Comic for Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

Posted: 12:20 am, Tuesday, September 26th

Not a lot today, but some quality stuff.

For good, solid, Internet dorkiness, here's the director of a bunch of video-game-to-film movies (including the game House of the Dead, which can best be described as zombies meet Operation Wolf) beating the living crap out of the dude that runs Something Awful. Apparently, Lowtax got off easy compared to the guys that came after him.

That video, like this one (an awesome trailer from some PS3 game) comes from Penny-Arcade. Gabe turned 29 yesterday, which in funny, because my mom turns 65 today. She's in her final year of teaching, before going on the Retirement World Tour with my Dad next June. She doesn't read this, but, um, happy birthday to my mom, anyway.

Shit, guy, I've gone on record as saying GTA: San Andreas is the best video game I've ever played, and even I had never even *conceived* of someone doing this before now.

The Ara Pacis is in a new building in Rome, that the Times architecture critic hates. From the picture they've posted, I have to say that it doesn't do a good job working with the strength of what's already around it. I saw the Ara Pacis when I studied in Rome nine years ago, and it was in basically a one-floor box with four glass walls. I really liked the art, the building was totally nondescript, and there was a nice view of the mausoleums. My impressions are a bit muddied - the day that I saw the Ara Pacis, I had woken up at four to see the last three innings of Game Seven of the 1997 World Series, because it was being broadcast live on NBC Europe (I saw Jim Sanson miss several field goals against USC and BC that season using the same technology). Anyway, the last three innings turned into the last six innings, and it was six o'clock by the time the game ended. I had a midterm that day, so I decided I would just get up and study over some cappuccino. So I went to Pascucci's, the bar that the students hung out at ('bar' in Italy basically refers to a deli), tried to explain to them why I was awake at such an hour, and proceeded to drink five cappuccinos before noon. I was still so jittery at midnight that I had to down a few pints of Guinness, which I say as if it were a rarity for a 19-year old studying abroad.

All the talk of Michigan State's fight song over the past few days got me thinking of fight songs and how incredibly goofy they are. For instance, Texas A&M's shows a pathetic need to concentrate on UT-Austin. Purdue, the Irish's opponent this weekend, decides to make theirs an ode to friendship. Penn has a fight song, which is goofy, because they're the friggin' Quakers. I checked out a few schools that I know the readership to have attended - Wood, you've got some 'splainin' to do, as Virginia Tech seems to have less of a fight song and more of a homoerotic epic poem going on here. ("Watch our men so big and active... we know our ends and backs are stronger"?) Hands down my favorite, though, is the fight song of St. Olaf, the rival school of my friend CK. Their fight song blows A&M's out of the water as far as worrying about your rival goes, works in the word "injurious," and ends in a campfire round of some sort that I doubt any living soul can explain. God, collitch sports are fantastic.

We have standards here, so I'm not linking to it directly, but Good Charlotte's "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" may be the worst song since "My Humps". Google it, the .mp3 is out there if you're interested.

bullfrog

Good work. Interesting posts, besides those spam...

Thanks, Mr. Fashion. I like to think of the spam as kind of a day-long game of Space Invaders. Keeps me on my toes to clean it out.

(Addressing the spam, the IT arm of Five Bucks did in fact install Kismet, but I think Pat was right in his assertion that I need to run the entire site through WordPress - I currently do the thing through a crudely self-constructed site using Dreamweaver. I haven't had a chance to look into what moving the whole thing to WordPress would entail, but I think I may have a chance this weekend, since we finally don't have any visitors to clean for/host.)

Ms. Credibility Condi Rice offers a rebuttal to Clin-tonn's terror record, and, furthering her credibility, she gives this exclusive to the New York Post.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Rice-Clinton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Oh, in other news - my God, Ohio.

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/business-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/23/20060923-D1-04.html

Of course, the Carleton version of the St. Olaf fight song runs:

We come from St. Olaf We wear cashmere sweaters We live on the hill to be closer to God We don't smoke, we don't drink (At least that's what they think) And between the sheets we go "Um-Ya-Ya-Ya!"

