Man Shoots Lawn Mower… and… ?!

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So apparently this is news in America and also, it’s against the law to shoot your own property now.

This guy essentially went Office Space on his own lawn mower and now he’s going to get an 11k fine? Give me a fucking break. No harm, no foul. Find something else to waste taxpayer money on, and also:

Dear CNN,

Please stop posting stupid bullshit stories like this that make me question the worth of my own country. Make me believe in the free press again.

Thanks,
Mike

30 is the new 20

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Michael and I

My 30th birthday was one to remember, for sure. I wanted to thank everyone for coming and share some thoughts about it all.

First, Jaime is amazing — she put this all together and… wow. Just, wow. ❤

Second, I realized that I didn’t give any sort of speech or say anything monumental to everyone there. I was sort of speechless and made a point to move from table to table, so didn’t really give a speech or anything.

But I thought about this a bit afterwards, and if given another chance, I probably would have said something like:

You’re only as good as the people who support you. When you stumble, they help you pick yourself up. When you succeed, you succeed together. I’ve had the luxury of friends who tell you the truth even if they know it hurts. I’ve been lucky enough to have the loyalty and love of my friends (real friends, not Facebook friends), and as I get older I value them more and more. You’ve made my first 30 years amazing, and I’m guessing life will continue to be one hell of a ride.

Cheesy, but true. Anyway, here are some of my favorite moments:

  • The confused blonde greeter who had no idea what was going on and almost blew Jaime’s cover
  • Imagining Jaime beating that person up right there near the front door
  • Following Jaime and this other girl to the basement of the Lucia, wondering where the hell we were going
  • Walking into a room filled with most of my closest friends
  • My balloons were cool
  • Great food — drunken noodles, red curry and some steak stuff. Yum!
  • Getting back the same tube of Preparation-H I gave Chris for his 30th
  • Reading all the signatures on my basketball
  • Riding with Cameron, Jaime and Erin trying to find a parking space
  • Fun times at the Marathon Taverna
  • Playing pool and watching Cameron sing along with Journey (with fist-pumping)
  • Dancing with Cameron
  • Mario Kart with Jon
  • Hugging Jaime once I had processed all of it
  • Feeling like the luckiest guy on earth

Finally, about birthdays — and many of you know this about me — I’m not generally a huge fan. Mainly because I don’t think it’s super fun to have people kiss your ass on your birthday if they don’t care about you the rest of the year.

This was different, of course — it was a time to stop and appreciate relationships, and I can roll with that. This meant a lot to me — just seeing everybody there made me think about all the things we’ve done together and how crazy life has been. It was just really special, and I was totally blown away. I’ll never forget it.

And even though there’s so much I can’t even fit it all into my head, it’s really just a start. We’ve got more memories to make and more things to do. So I guess the ending to this blog post is: To be continued… 🙂

Yeah, it was a foul

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Okay, Brent Barry got fouled.

It doesn’t matter.

It’d take more than 10 fingers to count how many times the Spurs’ got ridiculous calls or no-calls. In fact, if you take into account just 3 flops (two by Oberto, one by Bowen) you negate 7 Spurs points and add 6 Lakers fast break points.

Lakers should have won by 20, it was close because of the referees in the first place. Phil Jackson was right during his 2nd quarter interview. The refs turned an 11 point lead into a 5 point lead with 3 consecutive bullshit calls.

Let’s take a closer look at the last minute or so shall we?

  • Fish’s shot hit the rim. Small detail? How convenient to overlook that.
  • Odom’s block was legit. Eh, let it slide.

Hank Abbott ain’t talking about those plays, though. Instead he sees an aging Barry and vicariously plays the old guy not getting the fair call on a shot he never would have made. Face it – that shot wouldn’t have gone in. Not even in Hank’s pick-up game that he talks about in his article.

And this isn’t a pick-up game. Even pick-up games — and series — shouldn’t really come down to one play. Spurs still lost to L.A. three other times. Thing is, they know it’s over now, and it sure stings doesn’t it?

But after all the crying, shameless flopping, cheap-shot Rob plays and getting away with continuously fouling Kobe and CP3 — isn’t it a shame that when the Spurs play, win or lose, there’s always some trailer about the refs or dirty this or that?

It should be about basketball.

Then again, maybe it is — sometimes the ball rolls where you don’t want it to. Sometimes the calls don’t go your way. Sometimes your star player is chucked into a scorer’s table on purpose and you lose the series because of a technicality (yeah, I’m still pissed).

The game isn’t perfect, people aren’t perfect, refs aren’t perfect. One bad call after another or just a poetic reflection of the human condition? You be the judge.

Anyway, Spurs should just be grateful they’ll have all of their starters back. Sure would suck to lose two starters for a game 5, huh?

Statistically speaking, most series where the home team is the better team do end 4-1. I hope Hollinger was right. Would be nice to watch real basketball in the Finals and not feel the urge to ship a barge of No More Tears to Timmy and Manu after every play.

