The Not-So-Special Olympics

Another Winter Olympics have come and gone. I wish there was a single word I could use to describe the event. If I had to venture, I would say yawn.

I’m sorry but the Olympics are boring.

I don’t even care that the United States didn’t win the final medal count. In the world economic Olympics, we’re still number one. Just having a GDP per capita high enough to support a winter Olympic team is an achievement in and of itself. Choke on that, any country from South America!

I would now like to highlight a five-point plan to make the Olympics awesome again. My first and I think most important recommendation for the 2008 games in Beijing is that we need to simplify the events so that they actually have meaning again. For instance, of the many pointless sports being reviewed under Olympic Committee, Korfball has a legitimate chance at becoming a contender in the upcoming summer games.

Korfball is a sport that is a funky combination of football, basketball, and ultimate Frisbee played in the Netherlands. It’s played with two teams of four with two women and two men on each team. There is some type of hoop thingy on both ends of the court and scoring involves throwing a football shaped object through the hoop. You can only pass (no dribbling or running with the ball) and men can only cover other men and women can only cover other women.

Proponents of the sport applaud its emphasis on teamwork since you have to constantly work with each other to move the ball down the court. There is also a lot of strategy involved so being tactical is valued over sheer physical strength from any one player. Finally, the progressives love it because it combines both genders where everyone plays an equal role.

Though those are all intriguing arguments, I think I have a trump card for why it still shouldn’t be allowed in the Olympics: Because it’s fucking KORFBALL!

So we’re just going to let any crazy sport in the Olympics now? We’re going to diminish the already weakened value of medals from our core events like running, jumping, swimming, and Ping Pong? Enough is enough!

If we’re going to let Korfball in, then what about the sport that I invented? It’s called Wollball and the premise is simple. The sport is played on a 10 meter by 10 foot meter court with a brick wall measuring 3.542 meters high in the center. A player takes a regulation Wollball weighing 205 kilograms and then places it on the ground. The player then walks up to the brick wall and then bashes his or her head against the wall until the world starts making sense. This basically means knocking yourself unconscious. The fastest time wins!

The remaining four points are relatively simple. First, we need to provide a team for North Korea or Iran so there is at least one evil country that we can all rally against. Second, all events should be broadcast in montage form with Survivor playing in the background. Third, we need to take a cue from the Biathlon and start adding a gun element to all the events because guns are cool. Fourth, every country needs to do their part to start producing hotter athletes.

Now that I think about it, we should also go back to the Greek days where Olympians performed all the events in the nude. I think that would do wonders for the television ratings on women’s ice hockey.



Another litmus test to determine if an event should be in the Olympics or not is that there shouldn’t be the possibility that you could actually get better at it if you started drinking heavily. That would definitely rule out Curling in 2010.

Facebook is SO taut!

Finally! Someone has invented a way for me to network without physically having to meet people or make any kind of verbal communication whatsoever. Woo Hoo!

Every once in awhile someone comes along and coins a new word and that word becomes the cool new buzz word of the week. I’ve always wanted to be one of those word inventing guys in the worst way. I almost got one started once with the word taut as in “the cargo net was difficult to climb because the ropes were not taut” in a fashion such as “that club was really cool, I mean it was seriously taut, man.”

I got a couple of my friends to use taut in a sentence once but I think I they were only humoring me. They probably remembered the fact that I was raised by a loving upper middle class family in an affluent suburb and not a superstar rapper from the streets of Compton and therefore had no chance inserting hip hop type language into mainstream pop culture. My friends are quite astute, I’ll give them that.

I got a new word though and I think it might catch on. It’s clearly a derivative from the oh-so popular metrosexual but at least the connotations to the trendy stereotype will make it easier to understand. The word I invented is netrosexual.

A netrosexual is someone who became addicted and now almost exclusively meets and communicates with people through Internet social networking type sites, most notably Facebook, but also includes MySpace, Hot or Not, Friendster, etc. They have hundreds of random friends who in turn have hundreds of random friends, which ultimately means that tens of thousands of total strangers have unlimited access to incriminating photos, gossip from your friends, and almost every conceivable way to contact you. Doesn’t THAT make you feel safe when you sleep at night!?

I happen to be a huge proponent of the netrosexual revolution and have whole-heartedly embraced this new technology the day I was introduced to it. I use Facebook for e-mail, keeping in touch with friends out of town, and generating traffic for this blog. Where Facebook has really enriched my life though, is that it has made it SO much easier for me to stalk people. No more sneaking off like a specter in the middle night to peep into windows for me!

Okay, that may be a stretch, but seriously, some people put a little TOO much in their profiles. I’ve run into some pictures of girls on Spring Break that are clearly getting back at their daddies for some kind of neglect in their childhood. It’s a good thing I’m only having sons when I get married.

