Hey!
Surprise! Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi used steriods. Big one there. Of course, Barry says he didn't know, in what is probably a carefully constructed case of probable deniability. Giambi's the one who is gonna be most shook from this. He didn't take roids last season, showed up about 20 pounds lighter, and went on to have an absolutely terrible year. The health effects of steroid use are already catching up with him, and the Yankees might try to get out of his mega-contract. Kids, don't do drugs.

What I've been up to: lots. Basically, I had a presentation on Thursday and what ended up being a 20 page paper due on Friday. So, that took up a lot of time. The presentation was about Japanese History Textbooks, and the controversy around them. Basically, a group of right-wing nuts in Japan got together and made a textbook that kind of ignored Japanese wartime atrocities, and it got approved by the government for use in schools. China and South Korea weren't so pleased. Lesson of the day? Wars just don't go away when they end.

The other one was about Japan's economy, and I don't like discussing the economy too much, so I'm not gonna write any more about it. That's it. It's done.

Panthers won a big one at home against Tampa Bay. Again, the defense getting turnovers was the difference with Pepper's return for a TD. Of course it was nice to get to see a big come from behind victory like I heard about it all last year.

Tonight, the 49ers tried hard, but came up short in 3OT's against #22 ranked Alabama. Missed free throws were the difference, but I have to mention the extremely preferential officiating for Alabama. I mean, I've seen some whoppers in my day, and some of these were really out there. So congrats "Tide", you lucky punks.

Are you in the Christmas spirit yet? I'm not. Still waiting. I'm sure it'll kick in once school ends though. Just need to see some more trees and lights. Remember, I missed out last year, so I hope it's good this time around.

I can't talk right now
TRIVIA (or more correctly, Fountain of Trivia) IS COMING TO AMERICA. Sweet. link. Folks, this was my favorite show in Japan after Sasuke trials. It's full of wacky goodness and completely facsinating trivia. Sure, it will probably be poorly dubbed and watered down for US TV, but it's better than nothing. Let me say it again: tape it, Tivo it, or actually watch it when it's on TV, but just watch it. You'll be hooked.

Random Thoughts
I was walking by Harris Teeter today, and I saw a Salvation Army guy ringing the bell and doing the bucket donations thing, and I thought, "boy, that'd be pretty low to steal from one of those guys." Well, low and behold, apparently it happened. Guess I'm starting to agree with FDA more and more. Get the whole sad story here.

In other news, apparently some military jet started shooting at, uh, civilian targets in New Jersey, accidentally of course. I recommend you read it here. Now, you'd think most people would be pretty pissed about this happening, but looks like some people are standing up for the military on this. Now, I'm all for the patriotic thing, but when the military IS SHOOTING AT YOU, it might change your opinion. Well, not at you directly, but you know what I mean. Remember folks, the military works for us, not the other way around. That'll do it for the civics lesson today.

I'm a consumer whore
I swear, I'm not doing this ever again. Well, not for a year at least. I decided to go and wake up early for all the big after-Thanksgiving sales. That's right, somehow I'm gonna wake up at 5:45 AM, and brainwash myself into thinking that it's a good idea too. Well, here's the deal. At Circuit City, they had an exclusive Game Boy Bundle where you can get Metroid Zero Mission FO FREE. Now, that's what I'm talking about. I also did another thing that I swore I was never going to do, and that's buy a Toby Keith CD. Well, it was for a gift, and by waking up early, I saved some real dough on it. Like, six bucks dude. Oh yeah.

I spent waay too much time in stores today. I spent enough time in Target and Circuit City that I should be getting paid for it. I'm spending way too much money- of course, in all these deals, I ended up picking stuff up for myself, too much really. Combine that with my recent Ebay out-of-control spree, and I'm just spending too much dough. Good Job Mike.

Food for Thought
This comes from Gregg Easterbrook's excellent NFL column Tuesday Morning Quarterback, available weekly at nfl.com. What would the pilgrims really have ate at Thanksgiving??

In other NFL news, Thanksgiving has become Throwback Day, with teams to wear old-fashioned uniforms and old logos on the NFL.com home page. TMQ suggests this menu for your own personal Throwback Thanksgiving:

* Wild turkey, shot with a musket and hand-plucked.
* Dried maize; no corn-on-the-cob.
* Ample, overflowing servings of lobster. (The Pilgrims considered lobster tasteless and complained in their diaries of having to eat it so often.)
* Seal meat.
* Hard apple cider. (Till the early 1800s or so, hard cider was in rural North America considered the only totally safe beverage, because the alcohol killed waterborne pathogens; children often drank diluted hard cider and went through the day slightly tipsy.)
* For dessert: plums, grapes and stewed pumpkin. (There is no chance the Pilgrims ate pie at the first Thanksgiving, because they had no refined sugar. Until the 1800s, most Americans rarely tasted anything containing refined sugar.)

As you dig into your turkey, stuffing and pecan pie, washed down with a $10 bottle of wine superior in quality to any wine available to the 17th-century kings of France, remember how hard your ancestors worked, and how they sacrificed, in the dream that someday their descendants would be warm, well-fed and secure against nature. Considering that your forebears just a century ago had an average lifespan of 46 years and often shivered during winters while eating mostly salt-preserved food, try to get through turkey day without complaining about anything, okay? Happy Throwback Thanksgiving!

Again, I highly recommend Tuesday Morning Quarterback. It's also incidentally enough where I got the name of this blog from, so a little bit of blogging trivia for ya. Enjoy the holiday.

