That Makes You Crazy

So this is a mandatory post on Craziest. So stop reading now.

My favorite thing about Craziest is how clever the title is. It references not only the "triple triple" but how the narrator/main character is actually crazy. At first I didn't realize that this was fiction because I know there are people who actually get that obsessed over things less serious then Scrabble. I though she was hyperbolic when she said she found the Oracle through Scrabble but I caught on when she said she dropped out of college to play the game.

So overall it was an alright piece. Not the best. Certainly interesting. I have never been one to find much comedy when you take something mundane and give it a false sense of over-seriousness. I can see the humor of the strange juxtaposition but I think it is a cheap way to go for easy comedy. It is only a slight step-up from what people do to come up with wacky sitcom ideas. But all that aside Craziest actually had some really funny stuff in it.

I think we watched it in order to see a type of medium for online storytelling. I don't think it was for anything else besides entertainment. But hey I'm not complaining.

401/1000

How a Small Animation Company Dominated My Heart

Pixar Studios has been making the best animated movies for the past 13 years. This isn't actually an opinion. At this point it is more or less a fact. I loved, loved, loved Wall-E and thought it was the second best movie of the summer. It just came out on DVD the other day and I think I'm going to pick it up soon. Also, Toy Story is over 10 years old. Isn't that freaky?

Here is a sneak-peak for the next Pixar movie. It is called Up and looks just as creative as their past 10 projects.



All of Pixar's movies are perfection* but it is often left up to debate which one is the most perfect. As a warning I am not saying the other movies** are not good just that this is personally my preference. I made some really tough choices here. My ranked list is as follows.

1. Monster's Inc. (It is just so charming)
2. Wall-E
3. The Incredibles
4. Toy Story 2 (Yeah I liked it better then the original)
5. Toy Story
6. Bug's Life (I think it is the underdog of the pack)
8. Ratatouille
9. Finding Nemo
10. Cars (fuck Cars)

*Cars kinda sucks
**except Cars

382/100

Why Wiki.

So, as it turns out, I am the one who made a Wikipedia page for my 26 Lies/1 Truth project. Now I know on the outside this seems like a fun and cheerful little project to do. Let me be the first to tell you it was not. But I'll start at the beginning. Why did I want to do a Wikipedia page for this project? Basically I wanted to think of a creative way to analyze and fully understand the book. So I thought "I have never written a Wikipedia article, and that seems like something essential you should do in your life time, so I could take out 2 birds with 1 stone here." Plus there's no better way than proving you know a book inside and out than by writing an article about it, because it's not like you can lie. So it's a cool way to get inside the book and explain it to others basically. 

 

So how did I go about writing this article? Like I said, it wasn't all peaches and cream. What I first had to do was learn all about Wikipedia’s procedures for writing an article. For a source so many call "unreliable" they sure are sticklers about what you write. You need at least a few credible sources. This means, unfortunately, no blogs. Which made life REALLY difficult considering the whole book is a blog and its whole reference in the internet is almost exclusively in blogs. So basically I had a hard time proving to Wikipedia that this article was worth having. Yes, they actually exclude articles from being added to Wikipedia, though it may not seem like it with such scholarly articles like: Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp.

 

Wikipedia, I discovered, was like its own little world with a talk box for help and a bunch of rules and code I needed to learn. Once you get the hang of it though, it's not too bad. Like ==section== means the title of a new section or something. Next I had to learn Wikipedia’s formatting rules. As you may have noticed, all articles about books are generally set up in the same way, so I had to research this and find out all about this format and what it entails. Generally, descriptions of the book, plot and character overviews, and critical reception are common guidelines one should follow. Under these rules I proceeded to include a plot section, a characters section (albeit this was difficult with the author being the main character and the rest of the characters only having letters to represent them), a "controversy" section (partially to convince Wikipedia this was legit and important), and finally a reception section. In this sense it was set up like a traditional Wikipedia book article. I tired to include everything I could in each of these sections, but I could only present fact and not my opinions on the book which I discovered was difficult after having talked exclusively about the book for some class periods now. Looking back this was probably a short coming of this project, I couldn't deeply analyze without putting my opinion out there. I'm sure it's possible, I just can't do it. But I certainly hope others have the opportunity to edit and make my article better. Even for being a small article about a relatively short book, there is certainly still some more room for improvement. I hope people expand upon the character section, even going so far as to elaborate on the glossary in the back. The article is linked to the Ben Peek article, but I hope more could be done to expand upon his character. Otherwise, I am moderately happy with the article. Some things could be a little better if I had some more sources because, truth be told, there’s not a lot of scholarly things about the book in the internet yet. But that will change. With this Wikipedia article.

I need four more of these by Thursday.

