Day: February 9, 2009

The McBournie Minute: Bowl to the future

Over the weekend I attended a 7-year-old’s birthday party and was surprisingly devoid of alcohol. It had been a while for me since I had gone to any birthday parties that did not involve someone falling asleep on the bathroom floor, so this was a shock to me. Happily, I found that the birthday parties of the younger ones have not really changed since I was that age.

There were still heavily caffeinated sodas for the children, along with snacks and cake. There were presents and balloons. It was at a bowling alley, and there were pop music videos playing on projection screens. During the experience I realized two things:

  1. Kids listen to pop music brought to you by Disney, featuring teen singers/ role models so modestly dressed you can’t even see their 20% of their skin, thus making me feel creepy for the slightest glance.
  2. Federal funding for bowling alleys ran out in 1981.

Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Bowl to the future

Not addicting, but got you by the balls

Medical researchers are experimenting with a new hypothesis that is sure to make Snoop Dogg sweat: does smoking marijuana increase the risk of testicular cancer?

So far, the answer is a very scientific “Idunno,” but they’re working on it.

But that’s not to say that every scientist is gung-ho about it. Some are calling the connection “a tenuous one,” especially considering the type of nut cancer they’re investigating has not increased over the past 35 years. We don’t have audio of this quote, so we can’t verify whether the source– Steve Shoptaw, “a professor in the department of family medicine and psychiatry at UCLA” — sounded anything like your freshman year roommate. (Think Tommy Chong.)

Should this hypothesis become fruitful, this is great news for Michael Phelps: testicular cancer improved the career of Lance Armstrong.

Score 50,000 points and fly in the military

A guy went from high school dropout to drone pilot instructor in the Army — not a position most 19-year-old enlisted hold, by the way — thanks in part to his video game skills.

Sigh.

The soldier in question was a high school dropout who joined the military to make his father proud (graduating from high school, however, does not do that). But his failing grades in school made his superiors skeptical of his qualifications to be a helicopter mechanic, his first choice. So they asked if he wanted to be a drone pilot.

Surprise, surprise, this doesn’t sit too well with bona-fide academy flyboys. Says P.W. Singer, a former defense policy adviser to the Obama campaign, and the author of “Wired for War,”

“You tell that story to someone in the Air Force, like an F-15 pilot, and they go, ‘I do not like where this is headed. You know, I’ve got a college education. The military spent $5 million training me up. And you’re telling me that this kid, this nineteen-year-old-and — oh, by the way, he’s in the Army — is doing more than I am?’ And that’s the reality of it.”

In all seriousness, it’s great that the kid is joining the military. More power to him if he really wants to do so. He just better remember that the Konami Code doesn’t work in real life.

All the promotional things

The Guys have been fearing this moment for years. The moment where we start to feel really old. Well … most of us anyways, Grandpa Snee is already in that category. But one of the defining signs that a generation is in fact aging is when a band breaks up, then comes back for a reunion tour/album.

Welcome back Blink-182! After a four year hiatus in which TomDeLonge made two crappy albums and Mark Hoppus still complained about high-school girlfriends, the pop/punk (pop-punk?) trio announced their comeback last evening at The Grammy Awards.

The group wanted to announce their new venture in a modest way and in no way try to steal the spotlight from Chris Brown and Rihanna’s legal troubles.

Cows are attention whores

Cows: They’re tasty, they’re full of milk that is part of this complete breakfast, but are they dumb? We tend to think of farm animals as stupid and docile–completely under our control. We forget, of course, the bloody coup that was George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

A recent study in England (not that we can trust the Europeans, either) found that cows may not be so stupid, but rather, the needy, selfish beasts we all fear they could be. Apparently, if you love your cow (in which ever way you choose) and name it, the cow will produce more milk.

Cows need your attention and need to be told they are doing a good job. Why do they need this? Because they understand English!