Citizenship Test

From the news wires...

Some of these questions are not easy. I guess if you knew what to study, they'd be easy, but I bet most people don't know the answer to some of these...

And dude...I like video games. I like playing them (though i'm not a hard-core gamer). I like reading Jason's blog posts on video games, which are always interesting and insightful. But this quote below is a bit much, I think...

“This is the Mecca of the video game world right here, right now,” Carl Gunther, a 23-year-old marketing researcher from Brooklyn, said Monday night as he joined hundreds of other fans in a long line outside a Best Buy in Midtown Manhattan.
“Halo is the ‘Star Wars’ of this generation,” Mr. Gunther added. “Thirty years ago my father waited in line to see ‘Star Wars,’ and I know I’ll tell my kids I stood in line to buy Halo 3. It’s like saying you were at Woodstock or something.”

Carl, let me give you a piece of advice for your future parenting responsibilities. Telling your kids you waited in line to buy Halo 3 will only confirm to them that their dad is a total loser. I advise against it. And while it is an awesome video game, and the release is clearly an event, I'm not sure it occupies the same level in the pantheon of major american cultural events as Woodstock. Jebus...

4 and 0, baby

Stade Lausanne improved our record to 4-0 in a 20-5 victory over RC Fribourg yesterday afternoon at Fribourg. After dealing with the hairy neuchatel brutes, the Fribourgians didn't really give us too much trouble, and our pack dominated the whole game. And, thankfully, I'm not in as much pain. 40 minutes playing time at prop and hooker. Nothing really of note from my end. A few tackles, a couple of Russell runs, and some decent lineouts. The good news is that I'm settling back into it. Doesn't hurt to play on a really talented team either. Pictures to follow one of these days...

Watching the All Blacks beat the hell out of Scotland. It's too bad...The Scots aren't playing terribly, they are just outmatched. Watch NZ's pack if you want to see the best front 8 in the world. They only outweigh the Scottish forwards by about 100 pounds, but they are just manhandling them...bummer.

France's game on friday against Ireland was a bit of a surprise, namely because the French looked great. I think they are a sleeper candidate for the cup, if they can keep this up.

laters.

Wowsers

Who says the french are nancies? This fucker certainly isn't. He looks as if he's descended from some psycho gallic chieftan...6'4", and 257 lbs. Maybe the giants can draft him at linebacker or something...

Riots!!

Damn. I can't believe I missed this...

Also, here is one of the new anti-UDC logos...

Dude...

I got this flyer in my mailbox a few weeks ago. UDC (Swiss Peoples' Party). Not a small political party (I believe they have about 22% of the legislature)...The head of this group also rotates the presidency with the five other council members. The poster isn't too subtle, is it....

The Swiss are going bonkers over the fact that this thing has been pasted all over the country. Well, i guess it depends where...The lausannois are going bonkers, and all sorts of protest posters are popping up. Will find one and post it here.

Football and Rugby thoughts...

I'm sorry. The giants are going to continue to suck every year if their secondary can't get their heads out of their respective asses...My god, man. Everyone is talking about how 'great' farve was... Bullshit. I reckon that a decent high school quarterback could have shredded the jints' secondary on sunday. I swear to god, it almost became a joke with that poor outmatched bastard RW McQuarters (though kudos for a badass name). Which of the following was said, more or less, at least one time during Sunday's game...

Fill in the blank:

And RW McQuarters....

A) Misses the tackle;
B) Gets burned by a WR;
C) Is out of position;
D) Is called for PI; or
E) All of the above...

What sucks so much is that in the offense-obsessed age, we worry far too much about the QB/RB/WR. Anyone playing at the NFL level in those positions should be just fine (exception: Rex Grossman). In fact, some of the premier RBs today were either backups or second thoughts (hello, Joseph Addai) and do just fine. But if your goddamn secondary allows 30 plus points a game, you are in DEEP shit. Way too much time was spent working on Manning (who looks great). But it's wasted effort. Someone fire the coach, the DB coach, and...oh, i don't know...the whole secondary... jesus. Frustrating.
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Rugby World Cup. Springboks (South Africa) look like the NE Patriots right now. They are unstoppable. Destroyed England handily on Friday evening. Made it look easy. I'm calling it now. SA/All Blacks final, SA wins by at least 10.

