If you take the “el” out of “People,” you get “Pope.” This is due to the fact that el Pope is much like “people,” except that there’s just one of him.

Thus, “El Pope.” A man of the people; so much so that his name is an anagram for people.

There’s a new manager at staples, and we had a lovely conversation!:

TheMan: What are you going to graduate with?

Me: Debt.

Only the facebook can make it official.

This means that the only remaining scholarly person I know who is not on the facebook is my sister. Alex Reed, the one man I thought would withstand the gusty winds of change, caved like an anorexic in a hot dog eating contest.

Stopped by Barnes & Noble today for a coffee and some free reading, when I discovered the book Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage.

First off, excellent title. It’s what drew me to the book. I’m sure he considered many other reasonable titles before he settled on it and he definitely went in the right direction. Other titles he rejected include Liberalism, the new commy-terrorism and Liberals: They WILL eat your baby; but it got my attention and that’s what matters.

When I initially went to see Fahrenheit 911, some conservative minded friends went with me and so, in a reflexive post-movie state, I asked them what they thought of the film. After they expressed an inclination to burn down his house and kill his children (see: terrorism), they pined for a movie of similar caliber from their point of view. I think Michael Savage is the man for such a movie. I would probably enjoy a movie like this so long as it was truly funny. While a great many friends take politics very seriously, I really believe that comedy is much more important in my day to day life. I propose instead of having “debates” (I’ll get back to Savage’s use of quotations later), we have each candidate do 30 minutes of stand-up and choose the next leader of the free world with a device that can only be called the laugh-o-meter. Their performances wouldn’t be any more scripted than they are now.

Incidentally, if this system had been in place in 2004, the election wouldn’t have even been close. The Great Reverend Al Sharpton would have annihilated the whole crowd. Bush’s frat boy humor just isn’t appealing, Kerry could bore a guy on laughing gas to tears, Howard Dean has that mad look in his eyes that makes you question whether or not he’s kidding. Only Sharpton could say, “George Bush giving tax cuts is like Jim Jones giving Kool-Aid. It tastes good but it’ll kill you,” and get away with it.

Getting back to the book, what makes Michael Savage great is his fanaticism, he put “United Nations” in quotes, apparently Mr. Savage believes the UN is a fictional body of world leaders, much like Super Friends (Come to think of it, calling Korea, Iraq, and Iran the “Legion of Doom” wouldn’t be any more ridiculous than “Axis of Evil”). Now, I’m not saying the UN is in any way efficient or effective, but to put quotes around an international diplomatic organization calls your grip on the bike handle that is reality into question. At a later point, Big Mike inventated the word islamofascist, which to me sounds like a game where you run around hitting fascists on the head with a laughably over-sized mallet; the point being that this was a situation which necessitated a hyphen, to indicate your intention is humor and not a failed attempt at english. I suppose it is possible that it comes up so often in his daily vocabulary that he has actually started to believe that this word is, in fact, in Webster’s, under i.

My favorite quote from 15 minutes of reading has to be:

“Ultimately, the legions of leftist revolutionaries are laughable. Their ideology has been a complete failure wherever it has been tried… …Which is why I invite you to sneer at their Big Lie. I invite you to remain vigilant before a bomb goes off in your mother’s house.”

Did… …did Michael Savage just threaten to level my mother’s home if I refuse to sneer?

School’s been keepin’ me down for the last couple weeks, I’ve got tons to post about but it doesn’t look like today is going to be the day where I mount an offensive on the heap of good material that has been accumulating in my notebook, as I have yet another program due tomorrow.

On the plus side, Darth Vader has a blog.

David Sedaris is speaking at Cal Poly this weekend, and I will be attending. He stooped so low as to be interviewed by the Mustang Daily, which resulted in the following:

MD: Do you have any advice for college students? We need it.

David Sedaris: Right… I would just encourage college students to take drugs and have sex with as many people as possible because one day they’ll be old and right now they’re the perfect age for all that stuff. They might as well have fun now, and then they can reflect upon it later when they’re old.

MD: I’m using that as my headline: “David Sedaris says: Get Laid!

David Sedaris: Don’t leave out the drug part.

The following link is a video clip describing The Internet vs. Real Life from Red vs. Blue.

It’s funny.

The concept behind red vs. blue is to create an animated picture show, but without actually doing any of the work of animating, which, as Lauren can tell you, is hard. What they’ve done is esentially move characters around inside the video game Halo and then added their own sound.

At which point hilarity ensues.

Who says programmers don’t have fun. The guy on the right wrote the textbook for CSC 453, introduction to Operating Systems. And one of the other three guys in the picture is a VP at Novell. I’ll let you guess which one.

that’s hot

I recently discovered Paul Graham’s “What You’ll Wish You’d Known,” a speech that was originally written for a high school graduation ceremony, but that works just as well for those graduating college any time soon (For example: NOT ME ).

