When the need arises for a post format featuring unfocused ramblings about subjects unable to support an entire post individually, the world turns to...Choking Yak's Provoking Facts.

- On the other side of my cubicle wall, one of my senior managers (like the boss that's levels above my boss, the Bowser to my goomba) is talking to my group's administrative assistant (aka the frumpy woman that orders office supplies for us) about the changes she made to her "Facebook page." He's over 50 and she's over 30...it's creeping me out on a level that I'm not used to being at. I already have problems with old people using computers, or technology in general. They shouldn't be on Facebook as well. Just yet another reason why I will never sign up.

- Ajax Wiki Search is a neat little site that attaches a search sidebar for Wikipedia that searches for stuff as you type. You can also make quick searches through the actual URL, as demonstrated in the original link.

- Three Friday's ago, I stopped shaving. It started as just being lazy and not bothering to shave Friday morning for work...but then it carried on through the Thanksgiving weekend...and then I took Tuesday and Wednesday off...and suddenly it became the longest stretch of time I'd gone without shaving since high school. (This would be the equivalent of a white person not shaving for a single day, or an Indian person not shaving for like...six hours.) Wildly euphoric and delirious from my beard high, I even recklessly accepted a dare from Jess that I couldn't go two weeks straight without shaving.

I did not make the two weeks. I shaved last Tuesday.

It got to be too much for me, sitting in meetings, jealously looking at all the glorious beards of all the brown guys and Polish guys around me, taunting my crude approximation of a beard. Plus, my parents endlessly gave me shit for it, subtlety destroying my self esteem in the deprecating yet loving way that only parents can.

But I've caught a glimpse of its true power now...and I've opened a door that cannot ever be closed again.

- Check out this Kevin Martin dunk against the Blazers in preseason, which - while impressive - is really only enjoyable because it came from a bet he made with Mikki Moore as to who could dunk on Greg Oden first.

- Dan's comment has prompted me to think...as a socio-politically disadvantaged group, there should be more affirmative action policies in place to abate the rampant discrimination against the Asian male. Perhaps policies should be put in place where certain recruitment quotas are established, like how companies are legally obligated to hire a certain number of the disabled into their workforce, or how Canadian radio stations are required to fill like 40% or whatever of their airtime with crappy Canadian music. Every year, the population of Asian women need to meet a certain quota of Asian guys dated, which will in turn be closely scrutinized and compared against the percentage of white guys dated, and so forth. I'd consider it a great success if we could get the ratio back to 1:1. We'd also push to get a similar percentage established with white women as well, but honestly...even establishing a quota in the first place would have to be considered a huge victory, worthy of its own national holiday. But no fat, anime loving otaku hood rats! That doesn't count.

This will be my election campaign for when the factions divide and the inevitable Race Wars start. I will broker these deals, and the years of social and emotional abuse of my brothers at the hands of evil, whorish Asian women and the white guys that date them will finally begin to be compensated for. We will hold software development and superstar comic book artists as bargaining chips. See how long your way of life will last after we take those off the table!

- Hollywood Director Attack Ads asks the question "What if famous directors were commissioned to helm campaign ads for John McCain?" And then it answers them. With a vengeance.

- And finally, a quality version of the alleged teaser trailer for Dragonball. It looks...glorious.

I've had Crowed House randomly stuck in my head the whole day, but I don't remember the words at all, so I've had these two lines just endlessly loop over and over again in my brain, driving me insane. Don't try and look for deeper meaning in today's (or any day's) quotable post send-off.

Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over

10/27/2008 04:37:00 PM | Comments (0)

Bright-Eyed Athena And The Ass-Crack Of Dawn

Colony Of Birchmen - Mastodon

A selection of links, to tide you over this weekend.

With EliteXC going under and the future of American Gladiators in doubt, it looks like it's going to be slim pickings when it comes to your Gina Carano viewing options in the near future. We'll always have Craig Ferguson. Gina says that fighting is kind of like sex. Well, duh. Ah, Gina. She's so bashful and shy...*swoon*. I don't care if she struggles to make weight, she'll always be my chubby, little queen.

*****

I think my only problem with using I Don't Want To Wait in the first episode of Mass Romantic is that the song has been used in satirical situations ad nauseaum. Exhibit A. Then again, this was about ten years ago so maybe it is time to bring it back.

*****

Here's a video of The Spinto Band peforming Later On in the kitchen. I found this video with no help from anyone at all. I'm just kidding. Happy Birthday, Sue!

*****

For anyone who wasn't aware of this yet, Nathan Fillion is...Nailing Your Wife. Better late than never, I suppose.

