Today The Stranger

released their “Queer Issue”, or as the locals refer to it: “Wednesday”.

Giant Jesus statue destroyed

Click through to see the pics.

The giant Jesus statue was built by a giant megachurch and last night it was struck by lightning and destroyed. This morning the megachurch called their insurance adjusters and plan on rebuilding the giant Jesus statue.

Now, I’m not a religious man. But if I was a religious man, and I built a giant statue of my god, and then that statue was destroyed by lightning, I would take that as a sign my god did not approve of the statue I built and I would not rebuild it. But these people are religious so they might not have the brainpower to get to that conclusion.

More likely they don’t believe this is really about honoring Jesus or god at all and just want to be known as the guys who have the giant Jesus statue by the freeway, in which case it makes perfect sense to rebuild.

The Crazy Nationalism of Soccer

The united states doesn’t quite “get” soccer or the crazy nationalism that surrounds it. That’s pretty weird since the united states is probably the most crazily retarded nationalistic country on the planet. So what gives?

Here’s my theory. All that tribe aggression that is inherent in human beings is vented out in other countries by this crazy soccer shit. Riots are thrown over soccer. Players are ganked. People live and die by this stuff. And it gets all that human aggression out.

The united states doesn’t “get” soccer. So they still gleefully start wars. The united states’ wars are their highly destructive version of soccer matches. For whatever reason soccer didn’t become popular in the states. So they still rely on random war against other countries to get that primal tribal human war aggression out of their system.

I think some of the people even get this on a subconscious level which is why soccer is so often bashed in the united states. They get the show but don’t want to give up the bloodlust.

That’s my theory.

Stargate Universe: Incursion

The season finale is done and I don’t know. It’s all a blur of people walking through hallways and being rude to each other on walkie talkies. Was it the directing that made it feel lackluster? If the majority of your two-part season finale are people standing around talking to each other on walkie talkies you really, really have to make it dynamic. And it didn’t feel dynamic. Plus one of the major events was an exchange of Destiny extras for Lucian Alliance extras, and who really cares?

Rush said what I was thinking when Sgt. Extra got shot, which was basically, “Well, would you rather it be someone from the main cast?” Young is supposed to be a somewhat  of  a poor leader I suppose, but if the casualties really start piling up he’s going to look more like a truly incompetent leader instead of an underdog doing his best. If they vented the atmo when the Lucian Alliance first arrived there would have been one Destiny causality. Now there is at least one,  probably more, plus the entire ship might explode from the sun radiation or whatever.

I was disappointed that it was sun radiation that killed the Lucian Alliance guy in part one. I was really hoping the Lucian Alliance were space vampires.

What this season finale really needed were space vampires out of nowhere.

The best part of the episodes was Chloe and Eli wandering around BFE. I thought Eli was played well, since it could have easily gone into creepy “I’ll save you, my love!” territory. Instead Eli came off as a genuine friend. Plus they acknowledged Eli’s feelings for Chloe and Chloe’s awareness of those feelings and Eli being propelled into the friend zone as strongly as a dying girl with a gushing leg wound can manage. Chloe came off good, Eli came off good, and the last moment between them before Eli runs off to get stuck in the cliffhanger was well done.

It did make me think of Meredith Woerner’s io9 review from last week with regards to the quickly wrapped up Eli/Chloe/Scott stranded storyline and the current Eli/Chloe lost storyline:

Wouldn’t this have been a great situation to bring up things that might have happened when the love triangle was stuck in a remote wasteland? Can you imagine how much more complicated, desperate, shaming and scared the chemistry between these two would be if we knew, or found out, some serious shit had gone down between these two in the past? Not just Chloe using Eli’s brain as she did that one time during the 15-minute mutiny — that is a forgivable offense — but more and deeper. What if on the Love Triangle Planet, Eli had spilled his feelings out to Chloe, or if Scott attempted to leave Eli behind like they left Greer, because he was injured or merely slow? There are options here besides, Chloe=damsel in distress. Eli=loves Chloe, and thus has to be the hero in spite of his fear.

Really good points, and after watching this episode I wondered why they didn’t leave them lost until next season. Eli and Chloe were separated from the action on the ship anyway, Scott didn’t do much of anything since getting back (and whatever he did do could have been done more interestingly by Greer), and as good as the Chloe/Eli story was, it would have been better if Scott was involved and we actually got to see the love triangle aspect play out. Plus something would be happening off the goddamn ship which would be a welcome relief at this point.

