Thomas Magnum v. Parrot

I liked Magnum P.I. back in the day. Tom Selleck was the coolest, what with his sweet 1911 and his Ferrari and his free bachelors pad on a Hawaiian plantation. Throw in the seemingly endless stream of hot-to-trot chicks, occasional gun-battles and two best friends that own, respectively, a helicopter and a bar, and you pretty much have the perfect life.

Not all was good in Magnum-town though. Every once in a while Magnum would flashback to Vietnam, and I have to assume that the Ferrari got a flat tire here and there. Plus, you know, skin cancer? Put on some lotion, Magnum. More troubling than the PTSD and the cancer was the fact that Higgins was always on his case, man. Stupid Higgins/Robin Masters, why can't you leave Magnum alone? He shoots the guns and flies in helicopters, you discuss DeBussy and Proust with your friends and leave it at that.

Occasionally though, Higgins proved useful. Take the video below, for example:



Uhh... What? Seriously? An old lady ordered her attack parrot to attack Magnum in order to keep him from attacking her for attacking Higgins? That would be crazy enough on it's own, but then you have to consider this: Higgins convinced the parrot to cease it's attack and commit suicide by talking to it. In it's native tongue. Out of all the possible talents in the world, who would have thought that would be the one to keep him from getting shot?

Bro's, Magnum P.I. is the coolest. I bet that pansy Michael Knight couldn't have talked a parrot into killing itself.

Football is a delight.

Me here at the Wide World of Timbo likey sports. I mean, this blog is named after the "Wide World of Sports", right? It makes sense, although I wonder if anyone ever caught on to my blatant rip-off.

Anyway, I like sports. Sports, sports, sports. In particular, I like football. The video clip below highlights one of the most amazing catches ever in the history of terrestrial man, and possibly even extra-terrestrial man. Or, as E-TM like to be called, "Manbots".

Whatever. Check out the clip, because it really is a pretty amazing catch.

Rock and Roll will never die.

Lita Ford and Joan Jett are both over 50 now. Lita was always a little to cheesy for my tastes (although she was sort of hot), but Joan Jett... man, she can rock it old school. There are just a few people who I think can really dig down and rock people on a primal level, and Joan Jett is one of them (along with the seemingly immortal AC/DC).

Anyway, thinking about Joan and Lita getting older made me think about them at their youthful prime, specifically the very awesome band that both were in, The Runaways. Here is a video for Cherry Bomb, which is a great song by a great band...



And, since I mentioned AC/DC, here is a video of Bon Scott era AC/DC (my favorite AC/DC lineup, by the way) rocking out "Whole Lotta Rosie". This video is especially cool because Angus switches guitars in midsong, comes back with a guitar with no strap, and then continues to rock it while some roadie runs out and straps him up while he is ripping a solo. Awesome.

Trolls, be warned.

This dude really seems to hate trolls. So much so that he proclaims that the troll reign of terror is at an end, presumably by his hand. Sadly, despite my general dislike of trolls, I will not be joining him in his war, and I do not suggest that any of you, my beloved readers, ally yourself with this crusader either.

The worst part about this is that I really am not sure if he is talking about internet trolls or actual trolls. I thought internet trolls right up until he said "trolls and trollkind", which implies that he is talking about real trolls.

Well, whatever. If you don't like trolls, and are thinking of taking that dislike to the next level, this is your guy, I guess...

Political Ad

TWWOT is not a political blog, and while I am posting a pro-McCain ad, I sincerely want everyone to vote for whichever candidate they truly feel is best. I am posting this ad simply because I am a veteran, and I find this to be a powerful ad. If you are pro-Obama and anti-war, you will probably not like this ad. Feel free to comment as you see fit, but I will immediately delete any comments that are vitriolic in nature. I am respectfully putting up an ad that represents this veterans (and by extension my own) opinion, and I only ask that if you disagree you do so with an equal measure of respect.

Also, while this video is available to all on Youtube, I found it on fellow High Roader John Shirleys blog, Wandering Thoughts. You can find a link to his blog in my links section!

