Cornhole, Chianti, and Pirates OH MY!

Alright, I was really hoping to weave all of my favorite highlights together in a Ken Jennings Mental floss kind of way.

I made a few degrees of connections and then fell short of including all of the relevant stories.


I guess that's why he's the mack daddy of jeopardy and I am not, but here goes...



Like all good blog posts, it starts and ends with pirates. Fripp Island was founded by one John "coconut monkey head" Fripp to keep spanish pirates at bay.

->

While on the island for the wedding last week, I saw an old pirate lady attempt to hold up one of the attendees, JB, proclaiming "Give me your billfold" as she jabbed him with her plastic sword.

->

On another day, after a few hot rounds on the beer pong table, the very same JB, infused with swagger and braggadocio, decided to play the next round with a thug jug of chianti. Cue up the bad ideas jeans commercial. The resulting antics can only be described as a restaurant quality shit show. Headbutting shutters and obscene sandwhich artistry followed and led to the decision to wheel JB away on a golf cart, at which time he thought he was being taken off to sleep with the fishes sopranos style.

->

Speaking of golf carts & JB, while shuttling us back from the bar, SC claimed he could run faster than the cart. Turns out he was wrong. We pulled ahead of him quickly as he started to scream that the road was too rocky for his bare feet. We kept on going just because we could. It was all very forrest gump like.

->

Part of forrest gump was filmed on fripp island. Tom Hanks starred in Forrest Gump. Tom Hanks is an A-hole.

->

A-hole is just 2 letters from C-hole, and I played my first game of cornhole this weekend. Described as a cross between horseshoes and sodomy, this game is sweeping the nation, thanks in part to things like the LED cornhole ramps which allow you to play at night. The lights aid in the ability to see at night.

->

Pirates often wore eyepatches, not because they were one eyed-freaks, but to allow for better visual acuity when transistion from the sun lit deck, to the darkend bowels of their ships.

Pirate to pirate.

Argggggh!

Da Bears

Greetings from Chicago O'hare airport, where I sit on a layover en route to San Francisco.

I just departed Fripp Island SC, where me and melady attending a friend's wedding. But this was no ordinary wedding. This was a week long extravaganza which will require a proper post, just as soon as I can get my head around some of the more definitive events of the week.

Until I can do that, I will share some useful information (which was shared with me). If you happen to be in Philly and are looking for a deal on beer, head on over to the drinker's tavern. As the name implies, that place is all about business.

Example #1. They sell 40s at the bar. Yes 40s.

Exampled #2. They sell cans of PBR for $2 a pop, but will cut that price in half if you shot-gun that blue ribboned goddess.

What are you still doing reading this? Get in the car and meet me in Philly. STAT!

Ain't that a pickle

I am just going to say it, pickles are delicious.

For some reason that sounds disturbing, but that's the way it is.

Yesterday for lunch, I spied fried pickles on the menu.

As I attended school in the south where they fry everything but babies, I am no stranger to fried pickles. My friend DB however, is fried pickle niave. So I suggested we order some. I did not intend for him to order them as his main course, but he did.

The waitress gave him the stink eye based on hearing his order and with good reason. After reducing the five pound pile down to roughly three and a half, DB looked like he had been punched in the bread basket by Tank Abbott.

How far would you go for the love of a pickle?

That's pretty far, but here is the ultimate test. Afterwards we stopped by a snowball stand with more flavors you can shake a stick at. Way down low on the list of delights such as strawberry creme, mango and lime, was a real shocker.

Dill pickel.

Dill muthafunkin pickle snowballs.

Man, I am having a serious crisis as to whether or not I can leave this city without trying one.

It's the simple things in life...

Very few readers will remember the game GORILLA.BAS from back in the Non-GUI computer days, but let me tell you this was one of the funnest games around.

It consisted of two gorillas standing on top of buildings throwing bananas at one another. It help teach the relationship between angle and velocity so that a projectile (the banana) would hit the target (opponents gorilla).

This game was out before the dawn of the NES which is like a great grandfather to the video game systems we have today. One can only imagine of what this game would be like if given the next generation treatment.

Well, imagine no more. I found a very similar game which will be coming out for the PS3 and the 360 in the near future. There are a few differences I would like to point out.

(1) The point is no longer to launch your projectile at an opponent, but rather at a fully destructible, interactive environment.

(2) While still in the game as part of the environment, monkeys are no longer the means to launch the projectile, this game will use a giant makeshift rubberband sling shot.

(3) Bananas are no longer the projectile, this game uses people.

(4) This game is called pain.

Fury of Posting

Ok, so I am making up for lost time here (at the prompting of and admonishment by one Brother Rob).

