The End of the World Continues...

$2.69 a gallon!! Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!

One gas station by my house only went up to $2.46, and it was completely packed when I went to work at 4. When I came home at 7, it had gone up to $2.51, but it was still completely packed. Smart gas station.

But it's rumored to go up even more before the weekend's over??

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

The Piano Man: Wrapping Up

Well, the mystery is mostly over.

Here is a synopsis of the facts that have emerged in recent days:

His name is Andreas Grassl.
He learned to play keyboard at age 10, and he plays well, but is not a concert pianist.
He was the only gay in his village.
He yearned for fame and asked people such as Bill Gates and Robbie Williams to help him launch a career in media.
He got a column in a local paper and criticized the instant fame of celebrities and longed to be a millionaire.
He said he suffered a breakdown, but other than that we still don't know exactly what happened, and the jury's still out on whether he was faking it all or it was something trauma-realted.

And that's about all.

As one German newspaper said, "The truth is often so awfully banal."

Edmond the Hun

Halo Movie?

So I read this article about a Halo movie. Something about Microsoft selling rights or buying them or something or other ~ I don't remember. The point is there's plans, as preliminary as they may be at this point, for a Halo movie based off the bestselling and ever-popular game.

The movie, if it is ever released, will flop.

There's no way around it. Games-to-movies, from Resident Evil to Tomb Raider, have never worked too well. Why? Games are entertaining because they are repetitive yet increasingly challenging, while movies are entertaining because of an excellent plot, or humor, or something literary like that. In a game, it might be different every time you play it, depending on how good you are, while a movie is always the same. They're just completely different types of media.

And in a more specific sense, Halo would not work. Halo is not loved and worshipped because of its one-player storyline shooting aliens (and what else could they make the movie about?). It is loved and worshipped because of its multi-player humans-shoot-humans, allowing for endless fun as you develop your skill relative to that of everyone else in the world (literally). There's no way to translate that into a game.

So, if this Halo movie thing comes true, I just can't see it making a lot of money. Gamers would rather save their eight bucks and play more Halo.

Edmond the Hun

And Then Marquis Pitches A Shutout...

Whoops.

The unpredictability of sports strikes again. Only two days after I begged LaRussa to spare the Cardinals and take Jason Marquis out of the lineup, he pitches a complete game shutout.

Sports: Cards Need to Can Starter

The Cardinals starting pitcher Jason Marquis lost again Tuesday night. He's lost seven in a row, having not won sine July 16. I know you can argue that several of his losses were not all his fault, but his ERA has climbed to the worst in the team, 4.67, and there's no denying that he's not starter quality any more.

I don't understand why Tony LaRussa isn't demoting the guy back to minor league, or at least a reliever or something. In the NFL, when the starting quarterback loses games consistently, they replace him. In fact, they even replace him when he doesn't lose all the games. That's why Kurt Warner's on his third team in three years.

There's no reason to guarantee a Cardinal's loss with each start by Marquis. Let him be a pinch-hitter. He's got the best batting average on the team.

Edmond the Hun

The Piano Man: End of the Mystery?

The Piano Man has been released from the hospital. (see current for brief details if you don't know what I'm talking about)

There is a report that he finally spoke and said he was from Germany and he came to Britain after losing his job in Paris. A hospital official refused to comment. German officials confirmed he was a 20-year-old from Bavaria and flew home to Germany on Saturday.

Is this the end of the story, then? He's just a regular guy from Germany? Or is that report false? If it's not, why don't we have a name?

I don't know what to think. If the report's true, it's a rather anticlimactic and boring end to this intriguing mystery. But the article didn't seem to imply that they could guarantee the report was true. Guess we'll have to stick around for more information...

Edmond the Hun

(Proof: www.msn.com)

Demotivation Poster #1

So here I am updating my blog. Except there's nothing in the news worth blogging about. So here's a demotivation poster for you from www.despair.com. There are a lot more where that came from.

Edmond the Hun

Note: The philosophies expressed on these posters are not necessarily those of edmondthehun.blogspot.com. They may or may not be serving merely humorous value.

Movie Review: March of the Penguins (5 of 5)

So a bunch of guys who like cold weather go to Antarctica and film some penguins. They come back and turn it into a documentary for a few small theaters. It's so well-received that they expand to over two thousand theaters, including one close enough for me to go see it.

Let me start out by telling you what March of the Penguins is not. It's not an action-packed thriller, although penguins getting chased by a seal is a little suspenseful. It's not a romantic comedy, although there is plenty of info about penguin love, and it is very amusing when waddling penguins fall over on the ice.

