Ugh, it's a wonder some people know how to breathe

Couple days ago, I ordered an item off of half.com, an ebay affiliate. The seller of the item then contacted me a couple hours later telling me they no longer owned the item and would refund my money, having it credited to my card within 2 days. Fine I say, it's inconvenient but I'll live with it. For 3 days nothing happened in my bank account, then tonight, the transaction vanished, but I wasn't credited with any of my money back. So now I'm out the money AND they didn't send me the item. So I paid 20 bucks for nothing. Needless to say, I contacted half.com via ebay's contact page and am currently waiting on a response.

If this cannot be solved via the official channels, I am going to send the seller an email demanding rectification of this issue. I mean really, stuff like this just eats me away inside. How can you be dumb enough to leave an item up for sale when YOU DON'T EVEN OWN IT ANYMORE? This is so ridiculous that I don't really know who to be more mad at, the seller for being incompetent, or ebay for having a refund system that doesn't even work. Sometimes I consider just giving up buying shit online. Last year, I had a massive ebay dispute when this guy tried to stiff me on a rather big purchase. Luckily, he turned out to be a scam artist and ebay refunded all his buyers but DAMNIT. Is the juggernaut gonna have to smash somethin?

Tribute to Real Men #2: Joe Frazier

In part 2 of my tribute to real men, I have installed my favorite heavyweight boxer ever: Smokin' Joe Frazier. Frazier was a man's man...the kind of inhumanly tough guy you can only read about it seems like. As a boy, he was born into abject poverty but he taught himself how to box and his first heavy bag was self-made out of a mail sack, sand, and cinder blocks. By the time he'd reached adulthood and pursued a boxing career, it became clear that a lifetime of sheer grit and guts was ready to make up for what he lacked in overall natural ability.

Frazier, as a fighter, could be described by me as RELENTLESS. He chased his opponents down, and with his signature 'bob and weave' to the extreme style, he confused usually accurate punchers and wore them down against the ropes with a constant, steady attack on the body, his forehead buried in their chest. He'd whip the ribs for a while to set up head shots, and his money punch was the left hook. When it landed, it took someone with a special kinda chin to take that shot and live to tell about it. After Ali lost his boxing license over the draft controversy, Frazier won what would eventually be recognized as the world heavyweight title. He was a proud, respectful, and honorable champion, and a fierce fighter inside the ropes. He held the belt until Ali returned, and after Ali had gotten his ring rust off, the two squared off in 1971 for the 'linear' world heavyweight title that technically still belonged to Ali. I should back up and say that prior to this, Ali had repaid Frazier's gift of money during his non-boxing years after the draft incident by verbally lashing out at him, ruining Frazier's childrens' school lives, and making a mockery of Frazier's attempts to train for the bout. He never once gave Frazier the loan back, and spat nothing but venom at his attempts to reconcile.

The fight was legendary. Frazier came out at the opening bell and headhunted all night long, pushing Ali into the ropes when possible and looking to land the left hook. He brutalized Ali from pillar to post, never tiring, never giving up, and never losing focus, despite the tough Ali hanging in there. Finally, in round 15, Frazier landed a MURDEROUS left hook square in the chin that put Ali down, but Ali beat the count and went the distance. Frazier won a unanimous decision. He eventually lost the title to George Foreman in 1973, and lost two subsequent matches to Ali, but the beatings Frazier laid on Ali are widely considered to have caused or contributed to his development of Parkinson's disease.

Frazier is an example of a real man, a man who never once compromised his principles for anyone, a man who, when faced with adversity, told it to go to hell. A man who when faced with his greatest challenges, said "bring em on." And he did it with class and dignity at every turn. In a sport where massive egos rule the day, Frazier stood alone as a beacon of respect and honor. For his stellar boxing career, particularly his shocking victory over Muhammad Ali (making him the first man to ever beat Ali) which I find especially satisfying due to my intense dislike for Ali, and his comporting of himself as a champion, Joe Frazier makes my Hall of Fame for Real Men.

