Sunday Afternoon Time-wasting

Man it's been a while, I almost forgot about how much fun it can be to post. In any case, I'm wondering how everyone's Christmas/New Years was. Mine was pretty dang good, hectic but good. I went to DanaWillEatU's Mom's in Sauk Centre for Christmas, back to Owatonna to work on that Friday, to my parent's place in Iowa for the weekend, back up to DanaWillEatU's mom's on Sunday, back to Owatonna on Monday, work for two days, up to DanaWillEatU's sister's house in Hutchinson Wednesday night for New Years, back to Owatonna Friday morning. Needless to say I'm tired of riding/driving.

I don't have an engagement to announce following the holidays, but it's been crossing the mind quite frequently now. One perk of that day coming is that I won't have all of DanaWillEatU's family checking her ring finger every time we come visit.

My New Years report is far less glamourous than last year (at least I didn't get kicked out of a club), although it was quite fun. I mixed Crown and Coke all night with DanaWillEatU's brother-in-laws and watched Superbad and Eagle Eye. We all probably know how entertaining Superbad is, but I'm curious as to whether any of you know how entertaining Eagle Eye is. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not entertaining and 10 being Iowa beating up on South Carolina in the Outback Bowl, this rated a 3.2 for me. I think I've gotten more enjoyment out of a Patrick Dempsey chick flick than I did out of Eagle Eye.

Holy cow, the TV just told me that the Baltimore Ravens' Ed Reed has 5 career interceptions in 3 post-season games, that's pretty damn good. Too bad the game isn't all that entertaining and I've been watching Smokey and the Bandit for much of it instead. I never would have guessed that transporting Coors east of Texas back in 1977 would be considered bootlegging. Here are some other online tidbits I've come across as of late:

- Nothing worse than an out of control beaver

- A mildly intense video

- As if we didn't already know

- A buddy at bowling showed this service from Google to me a couple weeks ago, I've already used it when I was lost trying to find DanaWillEatU and I's hotel

I'm going to make another attempt at coming up to the cities for a weekend, potentially the 24th. Go Vikings!

Great Marketing... or the GREATEST Marketing.

EA used to be awesome back when it was called Electronic Arts. Then it got shitty and became the easy target for core gamers to mock. "All their games suck, they never come out with anything cool or inventive" was the usual hatred for EA.

But recently if you look at what they are doing, they are probably actually trying more new things than anyone other game studio. From Mirror's Edge (which looks awesome), to Skate and finally, Spore. EA is actually coming out with some pretty cool stuff.

Now some of you might be saying, Eff EA, all they do is come up with a new version every year of [Insert Sport Here] and they don't make any improvements they just update the roster. We'll that maybe true for the most part but it's got to be pretty hard to revolutionize a game every year especially when it's on the console that you have been using for the past few years. The other option would be for there to not be a new game every year and only when they come out with something really new, but that wouldn't go over well with anyone either.

And come to think of it, sports game are no different than fighting games. They come out with the same exact game but they add one tiny new fight mode and some special character from a different series altogether. And they get less shit than the makers of the sport games. What's up with that?

Anyways that was a long introduction to the following two videos. Watch the first one first (Imagine that.) and the second one second. EA gets it.

YouTube Video from Levinator25


Youtube Video Response from EA Sports

Sunday Evening Post

Well it's Sunday and I haven't posted in a while, so here goes. There are some interesting things to talk about anyway.

First off we have the Twins being smoked by the White Sox for the 3rd game in a row (10-6, 11-2, 12-2). Will Glen Perkins stop the bleeding against John Danks? Doubtful, Perkins went 4 innings in his last two starts. In fact, the Twins haven't had a starter go past 5 innings for 5 straight games. Before that Slowey went 6 against Baltimore, and Livan Hernandez went 6 in the Yankees series finale. I didn't look at the stats before that, but my guess is the number of "quality starts" for the Twins isn't a very promising statistic for this year. On the bright side, Danks may have a 2.88 ERA against the league but it's over 11 against the Twins. Hell the Twins are hitting .406 against him (unless you count the two hits over 5 innings he gave up to Minnesota the last time they played). Ok ok so that stat is skewed the Twins have only faced Danks twice this season. They put up 7 runs and had Danks out of the game one out into the third inning the first time. Oh, by the way that was April 9th, back when baseball games meant something and Danks was in start-of-season form..........