Huge Omnibus Blog Entry
Man, it's been a crazy couple of days. Just about non stop something or other for the past week or so, which isn't exactly what I like to do when things like sleep are involved. So, let's start with Model UN. When you add it up, it was pretty sweet but let's just say definitely had its slow points.

I spent all Wednesday night printing out stuff and packing for the conference, then woke up bright and early on Thursday... and waited several hours for late people to show up. Finally, on the road. I don't remember too much about the trip other than stopping at some place called Dad's Restaraunt and Gas Station somewhere in deep, deep, Georgia... more rebel flags than you can shake a stick at. Then we made it to the conference at the airport Marriot in Atlanta. After a salty and greasy Pizza Hut dinner, we started what would be the first of many, many committees.

Essentially a committee is a full-on simulation of what the actual United Nations would do. In my case, I represented the Philippines in the UNAIDS Committee, the topics that we dealed with were like Children with AIDS and Food Security and AIDS. Basically, everyone agrees that action needs to be taken on the AIDS situation, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, but no one can agree on exactly what to do. So they haggle about it for hours on end, and then resolutions are typed and voted on. The fun day was on Friday. We were literally in conference for literally something like 10 hours. It was ridiculous.

Sometimes, noting how both the conference and our accomodations were at the hotel and we never left the hotel, it maybe felt just a little bit like prison. But anyways. Late Friday after many hours of work it started to get a little unruly in conference, and the person who would actually be the deputy secretary under Kofi Annan actually had to go in and bitch out our conference just for being punks. Believe me, after nine hours, it wasn't funny.

Anyways, Friday night ended up being a pretty monumentus night. Let's just say when you get a bunch of college kids in a hotel room it's going to be a fun time. Somewhere all this other craziness, I remember seeing a near-riot break out Detroit on ESPN. This deserves a whole blog entry in itself, but here goes: buying a ticket, no matter how expensive, is not a license to act like a jackass. It is not a get out of jail free, not-my-fault card. The situation had been cooled and pretty much diffused until some jackass thought it would be a great idea to throw a cup of beer on the most volatile player in professional sports. Well, he got what he asked for. Ron Artest definitely cannot charge into the stands and trust me he will be made the whipping boy and pay for it. But I say it's time to start cracking down on dumbass fans as well. I'm talking jailtime, fines, you name it.

Anyways, one more day in conference. At the end, there was an ending ceremony, and everybody's happy and stuff. Unfortunately the Philippine delegation didn't win any awards. I didn't think I'd care about winning one, but it definitely would have been nice. I gotta try harder if I want to succeed.

Slept most of the drive home. The Model UN head honchos bought a HUGE chocolate cake for everyone for a successful conference, which we ate at Taco Bell. Mmmm. Came home and slept late on Sunday, watched the Panthers whip up on the Cardinals. It seemed like equal parts good play for the Panthers and self-destruction on the Cards' part, but we'll take the win. Then, I had to cram to finish 2 papers, one on Monday and one on Tuesday by 5pm, which I mailed to the teacher at, incidentally, 5 pm on Tuesday.

From then on, Thank God, it's been vacation time. I got a big meal at Taco Bell, checked out the Nintendo DS at Circuit City (for the record, I like it), and played RC Pro-Am on the computer. It was like in Office Space, where the guy says, "I would do nothing". That's how I feel right about now.

Model UN Conference
I'll be going to a Model United Nations Conference in Atlanta for the next couple of days, you can check it out at srmun.org. It's cool that it's in Atlanta, it's not cool that I'll be stuck in conference for hours on end. Anyways, expect light blogging for a while.

Belated Panthers Victory Post
Finally, the Panthers win another game. The infamous 1-15 season of 2001 will not be repeated, the 14 game losing streak avioded. And you know what I feel finally did it? The defense. They really cranked up the pressure and started getting turnovers left and right. Throughout this season, it didn't seem like the defense was doing enough to get turnovers and create opportunities for the other side of the ball. That changed with this game.

Some of the turnovers were just plain Rattay's fault, but odds are good if the pressure isn't there he doesn't make the stupid throw. So I would give the game ball to the defense on this one. Sure, Delhomme and Muhammad but up big numbers but that doesn't happen without the D stepping up big time with the turnovers.

You've gotta feel good about coming back from a 17-3 deficit as well. The defense finally came up with a stop at the end of the first half, and the offense moved the ball, so I had a feeling that if they could just make some adjustments at halftime they would have a solid chance to win. Sauerbrun's Clutch kicking (4XP's and a FG) was a key as well. All in all, after taking a while getting their act toghether, a good game for the Panthers.

Halo 2 post
I've had some requests for a Halo 2 post, so here goes. First of all, the game is continent-sized big. I was really impressed by the size and the length of the levels in this game. For the most part, they managed to be varied and interesting, full of different vehicles, AI help, and strategies. I was really impressed by the AI in this game. Many times you can just sit back and watch the chaos as your allies and enemies face off. Vehicle and weapon selection has been expanded and improved, you can finally use Plasma swords and drive the Alien tanks. Very, very nice.

The frantic gameplay remains from the first, aided by fantastic graphics. I really felt while playing this that it was what the future of games was supposed to look like, it's be a console benchmark for years. Playing this, I feel like I had per capita "Holy Sh--" moments than any other game previously. There was this one part in particular where you're fighting a boss, and you can hijack his floaty thing, and punch him in the face til he dies. I was so impressed by that. The story was full of twists and surprises, although I wish maybe it would have been a little more focused I still like it. Unfortunately, the game ends just as the plot is getting good, Lord of the Rings-style. Ah well, what's another 3 or 4 years wait, right?

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