Virtual Thought

First off: yes, I watch American Idol. Get over it.

Who I really want to talk about is Paula Abdul. Nice stuff first: she seems like a genuinely nice person. And now the bad: she is so saccharine sweet that her “criticisms” are useless to any of the singers on American Idol. She claps like a winner at the Special Olympics (thanks, Jim!). She seemingly boozes it up so much before the show that she can barely contain the effluvium of her sugary heart, spilling it out at random upon any passers-by whether they be Randy, Simon, a singer on stage… whoever.

And now the love triangle. Watch the show sometime and you’ll see what I mean. Or, just read the recaps. But I digress.

The love triangle: Ryan Seacrest, Simon Cowel, and Paula Abdul. See, in that bored way I believe people in the entertainment industry do things, especially people whose careers don’t seem to be going anywhere in particular (_ahem_) Simon and Paula slept together a few times. Y’know, just to try it out… see what it’s like. Only this totally threw Seacrest for a loop. What do you mean they slept together? he thinks despairingly. Simon is meant for me! And so he insults Simon as a fourth-grader would pelt a crush with pinecones in the hopes that Simon will one day look at him with the same I-think-I’m-witty eyes that he looks at Paula with and make Seacrest his and his alone… while leaving Paula to stagger her way over to the American Idol men and make slobbering passes at each of them in turn but ending with Constantine who she is falling in love with anyway…

I could’ve been watching 24.

Oliver, I know how you feel.

After that last post I needed something to laugh at.

I received a weird comment on my Earthsea rant. The comment is from someone named “Yellow Monkey”. This person’s URI is yellowmonkey2.com which doesn’t resolve, currently. The text of the message is this:

Thank you! Chinese Apes.

That “Chinese Apes” thing is a link to chineseapesattack2.com. I don’t want to link to anything because it might be spam of some kind… the e-mail address is one of those super-long spammer domains (aa5362fcef81b36d…).

Also, the IP is 205.234.132.50 which resolves to unknown.ord.scnet.net. SCNet seems to be a large-scale broadband provider that seems kinda shady.

What the hell? My only guess is this is the first finger of some shadowy marketing campaign possibly disguised as a game. I enjoy those (anyone out there love bees?) but not if it just confuses me with domains that don’t resolve.

(Since the original www.ilovebees.com seems to no longer be working, here’s a link to a guy who archived most of it)

AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHH!

I know an urban legend about Batman.

I won’t tell it here, however… you have to ask me personally, for the magic is both in the story and the looks of wide-eyed wonder that greet any repetition of this fantastic and uplifting tale. A harrowing tale of adventure and loss, the Batman Urban Legend is a thing of rare beauty and power.

Recent Batman sightings reminded me of this Urban Legend. Where is Pat and how’s he doing, anyway?

The latest Madden game is fanfrickintastic. Too bad I don’t know how to play football.

My offense is getting much better thanks to the Madden 101 feature built into the game, but my defense really, really sucks. What’s a 4-3? What’s a 3-4? Why a nickel and not a dime? So, in an effort to improve my game knowledge so my brother doesn’t kick my butt all the time, I found this article about defensive formations. Seems pretty cool, but I need more in-depth help. What’s a zone? What does cover mean? Why is bump-and-run coverage good during some blitzes?

Chalk it up to learning to program computers rather than playing football.

I’m a very happy participant in fads and trends. That’s not what I’m writing about.

I had some time to surf today and I checked out my friends’ blogs… Christoph hasn’t written since the beginning of July, Ryan wrote his second entry in a month on Tuesday, Mark is still talking about bad beats and .NET, and Sean is moving his blog again. What the hell’s wrong with all of you?

( =

At least Carlos is being a good little blogger.