Balcony Farming

Sitting at work with 5 minutes left in my day yesterday, my work-mate and I were talking to one of the clients, and as is my custom when somewhat delirious, I immediately started saying out loud all the crazy thoughts running through this racquetball court of a brain I have. What came out was my idea for balcony farming.

Since I live on the third floor of an apartment building, I simply do not have the acreage necessary to do any full-on agricultural projects, and I really don't want to "garden", so I started thinking about possibilities that are outside the box. The other side of this is that I am interested in being able to get the freshest produce and meat possible. This way, the food goes from balcony to table in mere seconds.

What came to me is that there are miniature versions of most common farm animals available for purchase. There is no miniature cow that I am aware of, but there are miniature horses, potbellied pigs, pygmy goats, and I am sure I can find some sort of chicken that is pretty small. The horse is necessary because I won't have room for a tractor, and will need something to work my tiny fields with. Update: I actually just googled "miniature cow" and by god, it turns out that there is such a beast. They are apparently just as delicious as a normal cow, but 3/4 the size. Excellent!!!

Of course, space will be at a premium, but if the miniature animals can all get along decently, that will make life easier on everyone. If they don't get along, well, that just means that it is time to eat. Speaking for myself, I am always at my best behavior when I think that acting otherwise might mean that I become dinner. This motivational tool will also be used to get the miniature animals to use a special area called "my bathroom" for their toilet needs. I would prefer to keep the farm totally on the balcony, but my plan is doomed if miniature feces is constantly raining down on the two floors below me. The only problem with this compromise is that I don't want any of the miniature animals getting the wrong idea: They are farm animals, not pets.

For my crops, which will not be subject to snatching by any cops, I have yet to decide. Looking out of my balcony door at a row of delicious corn sounds good, but it may be impractical from the standpoint of getting a combine in. Since I will be the only one eating the bounty of my balcony, I don't have to grow particularly large vegetables. The problem is that I just haven't really researched what tiny vegatables are available.

Anyway, don't steal my idea.

Satano-Baby?

So, because I am too lazy to go to the actual Wal-Mart, I was perusing walmart.com tonight, and they had the above Disney ad posted on the home page of the site.

Is it just me, or does that baby look sort of, you know, evil? It may have something to do with the fact that the baby has a succubus drinking it's blood, but whatever the case is, that baby has some crazy eyes that will very likely haunt my dreams this evening.

The Wide World of Timbo bids thee farewell, Earth.

So, everyone else is talking about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and how tomorrow might very well herald the end of Earth, and I figured that I would jump on that LHC train too. Also, it finally gave me a excuse to post the above picture in such a way that I am not revealed to be a perv.

So, for those of you not in the know, the LHC is basically a gigantic ring in which particles are accelerated and then rammed into each other, at which point nerds with PhD's gather around and observe stuff. It sounds innocent enough, but there is evidently a chance that when they fire that baby up, a black hole will be created. A black hole would be bad. Very bad. Super bad. Holy-crap-we-are-all-doomed bad. Apocalyptic bad. How bad? Pretty bad, that's how bad.

On the other hand, most scientists say that we are in no danger whatsoever, and are actually looking forward to the LHC revealing (or disproving) the existence of the elusive Higgs Bosun. Don't know what the Higgs Bosun is" Here, straight from Wikipedia, is an explanation:

"The Higgs boson or BEH Mechanism, popularised as the "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics; it is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. Experimental observation would elucidate how otherwise massless elementary particles nevertheless manage to construct mass in matter. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons. Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (caused by the photon) and the weak force (caused by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter; thus, if it exists, the Higgs boson is an integral and pervasive component of the material world."

So there you have it. Anyway, back to scientists. Notice how I didn't say "all" scientists think it is safe, and that we should collide particles until the break of dawn? It wasn't the lady at the Waffle House that came up with that black hole theory, dudes. Nope, it was other scientists.

