Happy snowday, Hamline

-eb

Drew Carey is not funny

If I've learned one thing from watching TV, it's that fat people are funny and skinny people aren't. 

Drew Carey has a new show coming out on Game Show Network. It's titled something stupid like "Improv-a-smorgasbord-a-palooza-fest." Unfortunately, Carey has lost a great deal of weight since his earlier years in comedy. Also, unfortunately, nothing about that show seems to be a game show.

Regardless, it's clear Carey didn't learn his lesson from Drake and Josh. The once popular Nick teen show fell immediately down the tubes once Josh lost weight in the third season. The show would last only one more season and garner a meager 12 more Nickelodeon Kid's Choice awards, a paltry 6 times as many as they received in their first two seasons.

It's clear here: 

What did the writers expect? Seriously, we don't want to see Skinny Guy Meets Skinny Guy. If we turned the lights off, and could only use our hands to communicate, how am I supposed to tell them apart? By beard length?

What a ridiculous assertion. And now it seems Drew Carey has fallen to the same fate. 

For scientific purposes, I have included two individual scales used to monitor funniness to fatness: The Farley Model (perfected in a 1996 study comparing how fucking hilarious Chris Farley is when compared to that squirrelly guy from the 7 Up commercials with whom he always seems to be standing next to on stage) and the newly devised Carey Scale, which I've used to compare Carey to Nicole Richie, who is neither fat nor funny.

Best of luck fishing your career out of the toilet, Carey.

-eb

Snooze will be the death of me

I can't wake up in the morning. And I don't mean "I'm not a morning person," or "I'm lazy and don't want to wake up." 

I mean I Cannot. Wake. Up. In the morning. 

If my body had its way, the day would be 36 hours long, and I could wake up at 3 p.m. every day. This way, Erik would have time to sleep in, and still do normal human things like eat lunch at an appropriate time, and also to eat snacon, a meal I had to make up because I added 12 hours to the day.

To try to wake up in the morning, I've taken to setting three alarms on my phone and one clock alarm because Sleepy-Erik is smarter than most and he is able to do simple arithmetic.

Here's the equation that goes through my head when I am trying to wake up.

Which puts me out of bed 5 minutes before class. Which puts me in class in the same clothes I wore yesterday. Also sometimes without shoes.

This has happened on numerous occasions. 

The non-presence of shoes is a dead give away that Sleepy Erik won round one.

This past Friday, I didn't have class, but I had work at 4:30 p.m. I set an alarm for 3 p.m. just to make sure I wouldn't oversleep. 

Past 4:30. P.M. 

In the evening. 

As in nine hours after most working Americans wake up on a Friday. As in four hours later than most lazy, unemployed Americans wake up on a Friday.

I am convinced the only thing that would wake me up is if my bed was on fire, a police squad car was parked in my room sirens blaring, a jackass parrot was mocking me using 1950s terminology and Flava Flav was present in my room belting out a rendition of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Get on it, Sony Dreamscape.

-eb

I probably don't belong in my gender comm course

I am taking a course on gender and communication. It's four days a week for three hours each day. 

It's really hard to keep my white-male cool for that long of a time.

-eb

It's not delivery, it's TAKING FOR FUCKING EVER.

Pizza Luce. Selby Avenue. St. Paul, Minn. Where the beer is cold, the people are friendly and the waiter, who looks strikingly like the guitar player for Incubus, takes 15 minutes to give you refills and an hour to give you two small pizzas.

One hour. Two small pizzas.

That's one small pizza per half hour.

That's one small half of a small pizza per quarter hour.

For ease, I've made the following pie chart. It's functional, and shaped like the whole pizza that took an hour to get to my whole face.



















Had he not been an incredible replica of Mike Einziger, I might've been more pissed. Oh wait, I was pissed.




















These Incubus references working for anyone?

-eb

My thermostat is r-worded

My apartment doesn't have a thermostat. Instead, it has a fan. A fan that blows hot air or cold air ceaselessly unless we adjust the mystical "ON/OFF SWITCH."

Just so everyone knows the difference. Here's how a normal thermostat works:

And here's how the thermostat works in my apartment:

When I consider why anyone building any sort of modern living quarters would not include a self-monitoring temperature system, the only answer I can think of is honest stupidity. 

As you can see by this scientific Venn diagram, at the intersection of heat, the constant flow of hot air and the knowledge that Hamline just straight up did not want to properly install a temperature monitoring system is me being pissed off. 

So while I'm sweating my dick off in bed, you guys are probably wondering: BUT ERIK WHAT ABOUT KIDS IN CHINA WHO DON'T EVEN HAVE HEATING LET ALONE CLEAN WATER EVERY DAY TO BATHE AND DRINK?!