Taking these 2 or so weeks off from class and not blogging has put me severely behind schedule for this weeks blog tally, so I will be busting out the posts from here on it. That being said:

I have no idea what to write about. It's almost Thanksgiving/my birthday/Christmas/New Years and I have lost all motivation to do work. Sitting here, I have 3 days until I go home, then a few weeks until Christmas. How can I be expected to work under these conditions? Not well I tell you, and thats when you spend hours looking at LOLcats.

But don't worry, I won't post every lolcat I think is funny here. That could go one for pages. The question now is what do I blog about. If you haven't guessed by now this is entirely stream of conciousness writing and I am writing this now in an attempt to have less blogging to do later. Maybe future posts will be more quality. Maybe they won't. Who knows? But this post requires a little more so here is a youtube video:

This is what all girls are like. Period. 

Well that's not entirely fair of me. I'm being harsh. Here is something not sexist for the ladies.

I think thats enough to warrant a full post right? I promise to do better the next time. (PTI reference? Anybody?)

For My Grandma!

This is about 2 weeks late but the reason I am even writing it is because of my grandmother. She likes to write letters to me and demands that I write back and well she is a good six letters up on me at this point. So I figure I need to get one out to her soon. In her latest letter she wanted me to describe to her my position on the latest election. So I thought I might as well and double this up as a blog post and a letter back to my grandmother. She wanted the following from me

a.) describe what I did immediately after Obama won
b.) my thoughts and feelings about it.

So this is pretty easy. I was one of those kids who got caught up in the unruly mob who marched down to Church Street. It was a surreal experience. I heard shouting from my dorm room so my girlfriend and I go out to see what is happening. Then we get engulfed in a group of hundreds. It was an amazing thing to witness/be a part of. It gave me an overwhelming sense of hope. Hope that I have cynically been missing for some time now. Just seeing so many people overjoyed and ready for change. I guess apathy wasn't as wide spread as I thought. Let's hope people don't lose this fervor and do something with it. It certainly was a historic moment that I won't forget. It is exactly what our generation needed. I said to later was that in my entire life I have only seen that many people come together in such a way. And that was after 9/11. This is the first event I can recall that was the result of something good.

So that is basically what is going into my grandmother's letter or part of it anyway.

Something Obama is doing that really excites me is his weekley youtube addresses to the nation



I bet it has been said before but it reminds of me of FDR's fireside chats. But it is cool how Obama is taping into modern technology to inform the masses. It all makes so much sense and is ridiculously simple. It make you wonder why it took until 2008 for it to happen. One time there was a study saying people won't watch a video that is over 3 minutes. So he seems to be keen to this. Also someone working with these videos is a genius because they disabled the comment section.


oh and before I forget 336/1000

A Musing On Things Left Unfinished

So at some point this summer I told my friends that I was going to learn 10 new skills. They of course laughed at me knowing full well I didn't have the drive to actually do it. Determined to prove them wrong I made a list of what I would do. It included such noble endeavors as learn how to ride a horse and learn how to drive standard. After my list was finished I decided I would start with what appeared to be the easiest, which happened to be learn how to fold a paper crane and make 1,000 of them.

In retrospect I'm an idiot. If only I hadn't tacked on the make 1,000 of the little bastards I could have progressed in my list and I would be riding a horse to class right now. Whoops.

At any rate I rushed into my project headstrong determined to make some headway. Learning how to make the paper crane was a cinch. Here even you can too if you watch this handy video.



But the problem was folding a thousand of them. "Why a thousand?" You might ask, which is a perfectly valid question. Well as legend goes anyone who is in possession of a 1,000 cranes (which is called a Semba Zuru) gets one wish. You get this from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. As it goes Sadako was a little girl in Japan dieing from radiation set off by the atomic bomb. She didn't want to die. She hears you can get one wish from a Semba Zuru and begins folding away. She makes them all, wishes not to die, and then unfortunately passes away anyway.

I bought a bunch of sticky notes because they are the perfect size square and only mildly annoying to deal with and began folding. After about a week I was bored and gave up after only folding around 300 cranes.

------------------------------------------------

So the reason I'm telling you all this is because I went home this weekend and found my bag of unfinished cranes. I decided I want to start back up so I have some sort of accomplishment to brag about. So here I am in life. Folding cranes. Again

I usually just fold these damn things in the background as it doesn't take away much time. It is just tedious. Once the technique is etched in your subconscious it only takes about a minute per crane.

From now on I will include how many cranes I have made in the bottom of my posts

????/1000 (I don't actually have the time to count them right now)

We needed to be blogging this whole time.

It's really hard to blog without having the class to constantly remind you. It's also really hard to blog when you are crushed under the wieght of every class realizing they want to squeeze a test or paper in before Thanksgiving break. In an effort to find something funny to blog about, I did what anybody would do and Google searched for some humerous news story. This is what I found:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081018/D93T7H6O0.html

I am losing faith in humanity. At the very least, I am losing faith in people from Michigan. Now I don't pretend to be an expert about Michigan, so before judging I decided to peruse the rest of the internet for Michigan-esque things. Here is what else I found:

Rickrolled, honestly.