But back to the stalking thing, I really wish Facebook offered more options for the relationship section in the personal profile. It’s nice that you can see what kind of douchebag a chick is dating but it doesn’t give you any idea what the status of that relationship is. Is the flame still strong, is it faltering, is she just waiting for someone better to come along, what’s the deal? Some kind of numeric scale would be nice. I could then input the status of a relationship in an Excel spreadsheet so I could track future trends and maybe plan a weekend around a projected rebound.

How awesome would it be to know the exact probability of getting ass on a given night? Over 50%? Sweet! I’ll wear my clean boxers tonight!

I feel it is just a matter of time before EVERYONE knows EVERYTHING about EVERYONE at ANY given moment. Although sarcasm is my specialty, lying is not, so I’m okay with this new world of ours where everything is transparent. Life could be a lot a worse for the netrosexual that I am. I love Big Brother..err…I mean Facebook.

I just hope no one invents a way to electronically break into houses in order to stare at people asleep in their beds for hours at a time. That would REALLY cramp my weekdays…

Karma, Where Art Thou?

So it turns out I didn’t win the Powerball.

Again.

I really don’t mind paying the “Doesn’t Understand Simple Probability” Tax every once in awhile as long as the jackpot is over $300 Million dollars. Because anything less that would just be a complete waste of time, right? Winning the lottery, is in fact, part of my five year plan, but I still have a ways to go until then, so I’ll just keep sluggin’ it out at the office and hope I hit get hit by the Karma train like it hit Earl.

Whatever the lottery gods have in store for me in the future, I sure could have used those cool millions at the clubs in Phoenix this week.

The whole club scene is a relatively foreign concept to me, being from the Midwest. Especially being from Green Bay where talking to chicks only requires a modest sense of humor and the ability to hold your liquor more than the guy standing next to you. I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve met from making fun of my buddies passed out on the bar stool next to me. It’s like a really unhealthy version of Survivor.

But clubbing is a lot different because the stakes are a lot higher. At least in Phoenix it is because apparently Arizona State University is a breeding ground for the nation’s hottest women albeit unapproachablest women I have ever met. For one thing, the girls there don’t cut you any slack for adding any tundra pounds that are so prevalent in the carbohydrate hoarding winters of the North. And second, I get the impression that chicks outside of the Midwest are less impressed with how MUCH you can drink as opposed to your ability to PAY for those overpriced drinks.

All of these clubs have these things called VIP rooms which are swanky lounges that overlook the peons on the dance floor. In order to gain access to these bastions of affluence, you need to wear asshole attire which is basically any clothing that costs half a paycheck to assemble and would make you feel like a complete jackass if you wore them anywhere else in public. You also have to give the host a fat tip, and then buy a bottle of booze from their bar. But we’re not talking a bottle of Kessler at wholesale here; you have to buy Grey Goose or some shit like that and then pay $300 for it.

I have to admit, after going through all that trouble, it must feel pretty rewarding to have these women actually make eye contact with you. I can only imagine what it takes to have them maintain that eye contact with you, let alone bring them home. My guess is that you are either talking about the ups and downs of playing in the NBA or have access to all sorts of drugs. I wouldn’t know because I only made it up two steps before security was so kind as to escort me back to reality. Have no fear though, I vow to one day infiltrate a VIP room and find out the truth of what really goes on up there.

I hope I am dead wrong about my assumptions above and it’s actually just a bunch of people playing Monopoly. That would be sweet, I love that game.

In spite of my utter failure to communicate with ASU’s finest, I still had a good trip. My rental car for the week was a bright yellow Hummer, in which I took full use of its off-road capabilities on every available desert lot in Southeastern Phoenix. It was also especially gratifying to bask in the 80 degree weather while Wisconsin got dumped with 12 inches of snow and a wind chill I can’t even imagine.

Now that I think about it, the wind chill probably wasn’t nearly as cold as the shoulder I got from the Barbie Doll I tried to talk to on Wednesday night. Ouch.


The first thing I'll do when I win the Powerball is grow a huge moustache. Then I'm going to ask out Jamie Presley.

Happy Freedom Day, Singles!

Let’s see here, hmmm, I feel like I was supposed to do something today. I know it was something important. God! It’s right on the tip of my tongue; don’t you hate it when that happens? Hold on a sec, let me check my calendar. February 14th. Okay, I got that presentation at work covered and I picked up my dry-cleaning, oh here’s what I’m looking for: NOT have a girlfriend. Whew! I’m glad I remembered to do that!

