Random Wednesday- Which of you Elves Gabbed?

Merry Christmas!

-Michael

Random Wednesday- Christmas{ish}

Finals are over! I took my last two finals today. I think both went pretty well. Now comes the period where I compulsively check Blackboard way too frequently to see if scores have been posted yet:

"Michael, it's 2 in the morning. She's not going to post the score tonight."

"Maybe she went out to a bar and will post when she gets home."

"It's Wednesday. She didn't go out and even if she did she wouldn't be grading papers there, now would she?"

"She could have gone to a special bar where all the teachers go to grade things."

"And where's that?"

"You know at that corner where those roads meet. Hold on let me check Blackboard again."

"Go to bed, Michael."

"In a minute, I need to check another class."

Anyway here are somethings that are sort of Christmas-like, but not exactly. They just remind me of this time of year.









Well, I need to go check Blackboard. Goodnight.

Thanks for reading.

-Michael

Random Wednesday- 5AG

I've never been through a grown-up break up before. I think how I've been feeling since Kristina announced the de facto end of Five Awesome Girls on Monday is the way it would feel. It's weird how much of a ritual* their videos became in my daily life. It is probably pretty weird to think of it that way.

I'm a pretty cold** or stoic*** person, but I definitely got choked up at this announcement. In fact, I actually almost lost it when Kayley posted this just a little after the 5AG announcement. Monday really made me realize how much I identify with the community. So, it was definitely saddening to know that a big part of that was going away, but it also was nice to have that realization. 5AG was my introduction to a brand new world that I didn't even know existed a year ago. That is now a world that I can't imagine my life without. Nerdfighters are just awesome.

The 5AGs a probably one of the biggest reasons that this blog exists. Prior to this one, I had started several blogs that I just quit on. I got tired of posting things that I know no one would read. I wanted something that would gain me attention. The 5AGs and a few other influences made me realize that it shouldn't be about that. You shouldn't seek fame, but rather try to have fun through the mediums of the internet. If viewers come, then that's awesome, but it should still be about having fun for yourself. The only way ensure failure is to worry too much about mass appeal.

I don't want it to seem like I'm angry about this. I'm so very appreciative of 5AG. I don't think they could ever understand how much Five Awesome Girls has meant to me. It saddens me, but I can understand and respect their decision. It isn't really over anyway. The videos will still be there and it's not like Kristina, Lauren, Kayley, Hayley and Liane are going to drop off the face of the planet :)

Still, I can't help being a little heart-broken though. But of course today is still awesome.

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael
*Ritual is definitely the proper word
**If you are describing it as a character flaw
***If you are describing it as an attribute

Random Wednesday- International You Day

Someday, I'll actually put more into a Random Wednesday post again. To tide you over here's a random thought: Nothing is more annoying than having your pick fall into the sound hole*.

"International You Day" by No Use For A Name is song I've been particularly fond of lately. I can't believe I've never how much a sweet love song it is before recently. Punk Rock will do that to you, I guess. Check out the Acoustic version; I think it's amazing.







Thanks for reading.

-Michael
*That's what she said

Random Wednesday- Unless It's Kicks

Random Wednesday- "wrong for the next war"

"Although the French did not yet know it, the slaughter at Morhange snuffed out the bright flame of the doctrine of the offensive. It died on a field in Lorraine where at the end of the day nothing was visible but corpses strewn in rows and sprawled in the awkward attitudes of sudden death as if the place had been swept by a malignant hurricane. It was one of those lessons, a survivor realized afterward, "by which God teaches the law to kings." The power of the defense that was to transform the initial war of movement into a four-year war of position and eat up a generation of European lives revealed itself at Morhange. Foch, the spiritual father of Plan 17, the man who taught, "There is only one way of defending ourselves-- to attack as soon as we are ready," was there to see and experience it. For four more years of relentless, merciless, useless killing the belligerents beat their heads against it. In the end it was Foch who presided over victory. By then the lesson learned proved wrong for the next war." -The Guns of August

I read this paragraph on Monday and thought it was brilliant. This is such a good book. It's dry and all about military tactics, but really it is about so much more than that. I really think anyone who get elected to public office should have to read The Guns of August

The post I'll being doing tomorrow will be about the stupidity of WWI, Armistice/Veteran's Day and how perhaps we should observe that day differently.

