The Vikings decided to finally end the soap opera and trade Culpepper to Miami for the the 51st pick in the draft (so basically shit). I do not know, but I think they are too confident in Johnson's ability to lead the team. Not that they he was a horrible quarterback, but I currently have zero confidence in the ability of the Vikings to sucessfully convert to a west coast offense with a new coach. We will see of course in time how the gamble pays off, but I think Miami got a great deal in the end. To say that Dante would never recover and be a quality quarterback again is crud.

-Trevor

So I realized I just can't get enough of Brokeback Mountain for I keep on writing about it, but this is just so damned frustrating. The woman who originally wrote the novel that the movie is based on has decided to inform us that those who vote on best picture are too conservative and don't pay attention to the real world. I'm going to say this once, movies are not good because they are controversial. They are good because they have a combination of story, directing, and acting (Controversial films can contain all three elements and thus be a good movie). I am sorry, but Brokeback Mountain was horribly directed. It was so fucking boring I couldn't finish it. And this is someone who loves Once Upon a Time in America. If I get bored with a movie, it's not good, period. Controversy has nothing to with quality for if it was, surely next year I should create a movie about a tortured priest who is torn between his vow of chasity and his love of fucking his bastard son in the ass. That should surely make headlines and if the Academy Awards doesn't give me a best picture I will compare it to the screwjob they gave Brokeback Mountain.

Oh and by the way, we already know that the the Academy Awards does not always make the right choice, here are a few obvious mistakes:

In 2002 both the Hours and the Pianist got beat by Chicago
In 2000 Almost Famous got screwed and not even nominated for best picture and we got to see a sleeper of a film, Gladiator.
In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was shafted by Shakespeare in Love
In 1997, any movie would have been better than Titanic
In 1995 Apollo 13 was blown out of the water from a mediocre Braveheart
and the list goes on.

Annie Proulx, I personally do not have anything against homosexuals, however your movie is not about homosexuality, it is merely for shock value. You are merely a Howard Stern of the novel, all shock and no substance. All the movie does it take an image that society has a preconceived notion about and you twist on that for shock. And the day that Howard Stern wins an award for his wholesome portrayal of women is the day I decide to become a cowboy and eat some pudding.

-Trevor

This is always good news to hear, Pearl Jam's single "World Wide Suicide" has done very well on the billboard charts. This is good for a plethora of reasons, the one I care about the most is the ability for bands such as Pearl Jam to distribute their material without a major label. Of course the need for music publishers will never disappear, but maybe we would get less Christina Aguilera's, Britney Spears, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, (Need I go on?) if bands can begin to sucessfully market themselves. Of course if alternative methods never emerge, no major distributors could hurt choice, but I'm certain that there will be new distribution channels on the internet to help get good names out in the world so we get have a litte more choice on who we want to listen to.

-Trevor

Well it is currently spring break in the land of no rain, except a day in which I want to go to a baseball game. While the game wasn't rain delayed, it did feature unusually cool weather and the potential for rain. Not that rain is not needed, however, why did it have to wait until I had time off until shitty weather came in. Well I guess it has left me more opportunities to play catch-up. Pathetically enough, I am the only one in the department now, just like I was the last one in the department last night and the night before. However, I'll show them, I will (If I wasn't using both hands to type, I would be shaking a fist). Actually the weather should be getting nicer and I will catch a game later this week.

In other news, I decided to pick up the Name of the Rose again by Umberto Eco. I found an absolutely terrific line that I would like to share here:

"I had heard tales of Brother Paolo Zoppo, who in the forest of Rieti lived as a hermit and boasted of having received directly from the Holy Spirit the revelation that the carnal act was not a sin--so he seduced his victims, whom he called sisters, forcing them to submit to the lash on their naked flesh, making five genuflections on the ground in the form of a cross, before he presented them to God and claimed from them what he called the kiss of peace (Ed. Note: The Kiss of Peace is often referred to as the Sign of Peace in mass)."

So in the last year, I have discovered three pickup lines that I think could produce interesting results:

(1) Hey, God has given me the command to give you the kiss of peace.
(2) I wish I was a derivative so I could be tangent to all of your curves.
(3) I must be your indicator function because you have turned me on.

So I imagine one of two things happening after saying one of these lines to a woman
(1) I get slapped
(2) I get slapped and then hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit

Well, that's enough fun for one day, back to the grind. By the way, I'll have my rough draft of my research paper done in about 2 weeks, at which point I'll post it on my website. Besides not paying attention to the man behind the curtain, don't criticize the fact that my rough draft most likely will not utilize two-stage least squares for my regression results.