If you were expecting a scathing Valentines Day post from yours truly, well, you came to the right place. Like all red-blooded American guys, I feel that Valentines Day is a crock of a holiday that probably brings more misery than happiness to all that decide to observe the results of Hallmark’s lobbying efforts from back in the day when a couple of genius marketing execs were brainstorming a way to combat a perennial winter sales slump for greeting cards. If you’re single, the day just reminds you of how pathetic you are, and if you are seeing someone, then you have to either cope with the stress of finding a gift that sends the appropriate message or receiving a gift that is inevitably going to carry a different message than you were hoping for. It’s a lose/lose situation for everybody.

Even though I tore Valentines Day a new asshole just now, I’m actually starting to warm up to the idea. It just requires a change in attitude. First, you have to ignore the actual title of Valentines Day and start referring to it as Freedom Day. It should be a night where you go out with all of your drinking buddies and get as messed up as possible, celebrating the fact you don’t have to beg and plea and justify your actions to ANYONE to get as messed up as you just did. No obligations, no problems! Whoo!

Also, you would have to be out of your gourd to try picking up a chick in a bar on Valentines Day so that takes a lot of the pressure off as well. If I was a bar owner, I would have a strict dress code to only let people in with sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, because if no one is going to be hooking up, you might as well be comfortable. What a great idea for a promotion!

The second reason I kind of like Valentines Day is not the day itself but the day after. Why? Because even though most people had a lot of fun rocking apart Freedom Day the night before, they are still going to come to next day realizations that there is not a bouquet of flowers on their desk or going home with their right hand again just ain’t what it used to be. This phenomenon should be called Cupid’s Hangover.

Cupid’s Hangover should be the start of mating season if ever such a thing should exist. It’s a time a where people should switch into vulture mode and prey on all the vulnerable people out in wild. It’s a perfect opportunity to ask the cutie in class for a cup of coffee after lecture or that co-worker out for a drink to bite the dog that bit you the previous night. You’ve got no excuses. As another incentive, it’s the day that marks the longest possible time between more Valentines Day. Yahtzee!

Happy Freedom Day, everybody! I’ll see you at Wando’s tonight. I’ll be the one with my head in a fishbowl.

Random Thoughts on a Random Day

I’ve decided to take a brain dump on you all today because I have many thoughts that don’t quite warrant an entire post.

First order of business: More people that look like other people.


Watching the Super Bowl last weekend, I noticed a glaring resemblance between the NFL’s luckiest quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and my hero Jim Helpert from my new favorite show The Office. Weird.



And before Dingeldein extracts his revenge on me for my expose on him looking like Antonio Freemen and Turk, I’m going on the offensive by revealing some incriminating photos of people that kind of look like myself. Unlike Brett Favre, some people actually DO think I look like Pacy from Dawson’s Creek and Eric Foreman from That 70’s Show. Personally, I don’t think the Foreman similarities are really there unless I’m two weeks past due for a haircut but that does tend to happen to me quite a bit.

Now for some Plugs:

I’d like to give a shout out to comedian Nick Mortensen for re-claiming his title of Funniest Person in Madison last December. He actually hails from Green Bay so you know he’s got to be funny in order to win this prestigious award without meeting the most basic eligibility requirements of actually being from Madison. Plus he refers to Su Doku in his bit and everybody loves Su Doku. Can’t wait to see you next year, Nick.

I’d also like to give a shout out to my second favorite wrestler of all time, “The Genuine Article” Chris Jordan for his Jackpot Jackpot Jackpot maneuver that is so nice, you have to say it thrice. My first favorite wrestler of all time, the Iron Yuppie, is unavailable for comment.

The last shout out goes to my English Lecturer from last fall for publishing my paper on her website about the time in high school when me and a bunch of my buddies broke into Lambeau Field to play a game of football. It’s one of my favorite memories so I’m just happy to be able to preserve it. It still needs a little work though.

A few more thoughts:

I got my Fusion Razor and I think I figured out why it is named the Fusion. It’s because the scientists at Gillette literally needed to harness the raw power of cold fusion in order to create this cutting edge shaving technology, no pun intended. My head almost exploded from pure glee using this device.

But it pales in comparison to the idea I have for the next generation of razors. Get this, not six blades, not seven blades, but ONE multi-purpose blade that does the same function as the five blades. I’m going to scrap that whole battery operated handle idea too because, is it just me, or does combining electricity and sinks filled with water just seem like recipe for disaster? Better yet, we’ll put the single blade on a cheap plastic handle so you can just throw it away when you’re done. I understand this idea is fairly radical so it’ll probably never catch on but what do I know?

Finally, I’m going to Phoenix this week and it’s going to be awesome. I’ll try to come back with a story. In the future, I’ll keep the brain dumping to a minimum.