Tribute to Real Men #1: Sean Connery

In this world gone mad, there's a severe shortage of real, beef jerky-eating, lumber-sawing men. A lot of you will think these posts in my forthcoming series "Tributes to Real Men" are jokes. They're not. I'm dead serious when I say that we need to see more recognition for real men when we live in a world populated by Ben Afflecks and Orlando Blooms.

Sean Connery is my first installment because he was the first guy I thought of when I thought of this idea (Well actually I should give credit to Maddox for the idea, but I'm just expanding on it). Sean Connery always played the best damn movie characters, and did pretty well for himself outside of movies too. Go here to see an astonishing list of awesome facts about him: http://imdb.com/name/nm0000125/bio

Anyhow, what makes Sean Connery a good addition to my little hall of fame primarily resides in the roles he played. Obviously, he was the best James Bond ever. He was a COMPLETE HARDASS as Bond and that was what the role needed. Roger Moore tried to be way too softspoken in the role, and Pierce Brosnan tried to act way too witty. Sean Connery was the only guy to ever play Bond correctly: a hardass who was constantly in control of every situation. Hell, he could be sitting there, tied up in the villain's lair, and he'd be smiling at the guy, figuring out how to escape the whole time. The problem with the other Bonds is that they all let their emotions show way too much. Sean Connery kept his cool and always wound up winning, and far more impressively than anything Roger Moore ever did.

And that's not even taking into account his other awesome roles in flicks like the Untouchables, his woefully underused but staggeringly badass Juan Sanchez Villa Lobos Ramirez character in Highlander, and hell even his somewhat comedic relief role in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was still pretty cool. And how could I forget him in The Man Who Would be King? That is a movie I recommend for ANYONE to see because it's a fantastic epic movie. And Sean Connery, once again, comes off like a total master in it. Fantastic acting, and the best mutton chops ever. And that reminds me: the other huge reason is facial hair. Anyone who knows me knows that's one of the main ways I qualify men as manly, is through their various facial hair regimes. Connery has had everything in the book, from a moustache/semi-goatee in Highlander to the aforementioned chops, to the full beard he's favored for about the last 20 years. He can pull em all off and I commend that.

Back to Bond quick. Notice how when Sean Connery played Bond, he didn't really care what anyone thought of him. That new Bond Daniel Craig, though I like him as an actor, more than likely waxes his chest or some crap for those beach scenes. Sean Connery is one hairy bastard and he didn't give a crap. He takes his shirt off and just does whatever. And with women, Connery's Bond was definitely the most proactive. He didn't wait for the women to come to him, he GOT the Bond chicks, and if they couldn't keep up with him, then too bad, it was time for another adventure. He left the sappy stuff for George Lazenby.

One final thing: when he decided he'd made enough ludicrous amounts of money and made enough awesome movies, he just said: "Okay that's it, I'm done" and retired to go get drunk on Guinness and play golf. He didn't hang around and harangle for massive paydays in movies he knew would suck, he just said he was done and that was that. And in corollary to that, he vowed to not return to Scotland until it was an independent nation. That takes some brass ones considering it was his home country and I'm sure he misses it.

So hats off to Sean Connery, the first inductee into my Hall of Fame for Real Men.

And apparently I'm a moron

Because if I had been smart I would've realized that after yesterday, no place on Earth is going to have Wiis. And they don't.

So, looks like I'll be getting that Wii after all

More than likely on Sunday. Awesome.

Probably going to get Tiger Woods 08 since I had so much fun with it last time I got a chance to play the Wii. And since I have a wireless internet portal in my basement, I'll be able to take it online through the router.

If only my weekend wasn't marred by other unpleasantries...namely school work to the tune of "please beat me over the head with a lead pipe because it would be more fun than this term paper."

I guess I could think of the Wii as my reward for all of my studious hard work. (Insert laughter here)

This post is really against my main goal for my blog, to be somewhat insightful whenever possible, so I'll try and make up for it:

I recently heard about this ridiculous motion in congress in support of a National Popular Vote. Essentially, it states that individual states will form into pacts with each other so that whatever candidate receives the majority of the popular vote in the combined populations of all the states participating will receive all of those states' combined ELECTORAL votes. Call me nuts, but doesn't the constitution explicitly state that these kind of interstate pacts are illegal and controllable by the government? Interstate commerce/relations is one of the few enumerated powers given to the federal government by the constitution. And considering the founding fathers were almost unanimously in favor of limited government at the federal level, then it says something that that is one of the things they'd give the federal government explicit control over.

