Funniest Family Guy moment ever

The funniest clip from the newest Family Guy is at 1:10. I've been laughing about this about every 20 minutes or so, all damn day.



You take the bus.

EDIT: I'm dumb. This is the video I was talking about.



I'll take the small bus.

Failure to Communicate: 'Never getting laid again'

Before writing this column, I had to consider the earnest possibility that I won't get another date for the rest of college.

"You're never getting laid again, that's for sure," my friend Jamie remarked after I told her my topic. "Is it worth it?"

Maybe, maybe not, but I've always enjoyed the adventure of making bad decisions. Time will tell, and I'll move far away from Greensboro sooner or later. Somewhere with no Internet if need be, where no one can access this column online. Like Kansas.

As I sipped my first cup of the night at Tate Street Coffee, Jamie unfolded a torn-out magazine page and handed it to me: an article from March's issue of Details called "Living in the Pro-Life Closet." It explained how, though men identify as pro-choice almost as often as women, some of us don't seem to fit the criteria. The most common divergence from the standard pro-choice stance is the issue of husband notification.

"Can you believe that?" Jamie asked.

I took a bit too long while considering my answer and Jamie's jaw began to drop. Unpleased, she was.

Full column here

Cheap Eats: Taste of Thai

GO TRIAD - The inside of Taste of Thai has a certain overwhelming calm to it — the kind of tranquility you see in movie restaurants with maitre d's and violin players circulating the restaurant. It's this calm that permeates every part of a meal at Taste of Thai.

Seated at glass-covered and candle-bearing tables, customers speak in hushed tones, creating a sort of reverent silence that's only occasionally broken by laughter or the tink of glass.

This is the perfect place for a first date or a breakup, one for peaceful conversation and the other for simply keeping someone quiet.

The utilitarian wait staff adds to this aura. Our waiter didn't make idle conversation or run through the day's specials; he simply asked if we were ready and smiled politely when one of the more indecisive members of our group told him that she still needed more time. Sips were barely taken from our water glass before they were refilled, which is handy with Thai food. Some of it has a kick.

Full column

Next time is Indian food. Something with some real spice.

As an aside, I have to admit I was a little intimidated walking into Taste of Thai. It wasn't that it was much, much nicer than any place I'd done for Cheap Eats. It was that the opening hallway was completely covered in columns and articles written about the place. The placemats at the bar are laminated copies of some other Go Triad article. They take their press seriously.

People sometimes tell me that some restaurant has stuck one of my columns up on the wall. Beef Burger has one up, I think. The waiter at Jan's House made me sign my column after he recognized me at the cash register.

Knowing that my column is going to be read by however many people get a News & Record on Thursday and whoever picks up a free copy doesn't bother me at all. I'm a writer, that's what I do. But knowing that people will be reading the column for years in some burger joint on Lee, for some odd reason that weirds me out. It's cool too, don't get me wrong. Odd though.

The Pope is Evil: Volume 2

BBC - Commentators have described Pope Benedict's recent expressions of regret as close to a rare papal apology. But how, they ask, can a man believed by Catholics to be "infallible" make a mistake?

According to the Roman Catholic Church, the Bishop of Rome IS infallible - but only in specific cases.

The Pope isn't infallible in certain cases, like on Tuesdays, holidays, or any time he makes a statement that condemns hundreds of thousands of Africans to an unnecessary death.

Seriously, stop eating spinach

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The number of people sickened by an E. coli outbreak traced to tainted spinach rose to 109 on Sunday, as federal officials announced more brands recalling their products.

"This is unquestionably a significant outbreak in terms of E. coli," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer with the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Full article

Stop eating spinach people. For realz this time. Just look at what it did to Popeye.

Sieg Holy

This pope looks like the devil. I'm just throwing that out there. This man looks like pure evil.

Greek to me

Since writing a Cheap Eats on Jack's Corner, the Greek restaurant right off of UNCG's campus, I've gotten several emails concerned not with the column's content, but with the actual ancestry of the restaurant's owners.

One was from a competing restauranteur, who, while saying I should review his restaurant, somewhat randomly threw in, "By the way we are "Greek" owned and operated. The last time I know of Jack's was owned by Christian Orthodox Muslims that attend the Greek Church in Greensboro."

Does this matter in some way? Is there a big rivalry I'm not aware of? What the hell is a Christian Orthodox Muslim? Is that like a Liberal Jew Buddhist? The better one came today.