American Bikesheds

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I wasn’t really surprised when I read the comments on a simple news ticker post on CNN. But it got me to thinking (instead of sleeping) about common arguments made against Barack Obama. Ready? Ok, go.

Obama can’t beat McCain, so let Hillary go even though she lost the primary in delegates and popular vote.

So why have a primary then? Why not just have 6 or 7 old guys in a room pick the democratic nominee instead? Oh, right, democracy and all that crap.

Obama is an elitist who is completely out of touch with normal Americans.

So let’s see… Barack said, “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or anti-pathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” So now he’s an elitist. Out of touch with the working class. But… but… but…

It’s true… American politics have become trivial in many ways because we’ve started to seriously argue about stupid bullshit like who wears lapel pins. Don’t make me quote the “pieces of flair” line from Office Space. Barack was a dumbass for saying it the way he did, but get over it.

This election is a huge-ass bikeshed argument because nobody truly understands how we’ll fix the economy, improve education, resurrect social security, fix our world reputation or reform our federal government. Is it much easier to talk about guns, god and how fucked up everybody else is? Yes. In fact, I do it all the time!

So that’s what elections are about for so many Americans — which is probably why they vote so differently compared to elitist assholes who can read and understand the issues. The Kentucky vote distribution says a lot. Hrm, I wonder what’s in Louisville and Lexington… ?

Obama is a cult leader who hates America.

Well, this is just stupid. But hey, cue the angry pictures of Rev. Wright, say elitist, and *poof* — the dog has been wagged. Pretty sure Fox News beat this dead horse (probably a bad phrase given current events but I’m leaving it in) quite a few times, and it worked, too.

Exit polls in Kentucky showed that, “nearly 55 percent of Democratic voters said Obama shares the most controversial views of Wright and those voters went for Clinton 84 percent to 9 percent over Obama. Among the 44 percent of Kentucky voters who said Obama does not share Wright’s views, 51 percent voted for the Illinois senator while 43 percent went for Clinton.”

Anyway, what really kept me up late on Tuesday was rummaging through comments on this ticker item about Oregon voters on CNN. And oh boy, there is some good shit on this page. Let me tell you some of my favorites:

Oregon = always was a worthless town full of pot heads. The lawyers, teachers, police,students, doctors and nurses. I lived there…I know. They are very liberal because they always snort. Obama snorts too that’s why he’s so popular. What a bunch of rot. They deserve each other.

Besides not knowing that Oregon is a state, this person obviously has had some bad experiences with snorting marijuana. Must have hurt pretty bad.

lol college educated but no common sense.Kentucky was by far more impressive then elitist oregon.

What a humble statement. I think I lost you at “lol college educated”.

Curiously, though not ostentatiously religious, OBAMA is by far the nearest thing to Jesus that I have seen among the presidential candidates.
“Naive, poor judgment” guy that he was, Jesus said “Love your enemies” and meant it, whether they belong to the Clinton following or are Republicans or whether they are Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan or anybody.

This kind of cracked me up. Interesting point, but I’d have to see him in a beard to make an educated decision.

Read the rest — it’s hilarious (and depressing).

But of all the diatribes and idiotic crap I waded through that night, this one stuck with me:

I believe I would rather be uneducated versus non religious. Brains versus Morality….I’ll take Morality.

Upon reading this, something occurred to me. Could be nothing, could be everything. Either way, my spidey-sense tingled and I came to a shocking conclusion: that person, my friends, is obviously not a zombie.

Brainzzzzz…….

Elbow Fail Update

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Eye is healing nicely, but it’s changing colors. Maybe it’s a sign I should end my NBA boycott and cheer for the Lakers just to spite the Spurs:

Sort of better

Bloody Eye

Elbows Happen

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Band-aid

Bloody Marvelous

Someone drove the lane and their elbow caught my eye. Happy Saturday.

Update: Since I know this is hot news (not) here’s a close-up a couple hours later before Jaime dressed it…

Shiner

Go Hornets!

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Spurs showed they were the best at… well… basketball? Here are some highlights from game 5:

  • Hey let’s foul the Suns on purpose instead of playing basketball — EQUIVALENT OF 8 TURNOVERS
  • Duncan tripping over his own feet — FOUL
  • Parker falling down after getting assaulted by a nitrogen atom — FOUL
  • Shaq stripping ball off of Duncan’s feet — SPURS BALL, 2 POINTS BY DUNCAN
  • Seven turnovers by the Suns in the fourth quarter — SHIT

I don’t even know where to start with this. Game 5 showed the Spurs’ true colors, bunch of fakers and liars. But even in the wake of such embarrassing play by the Spurs, the Suns gave them the game again because they were not mentally tough.

In the end, to beat a superior team you need to resort to intentional fouling, flopping and luck. It paid off.

So honestly, basketball died a little more today. Most of you don’t know why or what I mean, but then again most of you don’t know the game like I do. Most of you ain’t got shit on me.

Go Hornets. Best I can hope for is that this joke of a team dies at the hands of CP3.

Or, New Orleans will learn that it takes more than basketball to win in the playoffs.

Here’s to the Spurs getting old and eventually dying.