random question blah blah #rqod

sometimes i look at the 4 or 5 prematurely grey hairs i've gotten over the last three years and i wonder what the point of it all is. so i ask you guys, was all the stress and the sleepless nights and the weight gain really worth it? what do you guys think?

900 FREE GAMES?!? IS THIS REAL LIFE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

that's not a typo. you can drop everything you're doing RIGHT NOW and play around 900 classic arcade titles in your web browser even if you don't have the time to DIY your laptop into the ultimate home arcade! the good people over at the internet archive have along with the folks at JSMESS taken on the task of preserving these classic titles for posterity, and most of them are in good working order! all you need to get your dig dug or galaga on is:

• a computer;
• an internet connection; and
• the desire to be awesome and not a n00b

by virtue of being in the drewniverse right now you meet 2 of the qualifications. the only question is, do you dare to be awesome and not a n00b? i know i do. for the non-n00bs, in order to run the gmaes in browser just click the "run" link under the pic in the top right corner.

right there

now if you'll excuse me, i have to go.... uhh...  water my dog.... *goes to the internet arcade*

ps, here's the link for the real mvps

A cold day in November

so i've spent a good portion of the past week talking to voters and candidates, and i've learned something important. what i've learned is that regardless of what most people's beliefs, politics, pet issues and party affiliation, most people are decent, upstanding citizens. for the most part my interactions with the voting public and the candidates for office has been pleasant or at least reasonably non-vitriolic.

see, the thing about the word "most" is that it demands a "some". and the some were the blithering idiots that believe whatever Bill O'Reilly tells 'em to believe. or worse, the ones that take Pat Robertson seriously. a guy who said this about haiti after the earthquake hit and all this shit.

pat robertson, seriously....

now, this is america, and people in america have the right to belive whatever stupid thing they want, because 'murica. but when people don't know facts, when they vote some unimportant pet issue over their needs, an they do so based on the tripe they hear from false prophets and agenda spouting talking heads, i gotta draw the line. see, the drewniverse isn't just about enriching people's lives, it's about fighting ignorance for the good of the drewninites!

you're welcome

so let me tell you about the one guy:

shut up in my bones

bones are important, man.

stay with me. have you ever really thought about them? beyond them being hard or hurting a lot if they break i mean. have you? bones are why you have a form!! they hold you up and let you walk and stuff. they do other stuff, too. they enable you to eat and start digestion (teeth are bones, too, you know) they hold your muscles in place so you can, like, have mobility. they make stuff taste better (the difference between unctuous and flavorful stock and blah di blah broth? stock is made with the bones of the beastie). even bugs have bones (they call them "exoskeletons" because they wear them on the outside because bugs have no shame). and the most important thing bones do?

star in noir style mysteries?

no, they make blood! thought it was the heart that did that? wrong again Bob! the heart is like the head of person city's blood distribution ring. it moves the product through the veins and what not, but it has a supplier, and the supplier lives in the bones. that would be the marrow. see, if the heart is Frank Lucas, and the blood is blue magic, then the marrow is the vietnamese general that grew the opium it was made of.

And that would make Richie Roberts a heart attack (get it? because he was the arresting officer?!)

the bone marrow is very important. it's what makes bone in food taste good, and it's what gives stock it's oomph. also it's wht gives your body blood, and  more importantly, white blood cells. without white blood cells the body can't fight infection, and if you can;t fight infection, you can't, like, live through stuff. you need to be able to live through stuff. i mean it! how terrible would it be if everytime you got a sniffle you had to fear for your life? that's how important bones are, they give you the ability to live your life and live through the stuff that wants to take your life from the inside. 

and the cool thing is we all have that superpower!

.....

ok, so i lied. most of us have that superpower, but there are those of us who don't. there are people in this world that for one reason or another lose the ability to produce new healthy blood cells to fight off infections that might do us in. and you know what? as superheroes, it is our duty to help those who cannot help themselves. we have to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use their own. that's what wolverine would do. remember that scene in the first [read: the good] X-men movie? when rogue was latched into Magneto's "turn-all-the-people-into-mutants-but-it'll-kill-the-person-acting-as-the-battery-so-i'll-trap-a-teenager-who-can-steal-powers-into-it-in-my-place-because-the-nazi's-killed-my-mom" machine and died as a result, wolverine went and did the one thing he knew could save her: touched her so she could steal his healing power to come back to life. 

