Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Ravings, rantings, and gibberish.

Written by Drew

What is up FoCo? I am a recent college graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead. After recieving my B.A. in English and Mass Communications this past August I moved down to Colorado. I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and heavy metal. My hobbies include reading and writing, music, movies, and getting drunk. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Kurt Vonnegut. My top movies are anything directed by Kubrick. I enjoy listening to anything that rocks. Right now I am just trying to get to know Colorado and FoCo better. Mostly in order to find the best drink specials on each day that ends in Y. So if you know where I can get a cheap drunk on, let me know! --Drew

1. Baby on Board

Friday, 04 May 2007

It makes yields signs quake in their cement founding. BABY ON BOARD. You’ve seen them; plastered on cars and minivans, etc. Now, although I may believe that I know everything, there are other things that I just have a clue about. This is one of them.

You put a baby on board sign on the window of your car. Alright, so I’ll make sure that I don’t hit your car at 60 mph, but if I won’t worry so much about hitting one that says If It’s a Rockin’ Don’t Come a Knockin’. I mean what is this? I’m sorry Moms, Dads, and Parents around the US, but I value not putting a scratch on my car more than I value driving extra-safely around you because you have a baby on board. Is that what the sign is supposed to enforce? Safe driving?

Did these people ever consider the fact that I am more likely to be in a accident trying to read what the hell you have plastered on the side of your window than focusing on driving? Okay, sure, that was a little over the top. I have bumper stickers. I know that means people are more likely to ride my ass just to read the stickers than because I cut them off or something. But, I will take this ‘hazardous’ driving from others if it means they will read what I wish to promote or condone. But Baby on Board? I just don’t get it. Do people want to advertise the fact that they ovulated properly, or fertilized successfully? Or is Baby on Board a sign to keep people from leaving babies in the car. Is it a public disclaimer saying, check my car for a child and break in if you see him baking to death? Harsh, I know, but this is about the only good or useful thing I think it could be used for.
Yeah maybe I should put Handsome Rich Young Man on Board. That should keep people from clipping me, right? At the very least it will it keep me out of accidents because the cutie driving next to me will be laughing so hard she runs the red in front of her. Just joking. Stop vehicular infanticide, get BABY ON BOARD!!!
--Drew
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2. The VT Shooter & Gun Control

Friday, 20 April 2007

Now that the abhorrent shock of the single most devastating shooting in U.S. history has begun to wane, I feel I can write somewhat objectively about the subject. In turn, I hope that you as a reader can also begin to take various arguments in stride, without retorting in contemptuous rage or indignation.

To begin, I would like to start with the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho. I personally believe Cho is a coward and an ersatz of the cowards who have come before him. I originally thought Cho’s massacre was one that potentially had more substance than another Fox news labeled snapping. I thought perhaps Cho’s motivations, which at the forefront were ambiguous, would materialize into a methodical and intellectual reasoning. The reason I took a certain solace in the possibility of Cho being an intellectual savant, perhaps even a perverted philosopher, was in the hope that it would debunk certain myths and stereotypes of school-shooters. The Marilyn-Manson listening, video game playing, drug-using outsider. Cho wasn’t that, nor was he an intellectual, his act and his discombobulated and incoherent ‘rants’ prove that.

Cho, who went to town on rich kids and religion, showed nothing to support his angst against these groups in his act. Instead he simply shot at and killed randomly, those innocent to any retribution Cho believed he had the authority to exercise against. If Cho wanted to rub his thumb in the face of religion and the rich, perhaps he could have looked at the middle-class house his family lived in, or the college he was attending. Financially, Cho more than likely feel into the majority income level as the rest of his peers. On the other hand, we’re talking about Virginia Tech. Not Oxford or Yale or Stanford. In addition, as I’ve stated, Cho’s victims weren’t members of society’s high affluence. In his video, Cho says that we forced him into a corner, and that the spilt blood is on our hands and can never be washed off. How exactly, is this true, or relevant? That is what I would like to ask Cho. The fact that Cho sat up creating QuickTime movies with meaningless monologues that mean nothing only highlights Cho’s faux sinister revelation meant to somehow enlighten or scare us. As Cho attempted to make his voice lower and more menacing in the tape, it makes me wonder that if he knew we would simply think of him as sad, pathetic, and cowardly individual might even have been enough to stop such indiscriminate bloodshed. Cho’s screams are nothing more than a sad attempt at obtaining a fictitious fame, from an attention deprived punk without a spine. For those who have suffered, hopes, dreams and memories, shall live on. Be assured of that.

