Joel F

Grand Funk Railroad

Thanksgiving break was generally great.

Family keeps getting weirder

Still feels like there are some massive life transitions going down, at a very fast pace.

Switching to coffee

Going to start lifting

Going on some dates

Lots of chest hair

All while plugged into the internet

Talking to Women, The Greatness of Professional Sports, Albert Pujols got robbed, I got Booted, Thanksgiving is happening

Blogging about sports is a funny thing. I think it was the genius Steve Carell, today's funniest man in America (over Will Ferrell), who said that talking about sports isolates women out of a conversation because they aren't as likely to relate to sports metaphors and terminology. So there's a tip about what not to talk about when you are trying to pick up a nice gal.

Some people only like one particular sport, usually the one they were good at in their younger years. Others may appreciate a variety of sports, but only in a particular realm, like college versus professional. Personally, I think pro-sports are vastly superior to college sports, because even with the money and hoaxes the talent pool has no room for jokers, like last years George Mason basketball team there is no way that team should have been able to beat the various legacy schools they did, which to me made college basketball the definition of what it means to be unprofessional. Others would say this is okay because it is "madness."

Pros are better athletes with better knowledge of their game. They are full grown men compared to college kids that are still developing, which means a man's game requires a higher level of physicality and athleticism in order to be successful. I have a theory the only reason colleges exist in this country is because the US needs some kind of guaranteed structure to create the best athletes in the world so they can be dumped into money making spectacles like pro-sports. The game doesn't become pure until those boys become men and that level of greatness is achieved.

All of that being said, at the risk of alienating most of the readers of my blog, I have a sports topic to talk about. Prepare to enter the world of baseball, perhaps the most hated sport amongst people my age. I'm not totally gung-ho on this, so if you disagree with me it won't piss me off, but rather make me happy because some kind of discussion will be documented, which is always my goal with blogging.

This giant left handed dude named Ryan Howard was voted Most Valuable Player for the National League of Major League Baseball this year. My problem with this is this other dude named Albert Pujols, a vicious right hander poised to become the greatest hitter the game has ever seen, is in the same league. I think Pujols should have won. Here is the evidence:

The numbers break down like this:

Howard - . 313 batting average, 58 home runs, 149 RBIs
Pujols - .331 batting average, 49 homers, 137 RBIs

If you had to pick a winner based on numbers alone I can see why Howard would deserve the award. However, Pujols missed an entire month of the season with a pesky injury to his oblique muscles. It's clear both players are offensive juggernauts, so does the player who hits more home runs automatically make him the most valuable to his team?

MVP awards are usually decided in the second half of the season, and a good argument of why Howard should win the award is because of his startling production in the second half (.355 with 30 homers and 78 RBIs.) HOWEVER, MVP awards SHOULD be won and lost in the critical last few weeks of the season. Howard's team was in a heated playoff race with about half of the teams in the national league, but his bat got very cold when it counted most, and the Phillies did not make the playoffs. He was doing so well people expected him to end up with a home run total in the upper sixties, but he fizzled, regularly drawing intentional walks and striking out.

How did Pujols' team do? I forgot. Oh yea, they won the World Series. Though they almost didn't make the playoffs. The Cardinal's pitchers were getting lit up at the end of the year, even their ace Chris Carpenter gave up more than 6 runs in his last two starts. The team lost something like 8 games in a row, while the Astros were making a forceful run at the division title. And then, when the time came to separate the heroes from the zeros, in the last three games of the season Albert Pujols hit two mammoth game-deciding home runs, solidifying the Cardinal's bid for the playoffs, and eventual run at the world title.

That is enough to force me to vote for Pujols, though when discussing most "valuable" player, looking at the team of each player is inevitable. The Phillies are stacked with offensive talent up and down their line up. All-stars Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins had sensational years at the plate. The man batting behind Howard, Pat Burrell, had a respectable year as well, shooting 29 balls out of the park and knocking in 95 runs. The Cardinal's offense was a joke this year, with only one (utility) player other than Pujols hitting above the .300 mark. Pujols didn't have nearly as many opportunities with runners on base as Howard. The man protecting Pujols, Scott Rolen, had a decent year with 22 homers and 95 rbis, but he was constantly struggling with playing hurt, as was most of the Cardinal's line up.