Another Picture of No-Friends Hercules. I guess he can be KIND of cute when he's not biting feet and shitting all over the house.

Super Blog Sunday

What could possibly be better than Super Bowl Sunday? Could it possibly be TWO blog posts in one day? I bet it is.

Being the cutting edge blogging enthusiast that I am, it is my duty to report my observations on today’s game.

First, I am glad that advertisers have taken note from last year and given us exactly what we wanted to see in a Super Bowl commercial: more monkeys in suits doing business in an office. I’m sorry but to me this kind of stuff is timeless. I think we have reached the absolute pinnacle of low brow humor. The marketing department at whatever the name of the company that does those commercials have done a fantastic job creating a following and thus building brand recognition for their product and/or service.

The low point of today’s commercials was probably the Whopperettes commercial from Burger King. It’s painful to watch Brooke Burke go from overexposed beauty queen to utter obscurity in such a short period of time. What happened to you, Brooke? You used to be about the modeling and the partying. Now you’re about schlocking hamburgers for BK? What gives!? Even your most devoted Maxim minions are going to be upset about this. For shame. For shame.

The award for the coolest product easily goes to Gillette with its FIVE blades on the new Mach Fusion. If five blades aren’t enough to rock your world, there’s a bonus blade on the backside for sideburns. The Mach Fusion may be the greatest consumer product ever created. I could literally feel the patches of stubble on my face quibble in fear when the commercial first aired. I’m finding a 24 hour Walgreens when I’m finished with this post.

One thing I’ve always wondered about is why any respectable marketer would allow John Madden to do the commentary for the Super Bowl or any game for that matter. Not only is the man incapable of forming a coherent sentence out of his mouth, but his jowls flapping around in the breeze is enough for anyone to lose their appetite while watching the game. This is does NOT bode well for Pizza Hut, Doritos, Pepsi-Cola, or any other snack maker banking on huge game day sales. Someone needs to get Madden a bacon sandwich or something off stage to keep the camera off him as much as possible. I’m sure Al Michaels would agree.

The thing that annoyed me the most was that silly game of football that kept interrupting the commercials. It was really difficult to care about the game since my beloved Packers were not being featured but I’m pretty sure Pittsburgh was the victor over Seattle.

Well you could actually make a case that ALL the players were winners today. After all, they don’t have to live in Detroit.

3000 People Love My Blog

Wanna know something crazy? Brainlitter.blogspot.com.org has reached the 3000th hit mark. That’s pretty damn good! Granted I switched all of my roommates’ computers to make my blog their homepage so about half my hits last about .5 seconds as they immediately go to Google, so let’s just be conservative at 1000 hits and call it a day.

What I feel the real accomplishment here is that my little forum for groundless rants and irrelevant opinions has gone international. Thanks to my lovely foreign exchange sister Maite from Brazil and a few forwards to her friends, I now have hits from Curtiba (her hometown in Brazil that you’ve probably never heard of but has a population of 1.5 million people) and Argentina. That means I have achieved one of my secondary goals for my blog which was to give foreigners a completely inaccurate portrayal of a typical American.

My PRIMARY goal for Brain Litter is to stave off Brett Favre’s retirement for another 25 years. You’ll thank me when he throws in the towel at 65 years old like the rest of working stiffs.

Something else I found funny was that if you google the names of people I mention in passing, my site comes up within the top ten hits. My buddy David Dimmer, the Gandalf of computers, tells me the reason for this is because I’m linked to his business website (www.fyin.com) and he knows all these little tricks that Google uses in order to bring searches to the most relevant.

Gandalf tried to explain to me the subtle intricacies of this process but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about so I just nodded my head politely and thanked him for the publicity. It was equivalent to Chuck Norris explaining why his roundhouse kick is such an effective deterrent against crime. I am sure they are both fascinating subjects but I just assume leave the jargon to the experts. Ignorance is bliss.

I promise that the next 3000 (1000) hits will be just as exciting as the previous ones. There will be more posts, more pictures, more lists, more in-depth interviews, more action, more suspense, more man-woman-gorilla love triangles, more giant disgusting bugs, and more dinosaur fighting than you’ll be able to handle.

Whoops, I kind of digressed from what I was going to deliver in upcoming posts to more of what I want to see in a sequel to King Kong. My mind wanders like that sometimes.

Anyways, thanks for reading my blog everybody. And, yes, I do realize I am a shameless self-promoter. Hell, it works for Donald Trump…



My roommate Joseph Steven Daniels from Green Bay, Wisconsin put my favorite coffee cup in jello for retribution from the time I put his moped in his bed. This has nothing to do with the post, I just think it's funny as hell.