shown: life giving. not shown: what it looks like (fuckin)

that's what we are: a bunch of wolverine's. we all have a healing factor shut up in our bones. and we need to be willing to give our powers to those who have lost the ability to use there's. that's why i encourage everyone who is able to sign up to the National Marrow Donor Program as a bone marrow donor. it costs you nothing but a cheek swab and it could save someone's life, man. you could be somebody's personal wolverine!

not a butt cheek swab, you perv....

look, i know it's a scary proposition. donating a piece of you to somebody else, somebody you've never met no less, doesn't sound appealing. it sounds painful and invasive. i know man. when i signed up i had the same thoughts. but you know what outweighed all of my fears? the idea that just maybe one day there would be a part of me out there saving the next michael jackson, or the next bill gates. somebody might have leukemia and need a marrow transplant and that may be the person that cures AIDS or cancer. somebody might need chemo and require a transplant to repair their immune system afterwards, and that person may go on to invent time travel, or may negotiate peace in the middle east. hell, you may just save somebody's mom or dad, brother or sister, son or daughter, and they may go on to just lead a normal life. and that? that's worth more than any fear i had. that outweighs all of it.

i don't really know how to close this one out, so i'll just leave you with this image that pretty much says it all.

any questions, bub?

let's talk marley

if you've been following my tweets, my facebook rants, or read my blog over the past year then it's no secret to you that i have a special place in my heart for the trayvon martin/george zimmerman situation. and those who have been following are very aware of how upset i am that the verdict came out the way it did. i wasn't surprised -- legally the prosecution failed to meet the burden of proof, and the system worked the way it's designed to work: every benefit of doubt goes to the accused, little if any consideration is given to the vicitm. and on a personal level, c'mon, when's the last time a black person got justice from the courts? -- but i was angry.

and apparently my side doesn;t have the monopoly on anger. zimmerman supporters are angry that martin supporters are outraged. and some of the neutrals are mad because in their minds as long as there is injustice anywhere else in the world no one has a right to be upset by the injustice in this case, right lupe? (to him the existence of previous black on black crime renders illegitimate any outrage over this injustice)

then there's this bit of ignorance:

#JurorB37 & her fellow jurors got it right, & media, celebrities, Obama, do you even know who Marley is? #tcot pic.twitter.com/sFGOpeueRW
— l8rg8r (@HEY_l8r_g8r) July 16, 2013

for the uninitiated, marley lion was a 17 year old white kid who was murdered by a group of black men in SC following a party. as you see this persons misguided, though understandable, anger is of the lack of coverage young marley received compared to trayvon. well since you want to compare injustices, ms. @hey_l8r_g8r, let's compare injustices.

young marley was murdered while sleeping in his SUV outside of a bar. he was tired after leaving a party, and it was 4 A.M. during the attempted robbery, he was shot and killed. after a six week investigation, 4 arrests were made. trayvon martin was murdered while walking home from a seven 11 on a rainy florida evening. he had on him a  sugary beverage and a bag of candy. after being followed and confronted by a strange man, a scuffle broke out that ended in young trayvon's untimely demise.

there are some similarities: both cases had arrests made after more than a month. both featured men in their mid to late twenties shooting teenagers. both contain racial undertones. and, most importantly, both ended in tragedy. here's the difference. in young marley's case the assailant wasn't readily known. the investigation took six weeks, because the police had to do police work to find the assailants, and once they had the assailants, they brought appropriate charges based on evidence.

trayvon was not afforded that courtesy.

from the very beginning, the system failed trayvon martin. first let's look at the way the shooters were treated. when police arrested the 4 men they followed SOP: their histories sand criminal backgrounds were checked. when the sanford police arrived at the scene of trayvon's death, it was the victimized teen , not the shooter (who's record would have hurt his claims in court), who's background was searched. apparently not unusual given sanford police's history dealing with black victims. next the reason there was a 44 day gap between trayvon's killing and arrest wasn't due to the need for police work to be done, but because the shooter, who stayed on the scene, was given the benefit of the doubt. finally it is apparent that the evidence in the zimmerman case was, put nicely, insufficient and mishandled. the evidence in the case involving young marley's killers has been handled in an ethical and competent way.