Clearly Ryan Howard had a special season, a stand out performance when compared to most players around the league, but Albert Pujols was robbed of the award for Most Valuable Player.
End Of Sports Discussion

I got a boot on my car today. I parked in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy for a little under an hour to go to class and when I came back there was a massive orange sticker on my driver's side window and a boot on my tire. A shady skinny black dude in a leather jacket and dark sunglasses approached me and told me I had to pay him $75 by 6pm. He said he boots about 10 kids a week, which means he was stalking me as his prey. He wasn't that bad of a dude, but I hate wasting money and could have easily not parked there. boing boing boing.

Thanksgiving holiday basically started for me on Thursday night. I ate a big brownie and then saw Jurassic 5 in concert at my school. I was pretty damn close to the action, getting jiggy in the third row. Their song 'Freedom' was the highlight of the show I think. At the end two 10 year old kids came on stage and rapped, and they were mad rawww.

Home is always good. More people from the WHS '04 class will be in Omaha at the same time since probably Christmas of last year. This is awesomely awesome, but also pretty weird because you get to see how much everybody has changed. I get in town on Wednesday afternoon. I hope to see everyone and make out with all of your pretty faces. Tongues out of control.

Lu Lu Lu, I've got some apples, Lu Lu Lu you got some too

Okay, I thought this was an all right idea for a blog.

I am a music snob, NOT a music critic. I usually make an effort to absorb the entirety of material from my favorite bands. If I could make a playlist/soundtrack for my life I could definitely go three weeks without listening to a single song that wasn't awesome. I'm down with the Rollingstone 411 and I pirate like mad, so I got shit you ain't even herd yet. We all have our favorite songs, every once in a while we get to talk about them with an ally-fan, sometimes we sing them out loud when they are relevant to our life - like when I haven't washed my towel in a long time and it smells nasty I sing "Funky
towel, towel's got the funk" - a line from this song a bunch of cockroaches sing in the MTV movie Joe's Apartment.

Anyways, you can probably name 10 or 20 of your favorite songs off of the top of your head. But what about your favorite MOMENTS in a song. This is an important distinction. You might only like a song, but LOVE a particular 5 or 10 seconds of it. I feel that whenever you hear a song there has to be a part you are looking forward to more than the rest. Wanting to reexperience your favorite moment in a song should be what caused you to listen to the song again in the first place. Here are my favorite moments in some pretty awesome songs. Despite my being a music smarty pants, these songs were all gifts, which are probably the best kind of songs anyway.

Jimi Hendrix - Bold as Love
I think Erik sent me this song some time last year.
Favorite moment begins at 3:26 - I guess this is the peak of the guitar solo. The sound reaches some crazy mystical higher level of electricity I have no idea about. It does a really good job stirring around all of the trippy colors Jimi puts into your head via his lyrics/guitar earlier in the song.

Muse - Hoodoo
I was skeptical about listening to the new Muse album, but over this summer both Farrell and Jmac were enthusiastic about the greatness of the outer space themed Black Holes and Revelations. My favorite moment of this song hits at about 2:46. The song is the ultimate tragedy of the album, and at this moment someone dies or is defeated, and it is sad. Don't worry though, because the album concludes with the next song, where the group fights back in a victorious rampage of space cowboys.

Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
This might be my favorite music moment right now, because I have been thinking a lot about technology and the future lately. I found this song when Tommy Dahlk told me I needed to see Grandma's Boy. The movie is about some potheads who work at a video game developing company, and is absolutely hilarious. The head video game developer is a powerful nerd from the future. He plays this part of the song loudly in his office. When a techie comes in to talk about the game he asks him to turn the music down. He says he doesn't like techno. The nerd says "you would if you had robot ears."
At 4:50 the song begins to sound like you are a techno dancing robot who has just had a few shots of really nice gasoline, and maybe scored some sticky icky oil. The machine inside of you will dance even if your body is busy glued to the computer screen.