Local Rugby. My team went up against a large, hairy, and slightly neanderthalish Neuchatel side on Saturday and won in a ridiculous fashion. Down 14-3 with five minutes left. Final score? 15-14. Two tries (touchdowns) in five minutes by Stade Lausanne. Yours truly was subbed in at 19 minutes in for our injured prop. For those of you in the know, this is a position for big fat bastards. While not slender, I am not a big fat bastard of the prop variety (they tend to weigh between 220-240 lbs). Usually, I play hooker, which while also a front row position, is much less involved in pushing, and more involved with 'hooking' the ball from a set scrum piece. Here is what a scrum looks like. On saturday, i had the 'pleasure' of playing 60 minutes at number 3, otherwise known as the tighthead prop. And I am ridiculously small for this position. I am a sore, sore little monkey today, especially as i had to learning how to prop on the fly (i.e., with a bunch of aforementioned fatties from neuchatel trying to, i think, kill us and eat our hearts). So that was an experience, as I've never even practiced this position. However, while we lost many scrums, we also handily won a few, your truely helped set up the final try with a (dare i say it) lightfooted scamper of 10 yards, happily running over little tiny backs after dealing with fatties bashing me around all day. Two plays later, threw our boys over the line, whistle blew, and we left the field with a big win. 3-0 so far this season. Sweet.

Hmm...Sensationalism strikes again

Dude. CNN is retarded. The headline for the below video was 'Whoopi defends Michael Vick'. This makes it sound like the woman was about to say killing dogs was A-fucking-OK, but Whoopi (jesus, writing that name is relatively difficult), contrary to the headline, provides very apt commentary and makes a solid point. No other media outlet has made this point, probably due to political correctness, but Whoopi is making an important cultural argument here, namely that dogfighting, in certain areas, may not be considered 'cruel' in the traditional sense. And, therefore, this helps understand a 'terrible' action. It's all about relativity, baby... And not at all what the stupid tagline implies.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2007/09/04/sot.whoopi.vick.comments.cnn

Oh, and Elisabeth Filarski (I hate you Tim Hasselbeck) is still super hot. Crazy republican agenda and all, I'll always have a soft spot for my little outback survivor... Insert morose sigh here...Maybe Amber is still available? No, damn it. I forgot. She married that mongo from Boston...

Rugby World Cup

Support the yanks this weekend against mighty England, those tea-drinking, queen-worshipping, cockney bastards. In all liklihood, the USA Eagles, ranked 15th, will not beat England, 7th ranked for the RWC, but also the defendnig champion. Anyway, it's on at noon. Fox sports, i think. check it.

YR

Violet on the Runway

Melissa's first book, Violet on the Runway, is out! Buy it here, or find a bookshop near you that carries it for all you "I don't shop at Barnes & Noble or Amazon because they keep the little guy down" hippies out there.

It is an awesome book. I read it before it was released (because I'm a VIP kind of dude and you are not) and enjoyed it tremendously. Melissa is a very talented writer, and she brings such a realistic spin to her characters. She doesn't fall into the trap of using typical 'teen' stereotypes that are very black and white, as many teen writers tend to do. There are no 'jocks' vs. 'nerds' in the stereotypical sense (though, as with any good story, there are underdogs, and people you hope get taken down a few notches), and the story isn't one of 'loser conquers all'...It is far more complex than that, which how teenager-hood really was. If you think back, we all had 'jock days' and 'nerd days'. Some days, you felt like you were on top of your game. Great friends, great fun, etc., and then the next week, you could feel like you were all alone. And Melissa captures all of that so well, especially the ever-important relationship between the two main characters, Violet and her best friend Roger. You feel you know these characters, and you are intrigued by them. They aren't merely a device to promote the storyline (i.e., girl moves to city becomes model). Too many best sellers these days have a plot that races along and is intriguing but where the character development is nil (e.g., anything by Dan Brown). Melissa's characters are the heart and soul of the story, and one could, and I hope Melissa does, put them in a variety of different situations and plot lines in future books, and you would still be interested in them.

Plus, if I say it's awesome, it usually is. I'm a tastemaker, baby.

Congrats, Melissa!!

YR

NY Cabbies Suck...

So a bunch of NY cabbies are going to strike because they don't want to have to install GPS and don't want to deal with credit cards. Reasons given for being anti-GPS included the ever popular "i don't want people to be able to track me". Which is obviously total bullshit. My take on it is that cabbies don't want to accept that they don't know where anything IS! The sad news, ladies and gents, is that NY cabbies can't get ANYWHERE anymore outside of Manhattan. I've made earlier references to this fact, and I think installing GPS will be quite nice. It will also allow silly tourists to realize they are being ripped off if they head to Manhattan from JFK via Westchester. Adding credit card capabilities is mandatory. Just deal with it, for god's sake...

Why are NY cabbies so behind other cities? I was just in London this weekend, and the taxis there are, like, from the future. The whole thing is blue-toothed out, so the driver is way up front but you can talk to him without leaning forward and screaming "MANHATTAN BRIDGE, NOT BROOKLYN BRIDGE". And, of course, London cabbies don't need anything so pansyish as GPS. You know why? Because they have "The Knowledge". It's like "The Shining" but much more practical and far less reliant on elevators spurting blood and creepy little dead girls staring at you. Do not fuck around with London cabbies. They know where they are going better than you do, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

NY cabbies should have to have the knowledge too.