I was doing sit-ups and watching Dirty Jobs following my 4.5 mile run in the rain (Josey here I come) when I saw a commercial about about what appears to be a sweet celebration. I looked through the site and didn't see anything about free booze, but hey who needs free booze when you're on a cruise named after a beer.  This event got me thinking though, what kind of drinking related happening would get you most excited? In all honesty a booze cruise might just be the pinnacle for me, although I may prefer a fishing/ski boat instead of a cruise ship so that I can get up close and personal with the water. Water and booze, in any combination, are probably good enough. Have you ever had a beer in the shower? There's a reason it tastes twice as good.

Have you guys (Puyo in particular) seen the new Mountain Dews yet? I almost freaked when I saw the three different kinds at WalMart for the first time. I bought the flavor named "SuperNova". It's all right, it reminds me of Pitch Black a little. My only beef with it is that it tastes almost exactly like something else I have had before (which currently escapes my memory). I'm anxious to give the other flavors a whirl. I urge everyone to try the flavors and partake in the new KofC blog poll I created. After we get the results in I think we'll just email Pepsico and they'll have their answer as to which flavor to keep.

Rafael Nadal housed Roger Federer at the French Open....AGAIN. Now, I don't really root for dominance in a sport. For proof of this see my hatred of USC and the New England Patriots in football and the Yankees and Red Sox (as of late) in baseball. But then I think "I rooted for Jordan's bulls, Duncan's Spurs (until I started hoping the Suns would win one), I would have gone wild during the Steeler's 70's dominance, and I hope Iowa never loses another sporting event ever". So why do I HATE the teams I mentioned above? Maybe it's the payrolls and recruiting advantage (stupid sunny California). Maybe it's the bastardness of the management and players (Belichick, Steinbrenner, Manny Ramirez, Tom Brady). It's probably the bastardness and my overall disaprovall of how they've done what they've done. I guess that would help explain why I root for Tiger Woods and Federer. Roger (yeah we're on a first name basis) has never won the French and after today's drubbing it doesn't look like he ever will unless Nadal is injured. I just wanted him to get his career grand slam. I suppose that would help explain why I rooted for Nadal at the last Wimbledon, a 5 set loss to Federer. I just wanted Nadal to get closer to it as well. So that brings us to the NBA Finals. I'm rooting for Boston. I loved Larry Bird and I don't really like Kobe (not hate, just a small amount of dislike). I'm a fan of KG, and all in all I like the color green far more than yellow/purple. So Boston it is. Will I be watching the game this evening? No, I'm going to watch "When We Left Earth" on Discovery HD instead.

SB good luck in Vegasland. May the Nevada Gaming Commission shine fortune upon you. Also, if you make it to TV I expect to see you ride 8-J to victory. Unless of course doing that would cause you to lose. Please provide updates or tell someone in the know to do it. I think you should ask Rose Bear to do it.

Happy Sunday!

Random Babbling from The Daymonster

There hasn't been a lot of good news here lately. Besides SB's new house, things for the Daymonster haven't been looking that good.

Liriano might not make it back in the rotation as early as previously expected. Which really sucks because he was one of my keepers on my fantasy team.

It's been about 45 days since I last saw my beautiful xbox. After about 4 weeks at the repair center they just decided to send me a brand new one. Which sounds great but why did it take them 4 fuckin' weeks to figure that out. Plus when I retrieve my gamertag I will only be able to access all the games and stuff I have downloaded when the xbox is online. But the good news is, it is being delivered today, the bad news is, of course, I don't live where it is being delivered to. Tonight I am going to go to my old place, grab the little note from UPS and try to pick it up at the UPS warehouse.

Also, I have gone about 6 days without cable or internet. It's been hell. Luckily the cable dude is coming to flip the switch for me tonight. He will be there sometime between 5-8pm, and since I work until 5pm, I can guarantee that is exactly when the dude will be there. I guess I shouldn't say dude, but I find it hard to believe that there are any female cable men out there, I mean they are called cable guys or cable men not cable ladies. It's science.

In theory, I could have my xbox and functioning internet this weekend. With the COD4 maps out, and the Halo maps soon to follow, things could be looking better.

Also, SB, you probably already know this but when you looked at your new house did you check to see if there were closets. That is a mistake I made, my new apartment has no closets. There are some things that look like closets when the door is shut but they all have things like water heaters in side or are way to small to actually put anything in them. I don't own any dressers or anything like that so this has caused a problem.

As you can tell if you have made it this far, this post is one that is incoherent and practically unreadable. Partly because I don't really have that much to say, and partly because I am so excited to get my xbox and internet up and running.

Also, any KofC members interested in coming to Chicago to watch the Twins play the White Sox next week? If you don't have two words for you... come'on.