Um-Ya-Ya, Um-Ya-Ya Um-Ya-Ya, Um-Ya-Ya Um-Ya-Ya, Um-Ya-Ya Um-Ya-Ya-Ya!

The tune is extremely perky and Norwegian, and even better sung while drunk.

Can you believe the REAL #15, who hit a pinch hit three-run homer in his first at-bat in a month? Of course, the cardinals lost anyway. SEVEN losses in a row! They are just determined to choke away what was a 7.5 game lead with 10 to play... Now it's a 2.5 game lead. Ugh...

Anyway, that's actually not why I was writing. Wordpress is supercool with lots of neat features (like RSS!). I only wonder whether or not it would mess up your archiving system.

You're going to have to walk me through that song sometime, CK, because all I can get "um-ya-ya" to sound like in my head is an five-year old's interpretation of a Native American rain dance.

I make no excuses for the Virginia Tech fight song lyrics. It is supposed to be sung by more feminine types as masculine types run nude across the grid-iron to wreck barbaric slaughter en masse and bathe in the blood of innocents. Regardless, they do play the Hokie Pokie at games which continues to confuse and disturb me. This is counteracted by Enter Sandman as the intro music. I have a deep seeded faith that Mariano Rivera was just trying to copy VT. He is such a poser.

I wish I could have studied abroad for a semester.

All I know about the Missouri fight song is that the tune is sung to It's A Long Way to Tipporrary. Which makes as much sense as our National Anthem being sung to a English drinking song.

Oh, and 15? Just hope that the pennant doesn't come down to an one-game playoff between the Astros and the Cards, in Houston, with Roger Clemens as the Astro's pitcher. Because I think that is what will most likely happen. The last thing I want is to justify his return for one more year.

I just found you by way of the House That Rock Built. The comic strip I dig like dirt. I think we have radically divergent politics, but you're funny and you're a Domer, so 2 outta 3 ain't bad. Keep up the good work.

Welcome aboard, Phil. And, hey, in the words of the wise Kang (or Kronos, I can't remember), "Very well, abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"

On songs sung to weird tunes, this school in the Albany area, Guilderland High, sings their alma mater to the tune of O Tannenbaum. Like, "O, Guilderland/ O Guilderland..." I have no idea what the next line is, but if they were going to go "O [three syllables]," O, Canada may've been the better pick.

(Further along these lines, which I can't imagine anyone giving a shit about, I was trying to sing my high school's alma mater for 2.0, but the only tune I could come up with was that of Notre Dame, Our Mother. Which is really how it should be.)

More typing!!1! I must've skimmed your comment first time through, Wood, because the running nude through the blood of innocents part just hit me. I think that would be a huge improvement over the 90s Comic Book Outfits that Nike hooked your boys up with last year.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds... You watch the fashion, everyone, except Joe Pa, will be following Tech in the next few years. The comic book kick in hollywood is too big to resist.

Mediocre mi -! Why I oughtta!

Anyone watching the game last night notice this? I've noticed for a while now that Right wingers usually receive a slightly warmer-than-neutral reception from the announcers, and have often wondered about the lack of boos when phenomenally unpopular members of the administration make appearances at sporting events (Cheney aside), but I never really though it was as devious as this guys puts forth. Wouldn't shock me in the slightest, though.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/26/8550/57285

Well...

The way I see it, what Bush. Sr did is viewed far lesser than what the current President has done in the public's eye. (In other words, they realized it did get a lot worse.) Plus, his charity work with Clinton probably has caused a lot of people to give the "all is forgiven" mantra.

Unless you were talking about Spike Lee. In which case, all I have to wonder is about how much is Isiah Thomas is paying him to say what little he did about the Knicks.

I dislike Bush I, but I agree that he's been more or less forgiven Stateside (I have no idea his standing in the international community). He's not doing any harm right now, everyone's forgotten the early-90s recession that he oversaw, and at least he accomplished his end goal in the Middle East back in '91. (Full disclosure - at the time, I thought we should go in and take over, just like Shitwit does now. The difference? I was in seventh grade at the time.)

I meant the 'click' with the audio track last night, though. I'm assuming it's pretty unnoticeable and you'd have to be somewhat aware it was coming to pick up on it, but I was just wondering.