Thanks for reading.

-Michael

Random Wednesday- No Politics

Considering the past few posts have been heavy in political jargon and tomorrow's will be as well. So, the goal of this post is to break up that monotony. Of, course making a point of avoiding politics is in it's own way an acknowledgment of politics.

I got my Mythology midterm back today and did pretty well. I got an A 93/100. You almos always kind of know whether or not you did good an a test when you turn it in. Still, considering this was the first big thing my Professor has graded, you never know how tough she will be. Especially since the essay was 50% of the grade and a picky professor could really fuck you on that. As I expected she wasn't a ridiculous grader and she was definitely a fair grader. I got a 43 of 50 on the essay portion.

This week has brought two updates that I think are trying to blind me. The new XBox Live Dashboard's text is small, but totally forgivable, because I have ESPN 3 on my XBox now! Also Facebook has decided that squinting is the new cool. It looks like they've reduced the text side of the feed to 6. Maybe 8. Just way to small.

Something kept me up really late last night. So for the first time this quarter I skipped my 8am Biology class. Next week may be even worse though. I'm going to a concert on Tuesday night. I may not be getting home until well after midnight. So, I may be skipping again. It's ok, because that class is terrible. The other students are cool though. Just such terribly boring material and annoying professor.

My project for this week before Black Ops comes out, is to finally beat World at War on Veteran Difficulty. I'm advancing slowly, one checkpoint at a time. I'm almost done with the second to the last level.

I'm terribly boring.

Thanks for reading

-Michael

Random Wednesday-Shake It Out

-Michael

Random Wednesday

This turns me in to a roflcopter every time.



-Michael

Random Wednesday- Colt McCoy is no Charlie Frye.

I mean that as sleight to Colt McCoy. Also kind of a sleight to Charlie Frye. Just more so as a sleight to Colt McCoy. You know what? I mean it as sleight to both of them. I'll put it this way:

Charlie Frye was almost decent. I don't see near the promise in Colt McCoy that I saw in Charlie Frye. I mean McCoy could shock me and prove to be good, but as I've stated earlier he reminds me too much of Brady Quinn.

I'm kind of ragging on him and he hasn't even played a game yet, but man he's going to be thrown into the fire quickly. I personally would start Ratliff and let him be the one who gets killed. Leave McCoy on the sideline and see if he develops into something better than the QB at Texas who never threw the ball much further than 5 yards down field.

The Browns also did something today that sincerely pissed me off. The traded Jerome Harrison for Mike Bell. It was basically a gift for the Eagles. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of trading Harrison. He is probably disgruntled due to Hillis getting virtually all the carries. It's just, why for Mike Bell? I'll take any draft pick over another Denver-system Runningback. Not to mention Mike Bell is probably the worst of the bunch. I seriously think Heckert wanted to give a present to his former team. If you want to get rid of a player... just get me a fucking draft pick ok.

There you go. Basically a special edition Browns' Monday, only I think it is more disjointed and rambling, so I think it qualifies as random.

Thanks for reading and please donate to help sick kids(only two more days!)

-Michael

P.S. Someone remind me to switch back to the old editor.

Random Wednesday- (Political Ads) With Avengene

Geez, I don't know about where you live, but it's barely into October and political ads dominate my TV. I know my market has two competitive* House races, a competitive* Senate, every State-level statewide position is being held, various competitive races for the state legislature and some local races. It just seems like every commercial is a political ad.

The Republicans in my area of using their little children in their ads. I find that ridiculous. The there is this one where Mike DeWine's** grown daughter is talking about how great her dad is like she is some how impartial.

Another big thing they're doing this year is talking about how they voted to cut their own pay or will cut their pay once elected. That's totally ridiculous. Congress always raises its own pay. Only those in competitive races say 'they voted to cut pay,' which doesn't matter because virtually no congressional seats are competitive, so the vote is always overwhelmingly for pay raises.

There also has been some passively racist ads in the race for Treasurer.

Loads of other super negative ads too.

Here's my summary of the different party's angles.

