Chuck-ese

Bernie Mac

Isaac Hayes

Running Tally

Straight Dope Message Board Celebrity Death Pool

This shit is getting morbid. I feel like I should be creating a “death” category.

And I’m being ironic in the last half of the title.

So, I was at my grandmother’s house today, and she was watching Fox “News.” The headline they showed on the bottom-middle of the screen read:

THE COST OF FREEDOM
LA Plans to Ban New Fast Food Chains: Threat to Free Society?

I was speechless. This is a threat to a free society? Not illegal surveilance of Americans? Not politicization of the Justice Department? Not telecom companies clamoring to censor the internet?

Fox seems to be using the tactic of whipping people into a frenzy about something small to distract them from what’s actually the problem. A standard Republican tactic.

…how before Obama’s trip to the middle east, everyone on the Democratic side said that it was a terrible idea, but now now the general consensus seems to be that it worked out pretty well?

The moral of this story: Not only are political predictions nearly meaningless, but most people don’t have the attention span to notice.

Link

Tim Russert

George Carlin 

For a Running Tally… 

I briefly star in this YouTube gem, about an idiot at my school rocketing himself in the nuts. I’m the kid in the dark shirt and glasses who walks in front of the camera at the end.

I did something pretty cool quite a  while ago, and I thought I should share it with you now. On Friday, October 12th, 2007, I completed the Tribune Crossword in the Detroit Free Press. This was the first crossword I had ever completed.

Yeah, it’s pretty lame. But I don’t care.

This probably is, sadly, to be the last of the quiz bowl roundups (10th, 11th).

Quiz Busters:
3-1
We made it to the fourth round and lost.

Fall League:
Season: 7-0
Tournament: 3-0
1st Place
I got a personal trophy for highest individual score.

Winter League:
Season: 6-2
Tournament: 3-1
1st Place
I earned First Team All-Conference

High School Challenge:
2-1
We nearly forfeited that last game because I was sick in the bathroom. We lost by one question.

State Tournament:
First Day: 4-0
Second Day: 0-2
Total: 4-2
Class B 3rd Place
I got First Team All-State

National Tournament: May 23rd, 24th, & 25th.
This is the first time we’d gone to nationals.
First Day: 5-5 (We needed a record of 6-4 or better to advance to the second day. I single-handedly lost us the 5th game). On the bright side, half of them didn’t know what euchre was, and 80% of those surveyed didn’t know what Vernor’s was.
Second Day: Explore Chicago (made only slightly worse by the fact that Yarb Bung came with us.)
At the end of the first day, we were 92nd out of 176. East Lansing was 5th.
I personally was the 43rd highest individual scorer out of 990.

Will I do college Quiz Bowl? I don’t know.

I just gave my senior project presentation, and I passed with flying colors (45, 45, 44, 43 out of 45). You can see the results eventually at the new piece of crap added to the Chucksphere. Thus ends everything project-like I have to do until college. Now I can finally write some stuff I’ve been meaning to.

Motherfucking done! Woo hoo!

So, yesterday was the most beautiful day I’ve seen in a long time. Spring is breaking and winter is fading away. I thought to myself as I was getting out of school: “This is the perfect day to get the Cavelier out and take her for a spin.”

[Break of a week in writing.]

Long stoy short, my ma was a total bitch and told me I couldn’t drive MY property until I got a job, while just two days before had decided to micromanage my life to the point where that would be impossible.

I’m not exactly over it, but I’m not as pissed as formerly. Just a little less. But I’m managing it quite well.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3: The whole premise has been cancelled due to the fact that I have no time for anything, least of all an international debauchery-fest. Even writing this is costing me valuable time.

This article was inspired some time ago (back in the days of the Old Chuckese) by an article that I can no longer find.

The point of it was that voluntary polls are worthless because the only people who respond are those who feel passionatelym about an issue either way, so you lose the middle-of-the-road people and the rationality. You also become convinced that something is an extemely polarizing topic, when in fact the non-exitant active-neutrals aren’t being counted into the equation. You see this alot on the internet.

(By the way, I mean “poll” to mean any method for commenting on a particular topic, from a blog comment, to blog articles, to public awareness campaigns, etc. Why did I do this? Because I couldn’t think of anything else to title this article that sounded as good.) (This post brought to you by the Campaign to Clean Out Chuck’s To-Do List.)

Call me paranoid, but the first thing I heard in the morning when NPR announced that a bomb had gone off at an Army recruiter in NYC, the first thing I thought wasn’t “Was anybody hurt?” but rather something along the lines of “Oh God, we’re going after Iran.” Is that so far fetched? We all know how George W. Bush thinks! It wouldn’t be out of character for the government to declare it a terror attack and use it as justification to start putting a harder squeeze on the American people.

In a shocking turn of events, the Department of Homeland Security and Army are not treating it as an act of terrorism! Kudos to the stormtroopers for acting with a little restraint.

(Link)