Innocent Bystanders

In a thread below, Dave and I were talking about heavy metal fixtures on the target cables of gun ranges.

That reminded me of an obscure, but excellent, song from way back called “Heavy Metal.”  It’s a song that offers the raw beat of heavy metal, but also features singers that can harmonize and serious work by the lead guitar.  Not just showy arpeggios, but real Clapton-worthy artistry.

I found it on YouTube, because it was featured in a truly bizarre South Park episode called “Major Boobage.”

Heavy metal.  South Park.  Major boobage.

I’m the kind of guy who needs to share.  I’m all about the love.

NSFW.

Read more >> Options >>

Here is one way:

Here is how others may spend their time off:

Or, here is another idea:

I guess I have led a sheltered life, not knowing until today that shooting bowling pins was a big deal.

Anyway, here is a random video I found of this particular activity:
[UPDATE: RG NOTICED THE FIRST VIDEO I FOUND WAS "NO LONGER AVAILABLE". SO, HERE'S ANOTHER RANDOM VIDEO OF A GUY SHOOTING BOWLING PINS.]

You know, I had a tough decision: post close up photos of my feet after running and contrast it with a close up of my feet with my orange Crocs, or this.

While this was not a Kafkaesque situation (personally, I’m an O Henry guy), it does resemble the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, only this time, all options are bad.

Enjoy.

  I see that one of my real world buddies has discovered the IB-iverse.  Commenter extraordinaire “Jay in Ames” left a blurb on my last post, and I just wanted to say “Come on in, take off your shoes, make yourself comfortable and get me a new beer while you’re up”. 

  Jay is the man who singlehandedly convinced my father that my whole college career was one long drunken haze. 

  In the fall of ‘95, ISU had a running back named Troy Davis who was tearing up the turf.  In his two years as a starter, he managed to rack up back to back 2,000 yard seasons (which has NEVER been done before in D1 football, or since…but did he win the freakin’ Heisman?  Nooooooooooo.), and he was the main reason to watch ISU football for the 95 and 96 seasons.  A family friend was working as a sales rep for a industrial machinery company at the time, and he gave my father and I two tickets five rows up from the bench smack dab on the 50 yard line for the ISU game against Kansas State.  This game was played in early November, and as frequently happens in Iowa, the weather was abysmal that week.  Temps were below 20 degrees, and the wind was pushing 20 to 30 mph all day.  By the second half, I’d bet that the stadium held about 300 or so people hanging on to watch the buttkicking that ISU got that day. 

  After the game, we met up with two of my old roommates at a Campustown bar for pizza & beer.  Welch Avenue Station is a great bar to sit down & watch a game, and Pizza Pit, the restaurant located upstairs from the bar, brings the pies right down to your table.  We were all sitting at a big table up by the window out onto Welch Avenue, when the bartender came over to get our orders.  He went around the table getting everyone’s drinks, and when he got to me at last, he said “OK, Russ.  What can I get you.”  My dad shot me a look that said “You graduated four years ago, and the bartenders STILL know you by your first name?”  Ames is a town of about 50,000 people when the students are in town, so I couldn’t play it off like I could have if I’d gone to some small-town college.  I was sort of freaked out at first, but then I figured out what happened.  Two of my old buddies from the dorms had worked at Welch Avenue Station during school, and I had been introduced to Jay at some off campus party sometime during college.  At least that’s what I figure.  The late 80’s and early 90’s are somewhat hazy to me still. 

  Fast forward to about 2000 or 2001, and I’m a regular commenter on a sports talk radio station message board in Des Moines.  We schedule a “get together” at an Iowa Cubs AAA baseball game, and a bunch of us reprobates from the internet meet (without firearms, Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat, or geniune Iowa beef, so it really wasn’t much of an internet get-together).  What do you know, but one of them JUST HAPPENED TO BE JAY FROM AMES!  Weird. 

  Oh yeah, and my dad finally met Jay at one of our tailgates a few years ago.  I reminded him of the original incident, and we got a big laugh out of it. 

  Anyway, he’ll be a valuable addition to our little corner of the internet.  I can’t vouch for his shooting ability, but I can reassure you that he always filled the pitchers of Bass Ale right up to the very, very top.  That makes him a stand-up guy in my book.