And for anyone who hasn't seen the Derrick Comedy movie trailer yet, shame on you. I know I was probably the last one to get on this, but I feel like this website exists solely to preserve these things.

*****

Annia was telling me that she is obsessed with the Andy Samberg/Mark Wahlberg bits on SNL (look them up yo' damn self). Well, I'm obsessed with MacGruber. I don't care if everyone ("everyone" meaning Annia and my mother, the ultimate authorities on pop culture) hates these sketches. The guy's a friggin' genius, MACGRUBER!

Also found on Hilarious.net, this is one of the funniest fucking things I've seen in a while. It helps if you've listened to a lot of rap battles. Otherwise, it pretty much sums up every rap battle ever done.

*****

Last, but certainly not least, I give you Patton Oswalt at Blizzcon. Go to the end of the pics for the audio. I warn you, this whole set is about 45 minutes long, so I recommend downloading it first and then saving it for a rainy day. Unless you're like me and have absolutely no life whatsoever, then by all means listen and laugh away.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a brief summary of my argument. You, sir, are a weak, timid and untrustworthy homosexual. The city in which you live is not nearly as difficult to live in, nor is it in such a high state of disrepair as mine. I am a superior monologist in this debate and any claim to the contrary will result in physical violence and perhaps even death.

10/24/2008 04:19:00 PM | Comments (0)

I haven't done many things in my life, but if I die tomorrow this will be my one significant contribution to mankind.

Best Movie Ever?

Also, in honor of me playing the hell out of Saint's Row 2. Here's possibly my favourite diss track ever. How is this song used in the commercial but not in the damn game?

10/22/2008 07:58:00 PM | Comments (0)

Let me just get some links out of the way before I actually write something with original material in it.

- An arrested warrant has been issues for an Indiana man that has been accused of repeatedly biting a 9 year-old boy and casting "spells" on two high school teachers. Guess what race this man is. (Hint: He refers to himself as an "Aryan sorcerer.") Meanwhile, this Boston man took "his three terrified kids on a high-speed late-night gun battle in an SUV reeking of pot and loaded with a high-powered weapon and an open 12-pack of beer." Guess his race. (Hint: The mother of the children claims he's innocent. "He’s a victim. It’s just because he’s a big black man." That should help narrow it down a bit.) Thank you Internet.

- I have this link filed away in my stash labeled as just "Japanese nonsense." I think it might work best if I just keep it like that.

- A bit late, but I thought these comments from NLCS Game 4 hero Matt Stairs deserves a click. I just don't know if he really accomplished what he wanted to with that particular choice of words. Look for him to likely get the start at DH in Game 2 of the World Series against Rays righty James Shields.

- Even though I was already musing about it just three posts ago, I was still considerably surprised to find out that EliteXC had actually gone out of business this past Monday. Not very surprising, however, is the realization that I don't really care. I can't see the UFC picking up Kimbo's contract, so I think this might have been the last we've seen of him on legitimate television. Back to hobo street fights on YouTube for him!

- I believe I have found the perfect plot for the next hit romantic-action-comedy sitcom. It will follow the daily misadventures of British and Iraqi employees working in a laundromat...that is really a bomb-making residue detector. Let's purchase the rights, make it a WAMBAG.COM production, and call it...wait for it, wait for it..."Cycles". Huh!?! How 'bout that!?!

- You know how we always used to say that some people are just born with a natural video game adaptivity gene? Well...check out the fifth last paragraph of the link I'm about to give you. Because I think scientists have finally isolated this gene for real.

...it explains so much.

More like 9½ SECONDS.

10/22/2008 12:59:00 PM | Comments (0)

And so it begins.

More tomorrow - I've realized again just now that I'm supposed to like post stuff on this website.

Q: If there were two of you, which one would win?

10/22/2008 12:34:00 AM | Comments (0)

Oh my God...they come in two's now.

WE'RE GOING TO JAPAN!

And a Bacon Potato Pie!?!

EDIT: HOLY SHIT.

Why are you so far away from me?
I need help and you're way across the sea.

10/09/2008 11:31:00 AM | Comments (0)

I've added a new wrinkle to the site, over to the left there that you can use to switch to a different layout or skin for the site. It's kind of lame right now because all I have is a black version of this (which I personally don't use because it hurts my eyes) but I'll add more as it amuses me. And I now I finally have a way to keep them all up here and to switch between them, so hurray for that.