Republicans: Big government, incumbents, wasteful spending, stimulus bad/didn't create jobs***, private sector good

Democrats: Republicans like free trade, free trade bad/job killing, George W. Bush.

Thanks for reading. I can't wait for it to come to an end.

-Michael
*Competitive is being generous. The Democrats are going to get murked this election. I think the Republicans may run the table here.
**What an asshole
***That is so amazingly bullshit though. The stimulus has created tons of jobs. Things would be much worse without it.

Random Wednesday

I'll do an actual post tomorrow. I'm so tired, but I refused to take a nap or drink an energy drink or something with caffeine, so hopefully I'll be asleep early enough to get all the sleep I need for my 6:30 rise tomorrow.

-Michael

P.S. I fucking hate spectator delays. I had to be 5 minutes late because every asshole on I-70 had to stop and look at a broken down COTA bus.

Random Wednesday- Cribs- Minecraft

What's up MTV? Hey, yo, I'm meeting you by the Respawn point to show ya'll my place. As you can already see it's the most baller place around and I ain't even done wit it yet.



Yo, this is my front door. You see I got the wood door with the stone all round. There's that tight little pyramid above the door with the torch on top. You, that lets the monsters know I ain't messin around yo. I don't play that shit.



This is my crib. This what I see when I come in the front door. Maybe I just got down murking some cows and pigs. Maybe I just got freaky wit a zombie and stole his feather. Or maybe I'm just coming in at nightfall, because I might be totally baller, but wit so many monster at night sometimes even I can get over run.

You, you see those tight ass flame chandeliers. Custom design.



I'll show what it looks like from the backdoor, because you know sometimes when shit gets tight you gotta use the backdoor.



This is one of my side rooms. I craft all sorts of things in here. Like swords to take out my enemies. I also got some pretty baller storage. Two large chest. I can keep anything up in here. There's also a stove for me to cook bacon and smelt minerals. I ain't tryin to brag or nothing, but I make the best bacon around.



Yo, Let me show the rooms that I use to get to my caverns and mine.




These rooms give me access to some baller caverns that I control wit my sword and pickaxe. I'll show you around them later before I kick ya'll out.



Let me show some of the most ballinest structures I've built so far. This is a tall tower I built. It took some time, but it's pretty god damn awesome. I can climb to the top of and watch the sunrise and the monsters burst into flames.



Here's the other tower I built. It ain't as tall as the other one, but is just as baller. You can also see a bit of my pyramid. Let's go take a better look.



Alright, MTV, here's my pyramid from the top of my tallest tower. You also get an awesome view of the other tower. If yall are good and we got time I'll show you up inside that pyramid and the secret entrance to it. Oh yea, take a look at all those sky lights. I keeps it real.



Yo, this is down in one of my caverns. I've mined all sorts of baller things out of this place. Let me show around here a bit. This is the bigger of the two caverns I got and there's some monsters around. So, keep a look out yo.




Yo, you see that monster. Don't worry I straight up pwnd it.



Yo, this is my other cavern. It's not as big as the other one, but I use to mine stuff too. You might be looking up at the secret entrance to the pyramid. Follow me and we'll find out homies.



Alright dudes, here's the inside of the pyramids. It's still pretty new, so it's pretty barren, but I'll make it the most baller place around before long. It'll be straight gangsta.



Yo, we're back in the crib. I hope ya'll enjoyed this tour of my place.



Alright, MTV, ya'll need to get the fudge out. Thanks for coming to my crib, but I got a party starting pretty soon with the farm animals. Maybe I'll let ya'll come back sometime when I got this place in better shape. Look out or you might get molested by the monsters. Peace!

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Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael

Song of the Day: Sometime Around Midngiht- Airborne Toxic Event.

Random Wednesday- Pass or Play

Pass.

Random Wednesday- My Elbow Hurts

My right Elbow has been hurting the past few days. It annoying and I can't figure out why it is doing it. I ran the symptoms on WebMD and one of the possibilities they gave me was Gout. lol.

It's probably just a repetitive motion injury. What is that repetitive motion*? My guess is that it is the way I hold my elbow when I'm holding the controller while playing XBox. Or maybe how I move it while playing guitar. I don't know.