What do you want to do with your life?
“People are always asking you this, so you think you’re supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.”

Or, as I’ve heard it put before, they’re not asking because because they expect you to have your life planned out, they’re actually looking for ideas.

You can dooo eeeet!
“Don’t get demoralized. Don’t think that you can’t do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn’t underestimate your potential. People who’ve done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart… In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they’d seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.”

This has been a strong belief of mine that many people are actually strongly opposed to. You tell some people that the student body at MIT is just like any other and there’s a good chance you’re gonna see some palm to face action in the near future. It’s like insulting a religious institution: “HAVE YOU NO SHAME,” they would cry as I am banished from society in the name of protecting impressionable young minds.

Perhaps my favorite tidbit from Mr. Graham’s speech is actually in the footnotes, in reference to the oft repeated high school teacher mantra…

Behave like adults!
“I wonder if they’d like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you’re very docile compared to adults… Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you’re taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they’d do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.”

While playing World Of Warcraft, an online only computer game that is very popular among those in the know, I discovered a bug. Specifically, one of the quests specifies you are supposed to look for a certain character in “Warrior’s Hall” which, as it turns out, doesn’t exist. I finally found the character in “Hunter’s Hall” and dutifully submitted a bug report so that other players would not have to suffer the same indignities that I was subjected to for asking people for the location of a non-existant building.

But then I had to go and end my bug report like this:

“I got flamed many times trying to find “warrior’s” hall and it was not
enjoyable, so if you could fix this type, I’d appreciate it.”

That’s right, I mispelled typo. I’m pretty sure I’m banned from the internet at this point.

“[Wal-Mart’s] $285 billion in sales nearly match the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia.”
-From The Christian Science Monitor

Call me extravagant, but I would think if your company pulls in as much money as a country that just happens to be “the world’s largest net oil exporter…”, you’d be able to pay your employees decently and maybe offer affordable health care.

Me: Where’s Young taking off to this weekend?

Uncle C: She is going to Truckee with like 8 other gilrfriends for a Spiritual Women’s retreat.
…
Uncle C: I was actually San Jose last weekend for something similar with the Bible Study Fellowship organization. The only difference was that I was with 3000 of my closest friends instead of 8.

Me: What can you do, you’re just more popular than she is.

Uncle C: True, it is a gift, and sometimes it fills like a curse. But it is the will of the people to see me.

As Lauren was in town this past weekend, we went to see Sin City, which was a bit of an experience. First of all, if you’re not up for the most gruesome of the gruesome, this movie is not for you. As Jeffrey Westhoff so succintly put it, “You know you’re gone beyond run-of-the-mill movie violence when you need to use the plural for ‘castration.'”

Quite honestly, I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to violent movies, I like to think it’s because I’m too empathetic; when someone gets dumped at the junior high dance in front of all his buddies, I feel his pre-pubescent shame, so when I’m witnessing a level of gore that makes The Holocaust look like Woodstock, it becomes hard for me to stomach.

On the plus side, the cinematography and the general look of the whole movie was amazing, they even managed to make Elijah Woods scary. There was no shortage of humor, so long as you take your jokes like I take my coffee, black and bitter, with type O positive added for flavor.

Without spoiling anything, I’ve come up with a Litmus test to tell if this is your kind of movie:

“Downloading copyrighted music doesn’t give me the same warm, fuzzy feeling running over babies with a lawnmower does.”

-inspired by grub, slashdot idiot #11606

If you found the previous quote in no way offensive, and in fact humorous, Sin City is your type of film.

Me: good riddle

Eugene: do you get alerts?
Eugene: i just put that up

Me: No, I just check my website habitually when i’m bored

Eugene: so do i
Eugene: you need to update more often
Eugene: three times a day at least

Me: I thought you checked your website habitually
Me: and I was thinking
Me: you need to update more often

Eugene: how ironic.

Best book title ever: Jihad Vs. McWorld

Can you say: “All publicity is good publicity?” Anything controversial results in more people hearing about the book and the more people who hear about the book, the greater the likelihood that someone will actually buy it. And the way it was explained to me, every time an author sells a book, an angel gets its wings, and somewhere, one of his wives gets a child support check to spend on the latest offering from Fendi.

In that vein, I’m renaming my blog; Red/Brian shall now be known as Jesus Wore Lipstick.

After watching the hilarious Super Size Me and reading the mind-bending Fast Food Nation I’ve temporarily sworn off fast food for life, with the exception of IN-N-OUT, whose diamond-tipped ethics have proved it a bastion of the fast food industry, staving off frozen food in favor of fresh, and paying it’s employees well, with starting positions at $9/hour and managers starting at $80,000/year.

