Nobrainer’s Think Tank

“And then there’s the fact that for the last five years America has been ripped apart by a maelstrom of cheerleader sex, substance abuse and violence.”

The Guardian article goes on to list 8 examples demonstrating the overwhelming extent to which cheerleading is a, to quote the Fark headline, “’sport’ in ‘crisis’”. The writer suggests that cheerleaders here are given the same regard as the Royal Family in Britain.

“Ripped apart”? By cheerleaders? Not the war in Iraq, or CIA leaks, or Hurricane Katrina — no, no, no! The last five years of the Bush presidency have apparently been bad because of the shenanigans of a handful of pubescent girls.

Problem solved. Karl Rove will soon be dispatching his minions.

Up to this point in my experience, digital cable has proven itself to be just another one of those “great ideas, horribly implemented.”

Sure having more channels and higher quality are great. But all they’ve really done, most of the time, is added a too-slow computer to my TV rendering it unnecessarily hard to operate.

The slow speed completely destroys my ability to channel surf. I demand to manually flip through each and every channel, so that for a mere split second, I can see and watch whatever content is available. Often I accidentally find items of interest that I would not have found by using the damn menus. The snail pace of channel change on digital cable allows me more than enough time to form coherent thoughts — the last thing I want to be doing while channel surfing. What’s more, if I don’t receive, say, Channels 150 thru 299, don’t bother to go through those channels when I hit “channel up.” Is it to difficult to skip from 149 to 300?

And what’s up with these damn menus? Hitting “channel up” or “volume up” increases either the channel or volume. But once I get into the menu, the down arrow goes to higher channels. (Ok, this is probably some relic leftover from the halcyon days of that magazine known as TV Guide. But we’re talking new technology here, not news print and mail delivery.) Again, don’t show me that “Back Door Sluts 9″ is on channel 275. I don’t get that channel. I’m not about to pay for that channel and the best porn movie every made; I have the internet.

The menus fail again in at least two ways. First, I’m allowed to sort content by themes. This is good, except that instead of choosing by major categories then a smaller theme, they just give me a whole fucking list of every possible theme they could have imagined. Try navigating from “Movies with a kid who learns martial arts to better himself and defeat his enemy” all the way past “Sports - Curling” to “Sports - Tennis - Women’s - Involving at least one of the hot Russians” and it takes for fucking ever. Secondly, the regular menus remain too small. The boxes are inadequate in size to even fully describe the title of a show, which means I now have to look at the bigger description. And looking at that bigger description is troublesome because to understand it I have to fucking read. TV should require no more reading than is necessary… unless you’re watching Sesame Street.

I want to sit on my damn couch or comfortable chair with remote-in-hand and have a mindless television experience and digital cable is completely ruining it. It that too much to ask for?

(This post has been edited from its original version by the Grammar Monster.)

Combine a 450 mile trip (twice) with extreme boredom, my blog, and a need to use my new camera… That means you get stuck having to look at pictures I took.

Haha-HA!

I guess I generally drive at night, or otherwise find ways to not notice the scenery. But the drive between Charlottesville and Hamilton is probably one of the most enjoyable, high mileage trips I get to make.

I was actually snapping pictures while driving, thus the “high speed” reference.

Yay! Mountains!

I always love driving past this dam. Here’s the overhead view.

And, even though it’s not high speed, I think this picture of Checkers is just too damn cute to not post.

The rest of the pictures are here. There are a couple from my golf outing on Friday. It was cold & windy. The course was sopping wet. And it is apparently “that time of year” for the geese; they were squawking around like drunk sailors — there was no quiet in the gallery. My game went straight to shit after the first picture. 4 balls hit the water in 2 holes. The back 9 was better — still better than almost anything else.

UPI reports that hybrid drivers are quickly becoming some of the most hated on local highways in California. The hybrids report up-to-the-second fuel mileage information. In an effort to improve their mileage, the drivers are adjusting their speed, by slowing down.

I’m thinking that car manufacturers should include those meters on all their cars. It would be just one simple way to improve fuel mileage — not by improving the car so much as improving the driver. There’s more than one way to attack this problem.

Lost:

A pair of testicles, which some may refer to as balls or cajones. Their owner is in desperate need of them.

If found, please return to this fellow who represents the majority of the United States legislature.

(more…)

This is my third attempt at writing this post goddamnit. I’ve got pages of semi-well thought out material and it all sucks. Now I’m pissed.

Education in this country is shitty because the education community contains too many stupid mother(child)fuckers.

What makes the education debate more intolerable, is that so often the proposed “solution” — one heavily favored by, surprise of surprises, the labor unions — is to hire more stupid childfuckers.

In the quality VS quantity debate, the American public has loudly voted that it would rather take the Sizzler restaurant approach.

In distilled form: the stupid are demanding more stupid in the classroom in order to make the stupid children of the stupid less stupid. Like Ron White said, “you can’t fix stupid.” You can only hope to contain it.

Really want test scores and shit to increase? Don’t spend money on shitty new books that come with useless CDs and webcontent and those nice color pictures, or computers that really serve as expensive toys, or even on more teachers. Spend some time and effort convincing the stupid not to breed. Give them all the budweiser, crystal meth, crack, sex, condoms, and maybe even a hint of education they need to keep them happy — and out of the parenting business.

A drugs for balls trade (how much is that heroin really worth to you)? Or let’s give out sex-vouchers, AKA get-laid-free cards, for men and women who undergo permanent sterilization. We can let people fuck to their hearts’ content without having to worry about their piss in the gene pool. Could that be any worse than constantly trying to reform all these unwanted kids?

It’s so perfect it has to work.