  Two years ago, I wrote a weekly college football column for an Iowa State University fan website on the Scout network.  It was a piece where I gave the perspective of “Joe SixPack” and reviewed the gameday experience from a seat in the bleachers.  No press pass, no access, no journalism experience, and no talent!  I wrote the column for free, because I wanted to give it a shot & see what I could do.  I did a daily column from the Big 12 Basketball tournament the spring before (March of ‘05) where I would come back to the hotel room from the bars at 2 or 3 am and pound out five or six pages on my laptop and send ‘em in to the webmaster.  I trusted the HELL out of him to edit out any drunken profanity I might have let slip into the mix in those columns.  I reprised my role when ISU went back to the Big 12 tourney in Dallas in March of ‘06, but since ISU lost in the first round, my columns were limited to one that they had to put a “the proprietors of this site do not necessarily agree with all opinions expressed in this article” tag on (at my suggestion, because I said some non-complementary things about the Big 12 conference and the Dallas site).

  I did one SHORT season-ending wrapup on football in early January of ‘07, a short midseason basketball piece , and a VERY short report on the Big 12 basketball tourney in Oklahoma City back in March of ‘07, and then pretty much retired from that job due to a conflict of opinion with the site’s publisher/owner:  I thought he was an asshole, and he respectfully disagreed (in a VERY assholish way, of course).   I didn’t do any writing last season because I was burnt out on the whole process, but I recently exchanged some emails with a guy who runs an ISU fan website independent of Rivals or Scout (the two big boys in fan websites) networks.  When I mentioned that I might be feeling like bringing the magic pencil back out of retirement, he encouraged me and said that he was a BIG fan of my previous work.  That’s nice to hear, because the owner of the site I used to write for barely even knew that I worked for him (can you call it “working” if you’re not getting paid?  Beats me.) and I even had a Khafka-esque encounter with the “silent partner” of the site at a bar in Oklahoma City where he was doing fan interviews.  I made it 30 minutes through a taped interview with the guy, and then asked him “Hey, are you sure you don’t remember me?  I WRITE FOR YOUR FREAKING WEBSITE, Moron!”  It was…..uncomfortable, to say the least. 

  Anyway, the proprietor of Cyclone Fanatic dot com wants me to join his team.  He’s even offered to pay me to write articles.  This is a mindscrambler:  someone will PAY me to do what I was gonna do for free anyway?  Wow, if I can just find sponsors for my bacon eating, gun collecting and masturbation habits, I’ll be a VERY happy man.

  The format of the old columns was VERY unstructured.  Sort of “Hunter S. Thompson meets…….Hunter S. Thompson’s drunken cousin”.  I would talk about the media attention leading up to the game, the trip to the game with my old college drinking buddies, the tailgating experiences we had, our amateur analysis of the game & the gameday experience, and hip trendy pop-culture references to make me look cool with all the kids.  We had a ratty old stuffed boar’s head that Janis bought at an estate sale for $200 which we mounted on the front of the bus and named “Bobby Trippe” (google the name if you’re curious).  Bobby became a regular part of my columns, as did my old buddies “Hogfarmer”, “Hooter”, “The Fire Marshall”, “Goldie” and “Jethro”.  Luckily our old buddy “Jizz” never made it back from Utah to see any of the games, or else I think the bluenosed owner of the site would have edited my work. 

  The resulting columns are probably going to keep my old tagline (”Putting Lipstick on a Pig”) and be done under my fansite user name (”CYlent Bob”, a witty play on the ISU Cyclones & my alleged resemblance to Gonzo Director Kevin Smith).  I think I’ll be making it to a couple of road games as well this year, and Jeremy from the site tells me that he’s THIS close to getting me a real, honest to God…..PRESS PASS.  A press pass.  In the hands of a man who doesn’t give a damn about furthering his career in the business.  This could be dangerous.  I’m really going to have to try to keep my demons in line at press conferences.  I’d love to be the guy who gets up in a presser to ask ”Excuse me, but did you just say that your game plan was right for the situation but that the team didn’t execute properly?  Coach, do we all LOOK retarded?”  I think that asking obvious questions like these would be good if I ran the site myself, but I’m not going to put another guy’s rear end in the frying pan for my lack of diplomacy.  Besides, if you’re gonna ask snarky questions like that, you might as well save up and ask one MONUMENTALY EPIC one, because you’re gonna lose the press pass anyway within 48 hours, so you’d might as well go out as a legend.