-Trevor

St. Cloud police have recently raided a party and cited 54 for underage possession of alcohol. Considering this is minimally a $100 fine, they netted a good amount. If the police can keep it up, they will net another $2 million for the city. If we extend this a little, if the city enacts a prohibition, I know of a great way in which the police can make a lot of money, ahem, I mean protect the citizens.

-Trevor

Don't you love playing with kites, having them soar for hours up in the breezy blue sky? Well those in Pakistan enjoy it as well, just with a twist. Evidently they also enjoy lacing the kite string with glass in order to slash other kites in competition during the annual Basant Festival. It also killed 19 people last year in Lahore, Pakistan. In order to prevent these fatalities, police have arrested 1400 people violating the ban on flying kites. I never associated kites with killing, but that was before I read about a girl getting her neck slashed from glass on a stray kite while riding with her father on a motorcycle.

-Trevor

The Navy is to retire all remaining F-14 Tomcats from service. They are to be replaced with the F/A-18 Super Hornet. It is sad to see such a popular plane no longer being in service in the United States with the exception of air shows, but I guess if popularity was enough to win battles, the Spirit of St. Louis would have won WW2 without the U.S. having to fire a single shot.

-Trevor

I was saddened to see that Puckett had passed away after his stroke in Arizona. It is really too bad that he was so young and died without being able to erase his tarnished image, but half that is probably overblown media coverage and whatnot. Well, I thought I would do him some justice by posting Puckett in a little better light than what I had in the last post. Kirby Puckett was definitely my favorite players growing up as a kid right along with Ozzie Smith. Both of them of course were honored by having two of my hamsters named after them, and as the joke goes, You know you are a Minnesotan if one of your pets are named Kirby.

-Trevor

This morning Kirby Puckett suffered a stroke at his home in Scottsdale, AZ. It is sort of sad considering the man is only around 45. However one look at the picture above and we see that he has not kept himself up very well. If this stroke was not too bad, I hope this be a sign to him that people need to keep at least a minimum level of health.

-Trevor

According to a new study (and what isn't studied nowadays), Obese and skinny men are more likely to die from a car crash than those who are moderately overweight. They cited possible reasons is that the overweight men have a "cushioning" effect, but the health problems of obesity outweigh the "cushioning" that occurs during the crash. They could not find any statistical difference among women, citing the possibility of a different shape (maybe the breasts were the "cushioning" effect). In any case, knowing I will likely die in a crash, I should stop wearing my seatbelt and speed at very high rates for I might as well get some fun while I am alive.

-Trevor

For those who are about to read this article, I foreworn you that the government is watching you, yes, YOU. In order to protect yourself, please don your tinfoil hat, for THEY will control you otherwise. How, do you ask? These tiny RFID chips pictured above. And the government is not the least of your worries, for as the non-believers as you are, we will soon be fighting for our lives against the Antichrist. I'm assuming you wonder how I am aware of this wonderful information? Katherine Albrecht in her new book, The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance has informed us that these are the sign of the apocalypse, and the world will soon be over. As you can see, non-christians should not worry for only Christians will face the wrath of the Antichrist. Sleep tight and do let secularism bite. Oh, and one more thing, barcodes are bad too.

-Trevor

Back in 1996, the Keech family lost their 2 1/2 year old son after 11 surgeries. After families and friends helped to pay for their expenses while struggling to save the life of their child, they have started a foundation to help families, who have taken off time to help their children, pay their mortgages. They recently helped their 500th family. This is stuff that is always great to see, local involvement of people helping other people.

-Trevor

So I hit a new record of unique visitors in February with 1150, up from a previous high of 690 unique visitors set in January. I find it interesting that such a large number of people are finding my site since the number coming from obvious spam sites seems to be down, which seemed to be a large source of traffic in the early days of my website, not to mention that the appeal of my blog seems to be fairly local as most people can get the news I rant about at any dime a dozen news aggregator such as CNN. My current theory is Google Images is driving a large number of unique visitors to my site. This makes me slightly unhappy that I am only getting hits from that, but I guess I will live. I did get excited when the article on India drew an actual discussion in my comments section, which was pretty cool. I always do find it interesting what people search to get here and this last month yogurt was the number one search term to get here. Steven Mattics is also a huge draw and I find that interesting since I mentioned him only once when I made a crack about American Express. Oh well.

-Trevor