With such a personal touch, it’s not a huge surprise to discover that the business is not owned by an anonymous corporation, but is family owned and run by one Esther Snyder, and it shouldn’t be a huge surprise to discover bible verses on most of the packaging for your burgers and fries.

Though similarly intentioned, the guy with the sign at your favorite sporting event was never quite intriguing enough to arouse my curiousity, I was too busy feeling bad for the guy; But when information is presented on the side of my double double (sans lettuce) and my half chocolate, half strawberry shake, I become ravenous for knowledge.

The guy with the sign at your favorite sporting event.

So, for the lazy, here we have the piecemeal biblical lesson that is being quite literally fed to us every time we choose to sit down at an IN-N-OUT. These verses are coming from the New International Version de la biblia, as dispensed by BibleGateway.com.

If you’re eating a burger, you will find Nahum 1:7 on the wrapper:

“The LORD is good,
a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him…”

If one finds himself consuming a soda, John 3:16 is written on the inside lip on the bottom of the cup:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

And if you’re shakin’ it like I so enjoy doing, you’ll find Proverbs 3:5 :

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding…”

As could be expected, it’s more of a “greatest hits” of bible verses, though I admit I was hoping for more topical verses, maybe a burger would give me Genesis 9:4:

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.”

A nifty way to let the customers know that IN-N-OUT cares about well done meat.

As I’ve been suffering from what the Doctor referred to as “Not much pneumonia,” I’ve had the opportunity to be in the Cal Poly Health Center on quite a number of occasions this past month and I’ve read and re-read every bit of propaganda frequently enough that their meaning has begun to evolve as my mind creates alternative interpretations out of sheer boredom.

To me, the most intriguing of the propaganda mixed among the cross sections of the human ear and the 5 signs of rubella was an entire wall that had been placed under the banner: “Love Your Bodies and Your Memories This Spring Break.” Upon my first reading, this was a fairly innocent and bland attempt at getting everyone to sport a raincoat on their week of debauchery, but on my fourth viewing in less than a month, the author’s original meaning was made clear.

“Talk safe sex first, have safe sex later.”

Interpretation: While some would read this as “Be prepared,” it is obviously a recommendation of verbal foreplay.

“Use the buddy system.”

Interpretation: When it comes to sex, two is better than one…

…and three is better than two.

“Remember that ‘No’ means ‘No’ and passed out never means ‘Yes.'”

I swear I learn something new every single day.

“Any man who can dance in high heels is awesome.”

-Desiree, in reference to her main man, Prince

Whilst shopping for textbooks online:

Me: $108.25 new at the bookstore, $73 used at Aida’s, $25.95 from some guy on ebay.
Lauren: some guy is the best
Me: with 100% feedback I might add
Me: holy christmas
Me: Product Type: Teacher’s Edition
Lauren: haha
Lauren: I think I’m developing calluses from knitting.

For me this past week has been steeped in thick, repugnant academia and an equally annoying case of bronchitis. But this last weekend did not foretell of the disastrous week ahead. I was on an up-swing health-wise and more importantly I was at Lauren’s sister’s wedding having an absolute blast.

Friday I was to be in Newport Beach with Lauren at 4pm, but due to traffic, we got there a lot closer to 4:45pm. Not too bad. I was a little slap happy as I’d not gotten much sleep the night before which resulted in me being a little slow to censor myself when I probably should have. For example: I said “they should push their boobs closer to together” in a church within earshot of Lauren’s parents. The context is irrelevant, the fact is that it happened and that’s enough; I’m gonna go ahead and call that one strike two. Then we all left the church together on our way to the Spaghetti Factory, also located in Newport Beach. Ended up in Hunington Beach. Fantastic. I’m outta there.

You’ve got to save money somewhere, might as well be the veil

Fortunately after getting a good nights rest, the actual wedding was about as flawless as anyone could have hoped for. Yours truly was an usher, which is definitely fun, all the old ladies are flattered, but anybody under the age of thirty gives you a weird look and pushes your elbow out of the way as they walk past.

There was a ceremony, Isaac, Katie, and Katie’s Dad all said “I do,” though each of them said it at a different time. And they lived happily ever after.

Then there was the reception, which was by far the best party I have ever been to. This event just re-affirmed my belief that the ceremony is just a prelude to the reception, and not the primary reason for attending. Delicious food, good company, open bar, chocolate covered strawberries, the USC marching band, an open bar, dancing waiters, and an open bar all combined to make this quite possibly the most impressive wedding I will ever go to. How’s this for a finishing touch: On the way out, they had coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts. Now that’s classy.

Lauren flirts with some random guy by the bar

If you want to see more pictures from the wedding I suspect you’d want to click here