Here is hoping that the majority is correct. Life can be hard, but in general I enjoy it. I certainly enjoy it enough to not want to die because some Euro's decided, mistakenly, to tamper with the elemental forces of nature. Sure, it sounds kind of cool to die in a black hole, and movies have been made that indicate that getting sucked into a black hole might result in getting plunked into an alternate, and far radder, reality, but the fact is that I think it would suck way more than it would rule.

Allrighty then. Those are my thoughts on the LHC. I know it's a little played out, but if this ends up being my last blog, no one will care anyway.

EDIT TO ADD: Humanity has survived to plunder another day! Huzzah!

The art of balance.

Balance. We all seek to achieve it. The rappers in this song achieved it by balancing the crazzapliest song possible with one of the coolest videos possible, relative to the song.

My only real complaint with the video is that about halfway through, I realized that the if the dancing ladies were really filmed in the 70's, they could then theoretically be any of my friends moms, or mine. I don't know about you other Gen X'rs, but the last possible thing that I want to imagine is my mother, or the mothers of the members of my flying squadron "walking out".

Please be advised: I try to keep TWWOT clean so as to make is SFW, but I really didn't listen to the song, so it is entirely possible that it is inappropriate. It sucks pretty bad anyway, so if you hit mute, you're not really losing out on anything.

Also, please feel free to use my new word "crazzapliest" in daily conversation. The etymology of the word is this: I was thinking of the word crappy and the word dazzling, as in "This song is dazzlingly crappy", and realized that I just didn't like how that flowed. Thus, I combined the best parts of the two words into one substantially more awesome and totally new word: Crazzapliest. You pronounce this new style thusly: Cra-zapp-lee-est. The "Cra" part should sound like the "cra" part in both "Crap" and "Crab", not like the "Cra" part in "Crazy". Aside from my original usage, here are some various forms of the word, presented as sentences:

1. That sushi is crazzappaly.
2. This new Britney Spears album has reached 9.3 on the crazzaplometer.
3. That sucks by an order of crazzaplitude.

Take note that my word absolutely does not share any lineage with the now extremely played out and decidedly not cool "izzle" effect, made popular by Snoop Dog. If it did, it would have been crizzle-dizzle", which is wack.

Oh yeah, the video. Enjoy!



Edit to add: So, I actually did about 5 minutes worth of research and discovered a few things. First, this actually was filmed back in the 60's, and the song that they were originally dancing to is called "Mexican Breakfast". It's kind of a surfy-jazzy sort of thing. Second, the lead dancer is a lady named Gwen Verdon, and it turns out that Gwen Verdon was like a mega-monster Broadway star. She died back in 2000. This pretty much explains the beginning of the song where it says "Gwen Verdon" and "Mexican Breakfast".

It really doesn't change my post at all, though I need to say that I honestly thought that this was filmed recently and made to look old-school. This might be the best mashup I have ever seen! Also, though I maintain that the overall song is crazzappaly, I do like the first part with Andre3000, who I have always thought was pretty fly.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Evidently, the continuing war on obesity (of which I am unfortunately a "victim") hasn't stopped enterprising cooks from developing exponentially less healthy dishes than what was previously available. Just looking at this picture made my left ventricle hurt.

Seriously though, how much grease and fat could you possibly need in one meal? Basically, this is a bread, cooked in lard, recooked in more lard, with cheese and beef fat flavoring the lard. Oh, and sugar. Don't forget the sugar.

Now, this is probably the most delicious thing ever cooked by mortal man, but even with that in mind, how could someone possible eat this? Anything that makes 3 Big Macs and a bucket of KFC look healthy in comparison is something that probably should not be. With that being said, I happen to know that this picture was taken in New York City at the Google Cafeteria, and so it will likely be outlawed and made into a class 3 felony before long. If you don't get why I say that, you must understand that NYC made trans-fat illegal, so while I am sort of joking, I am sort of not.

Charles Atkins is totally rolling over in his grave right now...

Metal

This will be the last of my metal-themed posts, pending new hilarity upon my full-time return. If you don't understand metal after watching this, I don't know what to say to you. Also, Metalocalypse is my favorite cartoon.