Day: February 23, 2015

For the past several years, my wife and I have gone to an Oscars viewing party hosted by friends. We all fill our ballots and eat and drink. The hosts are huge into movies, and have usually seen most, if not all, of the movies up for an award–even the foreign ones and animated shorts, which no one ever sees.

It reminds me that I haven’t seen that many movies, which I was already clear about this year. But it also reminds me that the show isn’t really for me, it’s for the cinephiles like them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in theory. But take into account that ratings really sucked last night, which means we’re watching other things. We’re bored by award shows.

That’s why we need to ban acceptance speeches. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Ban acceptance speeches

According to a study published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, YouTube users are not doing enough to show the negative side of drinking. (We know, we’re having trouble thinking of any, too.) Based on an analysis of the 70 most popular YouTube videos about drunkenness,

[A]lcohol consumption was associated with humor in 79% of the videos and […] active intoxication was portrayed in 86%. However, only 7% of the videos contained any references to alcohol dependence. Also of concern to the researchers was the fact that almost a quarter of the videos (24%) featured motor vehicle use.

Even worse, the kids like them: “On average, the videos received 23.2 ‘likes’ – the primary way for users to express enjoyment – for every ‘dislike’ that was registered.” And that’s counting all of the comments calling the videos “GAYYY!!!” or explaining how the government uses chemtrails to keep us docile.

It’s up to YouTube users to reverse this trend. We’re calling on MilfHunter538, PurpleMeth and therandomtickler to get to work on strong, anti-drinking videos to instill lessons on the affects our choices make on others.

What’s in a name? Ownership, status, power … even marketing. The right name can be all that matters and what proves the difference between good and bad. After all, you don’t see a whole lot of Sally Hitlers running around.

So that’s why the Bourbon virus bothers us. Bourbon is delicious and full of uses. One of those uses, despite what ticks in Kansas would have you believe, is to not be a part of an illness. The CDC discovered a new virus in a recently deceased Kansas man, having been found with multiple tick bites. Rather than come up with a scientific Latin name for the virus, the scientists named it after the county where the man lived (warning: autoplay). Because that’s what we expect from smarties.

Alcohol gets a lot of bad press. Being connected to a disease ain’t gonna swing it in the direction of good.