I've found my mind wandering a lot lately, though never anywhere specifically. I've been afflicted with this inability to focus on anything in particular, yet I feel like I'm always mentally racing towards something...like my mind is working overtime on nothing. I wonder if it's just something as pedestrian as sleep deprivation fraying my brain, or if it's a symptom of a deeper, psychological issue. I feel motivated, energetic, even restless...but when I try to commit to something, it dries up and vanishes, like some smokey illusion of motivation that was never really there to start. I feel like I am pregnant with all of these ideas and I am just trying to give birth to all of them. My creative batteries are charged, and either I have too many ideas bouncing around in my head that I can't concentrate enough to just choose one and go with it, or if it's a lack of focus or a creative anchor that I need to really rally behind. For example, I constantly wake up in the morning with a new idea or angle to approach a piece of Project Artemis with...but when I sit down to do it, it suddenly starts to look like a ill fit or just a bad idea to start with. And meanwhile, it's like just working on it inspires a handful of other ideas for other things, but none of them are really ever fully formed and they kind of disappear into thin air as well as soon as I try to look at them more closely.

I suspect this is either just because all of my ideas are terrible and I'm just having a lot more of them lately because I'm eating weird things before I go to bed, or I have a large poisonous tumor that is chemically causing insanity in my brain.

Now here are some links.

- If you haven't seen these already, here's a handful of personal pictures of Seth Petruzelli, the man who embarrassed Kimbo Slice this past Saturday, even though the fight was already fixed against him. What's interesting about this is that out of all the people involved, Ken Shamrock comes out as the biggest loser, allegedly injuring himself the day of the fight and being trash talked by his own brother. A brother vs. brother (Frank Shamrock was adopted), Ken Shamrock vs. Frank Shamrock fight coming up? Please no, I'm so sick of Ken Shamrock, I just want him to retire already and shut up. Regardless, everyone's wondering about the future of EliteXC now that their biggest attraction - the undefeated, mythical internet street brawler Kimbo Slice - has possibly been exposed as an unskilled hack, after being owned so handily by a no-name, replacement scrub. I mean if it was a sneaky ankle lock like with Brock Lesnar or if his ground game was exposed on the mat, then maybe you could blame it just on inexperience or even the element of randomness or luck inherent in all MMA fights in general...but you can't, he just got beat because he sucks. It saddens me a bit, just because of all the comedy we stand to lose, but Kimbo's MMA career is in doubt right now, and the whole EliteXC league is tied to him (but I don't really care about the league, just Kimbo).

Though at least they still have Crush.

- Speaking of huge, crazy, black people...Shaq has apparently added "The Black Michael Phelps" to his already pretty long list of nicknames he's given himself. This is awesome.

- A device that takes bread, turns it into toast, and shoots it onto your plate!?! WHAT!?!

- The ignorant ideas and thinking that prompts nonsense like 5 new rules for dealing with race at work being published in the public domain is exactly what's wrong with the world, and reading articles like this is depressingly deflating and discouraging to my personal lifestyle and selfless campaign to promote the acceptance and practical applications of racial stereotypes in mainstream society. What is this bullshit!?! I mean, look at Rule 3..."Racist jokes rely on an unspoken, shared knowledge of racist stereotypes. Without the stereotypes, there is no humor." Look at this! What kind of world do we in live such that the self described social experts, the pretentious, overly sensitive tightasses that dictate what should and should not be, yearn to eradicate humour from our workplaces, and thus and our lives? The use of stereotypes is just another tool, another form of clever allusions and references in jokes, to frame ideas into a relevant context, charging words and phrases with additional meaning and pretext, layering it as a literary device so that it becomes varyingly effective still depending on which angle at which it is approached from or interpreted, such that the comedic yield of a properly told joke is maximized. These people are the real racists, those that are unable to appreciate and celebrate the inherent unique characteristics of their fellow human beings, and instead wish for a world in which the infinite number of stories of each human life to be expressed upon the giant canvas of human experience as broad, monochrome brush strokes instead of the brilliantly multicoloured radiance of impossibly fine speckles from the rich mosaic of laughter, tears, grief, and hope that it requires and demands. I'm left to wonder about the nature of the world I live in, and while I have absolutely no idea how much of this inane rambling of mine I actually understand, much less believe...I feel very strongly that it is an issue that which we should all feel very strongly about. Even if I don't know specifically how we should feel about it, just that it should be very strong, whatever feeling we inevitably resolve to feel about this whole thing.

- Off the top of my head, I really cannot think of a better way to spend $60,000. I think it'd be worth it if even just to experience the sheer joy of seeing the likeliness of your own face explode in a brilliant shower of loose LEGO bricks when you jumpkick that motherfucker. ...though I suppose you could also request a replica of someone else if you don't share my particular vision of wanting to kung-fu-kick your own LEGO doppelganger in the face.