The various cliffhangers were cool, maybe I was disappointed because it had been hyped so much in the last few weeks, but I was left not really caring that much. I think part of it has to do with SGU smacking the reset button so often that it’s hard not to think that all of these cliffhangers will be resolved within the next 10 minutes of the season 2 premiere.

Might sound like I’m bashing SGU, but it’s still a fun watch if a bit of a slog. I’ll be watching next season. Hopefully they can up the characterization, the use of the stargate, and get off the ship more often. Or explore the ship. Too much of this season, especially the finale, felt like long stretches of clumsy set-up for a not that awesome of a payoff. Also, from the preview it looks like Robert Knepper is coming in next season, which owns. Could be worse!

Oh shit am I a mark?

Is WWE working the internet fans or is this for real!?

WWE has come to terms on the release of NXT first season rookie Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) as of today June 11, 2010. We wish Daniel Bryan the best in all future endeavors.

That’s the great (maybe) thing about the NXT angle. I buy this. I buy this for so many reasons.  As a “smark” (which is a wrestling fan who pretends to know how wrestling works [we don't at all]) this smells like something that was destined to happen. Vince McMahon hates the indies, he hates anyone or anything he didn’t create, he hates small guys. So you hand a guy like Bryan Danielson, who is the king of the independents and EXACTLY the sort of wrestler who Vince hasn’t want to give a chance since WWE was WWWF, it makes sense. Plus Vince is so petty (I got Eric Bishoff’s WWE published book for 4 bucks because Vince hyper-discounted it after Bischoff bragged about his royalty check), that Bryan Danielson being “future endeavored” after losing to everyone under the sun is something so close to things Vince has done before.

But on the other hand, the first season of NXT was basically an entire show to introduce Danielson to the WWE Universe (fuck you, I like the term) and he had pivotal parts in the destruction of Cena at Raw.

One of the reason this NXT angle is working so well for smarks is it comes from a place which is basically: “This is Happening and Why Would It Happen if Vince isn’t Behind It” vs. “This is What We Absolutely Know Vince is Against In Real Life”.

It’s not just that piece of human garbage Barack Obama that has boggled my mind. This has boggled my mind also. Of course rasslin doesn’t destroy the gulf coast while flabby white losers in dc squirt each other in the face with water guns and then twitter about it, but you take what you can get!

NXT, I promise to be a mark if you promise to violate World Wrestling Entertainment.

Wow, so when did Stewart and Colbert become Israeli tools?

First Stewart goes after Helen Thomas again (of course using the purposely unflattering footage from Fox News) and then goes on a rant about how petty and shallow the white house press corps is, actively ignoring that Helen Thomas was the best and only actual journalist in that place for over ten (!) presidencies.

And then Colbert plays confused muppet to the israel ambassador explaining why mass murder of humanitarians is great.

What pieces of shit.

Boggled

My mind has been boggled.

I am a pessimistic and negative guy in general. I expect the worst in people and I’m usually not disappointed. I thought Barack Obama was human garbage way back in the primary when liberals everywhere were strapping on their knee pads. All the nonsense about “stealth liberal” and how he just had to say certain things and vote certain ways so he could be president and then, OH BOY WATCH OUT, he’s going to lay a flame-throwing torch of progressiveness right up your ass. Of course it was nonsense. Obama was just a right-winger running as a democrat. But people are idiots so here we sit.

So it’s not like I expected much from Obama. I knew he wouldn’t leave Iraq or close the torture prisons or stop wiretapping or support civil rights or help the environment or hold Wall Street responsible or do anything else except follow in George Bush’s footsteps and maybe have his wife pretend to care about food policy.

But the great thing about Obama is even though my expectations of him were basically zero, he still fails to meet them. The bar is sitting in the dirt and he can’t reach it.

I just found out that Obama, the alleged president of the country, admitted that he hasn’t actually spoken with BP CEO Tony Hayward. At all. Ever. Why?

“I have not spoken to him directly,” Obama said. “Here’s the reason. Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”

And apparently the president of the united states, or at least Obama, thinks that he can’t make the CEO of BP take any actions. Nope. He can’t. Just doesn’t have the power I guess.  Oh well.

In the same interview Obama pondered who’s ass he needs to kick.

Barack Obama, kudos. You have boggled my mind with your awfulness.