Trigger Happy TV

I figured that I haven't had a video on my blog for a while and that most of the posts have been serious. So I'm putting Tigger Happy TV on. Trigger Happy TV was a British hidden camera television show in the early 2000’s. It is a show where you just can’t stop laughing. Most of the pranks involve large, animal mascot costumes, and the surprise and shock of complete strangers. This video is just a glimpse of the genius of Trigger Happy TV, so I added the link to the youtube search of it. Any of the videos are worth watching.

Track Already

Track starts Monday, February 16th. Wow. That is my first reaction. If we had not have had consecutive days of unusually warm weather at the beginning of the month, there would still be a foot of snow on the ground. The last time I checked, it’s hard to run in the snow. But nonetheless, practice starts Monday.

I will not be attending this first practice, or the first couple of weeks of practice for that matter. This is because basketball is still going on. The state tournament for basketball gets over in mid-March, by then there have already been a couple of indoor track meets. I don’t like how sports overlap like this. Give me a week off at least before I have to commit to the everyday running of track. This same problem occurred during the fall. Football goes into November if a team makes it to the playoffs, but basketball practice starts in mid-November as well. I think that if my football team would have made it to the state semifinals and lost, I would have had the weekend off before basketball started. If we would have made it to the championship, I think I would have missed some basketball.

This is wrong. Sports have their own season and should not drag on, or start up early. Track is a spring sport, the last time I checked, February in Iowa is the farthest away from spring you can get. Also, overlapping of sports gives the athletes no breaks. Coaches are always saying how you need to be in good condition and how you need to be well rested and ready to go. But when I have no break between sports, I never get the chance to rest. It’s always full go. It’s everyday, with no exceptions. I don’t like how coaches expect players to instantly switch from one sport to the next. I feel that it takes at least a week for me to transition out of one sport, and into another. But I know that if I want to make it to state in track, I won’t be able to take a week off, I will have to start right away, just like always.

Why I Blog (sort of)

Why I write. That is a commonly discussed topic among essayists. For bloggers, it becomes why I blog. But for me, it’s why I relentlessly rack my brains for random thoughts about loose topics to ramble on (great song) about. Sitting at a blank computer screen hurts, I loath it. But at the same time, I get excited when I have something to add to my blog, and the blank screen fills up fast. I have something to write about now; I’m going to blog about blogging (say that 20 years ago and people think your crazy, so I’m told). Now here it goes, why I blog.

I blog because I need to. In need to blog in order to get a good grade in a class, a class in high school that probably has minimal impact on the rest of my life, but might (I like to give this class the benefit of the doubt since it is the class that most entertains me during the day). In the grand scheme of things, I know that I should not be killing myself over such a simple task, but I do. I can’t help myself. I feel guilty when I don’t keep up on the required posts, and I feel guilty that I am only following the guidelines of the blog to their loosest setting. It’s not a good feeling to log onto my blog and see my last post was from a week ago. I want to blog, I really like having the thought that anybody in the whole world can read my words. But blogging is difficult to maintain at a constant rate. I find two reasons for this:

1-Time. It takes time to come up with a reasonable thought, write about it for 400 words, and then put it on the actual blog with tags and links and embedded videos and all. It is difficult to find time to sit down three times a week and repeat the steps mentioned above. An average 400-word post usually takes 25 minutes to write minimum. Maybe I’m not a normal person, but this seems long, and I usually don’t have the kind of time to do this, which all comes around to making me feel guilty again.

2- Lack of things to write about. I read things, I’m curious about a lot of things, I have opinion on almost everything, but I still find myself occasionally staring at a blank computer screen where words wont just magically appear. It sucks. I hate the feeling of helplessness when I have an empty screen and words just wont come. As you may notice, the original topics my blog is supposed to somewhat follow are sports, movies, and food. As you may also notice, it is not uncommon for me to write about something that is completely different then those. My blog has sort of become a place where I just write about whatever is on my mind, which has the always-looming possibility to come out bad. Maybe I’m missing something (I hope I am) but I just don’t have the time or idea bank to consistently write three 400 word posts a week.

Even with all of the difficulties of blogging, I really think it is quite fascinating. Anybody at anytime can read the words that came from my mind. My words all over the world. I don’t care who reads them; I don’t care if they get read. I don’t care if my blog is on Google, I just care that it is out there. Out there in a world of words, I added my own special touch. I added a small part of myself to the infinite Internet. And that feels good, to know that the audience is watching, but not too closely. When I say audience, I am referring to the innocent bystander who happens to stumble across my lonely blog and actually take the time to read it, even if what he reads is one line that makes him click back faster than the split second that it took him to accidentally click on my blog in the first place because that line was 81 words long and had something like 9 mistakes in it and was just unacceptable in his mind. I don’t care if that is the only person that visits my blog. At least its one.

I believe blogging would be truly enjoyable if I got to do it on my own schedule, about whatever I want to write about. And that is the other thing about a blog, you can write however you want. It doesn’t have to be formal, but can if the blogger feels it is necessary. It is how a person wants to write it, freelanced and streamlined.

So there you go, why I blog. This is not a piece of writing that will change the world in any sort of way, but now it is out there, and somebody might just happen to fall into the trap and enjoy it. But the chances are slim at best. 

