Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Imagine If You Will

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Just for a moment - I'd like everyone to imagine what would have happened at the Route 91 Festival in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, had 4 or 5 THOUSAND of those 20,000 concert attendees pulled out their handguns and began firing.

(Towards the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Towards the Luxor. Towards helicopters... towards each other...)

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

An Amazing New Band


It was August 31, 2016 (Stephanie's birthday). We had just finished our fantasy football draft. Mike Matney sent me an amazing song.. "Ether" by Bloody Hammers, and I think it might have been the 2nd time he'd sent it to me. Mike is amazing, and has turned me onto quite a few new bands. "Ether" is fantastic, by the way, as is a lot of their other stuff.

I had just prior to that shown him "Anesthetize" by Porcupine Tree, the Gavin Harrison drum-cam version. Upon reading a bunch of the comments under Bloody Hammers' "Ether," I figured out that in addition to them being one of Sweden's most popular bands, someone mentioned that this band called GHOST is too.

Not even 15 minutes later I was listening to this live version of Ghost's recently Grammy award-winning song, "Cirice", and this was my very first exposure to Ghost. The rest is history. . .

Saw them live in October, 2016. They have a ton of history, and have also entangled themselves within a lot of mystery surrounding band members' identities, and such.. But their music is so good that the negative publicity is worthless. They've toured the world, drawn millions of fans, and are currently venturing out on a tour along with IRON MAIDEN.

They are also currently working on their next studio album.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

I'm Back

I'm coming back. I just have way too much to say, and no way to say it. You know - other than liking and sharing crap on Facebook.



Monday, November 28, 2016

This Is How To Fix The Electoral College

We all know its purpose. It's to "even-out" the vote, so that all of the giant metropolitan areas across the country don't dominate the election.. blah blah blah.

Rolling Stone is certainly not a source I would usually cite, and/nor proudly expect positive consequences for pretty much anything - especially rock 'n' roll - but here's a good article from them I ran across a week or two ago... and I'll quote the most important part below, you know, for the lazy.

"Wyoming, the nation's lowest population state, has just over 560,000 people. Those people get three electoral votes, or one per 186,000 people. California, our most populous state, has more than 37 million people. Those Californians have 55 electoral votes, or one per 670,000 people. Comparatively, people in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as people in California. Put another way, if California had the same proportion of electoral votes per person as Wyoming, it would have about 200 electoral votes." (Source)

Yep, it's just simple math, people. Each state's electoral vote total needs to be proportional to the population of each state. That was the intention some 240 years ago, anyway. However the simple fact that each state (regardless of population) has exactly two senators, and that the number TWO helps to determine the number of electoral college votes for each state, is absurd!

So here's the fix:
Click it to enlarge!


Original Content (Data from Wikipedia)

And it needs to be edited before every election. I'm pretty sure the government has several statisticians employed, who can accurately project the population growth of each state based on the last census each time. If not, there are probably a few available. It's not that difficult.

By the way, with that fix I also just created 1,105 extra jobs (and growing).

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

A Tribute to Jay Howard, Voice of the San Antonio Spurs

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I've been wanting to write this article for many years now, but for some reason, I simply haven't taken the time. But there's no reason why I can't take 30 minutes and get it done! By the way.. Absolutely no offense whatsoever is intended to Bill Schoening! Bill does such a fantastic job that I would rather mute the TV whenever there's no Bill Land & Sean Elliott Spurs' TV broadcast, and listen to Bill, than most of the scrubs we're "forced" to listen to on ESPN & TNT.

A lot of people in my circle of NBA basketball fans absolutely cannot stand the NBA announcing trio of Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, and Mike Breen, who call games for ESPN & ABC. There are also a lot of people who like them, and surely a ton who don't care. I have written about my opinion of these three before! But this post isn't directed at the blabbering of both Van Gundy and Jackson, as it is towards Mike Breen.

Of the three Mike Breen is the one guy who actually does a halfway decent job calling the play-by-play. While JVG and Jackson continue to argue over irrelevant ideas, and disregard the fact that the fans are listening to their banter, while trying to FOLLOW a game they're interested in, they haven't a clue that they aren't doing the job they've been hired for. As an aside -- Does ESPN get (or acknowledge) any customer feedback in this regard??

OK OK, I said this post wasn't about how much I can't stand Van Gundy & Jackson. This post is to give some long-overdue credit to a guy who used to call Spurs' games back in the day. And also to let Mike Breen know that, although he does a "decent" job as a play-by-play basketball announcer (and bonus points for enduring JVG & Jackson), he needs to know something he probably doesn't know.

Jay Howard was yelling "BANG" LONG BEFORE Breen was!

Click to enlarge! - Image Source

Here is good ol' Jay calling our 1999 Championship!


Friday, February 5, 2016

2015-16 NBA Standings Thru Feb. 5

Another amazing season is shaping up - in case you haven't been paying attention!

Here are the NBA standings through Feb. 5, 2016:

Click to enlarge! -- (Source)

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Just a RANT about Anti-Smoking Commercials

You know what really makes me SICK?

Several DECADES ago, our government put their foot down, and decided to no longer allow cigarette advertisements on TV. None whatsoever.

So now that it's 2016, why in the hell do I have to watch commercials showing a guy explaining how much it sucks to live his life when he has a hole in his throat? I won't watch, but I also mute the TV, because the last thing anyone wants to hear is a guy having to hold a machine against his larynx to be able to talk, and I don't want to hear it. And it's not only him. This company has launched several anti-smoking advertisements recently, with a few different "victims". Some of them have recently died, and they are sure to let us know that.


source

Not only that, but now we also have to see tons of new anti-smoking commercials, such as these.

I'm a smoker, and I have been since I was about 21. Most of the past 23 years I enjoyed smoking a few cigarettes a day. Some of those days I smoke wayy tooo much. People enjoy smoking. Cigarettes.. Pipes.. Cigars.. Marijuana.... But I stray from the point.

I used to pay $3.25 for a pack of smokes back in the 90's. These days a pack is at least $6. Sometimes they're $7.50.

You're not allowed to advertise cigarette sales. Please stop advertising only the worst possible scenarios that result from smoking!


Mushrooms

We've all been there. Standing in front of the spices in the grocery store.

Why is there no dried mushroom spice/flavor? I mean they can come up with a ton of different stuff, most of which most of us have never heard of. But mushrooms are delicious in everything from spaghetti, pizza, most other pastas, and a ton of other stuff, but we always have to buy mushrooms (which go bad quickly) for this addition. McDonalds even puts freeze-dried onions on some of their "fresh" burgers. Yeah.