To which I respond: That is just inaccurate, probably racist, and also I don't care. 

-eb

A road paved with babies

I was going to post something about this, but I figured the only people that care are those that are politically involved in America -- so, about four.

Instead, I will talk about dead babies.

My drives between Grand Forks and the Twin Cities are always filled with greatness: taking my jacket off, letting the wind sneak in through a crack in the back window, singing along to Elton John, stopping for gas at the same Holiday. (Ain't nothin' like pissing in the same urinal every time you stop somewhere. Feels like home.)

But the commute between my homes is always punctuated with moments of utter disgust, because for some reason, ProLife Across America (along with the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life) seem to have bought out that entire stretch of I-94. So for miles upon miles, I get to read about how precious life is and how babies should be allowed to partake in such activities as riding motorcycles and growing up with drug addictions.

Now, I love a good motorcycle romp and heroin high just as much as the next leather-studded American cowboy, but there are some things seriously wrong with these billboards:

1. They are propaganda. Plain and simple. They use age-old propaganda techniques such as:

Glittering generalities -- using virtue words that mean different things to different people such that they can be interpreted in different ways. 

Eg: What is "happiness"? What are "human rights"? They didn't have room to define these words on their billboards. It's unfortunate that these words take up the entirety of the ad space.

and

Emotional appeals -- appealing to the fear, anger, joy etc. of a person instead of to their logical abilities. Like the use of giant close ups of baby faces for which the MCCL seems to be just smitten.

Other propaganda techniques include:

Transfer -- carrying out the authority, sanction or prestige of something we respect to something else. 

Case in the point: the Bible.

2. Aside from being propaganda, they frustrate me at how incredibly one-sided they are. Let us say we are considering every human life, when in fact, we neglect the life of the mother, the father (or baby daddy, let's be honest), the parents of the parents, etc. 

How will going through with the birth affect the mother? Her family? Doesn't matter. You're having this goddamned baby. And it's going to be fucking precious. 

The MCCL's website claims that since 1973 (Roe v. Wade), "well over a million unborn children have been killed each year from abortion while their mothers are left to suffer in silence."

Would you rather they suffer in public? That's called 16 and Pregnant, and it's not pretty. Seriously, I'm trying to enjoy a night at the cinema here, and teen mom behind me can't keep her kid quiet because she's 14 years-old and has no fucking idea what life even is. 

Further, instilling fear into young women is about the worst method to get them to reconsider pregnancy options. Instead of considering safe alternatives for abortion -- like consulting a real doctor in a real hospital -- they might be too frightened or ashamed of their choice because they have 300 square feet of plywood egging them on like Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, burning holes of shame through their pregnant bodies.

What the MCCL fails to realize -- or just straight up ignores -- is sometimes the circumstances are such that an abortion is warranted, and that the choice to do so is based on a person-to-person basis, and saying that one scenario/option fits all people is ignorant and childish. Remember how you used to put a Band-Aid on every injury you sustained when you were 7? Well, you're a fucking adult now; some incidents require Band-Aids and some require you to remove the human being from inside your stomach because you can't afford a goddamn baby right now.

It's not like the world population needs it right now anyways, and I could go for a few less eyesores on my otherwise exhilarating commute between my two homes.

-eb

I know a guy

The Thanksgiving marathon of Pawn Stars made me realize two things:

1. Every guy that runs a pawn shop is a certified asshole,
and
2. Every guy that runs a pawn shop knows a guy.

Point 1:

No matter what item was brought in to Gold and Silver Pawn -- the featured store on History Channel's Pawn Stars -- the owner Rick would scoff at the starting price proposed by the customer, then suggest at most 10% of that price.

$3,000 for a set of autographed Beatles' albums?
*scoff*
I couldn't go much higher than $100. Tops.

He's trying to run a business here folks. You know what the turnover rate is on 1909 authentic army cadet uniforms?

It's actually not bad. But this guy's got a camera and priorities.

Point 2:

Again, no matter the item in question, Rick would need to get their item "checked out" by an expert in the appropriate field. Someone brings in a Civil War era gun, he has a friend who specializes in Civil War era weaponry. Someone brings in a 1951 signed Yankee's baseball, he's got a friend who specializes not only in baseball, but in signatures in general -- in writing your fucking name in cursive.

After watching roughly 8 hours of the program, I realized when Rick says he "knows a guy," he's talking about "every guy."

-eb

Harry Potter and the Half-the-fucking-screen-is-covered-because-Frankenstein-sat-in-front-center

After my recent viewing of half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One -- which I suppose makes it a quarter-viewing -- I've decided Daniel Radcliffe is perhaps the most undesirable person for whom everyone is willing to give their lives.

Had a human dirigible not been in my way, I might've been able to formulate a full opinion on this matter.

-eb