"Hey Luke,

The people who own Jacks are Palestinian, not Greek.

[name]"

.....thanks? I don't understand the reason or meaning for any of that, but those Christian Orthodox Muslim Palestinians can whip up one hell of a gyro.

I blame Bush

VIENNA, Austria - A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has said.

Full article

What does it mean when I'm more afraid of my own congress than of a nuclear weapon-wielding militant islamic state? I don't even know what to overreact to anymore. The way that government, not just our government, every democracy on Earth, can wield public opinion through lies, misinformation and religion just scares me on a Plato level.

Why did we go to war? WMDS? Oh, because Cheney just said we would have gone to war anyway. Bush now says "we will find you" to Osama, but during the debates he wasn't too worried about him? Bush admits Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but now attempts the argument that it's a front on the war on terror?

They lie and we eat it. Blame the media? Sure. Blame the public? Awesome. Myself? Already there.

But I'll just blame Bush. That feels a lot better. It's what we'll do in 50 years anyway. Bush sucks. Fuck that guy. I'm going to go have a nap.

Failure to Communicate: Gay debate misses point

All things considered, there's really just one thing that bothers me about the debate going on in our country over gay marriage. Some people are spinning their wheels over arguments that couldn't matter less and do nothing but fill the void present from their lack of something substantial to say. Really, I could say that there are two things that bother me: the point we most often address when debating this issue, and the fact that there are black people who oppose gay marriage. But they're actually the same problem.

The recurrent point we bring up in the gay marriage debate is the question of whether a person is born gay, or chooses to be gay. It's on this issue that many people say that allusions to the black struggle for civil rights don't measure up; a person doesn't choose to be black, but they do choose to be gay.

But it doesn't matter if a person chooses to be gay or is born gay. The vast amount of scientific study we have is pointing to the latter, but, again, it doesn't matter. If a person chooses to pursue a relationship with a male or female, they have that right. It doesn't matter if I'm genetically inclined towards attraction to the female form, or if I just choose to like women. It's my business, not yours.

I say that the two points I mentioned before are the same because the point of equality of the races is just that, they are equal. A person is born white or black, but if whites and blacks are equal then would it matter if a person could choose to be one or the other? There's no advantage to being one or the other. One is not better. One is not worse.

Full column here

I realized today that this is my only piece in this week's Carolinian. It feels like it's been more than a year since that happened. Writing for Go Triad and the N&R is taking up a lot of my time, so we'll see if I start doing three and four pieces a week again. Hopefully not.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Bush 9/11/06

Bush goes Sutler, Olbermann goes Murrow. In November, we'll see who wins.

"Exit Strategy"

Ohmygodwhatthefuck

How did I not know about this? Who didn't tell me?

There's going to be a movie based on The Giver. Oh yeah, and by the way, in 2004 Lois Lowry wrote a sequel to The Giver. I had no idea this happened either.

Jonas didn't die. Want to know what happened at the end of the novel? I'll explain it to you.

The house that Jonas sees, that's immaterial. What's important is that he hears music. The music isn't coming from the house. The music is "hearing beyond." Early in the book Jonas begins to see color, what the Giver describes as "seeing beyond." He sees the red in Fiona's hair, the color of an apple, so on and so forth. The Giver has "hearing beyond." He hears music.

Now if you remember, the first Receiver, the Giver's daughter, chose to be released after absorbing an unpleasant memory. When she died the memories she had absorbed went out into the community, and the Giver had to take them all back. These powers, hearing and seeing beyond, were based on the memories that the two had absorbed. They were remembering things normal people had long forgotten. If one of them died while still retaining the memories that give them hearing or seeing beyond, it only stands to reason that the power would flow into the community as well.

At the end of the novel, Jonas hears music. Jonas didn't die. The Giver died. All his memories flowed into the community, and now there is no one to take them back as the Giver once did. Now the people of the community must remember.

Pancakes fit for a lumberjack

Cheap Eats - The phrase "all you can eat" conjures up the image of customers being led to the feeding trough, their gag reflex wrangled by low prices.

Rarely is the term associated with quality. It seems that the goal of these "all you can eat" restaurants is to offer cheap, poorly prepared foods.

Offerings usually consist of lumpy mashed potatoes, fried cheese on bread that resembles pizza and many other food-shaped objects that, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't want to put in your mouth.

If all-you-can-eat food can't be done well, then perhaps an unlimited amount of one food done right is the answer.