It's a first-rate documentary. Simple, interesting, informative, and very cute. Learning about these penguins isn't at all boring. The background music is almost classical, almost jazz, almost elevator music ~ perfect for a documentary, and yet I can still recall some of the tunes four days later (I want the soundtrack, if it's for sale). The fabulous shots of glittering icebergs as the setting is a nice bonus, too.

Even if you don't like informative nature documentaries, this movie is so well-done that I think you'll still find it enjoyable. I do admit that I wouldn't pay another $6.75 to see it once, but it is something that I will definitely want to see again.

Edmond the Hun

The Last First Day

Here I am, at my last first day of high school. Fun stuff. I'm blogging from the computer class, of which I am trying to retain an open mind and try to learn something about computers I don't know. Yay.

Edmond the Hun

The End of the World Has Begun

$2.58 a gallon! A crime against humanity! Aaaaaahhhh!

Mother Loses 37 Pounds Eating McDonald's

Yes, it's true.

Many of you have probably heard about the documentary Super Size Me, where this guy ate nothing but McDonald's for a period of time and gained weight or something like that. Well, he was eating 5,000 calories a day, eating everything on the menu at least once.

This lady decided that McDonald's was being unfairly criticized, that the responsibility for obesity was shifting to the providers of the food and not the ones who actually eat it (smart woman).

So she ate at McDonald's three times a day for 90 days. She used their website to select meals that amounted to no more than 1,400 calories a day, eating mostly salads and burgers and hardly any french fries.

And she lost 37 pounds.

This woman is living proof that it's not McDonald's---or any other unhealthy fast food provider's---fault if you're fat and unhealthy. It's your own fault for eating the food. You have the power to know the nutritional information of the food you're eating, and you have the power to adjust your diet accordingly.

It's about time people started taking responsbility for their own actions and stopped blaming it on corporate giants who pay me $6 an hour to give you food so I can go buy gas that may soon cost me half an hour per gallon.

Edmond the Hun

(Proof: www.cnn.com)

War on Terrorism: Racial Profiling

Liberals are getting all freaked out about this new concept of racial profiling. I, for one, hope that it becomes fully implemented into our transportation system, and very quickly, at that.

Racial profiling is the idea that security offers focus their random bag searches on male Arabs/Muslims and related types of suspicious people groups. The reasons are fairly obvious: the major terrorist attacks on Western civilization in recent years have come from those male Arab/Muslim types. If we checked them thoroughly before allowing them on our trains or subways or airplanes, then we would make it much harder for them to penetrate with an attack.

Of course, civil liberties obsessives are crying foul. That's unfair discrimination, they claim. That's unfair to all the poor peace-loving Muslims who want to live a simple life here.

My response: Too bad. Live with it.

If there was an outbreak of bombs blowing up in the US caused exclusively by male teenagers, and the government decided to carefully check the baggage of every male teenager that boarded a plane, sure, I would hate the extra difficulties presented to me personally, but I would understand that it was necessary. In fact, this sort of group-specific discrimination has already been present in our society for years. It's called car insurance.

Male teenagers are irresponsible, or so the statistics say. We immature young adults don't pay attention and cause considerably more wrecks than any other driving demographic. So the insurance companies hit us up with considerably larger payments. I sigh and submit, because I need to use my car. Where are the same liberal groups in this situation? Why aren't they crying, foul! You can't discriminate against all those poor responsible male teenagers who just want to live a simple life and drive their cars around!

But they don't do that, because there are enough irresponsible crash-causing male teenagers that it makes sense to just charge them all more money instead of wasting time trying to find some way to measure responsibility and driving skill. Likewise, there are enough Arab Muslim types that have made terrorist attacks on our society and are continuing to plan them, that it makes sense to just screen all of them before boarding planes and trains instead of wasting time trying to find some way to figure out which ones are peace-loving and which ones aren't.

Peace-loving Muslims of America, I'm sorry for the extra trouble racial profiling may cause you. But you have no choice. You must sigh and submit. It's the only way to protect us from further attacks.

But oddly enough, they're not the ones that I'm hearing complaints from. This anti-profiling stuff is all from the civil liberties groups. So to you, I say: Shut up! Stop preventing us from preventing terrorist attacks! Or, if you're so excited about group-specific discrimination, find a way to lower my insurance bill.

Edmond the Hun

Sports: Preventing Indian Mascots

The NCAA has banned 18 college mascots, which are Indian-related, from championship events, calling them "hostile and abusive." Indians---or Blackwhawks, or Braves, or Seminoles, or whatever---have been used as mascots for American sports teams for years, and there has always been debate over whether it's demeaning to our real Native Americans. Apparently, the NCAA thinks it is.

However, they're not offering a reason for why they think it's "hostile and abusive." Come to think of it, I've never heard a good reason at all. I don't see why any Indians should be offended at all.