One Sentence A Day

Today was absolutely beautiful outside, so I fixed my camera and took some pictures

This is the view outside my balcony on the third floor of Highland Lake Apartments. I'm in the far right corner of the complex, overlooking the entrance of the gate. If Highland Lake was a terrorist base, my apartment would be a turret, housing snipers and rocket launching mofos.

This is the entrance to Highland Lake. I j-walk across that street to go to class twice every day. It had been getting cold or rainy for a few different random periods of about three days, and now has suddenly blossomed into a nice fall. Will the ice storm come again this winter year?

Here I am with my cat. Moxie is the creature I spend the most time with. When I ignore him he hops onto my laptop and picks the keys off of my keyboard. I freak out and put him in the closet every single time. The computer and the cat need to learn to live together peacefully.

I still have just been hanging out, playing Max Payne 2 and trying to catch up on South Park. Mrs. Garrison's explanation of evolution to his class was classic.

Music! Deftones - Pink Cellphone

That Boy Needs Therapy

How come Rob doesn't have a blog yet? We could def use his input in my favorite blogging community.

What does it mean to be part of a community like this? I've tried to tell the story over and over again about how blogging was the main thing that got me into writing. Back in the day, CombatRhino really was like a family. We were excited about life, and were willing to share so much. One blogger's experience became the experience of every blogger simply by reading and looking at pictures. We were all close. Knew everything about everyone. And it was a thrill.

It would be great if some change was made, some coming together, where I would be fine with sharing all of the wildest parts of my life on here, instead of just posting minimal "catch up" blogs. I want to show the nitty gritty, but it's different because we don't see each other that often, and sometimes those blogs come off as self promotion.

I have this theory that most of the high school and college experience are exactly the same. It takes about the same amount of time to find things out about yourself, like who are your group of friends or how you like to interact with members of the opposite gender, during your four years in high school as it does in college. The lessons are different, but they definitely mirror each other. Well, CombatRhino started up in my junior year of high school and I am now a junior in college. I can tell good things are coming. And it's a good thing too because WandyTeeth was looking pretty sad for a while. Someone told me Jsizz was thinking about deleting his blog and I almost cried.

So having said that, I have a story to share.

One morning about a month ago I woke up late for training for my new job as the school newspaper delivery boy. I had played a dangerous game of Beirut the night before, with cups filled with Bud Ice, so I messed up setting my alarm. The guy who was supposed to be training me called me and after I apologized to him, I jumped from my air mattress, gulped down a few cups of water, and tried to get to campus as quickly as I could. Normally I walk to school, which takes about 25 minutes, because it costs $400 for a pass the park on campus. I decided to hop in my car and park illegally in a spot behind my old dorm pictured here:

I returned to my car at about 11 and some fancy car was blocking me in. There was a note on my windshield that said "As the sign indicates this spot is for RAs. You should not park here. I will be back at 4." This person was pretty brave because obviously double parking someone in for eight hours is begging to get your car keyed. I didn't do anything mean though, I just walked home and threw away the note because I didn't think I would ever get my chance for revenge. But yesterday someone else put a note on my car:

Ginger must have been feeling pretty guilty for whatever contact she made with my car, because as far as I could tell there was no damage done. I wasn't going to call her, so I threw the note in my car and drove to the liquor store to buy some Halloween drinks. I planned on being hung over this morning, so I gave myself a little extra sleep, knowing I would drive to school and park in the same illegal spot I had a month ago. When I saw the fancy car again I saw an opportunity for revenge. I put the note I got from Ginger on its windshield.

Obviously the car owner is going to be scared as shit at first, because they think somebody hit their car. But when they can't find any damage they will just be confused, which is also not a very good feeling. Maybe they'll even call Ginger and then they'll know their ass got punk'd.