That's all. I'm pulling out the finals excuse again.

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael

*Yea, I know what some of you are thinking and I can assure that it is not that.

Random Wednesday - MySpace Survey

Hooray for having a random Wednesday topic fall into my lap. There will be something else(a change to a previous post) if you can tough this out.

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1. First thing you wash in the shower?: My Arms

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?: Black

3.Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?: Probably not

4. Do you plan outfits?: No

5. How are you feeling right now?: Annoyed and helpless

6. What's the closest thing to you that's red?: There's an Ohio State shirt on the floor

7. Do you say aim or A-I-M?: A-I-M

8. Last dream you remember having?: I was eavesdropping on people saying nasty things about me

9. Did you meet anybody new today?: No

10. What are you craving right now?: Escape

11. Do you floss?: No

12. What comes to mind when I say "cabbage?": I'm afraid I don't have an association in my mind with cabbage

13. When was the last time you talked on AIM?: It's been a while. A little less than a year.

14. Are you emotional?: Not really

15. Would you dance to the taco song?: What the hell is the taco song?

16. Have you ever counted to 1000?: No

17. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?: This is a good place to stop as Hayley and Kayley determined.

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Ok, the college football season hasn't started, so this isn't cheating. ok?

In this post, I made a prediction that Mark Ingram would win the Heisman Trophy. I'm backing way off of that. Ingram got hurt on Monday and they had to scope out his knee. He's going to miss game one and will be week by week after that. It seems to me that whenever someone gets their knee scooped it takes way longer to heal than is expected.

Ok, new prediction.

Heisman Winner

Kellen Moore, QB, Boise State

*Edit*

Two things. I totally forgot to do a signature. Hopefully I'll remember to do it at the end of this little tangent.

Ok, so the other day I was playing some free-for-all in MW2. Yes, I've started playing MW2 again. There's still a lot of annoying shit going down and were still waiting on a bloody patch, but I'm still playing it. I didn't want to tell you all about that. I want to share with what I heard over the mic that is by far the most fucked up shit I've ever heard on XBL*.

There is a ton of racism, sexism, gay-bashing, noob-blasting, and general douchbagery over XBL. That happens all the time. I'm pretty used to it. Just mute the person or people(it usually turns to people, because on gamer calling another a fag usually causes a shit storm.)

So, I'm playing on Terminal. Not doing to bad. Then I hear this guy talking about his brother** to his friend. He says that his brother had a psychological profile done and the results were that his brother has the profile of a serial killer. He was talking about how much of a sadistic sexual deviant his brother was.

Like, really. Why are you talking about this over a public free-for-all match? I mean XBL does have a private chat function. I think that is a good circumstance to use it. I don't want to hear it and you probably shouldn't share it with a bunch of strangers.

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael

*Ok, my mic wasn't actually plugged in, but I did have my Turtle Beach head set on, which plays the chat channel clearly.
**I'm using brother, because that wasn't made explicitly clear that it was his brother. It's my best guess given the context of what he was saying.

Random Wednesday- Nonsensical Imaginary Spending

An alternative title for this post could be "super expensive stuff I want." So, if I had I had a finite infinity of money, this is a list of somethings I would buy. Materialistic bullshit commence.

Old Guitars- More specifically old electric guitars. Like a 50's Fender Stratocaster, an early 60's Les Paul, a mid 60's Epiphone. Oh, and a Gibson SG and I don't really care about the year. In reality, I actually prefer acoustic guitars, but I wouldn't necessarily want to add any Acoustics to my imaginary collection. Maybe a Gibson Dove or something like a Woodie Guthrie guitar or something of the like.

Gaming Consoles- I would buy a PS3 and Wii. Also I would update to one of the new 360 slims, just because the older versions of XBox 360s are so freakin loud.

Car(s)- An Audi R8 V10 would be the car I would want most. Maybe a '70 Corvette Stingray as well.

Trips- I would make a list of all the places and things I want to see, but it can be made simpler. I want to go everywhere and see everything.


I thought this list would be longer, but really that's all.

