On the eve of the eve of summer...

Lots of random entries floating through my mind right now…

1) Yes, yesterday’s post seemed to go in a number of different directions. Part of that was intentional and part of it was due to the fact that I’ve probably written that piece about a dozen times over the past three years and I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten it to work. So if at times it felt like you were reading different stories written over several years intertwined, well, you were. Still, it was just one of those things that I needed to write.

2) Barbaro update: His jockey visited him in the veterinary hospital today. Barbaro’s reaction: “Cool, it’s that guy who beats me with a whip all the time. Exactly who I wanted to see right now.” (Hey, don’t blame me. It’s another line that I’ve stolen from Deadspin). It’s interesting that this is still a story, it really just shows that this horse did strike a chord with people. There is a sociological paper there, what does it mean when the Secretariat’s of the world become a celebrity beyond being a champion thoroughbred.

3) Had a fun experience at work this morning. Get to my cube and saw that my computer was showing the blue screen of death and would not reboot. That always makes your heart stop for a moment when you realize that you may have just lost months of your life to a computer failure. The good news is that I owe the Help Desk a debt of gratitude as they were able to get the machine restarted by the afternoon with no loss of data. But it was fun spending the morning sans laptop. I start going into email withdrawl after two hours.

4) Got some news on what is probably my most embarrassing reality television addiction: they are doing Big Brother: All Stars this summer. I can’t really explain why I like Big Brother, it’s take a lot of annoying people, stick them in a faux Real World house, and have them alternate between voting each other out and just trying to kill each other. There is something really engrossing about watching people you can’t stand make fools out of themselves. Oh well, my hope is that the All Star cast will have some of the cool people returning (Kaysar and Nokomis topping my list). But more likely we will just have every annoying person in the house at the same time until you just hope that they all lose.

5) Oh, I’d link to this if I could find it right now but some people are trying to put together a real life Super Mario Brothers game. As in they hook you up to a harness and bungee chords and you get to jump twenty feet in the air and grab these big suspended coins and bounce on mushrooms and stuff. Am I the only person who thinks that this is the greatest idea ever? Screw playing laser tag, this would be so much more awesome. Well, not as cool as empty keg Donkey Kong, which requires a long staircase, an empty keg, and a lot of guys with no regard for their physical well being.