  I have no idea what the compensation for these articles will be.  I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of $10 an article or something like that (I still don’t understand internet business models, but I guess I’m just a bricks & mortar kind of guy that way), but I’d probably settle for free parking passes and gas money for road trips.  Janis wants me to take all the money & put it into Baby Moses’ college fund, which is a pretty good idea.  It’s not as if I’ll be making “coke and hookers” sized money anyway, so I’d might as well make it go to a good cause.

  As my bestest fakey interwebthingy buddies, I’ll make sure to keep you all posted on my work.

Gallup finally does a survey that is relevant.

In recent years, wine had narrowed the gap, including pulling slightly ahead in 2005 (though not by a significant margin), but for the first time since 2002, beer enjoys a better-than-double-digit advantage over wine.

Zombie Dating Services.

Female Collegiate Soccer Players, especially Megan Ohai.

Michigan weather in late July.

Mr. Long Wang.

And finally, science focusing on what is important: the damage women cause their breasts by wearing the wrong undergarments while exercising.

Dr Scurr - who has tested 50 bra designs on hundreds of women over the last three years - believes the speed at which breasts move could be the key to preventing breast pain and damage to fragile ligaments.

Her team has helped design a new, extra supportive bra made with moulded plastic which goes on sale later this year.

“Of the women I have seen during my work I would say only five per cent were wearing the right size bra,” said Dr Scurr.

“Most women wear an underband that is too large and a cup size that is too small. Wearing the wrong size bra can cause discomfort and offers reduced levels of support that can lead to stretching and ultimately sagging.”

Women experience the most discomfort when their breasts accelerate or decelerate, the scientists found.

Yes, I know this important topic has been covered before, but in the public interest, breast health cannot be discussed enough.

Well, I really screwed up the last post I did. But seriously, who hasn’t confused Berlin, CT with Berlin, Germany?

Anyway, here a few more things to be thankful for as we start another week of work:

Rosario Dawson hosing herself off. Seriously, who cares why.

Packers Fans taking Brett Favre’s situation in an understated manner.

Somebody else hates commercials as much as I do.

Most people merely dislike commercials. I fucking HATE them. I loathe them with all the bile in my bloated liver. Hatred for ads is embedded in my marrow, programmed into my DNA, woven into the fabric of my soul.

That’s why the people who invented TiVo/DVR and satellite radio are gods. They have golden thrones reserved in heaven, while advertising fuckfaces like Big Daddy Drew will burn for all eternity because they profited from making everyone else’s life just a little bit more miserable. Ever written a jingle? Die. And then say hi to Hitler for me.

Leopard Vs. Crocodile.

And finally, I have a new addition to the house. My latest arrival is called Mosin-Nagant 7.62, and it will defend the home well. Also, the fucker is so heavy, I could just use it as a club if necessary. I had a photo of the rifle, but the Kodak Easy Share Program on my computer ate the photo. So, I have to settle for this video:

Hugh Jackman, my close personal friend, dropped in for a visit today.

He asked me to say hi to the IB ladies.  The big dork is out layin in the pool now, suckin down a Fosters (I keep em around for him, although to be honest, I like Fosters too).

Oddly enough, he shares a birthday with my eldest younger sis, October 12th.  I got this for him for his b-day so it’s an early gift.

He really likes it.

I’ll figure out something else for Michael and Mrs. Michael.

also, some of you gals have made quite the impression on Hugh.  I’m just sayin!

Back when I was in undergrad and sometimes coherent, I all but lived on Hot Pockets. That lava hot cheese. That ambiguous “meat”. That funky sleeve thingy. All for $1.50 for two of them. That meant more money for alcohol, so you know, being the Biz School man I was, I allocated my resources properly and filled my freezer with Hot Pockets so that the essentials would be perpetually handy. And that fucking do-gooder down the hall complaining of the smell and flatulence? Go bite my ass, fuckface! I’m eating and boozing and getting laid. And you?

*ahem*

Anyway, I read with much sorrow today that there has been a recall of a shitload of LeanPockets, the “diet” spinoff of HotPockets.

About 200,000 pounds of the products, a spinach artichoke chicken package with two sandwiches, are affected.