Thanks for reading and please comment

-Michael

Random Wednesday- 30-year old Michael

This wasn't exactly what I had planned on doing for Random Wednesday this week. I was going to do a 'what I want to do before I die post*'. I actually find that topic to be kinda morbid, but lacking other inspiration it was the plan. Then this popped up in my Sub box on Youtube. It's kinda a variant of what I had planned to do; only something I feel better about doing. So here you go a note to 30-year old Michael filled with verb tense and subject confusion.

*Inspired by 5AG's theme last week
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Yo,

I'm going to start this off my making some predictions for the year 2019. I think this will make you feel better whether I'm/you're right or wrong. You can either be proud that you were a wise 21-year old or be glad that you're not such a fool anymore.

So here's a list of predictions:

-The economy will still be in the crapper
-A Democrat will be President. Obama will be booted in 2012** due to a crappy economy and the Republican** will be booted in 2016 for the crappy economy.
-The Browns will still not be very good
-Tressel will have moved to the role of Athletic Director and will have chosen his successor. I would venture a guess at who that successor will be, but I don't really have a clue. If I had to make a guess, I'll go with Chris Peterson
-Gaming will just be getting around to the next generation of consoles, because game developers fail to keep pace with advances in consoles.

Ok, that's enough. Feel better about yourself? I hope so.

There are something thats I will hope you have done by now.

I really want to go to the SxSW music festival at least once. I really liked going to Lolla a few years a go and would like to that again or try Bonaroo, but the music festival that I really hope we will have attended will be SxSW.

I hope you have taken a vacation by yourself. Not that I'm entirely anti-social, but taking a trip all by myself seems like a good idea. Not only will it be an opportunity to see someplace I've never seen, but an opportunity to fend for myself in an environment I don't know. I think that this is something that will make me a better, more well-rounded person. Plus at this point, I am incredibly poorly traveled and I would like to think that you will have seen some more of the world than I have.

I want to have had at least one long-term relationship. You'd have to tell me the story about it. As for marriage and kids, well, I'm not really to concerned about that as for those things to even be considered there needs to another half to the equation.

I want to have spent sometime doing something to that in just doing it makes me happy. It doesn't matter if you made much money as long as you've had the amazing experience. It could be a period where you're a touring musician, a published author, in the peace corps, or just something that's not traditional that will make us happy.

I hope you've gotten at least you're bachelor's degree by now.

You'd better not still live at home. .If you still do, well, maybe you should go jump off a bridge.

Sincerely You,

Michael J. Thomas

**voided by Palin becoming the Republican nominee in 2012

Random Wednesday - Run on Sentences

I feel that I write a lot of run on sentences, which is never really my intention, but it's still a bad thing in truth, because run on sentences are confusing and long, but I always feel that I need to put all the information I can into one sentence, which I guess is noble, but in reality is probably just annoying, because who wants that much information with out a period to separate some of it since that much information in a muddled form is useless because it is difficult to pick out, which means maybe I should better use semi-colons as well, but even then it is still a run-on, but I don't think the way I write sentences now is grammatically incorrect, but rather confusing, which is your problem not mine, which is an arrogant thing to say; I shouldn't have said that, but still it's out there now, which means it cannot be taken back, but I do promise to try and limit my buts and whiches as much as I can, because I think it will make me a better writer, but but and which and are really useful words and so is and, and because, and so are commas, which are wonderful and hooray for punctuation, but I seem to be adverse to using periods, which probably makes you all and my professors annoyed and that's not good, so I will try to limit my run-ons from now on and start using periods more divide ideas into individual sentences rather than one super long one.

I hope your head didn't explode. I came up with this idea while taking a mid-term today and while writing my responses to the 5 essay questions I realized that nearly all my sentences were run-ons. I think that this is probably the worst thing about my writing and I really do try to limit the length of my sentences, but sometimes I just need to write a ridiculously long sentence. Perhaps it's the reason why so much of what I write on here is rambling nonsense :)

Thanks for reading and please comment.

-Michael

Random Wednesday-- late 90's/early 2000's Music Videos

Way back, back to elementary school Michael. I used to watch TRL w/Carson Daily every day. It was the final days of the Music Video actually being on TV and I have a particularly fond feeling to a lot of songs from that period and their videos.













That's right, I busted out Nelly(ridiculously censored as it should be XD)