Think about it. When a team picks a mascot, what are they looking for? Something strong, something powerful, something inspiring. That's why we lions, tigers, bears, and eagles are so powerful. Would a lion complain that it was being abused because a team used his species for a mascot? No, for the same reason a celebrity doesn't complain when she's put on one of those "50 Most Influential People" lists (or whatever they're called.) It's a compliment! It's an honor! It's saying, you're so cool that we want to honor you. You're special enough to be a symbol of our team's strength and inspiration.

Teams don't pick mice or caterpillars for their mascots. They're weak. They're not inspiring.

Teams pick worthy icons for their mascots. And Native American Indians are certainly worthy.

Their warriors are historically famous for their incredible strength, endurance, and ferocity in battle. Naming a team after an Indian is simply honoring those virtuous characteristics and delcaring their desire to emulate them. There's nothing "hostile" or "abusive" about it!
Leaders of the NCAA, don't prevent your colleges from honoring this special ethnic group of our country. Native Americans, when a team picks you for their mascot, they're saying that you are worthy of honor and respect! What's so offensive about it?

Edmond the Hun

Mysteries Revealed: The Life of A French Fry

Doubtlessly, you have consumed thousands of those potato by-products known as "French fries" without giving the slightest thought to the long and arduous process by which they are prepared. This dark and mysterous pathway shall be illuminated by the light of my experience in a little McDonald's restaurant in the heart of America.

Let us begin the journey.

The shaping of the fries is a part of the process not known to me, but I imagine it involves slicing potatoes into thin strips a few inches long and freezing them. These frozen fries are placed into brown paper bags. About six brown paper bags are placed into a cardboard box. Thousands of cardboard boxes donate their residence to these paper bags with frozen fries.

These boxes, bags, and fries arrive at the restaurant via the truck. Or should I say, the Truck. I have never seen the vehicle mentioned in writing, but it is referred to so uncompromisingly as "the Truck,"---never "a truck," or "the supply truck," or "the big truck," but simply, "the Truck,"---that one almost imagines it has reverently been entitled to a capital letter. The Truck is as necessary to the life of the restaurant as the ships were to the early colonists. It brings not only fries, but meat patties, chicken, cups, lids, sauces, ice cream, apples, grapes, lettuce, pickles, onions, cheese, buns, nuts strawberries, toys, stickers, straws, napkins, cookies, croutons, syrup, coffee filters, coffee, fry bags, take out bags, burger boxes, tray liners, bottles of water, containers of milk, containers of chocolate milk, apple juice, salad dressings, forks, knives, trash bags, and a host of other things that I have forgotten or am not yet aware of.

The cardboard boxes containing the bags containing the fries are taken from the Truck and carried into the walk-in freezer. A reinforced steel door opens into the first room, which averages 38 degrees Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned items that need to remain cooled. A second reinforced steel door opens into a second room, which averages 11 degress Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned itmes that need to remain frozen. This is where the fries are kept.

(On a completely unrelated note, it feels very good to walk into the walk-in after you've been standing over the fry station or grease vats or grill.)

When fries are needed, a lucky employee is chosen to carry a box from the freezer into the fry hopper, which is a large plastic container shaped somewhat like an upside-down triangle with tiny metal doors at the bottom right. The cardboard box is opened. The brown paper bags are opened and dumped into the fry hopper.

Below the large plastic container is a sort of mini conveyor belt for metal baskets with handles. The fry hopper is somewhat intelligent, and it knows when there is a basket on the top ledge of the belt, and it opens its tiny metal doors and drops fries into the basket. The basket then slides down to the end of the bottom ledge of the belt.

Another employee, or perhaps the same one, takes the basket by the handle and places it into a vat of pure grease. This is known as "dropping a fry basket." The employee presses a timer on the side of the vat, which is set for three minutes and ten seconds.

The employee waits three minutes and ten seconds.

The timer beeps and flashes "PULL." The employee pushes the timer (to stop the irritating beeping) and pulls the basket up and dumps the hot, cooked, fresh fries into the adjacent fry station. He pours salt from a salt dispenser onto the fries.

There are empty bags of small, medium, and large fries. The employee takes the desired bag in one hand, and with a little metal container in the other, sccops up fries and funnels them into the bag.

The bag is then placed onto a tray or into a bag, depending on the method of your order.

You pick up a fry with your fingers, and place it in your mouth, where it passes in and out of your body. But we will leave the details of that process unexplored.

Edmond the Hun

Back

Hey, I'm back from Mexico. Good stuff. I'll be working on updating everything over the next few days, so be patient. Bien?

Edmond the Hun