This prompted a recall of the greatest stand up skit not featuring the late George Carlin (PBUH):

Anyway, what’s a lad to do while waiting out the recall? Here are a few suggestions:

Ponder whether or not Batman could really exist.

What’s most plausible about portrayals of Batman’s skills?
You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We’re seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

Thanks to Wisergenius for the above.

Go out and exercise.

Steve Striker of Edwardsville planned to eat at least 24 doughnuts. He was working on 20 doughnuts when he reached the Worden pit stop.

“I don’t think I’ll make my goal. It’s tough to hold it back now,” Striker said as he was shoving five doughnuts into his mouth.

First-time participant Blake Stevens of Edwardsville said the ride was fun.

“I got to see some guy puke after eating 25 doughnuts, so that was interesting,” Stevens said.

Cope with the InBev buyout of A-B:

Q: What should I drink instead?

A: You have several options. You can drink Miller Lite, which is fucking terrible. You can also drink Coors Light, which is also fucking terrible. But at least Coors Light is an offical sponsor of the NFL. Also, when you open a Coors Light, a big fucking silver train comes from out of nowhere! And you can see your breath! And girls with big tits show up out of thin air! Awesome.
…
Whatever you do, DO NOT drink any Belgian beer. Belgium is renowned for making delicious dubbels and trappist ales that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. THIS IS A TRAP. It’s right there in the name: “trap”pist. You know who makes those beers? Bloodthirsty Belgian monks, who employ the beer as a sedative before FUCKING THEIR VICTIMS UP THE ASS. You keep that Chimay away from my family, you perverts.

Or, you could engage in some “bonding” with the USC Football Team.

You could drive scooters in Columbus, OH (I hear that is popular with some on this site).

It’s difficult to get an exact estimate as to how many scooters are being operated around the city, but some estimates are as high as 3,000.

“With the fuel injection engines, it should get about 100 miles per gallon under normal use,” Beam said.

But there are drawbacks.

Scooters are now mixing into the flow of traffic.

Dave Hughes and his wife have started riding scooters to and from work.

“It’s more of a respect thing and ‘you’re in my way kind of thing,’” Hughes said.

But as the price of gasoline remains high, scooters may not always be the vehicles that are “in the way.”

“We’ve been absolutely inundated (with a) 35 scooter backorder right now,” Beam said.

With a higher demand than supply, Central Ohioans should expect to see more and more of them as more are built and available.

Or, you could hang out with some Canadian Football Cheerleaders.

Folks, the choice is yours. Choose wisely.

I just thought I’d share a sign we saw at a beach on Lake Erie, when we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago. Note the little addition some very creative person made to the sign:

The whole family got a laugh out of it.

UPDATE:

I’ve been asked by Michael to include the social relevance of a post like this:

I’m assuming that your picture of the pooping dog sign will be accompanied by an insightful explanation of how this relates to matters of public importance. It seems to me, for example, that dogs pooping on beaches are a metaphor for a reckless and irresponsible consumer culture that has led to the Crisis of Global Warming™.

Yes, that…and also the distressing inability parents have these days to control their kids’ behavior.

And, oh…if you don’t like this post…blame Eddiebear, he told me to do it.

Had this story happened in a certain pool in Texas, we may be reading about a Kimber helping facilitate some new steaks on a new grill. But, instead, we read about a bull escaping in England and landing in some guy’s new pool.

Apparently, the bull, named Broombrae Tramp, was brought to a farm to “mingle” with the female cows. From there, the young lad decided he wanted to make a break for it, only to land in the new pool of some businessman. And pool owners being pool owners, they could only think of themselves and be useless.

“I don’t think they were terribly pleased with us - we stood in the garden with glasses of wine and shouted unhelpful suggestions.”

Mr Stewart’s children Samantha, 12, Lucy, 10, and Finbar, 7, were delighted with their unusual party guest.

But all is not lost. The pool can be saved.

The outdoor heated pool, designed by Alba Pools, will need minor repairs and to be refilled.

Oh well. In true European Nanny-Statism, the bull was helped out of the pool and allowed to live another day, instead of winding up on somebody’s plate, which is what would have happened here in America. Just as long as the pool owner doesn’t blog incessantly about the repairs to the pool, or the missed opportunity to unload a magazine into a cow, all will be good.

I guess.