As a follow-up to that whole Mickey's Beer Pong Fiasco, I wish to make two additional points.

First, as the official sponsor of UFC, it should not come at any surprise that subing out Miller Lite for Hand Grenades will almost certainly end with some form of a physical altercation. Remember that Tyson fight where Iron Mike bit off a piece of Evander's ear? Know who sponsored that little event? St. Ides. I know this because I have a commemorative can in my basement that I bought off ebay for $1.75.

Some will say, topic 15, that malt liquor's gonna rot your brain! Possibly, but thanks to Mickeys, I now have a way to strengthen the brain cells which their product doesn't pickle.

Introducing, the Mickey's caps brain teasers...

Under each cap is a unique and fun puzzle which challenges the consumer to figure out a saying or phrase using only pictures. Think of Win Lose or Draw meets Gary Busey.

Unfortunately, Mickeys fails to include the biggest puzzle of them all. Why the hell would anyone drink this crap in the first place? It is pretty much the ass end of the malt liquor spectrum.

Beer Pong, Version T-15

For those of you with more solo cups than sense, welcome to the unnatural disaster of Topic 15's 42 cup invitation beer pong adventure.

Peep that hand grenade in the foreground? Yeah, that's how we roll.

Yep, as if play with near four times the normal cups wasn't nearly good enough, we further deviate from the norms of drinking game society by dancing with the angry mickey's hornet (AKA sickeys).

So how did this event end?

With lots upon lots o' bruises.

Thanks Fridge.

On the road again...

Yes yes yall, it's that time again, heading cross country on another research tour.

I just finished the New York leg and am pleased to report that city is as colorful and crazy as ever.

While walking down Madison avenue, I heard this disturbing comment, "Jimmy's balls smell like my grandma's house." Being the natural scientist that I am, I couldn't help but wonder the direction of that relationship. Do Jimmy's balls smell like metamucil and dried flowers? Or does grandma's house smell like balls? Regardless, I am not inclined to find out. As a second twist to this twisted story, that comment was heard from a dude.

Next stop, Dallas, then SF which means 15 hour days and rides in the rental car. You know what happened last time those two components merged?

Expect another magic verse in a week or so.

Skippy to ban skinny models...

From the mouth's of CNN, Unilever has made the decision to no longer use skinny models. Unilever makes Skippy peanut butter among other things.

This begs two questions, one of possible discrimination practices, and the other, perhaps more compelling, will Chunky follow suit?

Oh snap, there is just something too rich about a chunky Chunky model.

Maybe news of this fueled the business of the Hostess outlet, and they were planning ahead when they added that second cash register.

The Hostess with the mostess...

I swear, this post will not do this story justice, but here goes...

In what can only be described as a near to third world experience, last weekend me and melady took a field trip to Ikea.

What's so third world about Ikea? Do they make their Swedish influenced furniture in some developing country? Maybe. I can't say for sure, but what I can say is that a trip to the Hostess Outlet in PG county is about as close as you can get to buying twinkies in Egypt.

A few observations/ questions...

(1) They had two check out lines. Do they ever get that busy that they need to open a second register? Perhaps. The line was at least 3 deep when we were buying our assortment of discount, past their expiration date pies and cupcakes.

(2) Who determines the expiration date of a Yodel? And is that any different than that of a sno-ball or zinger?

(3) Does the cashier get an employee discount? My god, if it where any cheaper, they would pay you to take the stuff.

(4) The family in front of me paid in food stamps. There was also a brand new Hummer on DUBS out front. I was going to lose it if that was their car. It wasn't, but for sure someone in the store was driving that beast. And as we left a pimped caddy rolled in. Who exactly shops at this place anyhow?

(5) For a mere $3 you can buy something like 6 pies. Each pie contains roughly 600 calories. Calorically speaking, that is like 2 days of food which I could knock out after a night of popeyes and 40's. That is dangerous with a capital dangerous!

(6) Someone came in asking if they sold beer. Beer and snack cakes.

(7) You don't even want to know how much wonderbread you can buy for $5.

(8) There was a 4 blade ceiling fan with only 3 blades and they were still running it. I am not sure, but I think that might be a bit of a safety concern. Anyone know if you can suture a gash with a ho-ho?

Fantastic Forward

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ...Uphill BOTH ways...

Yadda, yadda, yadda And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that...I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can'thelp but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ... With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mail box and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and"asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass!

Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed! Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no CartoonNetwork either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning.

Do you hear what I'm saying!?!

We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled littlerat-bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up . We had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire ...imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about!

You kids today have got it too easy.

You're spoiled.

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980.