Eat as much pork as you can. We have to stop these bastards.

Tags: Humor, humour, Swine Flu
Comments: 3

For no reason whatsoever, here are some Big Brother 11 predictions.

The house usually seems to split into two groups, with one group being considered by the bulk of viewers to be “good guys,” and the other side villains. A third group doesn’t fully align but either floats back and forth as the power shifts or tries laying completely low and under the radar.

Here’s how the house is divided and my predictions for each house guest (as of 7-28-09):

“Good Guys”
Braden (already gone)
Laura (already gone)
Casey (no doubt he’s going this week)
Jordan (probably get evicted)
Jeff

“Evil Doers”
Ronnie (definitely will be evicted; I feel like he’s going next week)
Jessie (definitely will be evicted)
Natalie (definitely will be evicted)
Chima

Floaters:
Lydia (definitely will be evicted)
Kevin (definitely will be evicted)
Michelle (probably get evicted)
Russell

The ones without predictions are the ones I’m not sure about at all. Since I’m not positive they’ll get evicted, and can’t even say they probably will be evicted, I suppose that means I expect they have a great shot at making it to the end.

As of now, I would expect the final two to be Jeff and Russell. Other possibles: Chima, Michelle, or Jordan.

UPDATE 8-7-09:
Now that Ronnie is gone, I expect Jeff to use the Coup d’état and put Jessie and Natalie up together (for no other reason than that is what I would do).

Tags: Big Brother, Big Brother 11, Entertainment, Reality TV, Television
Comments: 2

When I saw Superman Returns, one of the previews which flickered onto the screen was for M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. People openly mocked it. Not just a couple disaffected teen slackers sitting too close to the screen, no, all types of people all over the theater. They were laughing, making jokes about it. As expected, that didn’t bode well for the film’s popularity. Perhaps you can gauge how not well by Shyamalan’s latest film being described as “by the director of The Sixth Sense and Signs.” (Films from 1999 and 2002 respectively, which ought to tell you something right there.)

I knew then things weren’t looking good for Shyamalan’s career. His latest film The Happening also isn’t out yet, and already the mocking has begun, as evidenced by this poster, defaced by anonymous wits in NYC:

(photo by wellohorld)

Or, as this review of The Happening by Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club states:

M. Night Shyamalan used to have a vast army of fans. Now he has a dwindling network of apologists. The former frightmaster’s descent from wunderkind to embarrassment has been unusually dramatic and public…

Why? Well, first his films are bad. The only (supposedly) good thing about The Sixth Sense is the ending — and I figured it out from the previews. (Really, have you people never read a ghost story that you couldn’t see that coming?) They all feel the same: soaked in dread, self-important, and more ponderously paced than a 36-hour child birth. It doesn’t help that like his films, the man himself is dreadfully self-important, strutting around as if he’s God’s gift to film. About the only good thing I can say about M. Night Shyamalan is he has some skill at crafting a story, but he comes up short in practically every other area I can think of.

I’ve thought for years the best thing Shyamalan could do is stop his two years between films nonsense, stop trying to be the next Alfred Hitchcock, and make several different genres of films in one year. The man needs to make a musical, a slapstick comedy, maybe a crime drama. It would go a long way to expanding his abilities and informing his other films’ outlook. As it is, he just keeps recycling the same crap over and over and audiences have been onto him for the better part of a decade. I don’t even bother watching his films anymore. I just look at spoilers to confirm I once again correctly guessed the ending.

But I’m not holding my breath for any self-discovery out of “Night,” as he likes to be called. He’d first have to acknowledge that perhaps he’s not the genius mommy always told him he was.

Yes, people are so over M. Night Shyamalan. Too bad he’ll never be over himself.

Tags: Entertainment, Film, M. Night Shyamalan, Movies, The Happening
Comments: none

The other day I wrote that John McCain had (inadvertently?) called President Bush “a fool or a fraud” in a recent campaign ad, when he said, “Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

I concluded that article by writing:

…can you deny George “I can hardly be bothered to show up for National Guard duty” Bush talks tough about war? If you do deny that you’re beyond hope. If you can’t deny it, which is he: fool, fraud, or both?

Wednesday, President Bush gave an interview to the Times of London expressing regret over his “tough” talk. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” he reportedly said. He further said that such remarks as “bring them on” and “dead or alive” could have wrongly “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace.”

You can, “you know,” imagine my blank, dumbfounded stare at that last one.

So, I only have two questions: Did Bush take McCain’s backhanded rebuke to heart? And how many wars do you get to start and still be considered “a man of peace?”

Tags: Current Events, George W. Bush, John McCain, Times of London
Comments: none

I love the conspiracy theories flying over Big Brown not only losing the final leg of the Triple Crown but coming in dead last. He was supposed to win, don’t you know?! Obviously if he lost there must be some dark secret behind it!

Some of the theories I’ve heard:

• Gamblers had the fix in so they could win.
• Bookies had the fix in so they wouldn’t lose big.
• The other jockeys conspired to box out Big Brown, not caring who won so long as it wasn’t him.
• The horse was suddenly taken off steroids, thus explaining away both his previous good performances and his last dreadful one.
• The horse just didn’t give a f**k.

On and on it goes.

Come here, I’m going to tell you the real reason Big Brown lost. Get close, I need to whisper, we wouldn’t want the conspiracy theorists to know the real reason, would we?

Big Brown lost because… he lost.

Simple, isn’t it? There’s a saying in football that on any given Sunday anyone can win. What that means is, it doesn’t matter who is supposed to win, it doesn’t matter who is better on paper, on any given Sunday it is up for grabs and anyone can walk away with it.

Big Brown lost because… any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

You need to understand: There is no such thing as a sure thing. Nothing is absolutely, 100% guaranteed.

If Big Brown had been the only horse running the Belmont Stakes, a Triple Crown win still could not be guaranteed. Even a horse running without any competition could break its leg right out of the gate, its heart could explode half way around, it could suddenly develop agoraphobia and refuse to set hoof on the track. Even in that seemingly guaranteed situation, there is still the element of doubt, no matter how slight, that the horse will never get to the finish line.

Though something seems 99.9999% locked up and assured, there’s still that .0001% likelihood of it not happening, and sometimes that .0001% will hit. Playing the percentages just means you’re likely to win, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to win. There’s no such animal. Take it from someone who’s seen that .0001% come up more times than would seem possible.

Any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

Tags: Belmont Stakes, Big Brown, Gambling, Sports, Sports Betting, Success, Triple Crown
Comments: none