Taking this direction, the folks at Tex & Shirley's have figured out exactly what their customers want. Pancakes. Lots of them.

Full column here

Heart-Shaped Bruises

Coming soon... a short story by Luke McIntyre

That picture has a story itself. My friend Lake and I hit each other quite a bit. She's fiesty. One night we, somehow, set upon punching each other in the shoulder for a good 15 minutes. I'd hit, she'd hit, rinse, repeat. It's childish, but we'd be kidding ourselves to act like anything but.

Her arm bruised up pretty bad. Mine did a bit, but nothing like hers. Chick can take a punch. A few days afterwards she was examining her arm and noticed, "This bruise kind of looks like a heart."

My jaw dropped.

Literally two days before then I named a short story I've been writing for a while. "Heart-Shaped Bruises." Her bruise did indeed look like a heart, and I had to get a picture of it. If you knew what the story was about, the coincidence would be even more striking.

Nintendo, because there is no other

Yes! Weekly - "It's obviously been owned by a smoker," my girlfriend says as we pry cellophane and packing tape from around it.

She's right - while the case was a cool gray in 1991, this one's the color of stained bed sheets, or perhaps Grey Poupon. A wad of electrician's tape holds the controller wires together, and there's a sticky purple substance on several of the game cartridges. If this were any other eBay purchase, I'd unleash a storm of negative feedback.

But this is an original Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and I think it's beautiful.

Full column

Carolinian Exec. Editor and Yes! Weekly staffer Chris Lowrance wrote a very good piece on people buying back their childhood one electronic at a time. I couldn't agree with him more, except that my weapon of choice is the original Nintendo (they did it right the first time), complete with the orange Duck Hunt gun.

I also agree that the Nintendo Wii is a console worth buying, for no other reason than every Nintendo and Sega game will be available for download. I'm not interested in the new games; they're blasphemy. I want Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat. Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Double Dragon. The very first Zelda. The very first everything, before the games became tarted up and whored out by the new flashy thing that makes it look cooler.

It's not that sequels can't be better. Mario 3 is the best Mario, hands down. It's that there is beauty in the simplicity of the first attempt, history in the original. It's the game as it was meant to be. Two buttons and a D-Pad. It's all I'll ever need.

Now if I could just get the damn thing to turn on.

Olbermann

To compare a person to Edward R. Murrow is a heavy handed task that I'm not qualified for, but the fact that Olbermann uses Murrow's timeless sign-off doesn't bother me one bit.

I Can't Believe I... Smoked Salvia

When I first heard of Salvia, I was skeptical. We've all heard tales of alternative drugs, supposed herbal supplements that create some sort of high, or over-the-counter drugs taken improperly creating a simultaneous trip and near-death experience. A co-worker once encouraged me to take an entire bottle of Dramamine, because it made him "see shadow people." Another friend downed two packets of Morning Glory flower seeds and found himself on the roof of a stranger's house, screaming at neighbors he didn't know.

Somehow these stories never really convinced me to put these things in my body. They also kept me far away from many of the parties I was invited to, insuring that the company I kept wasn't the company that got me in jail.

Still somehow, through my skepticism, Salvia piqued my interest. Unlike the activities mentioned above, Salvia has a bit of a following, marked by its legal sale in most head shops.

An aside for those of you not in the know, Salvia divinorum is a plant that, when ingested, is supposed to create a hallucinogenic experience. It's part of the sage family, and can be smoked or taken orally.

But does it work? There has to be a reason why this isn't as mainstream as other drugs. If it was just as fun, and legal to boot, it should be even more common than other drugs. I reasoned that if Salvia were the cool thing to do, it would be as popular as marijuana or alcohol is today.

I had never tried anything hallucinogenic or psychedelic in any sense of the word, so I was stepping on foreign ground when I lit my pipe full of Salvia. A deep breath to steady myself, then another full of smoke, and I was off.

Full article here

This detailed the first experience I had with Salvia, but I made myself try it a couple more times before I wrote this just to make sure I didn't have one bad reaction to it. Hated it both times. Don't do Salvia.

I love Penn and Teller

In the first episode of their Showtime show Bullshit!, Penn explained that they titled the series as such partly for legal reasons. You can't legally call someone a liar unless it is a verifiable fact, and even then they're likely to take you to court over it. Say that they're full of shit, however, and you're completely safe. Creative language use, as it were. One of my favorite examples:



What he said.

Fucking with SGA kids

This video made me incredibly happy.