My objection to the legislation stems from the fact that it would force states to relinquish their right to choose the winner of their own electoral votes, even if the opposite candidate wins the popular vote in the 'pact' of states. For example, if MN were to enter into a pact with California, and the majority of Minnesotans vote for one candidate but the majority of Californians vote for the other, the MN popular vote will mean jack crap in the long run because California citizens determined who MINNESOTA electors are going to vote for! BS if you ask me. I don't want my vote diluted by people in a different state, thanks. Let's hope and pray this doesn't make it past committee review.

My Collection at all time high

I should tell you that one of my main hobbies is collecting and playing vintage records, and my collection has reached a new high after my latest round of purchases: 471 LP's. I'm quite proud of that, as it's taken me a lot of scrupulous work and care to collect them all, maintain a catalogue of the titles I own and their condition, and to keep the sound system necessary to accommodate them in working order. (I did recently just buy a 'new' Yorx turntable/equalizer/tape deck combo for 7 bucks from Goodwill to add to my awesome collection of archaic, yet awesome, technology).

If anyone has any good haunts they know of in the twin cities to find albums, share em with me, I'm always open to suggestions aside from my usual stops on what I like to call my 'tour' of the metro that I gear up and go on on weekends to find albums.

I'm about to cry tears of joy

Okay so lemme set the stage here. Tonight, my dad wanted me to come with him to some party that he and a bunch of his buddies from work were having at a coworker's house. I was pissing and moaning about how I didn't know anyone there and didn't wanna go, but he convinced me to come along.

So it turns out that his coworker is an avid guitar player, and a fantastic one at that. Within minutes of getting there, he and I were in the basement playing on a couple of his acoustics. I was having a blast, because these were some top of the line instruments here, and they were tuned and cared for by an expert musician. So I'm sitting there playing his 12 string guitar (for those not into guit-boxes, it's basically a standard guitar with 6 extra strings, each an octave higher than their neighbor). And I'm loving it...it's a fantastic instrument. So he notices how much fun I'm having and he says "Well hey...if you like that one, I have another one upstairs that I can loan you." So I freak out and I'm like well hell yeah man, sign me up. So later on, as we're about to leave, he hands me the guitar case and says "Hey look, if you really fall in love with this guitar and wanna learn to really get good at it, you can have it." So I honest to god almost cried. I don't cry a lot. You gotta be a man about things, but seriously, this guy, a guy I HAD JUST MET, was GIVING me a guitar, and a REALLY nice one too. I shook his hand and I patted him on the back and tried to keep from crying. This thing was AWESOME.

Guess it's a good thing I decided to go huh?

Nothing quite like...

Having a whole weekend and all you can think is: I have to devote this whole weekend to one project. Damn soil science, why do you have to be so hard? It's the lowest level major course I'm taking right now yet it's the most difficult. It's taught as if I am supposed to already have a pretty complete knowledge of the subject matter going in. That's frustrating, but I can't blame the school for everything...I mean there are lapses no doubt in judgment on my part.

The 3rd test in that class was today and I actually thought I did a little better than I had predicted. Not outstanding, but solid. Probably a solid B. But it's the major project for that class that has me miffed. I'm going to be shut in all weekend doing nothing but working on it and I'll probably still only get half done. Then it's on to the 4 other major end-of-term projects I have to focus on. Jesus...the things I'll do to graduate on time.

Comedy Recommendation

You all HAVE to check out Patton Oswalt. That dude is some funny funny stuff. He's got a couple of CD's out...you might recognize him as Doug's friend on King of Queens.

AND SIXTEEN POUNDS AH PORK CRACKLIN'S!!

And usually, I don't even care for comedy albums...I have to actually watch the standup show so I can actually see the comedian, but this guy is so damn funny. There are some portions that I think are a little self-aggrandizing, like his constant Bush jokes but I let it slide because he has some real masterpieces on these...like "the Poety of Pornography" and "Steak." Give him a listen sometime, I guarantee you'll be entertained.