8 had the most with 10 episodes. The peak of the series, for me anyway, appeared to be season 5 - 8, which accounted for 37 of the 64 episodes. However upon selecting the top 15 (which is a weird number of episodes, but I felt 20 was too many and 10 not enough) I found myself tending to stay away from most episodes airing after season 7. In fact this list is more or less a bell curve starting low at season three, peaking at season 5 -7 and then dropping back down for seasons 8 and 9.

Ordering them wasn't easy, but I mainly went on instinct. This is all personal taste of course, because we all know the Simpsons is serious business. I did the best I could.

But enough of that crap, on to the list!

Can you find him? Seriously what is he doing?

Going home for Christmas from Dec 23rd until the 26th and bringing your Wii for some fun times, and then when you're on the train you realize that you forgot to pack any god damned games. Excite Truck was already in the drive, so at least I have that, plus any Wii games I get as gifts, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me? You may commence with the mockery... now.

So you know that Halloween party thing I was talking about? Okay, so, good times. We get to the place which is somewhere outside Philly I think, and chat for a while. It's a surprise birthday/Halloween party, even though the birthday boy's actual birthday is December 31st, but I guess that's what makes it a surprise party. Anyway, we get into our costumes and do the mini party thing with drinking and talking and stuff and finally we head off to a bar where there's apparently some sort of costume party contest thing. Good, good.

Except when we get there there are no people in costume. Well, scratch that, there are no other people in costume. It's a pretty big bar, two floors, second floor had a good fifty or sixty people on it (maybe more). Costumed people? Fifteen or us or so? Awesome. On the plus side the person who put together the whole thing went and found the manager who apparently took pity on us and gave us 75% off our tab. Woo! Which is good because the drinks were not very strong. But still, $20 for a decent amount of drinks by two people, well, you can't beat that. All you have to do is dress up like a ninja and show up at a bar. Trust me.

I think I might have another update later today. Pictures of random things perhaps.

You know what sucks? Going to the Nintendo Store, which apparently has 'tons of pre-orders left' and asking the dude behind the counter if they are still taking Wii pre-orders, only to have him inform you that they stopped taking pre-orders hours ago. Fuck you, clerk! I couldn't get to the store until Friday! Now I have to crapshoot. Jesus. I haven't bought a non-portable console since the Sega Genesis. This is a lot of trouble! Imagine if I wanted a PS3? I'd probably be having a heart attack. Curse you Nintendo, curse you!

Also, many months later, 'Wii' is still a stupid name. However I have grown used to it, so I can accept it.

Your show date: Monday December 4, 2006

THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART

Amount of tickets: 2

Name of ticket holder: Michael Watson

I will also be at the Colbert Report yet again on November 30th. I have no idea how the ticket wait was so short, I e-mailed them with requests on September 20th or so. I hope the guests are good! Also it's kind of a shame all the best correspondents on the Daily Show have since moved on, but at least Jon Stewart is still there. That's it!

So in my never ending quest to apparently never leave New York City, I was there four days in a row, Friday through Monday. I don't live there yet. Fun times though.

Monday (which is today, though it technically ended eight minutes ago), I went to see a taping of The Colbert Report. Dahanese, who is awesome for many reasons, got tickets back in March. I was actually a replacement invite because her sister's boyfriend (who was originally invited) is both out of town and apparently doesn't care for the Colbert Report (their relationship is in serious jeopardy now!), so I win at being the fourth choice! Woo!

At any rate, it was a really fun experience. We are insane, so we got there at 3pm or so and were first in line, and thus had totally bitchin' front and center seats. There was a comedian guy who warmed up the audience (he was pretty funny) and then the stage manager came out to tell us when to clap (we're not allowed to during the beginning of the show, though laughing is okay apparently). Then finally Colbert himself popped out and high fived the entire front row twice (I'll never wash this hand again!) and answered a couple of questions, told some jokes and then they started the show.

It was neat being there because I tend to associate stuff on TV as being fake and it was pretty cool seeing the big 'C' desk and the set and all that stuff. It looks way smaller in person, but Stephen Colbert appears to be a normal size in person (maybe even bigger than normal size because he's pretty tall).

At any rate I'm really tired from riding the train so much this weekend plus I didn't get any sleep on Saturday night, so I'm going to stop this probably poorly worded update and catch some sleep. Thank you and good night!

Since I've now seen Snakes on a Plane (and it was awesome) I figured I may as well tell the lone story I have related to the movie that does not involve the internet. On my vacation last month I got drunk, a lot. The trip was eight full days and I was drunk all eight of them to varying degrees. On the first night when I only hung out with my sister and cousin (before we met our group of mostly under twenty-one friends), we finished up around 12am (the bar closed at 3am, so this was an early night) and went into the dinning area to get some pizza.

More drunk people, cool. Drunker than us. One particularly drunk guy was sitting there talking to his two friends and saying "I will fight a snake! I'll fight a snake!" over and over. I smirked, as the first thing that came to mind was Snakes on a Plane, but I figured he was just drunk and rambling. We made fun of him a little and ate our pizza and went to bed.

Now jump to the last night on the ship. It's around midnight again and the bar we were always at is fucking packed. Normally it was our extended group of fifteen or twenty people, but this night it was like a crowded Manhattan bar, except there was only one bar tender. He said the bar was never that crowded on the last day, so I guess we lucked out. Oh yeah we were also in the middle of a tropical storm, so it was raining and the boat was rocking a good amount.

