Christmas with Justin

Every so often, SNL comes up with something that's pretty darn funny. If you can't think of what to get your loved one this Christmas, they have an idea for you. For the love of Pete, if you're offended by the mention of male anatomy, specifically a term that is also a nickname for people named Richard, I'd probably move to the next post.

People Can Come Up With Statistics to Prove Anything, Kent. Fourfty Percent of All People Know That.

CNN has an article where apparently 95% of all US citizens (and, as any statictician knows, +/-4%) have had premarital sex. While I think it's certainly high (higher than is good for us), there is no way that the number is that high. The other interesting point is that it's been that high for decades. That seems to directly contradict this study right here that says incidences of premarital sex went from 32-45% from 1972-1982 then leveled off. While I'm sure that their statistical methods were sound, I wonder if their sample was an inaccurate sample. I could take a sample of people I know and premarital sex would drop down to around 20%. It's not going to be statistically accurate because of the high proportion of Mormons in it, but I think it illustrates the problem with the CNN study. Maybe they were just unlucky, or maybe they used some sort of push polling, or perhaps some other methods that tend to cause statistical anomalies.

Let's say for a moment that this is true though. What does that mean for society? It means that we're a nation of manwhores and people who don't care about the sanctity of sex. It's not just something to knock about with and have a good time. It should be taken seriously, and if the entire nation is having sex, not only are we all having affairs as well, but we're causing long term problems. Seeing as how most of the nation is still Christian in one form or another and that one of the tenets of all major Christian religions is that you should have sex within the bounds of marriage, then we're all condemned to Hell.

Of course, the good news is that this is almost certainly wrong, as that's such a high percentage as to call the entire study into question. They can always go back and do it again though.

This Wire Frame House can Kick Your House's Butt

Carson Williams, the maestro of last year's homebrew TSO lights extravaganza, has done it again, this time without causing more traffic problems than a Wii blowout at Best Buy. While I don't think that this tops the original (although the show he put together at a mall in Denver might), it's still awfully cool. I can see this guy rigging up his kids' caps and gowns so that as they graduate, they're blinking and going crazy to the graduation march. That'd certainly be one way to make it cooler than usual. I'd like to see some sort of uber-nerd High School, Tech School, or University do that. MIT, I'm looking in your direction.

Eigorobics

While I don't want to tell anyone to actually watch the full video, take a look at a few select pieces. Here's an aerobic class that (as far as I know) helps Japanese people get around Los Angeles.

Weee....Just [Looked Like We] Went Out of Business

There are a few businesses that just bug me, and one of them is Pa Pa's Southern Smoked BBQ. Right from the get-go this business annoyed me. They spelled Papa's Pa Pa. They have a little ugly pig on their sign. They have their little saying, which can only be said in the Cheeth's Little Kid From The South voice. Finally, and most importantly, they're not The Smokehouse. This is a shortcoming of pretty much every barbeque place west of Texas though, so it's tough to fault them for that. Unfortunately, as a connoisseur of barbeque, just existing isn't enough. I had tasted the sweet sweet taste of good barbeque on trips to Florida and Texas and some random place with bush league sauce just wasn't going to cut it. I have the same beef with Goodwood. Sure, the name is classic, but their sauce sucks. On top of that, they price their meals like they're gold plated. Anyway, I thought I saw some big crowds in Pa Pa's, which was unfortunate. Nevertheless, I drove past one night and it was quite dark with the only vehicle in the parking lot being a semi trailer. That's what happens when you're a start-up no-name barbeque place going into a former Tony Roma's (which also sucks, but that's beside the point) - too big a location, IMO.

EDIT - 3/6/08: a while back they moved across the street, so it was just a temporary relocation.

This Was Crazy

I was driving home yesterday for lunch and there was a dog meandering through the road. The road that I was driving on carries around 50,000 cars on an average day, so it's a busy road. Anyway, this dog was meandering through traffic at a light. The car in front of me stopped to let it pass, and I knew that disaster was imminent. Indeed, there was a Jeep Grand Cherokee that was chugging down the lane next to me and it plowed into the dog. Everyone in the car thought the dog was dead, but much to our surprise, the dog jumped right up after getting hit and took off at top speed. The dog must be mental though, because instead of learning its lesson and not running down the street, it ran down the middle of the road. It didn't look hurt, just scared. That was a shocker, as I expected dog pate instead.

I Rikee Mahketing

I've noticed this trend with Chinese restaurants here lately. The first was Chen's Noodle House. I got a flyer that is, to be perfectly honest, the best marketing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It was rife with misspellings, bad grammar, and other Chinese translation errors ("Free Deliver!"). On top of that, the delivery logo guy had a hat on that said China King. It's like the people who started the place up just got off the boat and started it up. While I haven't gone yet, I must go because if they are real Chinese people then their Chinese has got to be better than the Americanized stuff at Panda Express.
Now there's the Asian Buffet. I've scanned the ad to the right and once again awesomness is in the cards. Take a look at the picture of the guy at the grill. You'd think, "oh, that's nice, a cooking guy." Instead, they want you to think "GRILL!" Fish on a plate? "SUSHI!" If that's not cool, I don't know what is. The other thing that I love is one of their big selling points right there on the side: "We Serve Beer!" Apparently they didn't realize that here in Utah the beer flows pretty freely. In fact, I think I've seen it at such places as grocery stores, convinience stores, and even other restaurants.

Stalking 2.0

I've seen stalking before, but not Web 2.0 stalking. Tom Brady's got someone who has a little more than just a man crush on him, unless of course it's intentional. Then it's just darn funny instead of creepily unintentionally funny.

No, I've Never Seen That Before

I'll have a terrible camera phone picture to update this with on Monday, but I was driving home from work last night and I saw something that I had never seen before. Here was someone driving a mid-90s Ford Escort. That's not the something. The something was that the bumper of the Escort was a 2X4 that was nailed on to the frame. Now that's something I've never seen before. Is that even legal?