- Though if you want to spread that into weekly installments of approximately $2,500 and rent a robotic exoskeleton from the Japanese instead, who would I be to suggest otherwise? Imagine what this would do for (and how it's intended for) the physically disabled...and then what it would mean if a normal, physically healthy and capable human being got their hands on (or legs into) this. I bet it's what Superman feels like whenever he's wearing a robotic exoskeleton.

And then imagine if you had $62,500 to spend, and had a use for a life sized LEGO replica of yourself that could walk on its own.

That would be a pretty good week for you.

- A new study shows that one in four mammal species face extinction. To start, I find it a bit bogus, considering that it was completed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which doesn't exactly scream objectivity to me. It'd be like commissioning KFC to perform a study of what the tastiest animal is. I can't trust anything the IUCN says about endangered animals. Now maybe if we had an opposition party like the International Union for Hunting and Eating Animals or the Injustice League perform their own study and compared the results, then we'd have something. But whatever, assume these results can be trusted, that this whole thing isn't another propaganda vehicle being rolled out by the biased liberal media to further their own Zionist agendas (everyone knows how the Jews love animals). I say, good riddance. There's a reason we're at the top of the food chain and the dominant species of this planet - because we beat all the other animals, tooth, nail, claw, and prehensile thumb in a evolutionary battle royale. We earned our spot, fair and square. And now that we want to stretch our legs out a bit and cut down a rainforest or two or, net some tuna on the very planet that we own, here come the sore loser animals, blinking their sad puppy dog eyes (even though they are seals) and appealing to the sympathizing, open toe sandal wearing, tree hugging, hippy demographic. Forget you, animals. You guys just didn't want it bad enough back when it actually mattered. "Currently, 79 percent of Asia's primate species face extinction?" Yeah? Well good, because then maybe they'll stop stealing jobs from hard working human beings.

("Both monkeys are household pets and are certified by the local authorities to work at the tavern. They clock in a maximum of two hours a day and are appreciated by customers who tip them with boiled soya beans." ...there are monkey labour laws in Japan!?!)

Kiss my fuckin' ass, grey-faced sengi. U-S-A! U-S-A!

You're so strong! Oh God, you're having your way with me! Your back is like a barrel of snakes!

10/08/2008 12:46:00 PM | Comments (0)

More links, because we love them so much.

- Apparently ever since smoking was banned in federal US prisons, cans of mackerel have become the new form of prison currency. This Wall Street Journal article does a great job filling in the details. Mackerel? Really? Well...the more you know, I guess.

- The AFP (the Associated Press, but for the French) mistook a picture of an SNL skit with Tina Fey as an official one of Sarah Palin in an article that was published around the world. Apparently none of their publishing newspaper partners picked up on the mistake either. (You'll find the actual clip of the skit at the bottom of the article.) There's nothing I need to say about Tina Fey that hasn't been discussed ad nauseam already here in this space, so I'll just leave it at that.

- I'm having trouble deciding whether the first sentence of this article is funnier or if the headline is. It's really just an issue of how much you want to yield to the reader's imagination and what level of detail or simplicity works best. But it's a fun game to play regardless, because no matter what you decide, you've already won because you didn't stab yourself.

- Two really cool home improvement projects I might take up soon depending on how bored and restless I become over the winter...the invisible book shelf and inverted book shelf. It doesn't really get any more pretentious hipster white than this.

- I've been reading some Journey to Mt. Moriah lately, which is a lot of fun. The comparisons to Perry Bible Fellowship or Truck Bearing Kibble are inevitable, if only due to the fact that there's so much artistic depth in the strips. But I really think it's its own strip though, as the humour in Mt. Moriah seems a lot more arbitrary and poignant. A great way to eat like an hour out of your life for whenever you're bored.

- Went digging through some Funny or Die videos, and I really enjoyed Is my roommate gay? from Good Neighbor. If for no other reason than that absolutely ridiculous voice. "...whaaa!?!" Too good.

What is this, like strong guys and stuff like that?

10/03/2008 04:35:00 PM | Comments (0)

Side project

Last year, I performed some song parodies at this medicine charity event. It apparently was received positively, which just proves that white people love musical comedy. I finally got a hold of a recording of the event. You can check out my perfomance if you have nothing better to do.

The Prince (actually, the last song in the set, but the most accessible to those not studying medicine).

Hemiarthroplasty (a fancy word for hip replacement surgery, based on a Weezer song)

Pink Eyed Girl

Manic Med Trainee (which deals with the prevalence of the med student hypochondriac)

10/01/2008 12:17:00 AM | Comments (0)