Reason 305,664,712 That I Love Sam Harris

"Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated."

-Sam Harris for Newsweek

Don't Cancel on Letterman

Would You Quit Calendering Me???

Robin saw a sign at our new hospital in the cafeteria. Bewildered by its creative use of a noun as a verb, he took April to see it. Above the beverage section is a sign that reads:

"Please lid your beverage"

We'll start with the obvious that it is clear what the sign means; they want you to put a lid on your drink. However, I cannot abide this gross abuse and misuse of a noun as a verb. It irritates me that there is lacking "put a," "place a," "massage a," or slap a," in front of the lid. The lid is just hanging there as though it were caught red handed in a theft. It's like the lid sneaked into a jewelry store, grabbed some gems, the alarms started going off, and rather than trying to flee the scene, it tried to pose as a jewelry case. Hopefully the grammar police won't notice but I certainly did!

I've all but given up hope that the world will ever care about grammar as much as I do. It's all I can do to keep from flipping out every time someone uses "too" instead of "to." But this, THIS is just blatant disregard for everything sane and pure in this world.

What's next? Adjectives as nouns?

Why, that's quite the egregious you have there!

Adverbs as pronouns?

I gave it to expertly.

Pronouns as adjectives?

That dress looks hecious on you!

Adverbs as adjectives?

I saw them huddled together and talking leastily.

Nouns as pronouns?

The Cliffs of Dover said I looked great.

Nouns as adverbs?

They treated her Washington Monumentally.


But now that I think about it, my computer has been brush rather stapily lately. I tried to us the hard drive and it told me to cup my sunglasses. I didn't quite understand, so I junk "humorous" and tried useage to potted plant the thing into Waning Gibbous. The computer flower for a toilet before finally rhododendroning and when I got hug up and lately, my French walked in. Usury stood there and pyramided, "PostIt! Where the greatly is my she?" It took a most for me to Max Headroom out kiboshily to what French was referring. Then it punultimated to me, "Mannerisms! Gorgeously was just here itting for she too! Let's see, I earphoned it somewhere... here brusquely is!" I Californiaed the she and yelled it up to French. Her pencils lit yellowing. "Aplomb alive! You had she all ago!" My feverishly finally legged. French bereft my office and I hilt back to the computer. The lastly was going off. Verbeage! I was book for a lovely! I rubber band in a ruler and got the themselves outta there.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!!!!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Halo 3, The Online Experience

Being a casual video gamer, I am quite content to play games as my life permits. I have neither the time nor the social calendar that lends itself to lengthy sessions of blood-splattered carnage or numerous hours of magic-casting fantasy. Lately, I have found myself hooked on Grand Theft Auto IV (by far my favorite of the GTA series) but after an hour or two of play, I'm ready for something else. Last weekend, however, we had Sami and my brother over for whatever suited us, which turned out to be Halo 3.

Sami is an absolute pro at this game. Her rank is something like "Three Star General Ass Kicker, Bitches" so I wasn't too keen on playing her face-to-face. It had been so long since I even thought of Halo and I only vaguely remembered the online feature. The thing is, if you want to play with one of your friends, you can. You make a team and go in together. It doesn't even matter where, in proximity to you, they are. As long as they own an XBOX360, are on XBOX Live and semi-conscious, you can make it happen. Sami is all about the online feature, as she and her husband Tim are known to play for hours with people from all over the world, bound together in matches called things like Crazy King, VIP and Slayer.

After the initial "hello how was your week" talk that evening, Sami suggested a round of Halo 3. And so it began. Since Robin and I hadn't played in months, we were a bit worried as to our experience level and the almost assured finger-pointing and "hoot, hoot, hoot" that would follow a badly sucked round. Much to my surprise and merriment, those taunts never came. Or at least if they did, we couldn't hear them because we muted the other player's microphones.

We started playing around 9:30, Chris left at 10:15, leaving Sami, Robin and me. Two of us would play a round while the other watched and when the round ended, we passed the controllers along. It was so much fun. We cracked out until 12:30 when Sami finally relented to her sleepiness. It wasn't that we were the best or even won all the time, but when we did it was incredibly satisfying. As I mentioned before, there are all sorts of ways to play a round. There is the typical slaughter-or-be-slaughtered, king of the hill, hold the human skull without getting killed, kill only the VIPs for points, you only get a sword to kill people, and on and on. The setting we had made it so whoever was hosting a room (or "killing floor" as I like to call it) could decide on the kind of game. Before the game started, the other players were allowed to veto the game choice which if successful (majority rules) would default to good 'ol Slayer.

I went home yesterday after a busy day at work. I was excited at the prospect of zoning out on Halo for a little bit before Robin got home. Popping in the disk, I thought I might as well try plugging in my headset so I could talk to my teammate, whoever they turned out to be. The first few rounds were chatless because the other player didn't have a headset. When someone finally did have a microphone, they were obviously asking me a question - in Portugese.

I said, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Portugese." My teammate became very excited. He exclaimed, "Good for you! You did not think I was speaking Italian or Spanish! I'm Fausto, what is your name?" Since he knew English, we chatted it up and developed some kick ass strategy for the following round. His English was very good and his accent absolutely beautiful. When a round concludes, you have the option of playing with your partner again, which we did a couple more times. It turned out that Fausto was relaxing after his shift at a local tavern (it was 1am in Lisbon). He said that he had to throw out three drunks that night who were Greek. "Greek men," he said agitatedly, "they always fuck up your bar." I laughed, "Oh? I wouldn't know, we don't get very many of the Aegean types over here." He sounded surprised, "You know where the Aegean is? You are not like many Americans I meet." I was puzzled, "And what kind might that be?," to which he replied, "The drunk kind, of course!" I laughed so hard. His friend with whom he usually plays showed up, so he bid me a nice evening. I did the same and turned off the XBOX; Robin was about to be home soon anyway.

So for those of you who think video games are all self-indulgent, time-wasting, hermit-creating abominations, why not try some online Halo? You never know who you'll meet or what time zone they'll be in!

Just try not to suck. HOOT HOOT HOOT!