On the second note, can we finally start talking seriously about gun control? Did anyone else find it ironic that only a few short days after the shooting, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court held up ban on late term abortions? This is not meant to be an abortion debate, it is meant to make do a double take on the conservative right. Full arms rights, so people like Cho can easily buy handguns, semi-automatics, etc. without hesitation. What is the point of preserving life, if we don’t protect it? Mostly I want to see gun laws change so that we don’t end up with other countries arms’ laws. Perhaps soon enough hunters will not be able to buy 12 gauges and 30.6 to hunt because of indiscriminate shootings like at VT. Give us rights where we deserve, but why do we have to legalize the purchase of M-16’s, sniper-rifles, and handguns? What good do they really do? Gun collectors? Fine. Not to many people go berserk with Colt .45’s, but lets track the ones that are collectables, and get the ones that are useless except for gang-banging, the military, and school-shootings.
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3. An Ode to Vonnegut

Friday, 13 April 2007

When I heard the news a few days ago, the morning after his death, I had a hard time going to work. I had a hard time even getting motivated to take a shower. Yet, I had never even met the guy. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is in my opinion, one of the greatest American writers of all time. How could you not love the guy though? If you ever heard him speak during an interview, or read any of his books whether they were autobiographical or fictional, you wouldn't have had a pulse if you didn't react.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand." I mean how can you not laugh at that? But besides being the greatest satarist of second half of the century, Vonnegut was also a humanitarian. As funny as he could be, it was needed, because his scathing and undeniably thought-wrenching lines would make you wallow in gloom at the futility of it all. "During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice."
Not only was Vonnegut on top of his game in the political arena, he was also an amazing social critic. Who else would consider suing the big tobacco companies for NOT killing him? As he said in an interview last year, and I'm paraphrsing here, Phillip-Morris has put labels directly on the packaging that states cancer and death, yet here I am at 83. Of course, no one would have found it funnier than Vonnegut himself about the cause of his death, a fall in his Manhattan home. Vonnegut also shared with biting humor the importance that brain-numbing, body-destroying, anti-social invention that has become the height of everyone's lives on our society (And Yes I'm talking to you all of you who watch American Idol and CSI and Heroes and Friends, oh god don't get my started on friends) Vonnegut said simply, "One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
Regardless, if you have never picked up a Vonnegut novel, the next time your few years of life watching an hour or half an hour? of American Idol, pick up one of his books instead. It will be like nothing else you've ever read before, and there's always American Idol 9 through probally 35 to throw your life away on season after redundant and pointless season.
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." --Take Vonnegut's advice and stay from that center, get busy!
"I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007 who died from complications of tripping, so it goes, and from all of us who have felt honored to be alive when reading your books, a big warm hug.
Never to be forgotten
--Drew
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4. Bonds, Baseball & the HR Hunt

