Shouzer

I went up to northern Michigan this weekend with my parents.  My dad was attending a conference up there, and I came along since it had been so long since I had seen them.  We had a pretty cool time.  It turns out that Lake Michigan is far cleaner than I expected it to be.  I was envisioning this nasty, polluted body of water, but it was actually quite clear.  The scenery in northern Michigan is impressive as well.  It features rolling hills, old forests, and winding rivers.  I can now understand why so many rich Detroitians have cabins up there.

On Saturday we went to this island called Mackinac Island which was between the Upper Peninsula and the main hand-shaped part of Michigan.  They do not allow cars on this island in an attempt to keep it as touristy as possible.  It was pretty cool though.  We took a bike ride around it and did a little hiking.

I’ve been bursting to tell everybody about the coolest thing I saw this weekend though.  When I was driving north, I pulled over at a rest stop for a break, and there was a Chevy Trailblazer on fire.  I have never in my life seen a car on fire.  Everybody was just standing around staring at it.  When I went inside, it was just a small blaze under the hood, but when I came out, the flames were pouring out the sides.  There was a huge pillar of black smoke.  The fire seemed to be contained to the engine compartment, and thankfully no one seemed to be hurt.  I was dying to take a picture of it, but I restrained myself figuring that I would not appreciate it if someone did that when my car was on fire.

Check out this story about the government trying to protect us from ourselves. Basically, it seems to me that they’re trying to interfere with our lives just a little bit more.

Now, I imagine there actually is some legal basis for this, since schools are funded by the government. (Of course, OTOH, we fund the government…). It just seems like one of those things to me where you never know when they’ll decide to draw the line between what they can and can’t block.

We had the draft for our fantasy football league last Sunday.  It was pretty fun, as it has been the last few years.  The thing that sucks about doing it so far before the season is that now I’m really anxious for the year to start.  Football is by far my favorite sport, so football season is great for me.  I’m also looking forward to college basketball, but nothing can compare with the Broncos.

Anyway, I’m looking to improve on the abysmal season I had last year.  Two years ago I finished with the best record in the league and last year I tied for the worst.  That sucked, and it made it a lot less fun.  Hopefully I can get it turned around.

I’m having one of those days at work today. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about, but if you don’t that’s just tough. I’m not going to elaborate in a public forum such as this. To get my mind off of it I decided that I should eat out for lunch.

I ended up at this Middle-Eastern place called Cedarland, and it was surreal. This place had the look and feel of a mom and pop diner. It honestly reminded me of Triple E Barbeque. Their clientele was mostly older-looking white people, and the décor was also reminiscent of a neighborhood diner. The whole thing completely caught me off guard. The food was really good though, and it got my mind off work so I guess everything worked out well.

I should mention that by the time I left it had become more of what I was expecting. Most of the people there were part of the corporate lunch crowd having a casual meal alone or with 1-2 friends.

One of my roommates and I went to Ann Arbor yesterday to go to a comedy club.  We went a few hours early so we could wander around for a while and take in the sights of the city.  It’s a pretty artsy little place with tons of hippies floating around; I was obviously not a huge fan of this feature.  It was a good time though, and it was nice to get out the apartment for a while.  The opening comic was really good; probably the best that I’ve seen live.  The main act wasn’t as good though.  He tried to play off the crowd too much, and it didn’t work out too well.

 The best part of the day though was, as usual, a random event we witnessed.  We were walking down the sidewalk, and we happened to pass by this theater where they were filming some video for a skit or something.  We never figured out what it was for.  Anyway, this limo was supposed to pull up in front of the theater, and a guy was supposed to get out to meet his screaming fans.  When the limo pulled up, it slammed into the back of a mail truck that was parked in front of it.  The funny part was that there was a guy in front directing the limo driver, and when it hit the truck, he was still signaling that the limo had a foot left.  At this point, I just start cracking up as you do when you see somebody make a fool of themselves.  My roommate was chuckling a little, but trying to hide it.  I decided not to care and just laughed as loud as I could.  This in turn earned me some nasty looks from the other people standing around, but I didn’t care because it was just so hilarious.

Hezbollah has declared war on Israel. You should read this article about our reaction to it. It’s sad really. To me, we should be running over there to support Israel. The French government is saying the Israeli counter-attack is disproportionate. Yeah, I’d like to see him say that after he has soldiers kidnapped. The fact of the matter is a large portion of the world’s Muslim population would love nothing more than to see Israel destroyed, and Israel has every right to defend themselves.

Speaking on the subject, the Irianian president said, “Despite the barbaric and criminal nature of the occupiers of Jerusalem, the regime and its Western supporters do not even have the power to give Iran a nasty look.” That’s the kind of thing we need to be concerned with–not Iraq.  Iraq has not been a threat to us since 1991.