Anyway, it's about this time that the very same snake guy from the first night (drunk again) wanders out and starts talking about fighting snakes again. I'm drunker than I was the last time I saw him, so I go "Hey, it's snake guy! What's up, dude?" and I shook his hand. He then leans in and says to me the words I will never forget: "Dude, Snakes on a Plane, August 18th, Samuel L. Jackson, mother fucking snakes!" My response was of course "I am already there, dude!"

It was a beautiful moment where two drunk people who had never met before had something in common (aside from being drunk). I think he hugged me after that (but it was one of those macho hugs where you do that hand clasp thing and sort of bump shoulders, so it was okay) and then stumbled off into the night. I never saw him again, but I hope he thought the movie was awesome as well. Mother fuckin' snakes making the world a better place. Who knew?

And I refuse to taint it with a lame catch phrase. Also I clearly have nothing to update about. Going to see Snakes on a Plane on Thursday in though, so that will change! After that I guess I have nothing to look forward to. Damnit.

I haven't updated in almost two weeks, so I may as well write an update because I'm at work and I have nothing better to do. I'm not really a sad panda, I was just looking at the NHL bracket I whipped up the night before the playoffs started and the Rangers being down 2-0 after two bad losses made me write that headline. I'll be surprised if they don't get swept at this point, though they did play well the last game, they just couldn't catch a single break.

On Saturday night I hung out with my friends. My good friend just took some hard as fuck engineering test to become a licensed engineer (not the train type, though rest assured he does love when I make that joke) that he's been studying for for the last many months. He was very tired and really, really wanted to drink. Also around was another friend who lives in Boston who I haven't seen since last June when we visited her for her birthday, and yet another friend who lives in the same damned town as me yet I somehow manage to never see her. I'm not sure how that works out, probably because she never calls me back so I just gave up trying after a while (she never calls anyone back though except for her parents, boyfriend and her best friend, who I am also friends with, and she does call me back, so I can find out things second-hand). Also present at this gathering were my friend's girlfriend (aforementioned best friend of girl who never calls anyone back), her sister, brother, and three friends of her brother.

Everyone except me fell asleep around 1am (we started early) so I stayed up watching something on Animal Planet about bats. I don't know why, but Animal Planet is pretty cool when it's not showing some show about people who are obsessed with their pets. And I'm not talking the normal amount of obsessed, but the insane amount of obsessed that borders on scary. To me anyway, but maybe that's because I don't have any pets. None that I can anthromorphisize anyway.

Around 1:30am, brother's fiance shows up (this is the house of the three siblings, by the way) and decides to put makeup, plastic wrap and tampons on her fiance and his friend who have both passed out cold from entirely too much scotch and tequila. And Jager. And vodka. The universal rule of drunks is if you fall asleep with your shoes on then you are open game. So yeah. Pictures were taken, laughs were had and everyone learned a valuable lesson.

Oh yeah, and Kevin Smith put up the final part of his Jason Mewes story. Kind of anti-climactic, but overall a good ending. Kind of like this update!

Oh crazy liberal media, what won't you do? Okay, so I'm not a big proponent of the 'liberal media', mainly because most complaints about the media being liberal come from people who watch Fox News all the time. Fair and Balanced! However, this Reuters photo is cropped in just the right way that I cannot possibly think it wasn't intentional. I mean, leaving a little headroom over Cheney's head, okay fine. But it's so perfectly cropped. I refuse to believe this was a coincidence.

I don't know what Reuters' normal political affiliation is, but maybe this isn't a case of "omg Bush and Cheney suck!" Maybe they are genuinely concerned for Mr. Headshot Cheney's health. After all the man has a heart attack every week and he's got like six surgeons following him around ready to perform a triple bypass or angioplasty at a moment's notice. Maybe they just don't want him to have any more undue stress.

Of course if Cheney retires then George Bush will really be running the country, and I don't know if that's such a wise decision. He's good at clearing brush and making up new words, but I don't think he'd make a very good president. I mean he ran an oil rig into the ground. An oil rig. Those things hemorrhage money, and he managed to put one out of business. And then he traded Sammy Sosa to the Cubs when he was in charge of the Texas Rangers. Although in his defense he was probably drunk at the time. That's life though, I guess.

Anyway, I salute Reuters and Mr. Cheney too, and not just because he's the first sitting vice president to shoot another man since Aaron Burr. No, I salute him because he has a gigantic wang.

I wasn't sure if I should file this under 'funny' or 'serious'... after careful reflection (I thought about it for 30 seconds), I decided to go with funny, because what the fuck?

At first glance, Zoo elephant tramples boy to death doesn't sound very funny, but some 13 year old kid got past a rock wall and two metal fences to feed a mango to an elephant. While probably a pretty horrible way to die, you have to wonder what the fuck this kid was thinking as he scaled three barriers with a piece of fruit in order to feed an elephant 120 times his own weight.

I don't want to say he deserved it, but, after the second fence you'd think he'd stop to say "hmm, maybe these barriers are here for a reason". I'm starting to think funny shit may not be the best category, but I don't feel like rewriting the first paragraph, so it's staying! Don't fuck with elephants.