Sunday, May 31, 2009

Cracked rules

Friday, May 29, 2009

Between Two Ferns

Zach with Bradley Cooper. Love it.

Actually made me laugh at work and get wierd looks

oh dear...

Man Uses Live Swan to Beat up Victim

I don't think I need to say anything.

Monday, May 25, 2009

WHAT!?

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Kronwall Kronwall's Havlat

update: Sportsnet's Mike Brophy's take

First of all, it always amazes me how stupid hockey players can be. You have a guy who, who knows, could be in a coma on the ice and they are stepping all over him. It was the game before this where one of Chicago's players' heads nearly got taken off with a skate blade to the neck. Now Havlat is laying there, unconscious, and they could have decapitated him by stepping in the wrong spot.

As I was saying the other day, hockey is like no other sport in the world, except organized fighting and lacrosse, where violence outside the confines of the game is not only accepted, it is a marketing tool for the league. If you saw two basketball players, two football players, two baseball players, or two soccer players fighting, they would get tossed from the game. Those sports live (for the most part) without fighting. For some reason, in hockey, passion and violence go hand in hand; you can't have one without the other. Football is a contact sport. A hard hit is accepted as such. How many times have you seen a guy get blocked from the blind side and just get demolished? There is never a brawl afterward. It's part of the game.

I say F*** the hockey purists who say fighting is necessary. I've watched the Olympics, the World Championships, the World Juniors, there is no more chippiness or dirty hits than there is in the NHL. And the game is just as entertaining without fighting. I think hockey's excuse to let the players police themselves is one of the worst arguments in sports. Back in the old days when that statement was even truer you had line brawls and Mike Milbury in the stands whacking guys with shoes (seriously, look it up). These are the types of athletes you want policing themselves? They can't police themselves.

And to address Kronwall's hit, it was dirty and he should be suspended. He left his feet, I don't care if it was before or after the hit, and any time the league can review hits and see clearly an intention to hurt another player with a devastating hit to the head when he's not looking, then a lesson needs to be sent to the players doing these things. Unfortunately, there is no suspension and Havlat is now questionable for game 4.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Exposing a Diver: Kyle Lafferty

Here is a Rivaldo type performance by Ranger's Kyle Lafferty. I'll bet he wasn't laffertying though when his own team fined him and the Scottish Premier League could potentially suspend him.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Good Question

As DailyMail asks: "How did Ballack get away with this?"



I hate Michael Ballack. Nothing more needs to be said.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Britney, please

When I get out of the pool, I'm tired. And wet. Why do the radio Gods feel the need to blast me with Britney Spears' junk noise every time I'm toweling off? WHY! It never fails. I think 4 or 5 weeks in a row. It's incessant and unnecessary. Does anyone even like her or her garbage sounds? Without being embarrassed about it?

This needs to stop. C95 and 96 need to stop. Give me back my sanity. That's all I ask.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

He lives in a lair...

Below is a link to an interesting little discussion over at BLDGBLOG on the nature of evil lairs as represented by video games. All I know is I've heard a heck of a lot about Shadow of the Collosus- man I wanna play that game. Anyway, here ya go. It's a pretty good little read.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Debunking Soccer Rules

I've been reading FIFA's "Law's of the game" online and found some glaring issues with how their rulebook is applied in the real game and some misleading/contradictory statements.

Interesting reminders:
-A goal can be scored from the kick-off.
-A penalty is decided based on where the foul occurred; the ball position does not matter.
-A free kick inside a team's own penalty area requires all opponents to be outside the 18 yard box. Ball isn't in play until it leave penalty area.
-On a penalty shot, all players except the goalie must be behind the ball, specifically at the sides of the penalty area, 12 yards from the goal line.

LAW 7 – THE DURATION OF THE MATCH - Allowance for Time Lost
Apparently "any other cause" is a valid reason for the referee to allot added time. Additionally, "The allowance for time lost is at the discretion of the referee." So the referee can make up any reason for added time or decide not to allow any extra time if he/she so desires? Isn't the wording here just opening the door for potential referee bias?

Furthermore, in the referee interpretation guidelines, it says "the referee must allow for the full amount of time lost through injury to be played at the end of each period of play." WTF is going on?

LAW 9 – THE BALL IN AND OUT OF PLAY & LAW 10 – THE METHOD OF SCORING
This is something that should be über clear to every soccer player, but it still a source of confusion for me, especially with the way this law is enforced. When you watch soccer on TV, you will consistently see balls which cross over the line being called out when there is grass visible between the white line marking the field and where the ball contacts the grass.

However, according to FIFA's rule, the WHOLE of the ball has to cross the line. This is like the whole puck crossing the line in hockey. You have to look from over top or straight down the line to see if an object has fully crossed the line. Since the ball extends outwards from where it contacts the ground, only looking at the ball's contact with the ground to see if it is over the line is insufficient.

LAW 12 – FOULS AND MISCONDUCT - Cautionable Offences
This is a big screw up if you ask me. Nowhere in this list of offenses does it say that a dangerous foul can be punished with a caution, aka yellow card. The only thing that comes close is "persistent infringement of the Laws of the Game." This means a player must commit several fouls before he can be cautioned if you believe in the word "persistent." And I do believe. It's a real word. I looked it up.

It would seem to me that the words "careless, reckless or using excessive force" should be removed from describing offenses leading to a free kick and applied to the justification for giving a caution. Because that is really how it works in the real game.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

A funeral for Duke ... ?

Notice what I did with the question mark there?

But for the moment, yes, it's true. Duke Nukem is dead. 3DRealms, the company which develops Duke games, most notably the oft delayed Duke Nukem Forever, has gone bankrupt and closed its doors. And the game which may never be, starting from development in 1997, has potentially sunk with it.

Purely in the context of my video game fandom, this is a great tragedy for me. I don't get into games very much anymore and, in fact, the last game I have actually completed front to back was Duke Nukem 3d for PC with the new graphics pack. I was psyched ever since news last year started to come out that DNF was in active development and could be released sometime this year. There were even teaser trailers, screenshots, exclusive interviews, the works. Word on the street though is that part of 3DRealms' problem is that they wanted the game to hit the street with an explosive bang, surprising people instead of giving away too much of the premise of the game. And I must say, even though this may have hurt them from lack of publicity, it would have been a refreshing thing to have accomplished. I wasn't a fan of GTAIV's constant advertising, which didn't do much to hype the game for me and got rather annoying by the end. Of course, it didn't help that the game didn't live up to its potential.

But back to the question mark. 3DRealms going down will not kill DNF. Mark my words. This is just more publicity for the fire. Duke Nukem is back in the news and people are talking about it. Maybe not in a good way, but many people are going to express disappointment that the game will never be. And someone will jump on that opportunity and finish it, something 3DRealms couldn't do for over a decade.

Here are the latest and maybe last "promos" for the game.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Ah crap!

Awww...the plane looks so embarrassed. Like it's just trying to sneak away quietly.


Thursday, May 07, 2009

Between Two Ferns - Natalie PortMAN

Oh Zach. I'm like an egg and you are like the edge of the counter. You crack. me. up.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Tom Green

I might be one of the few, but as the expression goes: "The few, the proud, the Tom Green Fans"