It just seems like one of these days, Israel is going to lose one of their wars.  We need to help them out before it’s too late.

So after recent discussions with my sister and Scott, I decided that a shout-less Shouzer had gone on long enough.  After about 4 hours of work tonight, I finished a beta of a Shouts plugin for WordPress.  Once I tidy this thing up and add a few new features, I’m going to put in on the web for anybody who wants it.

There’s some new features since last time.  Now it’s all AJAX.  Most of the things I do lately are AJAX, cuz it’s spiffy.  So here’s how it works..  You type in your info, hit “Shout!” and your browser goes to work.  It posts the shout and shows it on your page without reloading the page.  The really fancy feature, though, is that other people’s shouts will show up in real time automagically on your page.  That’s right.  If you’re viewing Shouzer, and I leave a shout, it’ll update on your page.  Now that’s just sweet.

I went down to the All American Rejects at the Comerica Tast Fest tonight.  The taste fest was a 4 day festival showcasing many of Detroits restaraunts accompanied by lots of free concerts. 

I like the All American Rejects quite a bit so the concert was fun for me.  There was a pretty good turnout, probably because it was free.  I was a little disappointed with the level of crowd participation, but it was a pretty mixed crowd.  I got the impression that a lot of people just wandered up when the heard the music.  Still, it was a good time.

I went to see Superman Returns last night, and I have to admit that I was disappointed with it.  Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie, but it just didn’t live up to the hype.  I don’t think I have ever seen the original Superman movies.  If I have, I don’t remember them.  My biggest problem with the movie was that Superman’s powers were just a little too over the top.  I guess that’s a complaint against the Superman franchise instead of just against this movie, but the movie itself was a little light on the action.  I think that was due to the over the top powers though.  I mean, fight scenes are just a little boring when one guy can stop bullets with his eye, but even still, they could have shown a little more butt-kicking action.  The other big problem I had was that the story line was quite familiar.  The main love story centered around a girl who loved Superman, but hardly noticed Clark Kent.  Sounds a little like Spiderman to me.  I don’t know which franchise came first, Spiderman or Superman, but the love interest seems to be practically the same.

To be fair, I can easily see how this type of love-story structure started in the comic book genre.  Since the average comic book reader is a male nerd (I know I’m generalizing), this type of love story just make sense.  Certainly, a story in which the hot girl ignores the geek but falls in love with the real man underneath would appeal to guys who can’t get girls.

I guess that all sounds a little harsh.  The movie really wasn’t too bad, it just did not live up to all the hype around it.  It did get me out of my apartment for the evening, and I don’t feel cheated about spending $7.50 on watching it, which is more than I can say for some movies.

In other news, I’ve been watching a lot of World Cup action lately.  One of my roommates is a huge soccer fan, and he’s honestly gotten me interested in it.  It’s really not a bad game to watch.  Unfortunately, all of the teams I wanted to win this weekend ended up losing.  I was pulling for the Ukraine, Argentina, Brazil, and England.  I guess I’m the kiss of death for soccer teams.  The US team lost in team play, which is the first round, in case you didn’t know.  I have to say that even though they lost, I am still proud of those guys.  All of the other teams (see Italy and Portugal) seem to be a bunch of wusses.  They take dives and falls all over the place to try to get the refs to call fouls.  The sad part is, this tactic actually works.  The announcers even condone it as being “part of the art of soccer.”  To me, taking a dive is probably one of the most dishonorable things you can do in sports.  Now I know why Americans don’t watch.  It’s not because soccer is boring; it’s because soccer players are pansies.

I will still watch as much of the tournament as I can because I don’t have work next week.  I will need all I can to fill my time.  I should probably spend my free time getting ahead on my reading for class.  We’ll see how ambitious I get though.

i’ll save you from my in depth analysis of the orlando magic’s draft strategy and just give you the highlights.

the first round was disappointing for me. i wanted to the magic to select ronnie brewer, but they went with redick. but it’s ok. with redick, there’s a lot i can get excited about. it’s just a well known fact that i said redick was a mid-to-late first round nba talent, and my own team took him in the lottery. oh well. i hope that i was the one that was wrong.

the second round could not have gone any better. first, the magic picked james augustine. now i have twice as much reason to like them. second, the utah jazz (who had already picked brewer, my favorite player in the draft) took dee brown. now dee can reunite with deron. so when im not giving my attention to orlando, i’ll swing over toward utah. it will be fun to see them together again.

obviously, i can write better than this. but i dont want to. i just didnt want the week of the draft to go by without you all hearing from me. i mean, i’ve categorized the nba draft as one of my top four sporting events of the year.