Wednesday, 11 April 2007

Barry Bonds is only 20 Home Runs away from breaking the most coveted statistic in all of sports. The All-Time Career Home Run List. Hank Aaron, of course, currently holds the top position with 755 Career Home Runs. Bonds has hit only one so far this season, but now only stands 20 round trippers away from tying Aaron.
We have all heard of the Barry Bonds scandal along with other prominent Major Leaguers using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. By now you are probably still sick from all the commotion it caused just last year, and with Bonds only getting closer, it’s sure to be Anna Nicole Smith worthy of the media’s spotlight. I mean really, you do understand that in the middle of the Iraq situation, Congress and the President have also been very involved in the Nation’s greatest pastime as well, right? Well before you refuse to read anymore about Barry Bonds and the steroid issue, take a glance at the numbers.
Barry Bonds has played in 2,867 games so far compared to Aaron’s 3,298. That’s 431 games less. Of course, if Bonds plays every game this year he’s looking at adding 150 games to that market. Maybe he retires if he breaks the record, maybe he’ll come back to shatter it and push the bar to an unreachable level.
Hank Aaron had 12,364 career at bats, Bonds has piled up 9,529. A difference of 2,835. That’s a bit of a gap.
Aaron had only 1,402 career base on balls. Barry Bonds has already compiled 2,432; a significant chunk of those being intentional walks and also “intentional” walks.
So, by the numbers, every time Hank Aaron stepped up to the plate, he had about a 6.1% percent chance of hitting a Home Run. (Home runs divided by total number of At Bats). Barry Bonds is currently sitting at 7.7% percent. BUT, look at the discrepancy in Bonds’ base on balls stat-filler. As I said before, many of those were intentional, or “pitch-around” at bats. You might as well take away a large chunk of at bats for Bonds. And let’s face it, as the Home Run stat field narrows, the base of balls will only chasm apart. Let’s take away 1,000 of Bonds’ base on balls (& Hence at Bats, just to point out missed opportunities Bonds’ has had at the plate due to his opponents) and his percentage of stepping the plate and jogging to home is 8.6%. That is huge! If you always have pitchers throw to Bonds you’re getting close to him having the stat of hitting 1 Home Run every 10 plate appearances. So is Bonds really completely undeserving of the title?
Let’s face the facts. Bonds is almost certainly guilty of doing steroids. Fine. Bonds is also guilty of doing intensive weight and cardiovascular training. He probably has a dietician. Bonds is more than likely taking completely legal supplements that many the average American now takes. He is guilty of drinking Gatorade. And what exactly is the point? It’s all relative.
Gatorade is proven to help replenish and hydrate the body isn’t it? Most professional athletes now ban the booze and smokes and have full-time dieticians. Rigorous training camps and off-season weight training sessions. Just image what Babe Ruth’s career Home Run record would have been if he had a staff of doctors waiting on him hand and foot to get him optimum playing time, steered him away from stogies and booze. What if the Babe sucked down Gatorade and had off-season training programs. We wouldn’t be having this conversation, that’s what, because his record would be so far out of reach.
Besides look at the competition that Bonds has to deal with. Guys who can throw sliders and cut fastballs, slurves, and change-ups twenty miles per slower than there 95 mph fastballs. Not to mention most teams now have live video feedback, so they can watch the last innings at bats, see what they’re doing wrong how they can get an upper hand in the next at bat.
I’m not saying that Aaron was a bad player. And I’m not saying that Bonds should go down in the books without an asterisk by his name. All I’m saying is that Bonds is one of the greatest of all time, relatively of course, and that perhaps we should start to congratulate him on his historic performance instead of ostracizing him from Cooperstown.
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5. More Life Lessons from College

Thursday, 05 April 2007

1. Maxing out your credit card on kegs is a better investment than maxing it out on textbooks.
2. When you throw a 'theme' party girls will try to be as creative and detailed as possible with their costumes, guys will wear as little as possible. Hence, you must learn not to freak out when you see life-sized Smurfs in your front lawn.
3. Taking people's keys at the door means you're opening your house for up to week. Especially if you're friends end up taking each key and freezing each one individually in ice cubes trays.
4. Your house needs to be stocked at a minimum with a liter of the following: Rum, Brandy, Vodka, Kahula, Whiskey, and one specialty liqeour, like Peach Schnapps; 1 case of Lite Beer; 1 case of Dark or specialty beer, and 2 liters of Coke, Diet, Seven Up and Moutain Dew. Also good idea to throw in a six-pack of Smirnoff or Mike's.
5. If all the bathrooms are being used, someone will go number two in the kitty's box.
6. If you have any hopes of eating within a week of party you throw, you're going to need to clean out your fridge and freezer before hand.
7. If you're going to be a 'nice' guy and offer your bed to fledgling female, make sure she's not pass-out drunk. Not for any snuggling reasons, but because if needs to empty her stomach, she'll do it right there in your bed, and vomit stains are both highly colorful as well as highly potent. Plus, if she's at that point, you can throw out any brownie points you may have hoped to score.
8. Don't allow drunk people to shower or take baths after a long night of drinking. Invariably some body part will cover the drain when they pass out, or they will start it and then not make it back, flooding the apartment, house, basement, etc. Don't believe me? I had 5 experiences between myself and 2 other friends in 3 years. That's a lot of water. No one drowned, they were already full of alcohal.
9. When your HS ex visits you, don't try to impress her by bonging a beer. She'll jsut say you've changed, and go home. Actually, do that, because it opens the night for more drinking.
10. Don't worry about drinking so much that you'll do something funny or say something that defies logic, because your friends will remember for you, and it'll be even funnier.
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