Birthdays

What is the thing about birthdays? Why do we celebrate them? Why do we make them a big deal? To me, birthdays are nothing more than another day in your life, and you should treat them no different. But since today is my birthday, I got to thinking about them, and this is what I came up with: Why do we celebrate birthdays, and why do people fear getting old?

So first, why we celebrate birthdays. I really have no reasonable answer to this question, and if it was up to me, birthdays would not be celebrated. Why do we give people presents on their birthday? Why do we make them a cake? Why I it their day? I don’t have a reasonable answer to any of these questions either. I don’t have an answer because first of all, the person whose birthday it is didn’t do anything. The mother and father wanted you, planned for you, conceived you, and gave birth to you (the last part only pertains to the mother actually). So why do you get all the credit? Shouldn’t we be celebrating our parents on our birthday? Shouldn’t we make it our parent’s day and thank them for all the work that they put into you? It seems like celebrating your birthday is a very selfish thing to do.

And second, why do people fear getting old? It is obviously the most natural thing in everybody’s life- aging. Death is another issue, but getting to the point in your life when you can die naturally is a commonly feared thing. When the years start to pile up, people start to cover up. We see it everyday, woman wearing makeup to hide winkles, and men dying their hair so it doesn’t turn that dreaded gray. But why? I, once again, have no reasonable answer to this question. I might figure it out when I get to that point, but as of right now, it’s a mystery to me. I am going to embrace age. You can’t stop life, so why try and fool yourself.

Super Bowl Commercials

Watching the Super Bowl means I can’t change the channels when the commercials come on. The commercials, at least in the past, are what have kept me interested. Most of the time commercials are dull and boring and just a waste of time, but during the Super Bowl, they are funny and entertaining.

This years Super Bowl commercials were kind of a let down. There were about three or four that I really liked, but the rest were either just like a regular commercial or just stupid. The one second Miller Highlife commercial was by far the most original, just because I have never seen a one second commercial before. “Highlife.” That was all that was said, and it was effective because it left me thinking if it was supposed to be a joke or not.

My favorite commercial was the Pepsi Refresh Anthem commercial. After I saw it, I turned to the person sitting next to me and said, “That was a good commercial.” An immediate reaction like that for a commercial says that it really was a good commercial. It was not funny, which is usually what sets good ads apart, but it was catchy. I liked how they went back and forth between generations and I thought that it was very effective with a good song and images.
The other commercials that round out my top 5: Hulu.com with Alec Baldwin, LMAO by NBC, Castrol Oil with the monkeys, and a three way tie for fifth between Careebuilder.com tips for a new job, Coke with the bugs, and Bridgestone with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. These were all funny commercials (which you very rarely see outside of the Super Bowl), except for the Coke ad, but that was along the same lines as the Pepsi Refresh commercial.

Overall, I would say the commercials were below average. There were many that were just plain stupid. The front runners for this award are the Godaddy.com commercials. These are wrong. They need to find a new way to advertise because they beating this to death. These commercials were o.k. when they first came out, 3 or 4 years ago. But after a while they just get old. But the worst commercial of the game was another Pepsi commercial. Pepsuber. Really? Spoofing a spoof? That is low and its chance of being actually funny is about 1 in a gazillion. I thought MaCgruber was dumb on SNL, but to take it to another level like this was horrendous. That was the dumbest thing I have seen, ever.

To watch all of the Super Bowl commercials, go to NBC.com or Hulu.com.

The Super Bowl

Football is officially over. It’s February and basketball has been in full swing for weeks, and football just got done. I have already said that this is unreasonable, and there is no need to reinforce this. But its football, I can’t not do one final post about it.

I watched the Super Bowl I didn’t really care who won (although it would have been nice to see the “worst playoff team ever” pull this one off). So I was not planning on being very interested in the game. But I must say, that was a fun game to watch. All the ups and downs provided some serious excitement. I was on the edge of my seat for the last three minutes of the game. I was not expecting that.

I have said before that I would rather watch a good defense that a good offence. There was a lot of good defense in this game. To start, the 100-yard interception return by James Harrison to end the first half. Wow. I thought that Arizona was going to get back in the game with the ball on the 3 yd-line. But after that play, I didn’t think Arizona had a chance. A huge play like that turns the momentum in favor of Pittsburgh, and I thought it was going to be a blowout.

Second, it was a blowout because of the Arizona defense. I believe that they outplayed they Steelers defense but it didn’t show in the end. There was something like three red zone stands for Arizona, proving that they believed. Their defense played very well, but you can’t keep an offense led by Ben Roethlisberger from diving down the field in the end. Hats off the Arizona defense for proving people wrong.

I think the officials were being paid off. At one point the penalties were around 9 to 2, killing Arizona. They ended with 11 penalties for 106 yards. There were 3 personal foul, 15-yard penalties on one drive. One drive. You can’t win when you are being called for roughing the passer by knocking him over a split second after he releases the ball. He didn’t spear him, go for his head, drive him to the ground, or hit him late. He just knocked Roethlisberger down. I’m sorry, but it’s football, you need to expect to get hit. I’m not says that the penalties lost the game, but I am saying that they didn’t help the cause.