i'm not going to in any way denigrate @hey_l8r_g8r for her passion; young marley deserves justice. i won't even condemn lupe for his comments. he's absolutely right about black people's need to stop celebrating death and lack of outrage at the injustices facing our young men everyday. i only ask that they not let there passion cloud the truth. the truth is, for all the similaritieds between trayvon and marley,  they're merely coincidence. trayvon's tragedy is national news because of the injustice that took place after the tragedy. it was news for the way the police mishandled the investigation, for the lack of an arrest when the assailant was known, for the racial prejudice of his shooter, and the fact that certain media outlets were loathe to recognize it, @hey_l8r_g8r i assure you that trayvon's tragedy and marley's are not unequal. twi young lives are goone, their fire's not yet ablaze, their fruits not yet ripe. trayvon's tragedy goes beyond just his life. it is a symbol for how far we as a nation still have to go. because of the way self defense laws are written people like george zimmerman will always be able to murder young black males with impunity, their unwarranted fear and hate their shield. we mourn the loss of marley lion with the same fervor. we cannot let our passions for either of these tragedies skew our judgment of the others.

average cat

play the vid for a little background music while reading

i was going to write a blog today about CISPA -- a bill that recently passed in the house that allows corporations to harvest and trade your personal online information such as passwords and search history with the federal government -- but shit happens. school type shit. let me explain.

life is filled with things. terrible first line, i know, but it's true. there are good things, bad things, neutral things, scary and exciting things. there are cold things and warm. hard things and soft. you get the picture right?

this. this is the picture

for those extraordinary drewninites it must seem that the pleasant things greatly outweigh the other, more sobering things. for every crying baby there are ten yippy puppies and shit. ten. and even among the more realistic of you exceptional MFers that realize that the good and the bad must be even in number, the warm flowery things have the caloric density compared to the icky things of chocolate to lettuce. chocolate to lettuce.

what do you do when life gives you lettuce? make chocolate lettuce cake

i haven't forgotten about you curmudgeonly drewninites either. those who swear that everything bad in life happens to them and only them. well let me assure you that it doesn't. even those charmed bastards i spoke to above go through rainy days in their life. hell, Mary j. Blige made a career singing about all the bad things she went through, and she's one of the most celebrated singers in the history of singing! look, you sad sacks, the sun shines on all of us, and it'll shine on you, too, if you step outta the shade for a minute.

me? i'm just an average cat. slightly above average height, slightly above average IQ, but average looks, average fitness level, and below average scholarship. i get a lot of good things but every time i start to feel a little good about myself, every time i get a little chocolate high, life throws me some lettuce to balance that shit right out.

eat ya veggies, NYUGGA!

which brings me to the reason i decided this was my topic today: a bruhva got a little of that life chocolate last week. i was admitted into the community & economic development clinic for the fall. its a big deal b/c only 8 slots are available, you have to interview for it (and it's a short interview: 15 minutes. not a lot of time to sell yourself), then you have to get picked over all the other applicants and have your name submitted for university so you can register for it. well, all that went off without  hitch, so yay!

YAY!

needless to say i was feeling myself a little bit. life saw me feeling myself and realized that i was on a chocolate high. life always has a way of keeping things at an even keel, and in my case it came in the form of a grade. i got a stupid C on my last assignment. a C. and then prof had the audacity to sit in front of the class and pat himself on the back for the overall improvement each student made in their writing. explain then why, if my writing is so improved, did i earn a solid B on my last assignment? i put no more effort into that one than i did into this one. hell, on this one i even went beyond the call of duty to make sure i included legal arguments only barely hinted at in the fact pattern. so why isn't my grade at least the same as it was on the last one?

the moral of this story isn't that some professor's are full of it, though. it ain't even that i'm just an average cat. the moral is that you can't have life just one way. there is no perfect existence where only the good things happen. life gives us the opportunity to experience all the things, good or bad or otherwise. yes, i'm miffed that i didn't get a better grade, and it is radicchio bitter, but that doesn't mean i don't get to eat that law clinic chocolate, too. and just being in the law clinic doesn't excuse me from eating the lettuce. you can't have life just one way. there's gonna be sweet chocolate and bitter lettuce. but if you gotta eat what life serves you, it might as well be cake.

maniacal

ladies and gentleman ..... I'M GOING TO WRESTLEMANIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bo real blog today, just thought i'd let you guys know that