Also, (slightly retro):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPN4b4KUkh4

Naked Bike Ride = cool. Naked Mile where you train = uncool. Plus those guys just seemed like losers.

Apparently Michigan thinks they speak the best English as well, and that they have no dialect. They also seem to think NYC and the South speak the worse English. Which is probably true, but still. Here's the article, and you know it's true because PBS did it. And if we can't trust PBS to bring us correct information, I don't know who we can trust quite frankly.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/attitudes/

Well, that's all I've got. Not even incredibly interesting. I just really hope no one in our class is from Michigan. If someone is, (sorry first of all) and maybe you can explain to me why you guys are so weird. Thanks.

(Second Google Images result for "Michigan resident")

Don't believe me? Try it.

A Hundred Ways You Can Waste Your Time

Flash Games. I bet everyone here has played a few on the internet. I bet most people are quite familiar with Kitten Cannon or some other stupidly popular game. Few people know kitten cannon was actually based on a Japanese game Nanaca Crash. Well I am just going to list off a few of the best games out there right now. All additively fun. All strangely complex. All good ways to not do work and fail out of college. I am only listing games I think you probably haven't played but should.


Dino Run!

You play as a small pixel raptor who is trying to outrun extinction. On the way you have to eat other dinosaurs, collect eggs, catch rides from pterodactyls and cross tar pits on the backs of trapped brontosauruses.

QWOP Olympics

This game is insanely hard. You have to get a runner to run 100 meters and you control the flexes of both his calve and thigh muscles. I have never made it past 20 meters and that was with a slow hop jump method I discovered.

Fantastic Contraption

You have to make devices that will you get your pink object from starting point A to end point B. Sounds easy at first. Then it gets tricky. Fun for the inventor type

3D Logic

If you like puzzles this is the game for you. Starts simple then gets frustratingly difficult.

Ownage Burst

Dumb name. Fun shooter. The only free flash shooter that I know of that balances ridiculous action and clever cover strategy.

Winterbells

One of my favorites. A little gem of a game that is cute, endearing, well designed, and free to play. The music is fantastic and the animation is surprisingly smooth.

Shuffle!

A simple game where you have to knock your opponents balls off the table before they can knock off yours.

This list contains a large variety of different types of games. All of which are worth a play through. Just remember to get your work done.

EEEEEE! PUPPIES!

I think we need to keep making posts during our break. I'm not sure. But just in case I will make one about puppies.

Do you think puppies are cute?

If you answered no you are a robot.

If you are human like the rest of us you can now enjoy LIVE PUPPIES 24/7



Yeah some guy in California decided to set up a webcam in his kennel so the world can enjoy his puppies. Most of the time they are sleeping. But every now and then one will wake up and start walking on the other puppies' heads. Then they get pissed and it is a huge puppy fight. Awesome

Our multiracial generation is taking over...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html

Liberals, rejoice.

Anyone else march in that gigantic impromptu parade-type celebration on Main street tonight? There were definitely over 1000 college kids there, accompanied by tv cameras, people climbing up lamp posts, trees, and even police cars.

Words of zen:
NO MORE BUUUUSH!
NO MORE BUUUUSH!
(Repeat)

The Woes of Being an English Major

Way back in November when I applied to UVM (Early Action) I marked off English as my desired major. Now the reasoning behind this was as follows.

1.) I thought it was best to declare a major rather than go undecided.
2.) My talents in high school were mostly limited to being better at English than anything else.

Well now that I am one I begin to notice a strange social phenomenon. People don't really like/understand English majors.

Let me show you a common conversations English majors have.

Person: So, what is your major?
Me: Well you see it is...English
Person: Errr...English...cool. What do you want to do? Teach?
Me: No
Person: Oh cool...

Then we sip our drinks awkwardly and walk away.

People always just assume English majors want to teach. And that is indeed what we seem to be doomed to do. But far be it from me to try and defend my major by mentioning all the job opportunities available to me in the world of business, politics, law, as well as plenty more. At that point you are asked "Why didn't you just become a business major then."

There are even people who detest English majors with a passion. We seem to be the punching bags of the college world to these people. What I have noticed is that the people who do this are often on the track of getting a degree in some science or math. It seems to them that there is nothing in the world more important or useful than the science that they choose to study. Even if you agree that science/math is important in the world they refuse to accept that studying English has any sort of influence on the world at all.

Why does it have to be a fucking debate? Both English and Math are important. I guess they may be right though. Studying literature probably doesn't help advance the world much at all. I guess it is more a personal thing. I think you can learn more about yourself if you are constantly questioning universal themes and reading. Maybe I'm just selfish.

All you non-English majors probably don't know where I am coming from. In fact you may feel the same way about me as these math/science people. But hey at least English majors are a tad more useful than Philosophy and Political Science majors (haha fucking losers). In fact maybe I'm growing more attached to my major because I always am on the defense. Oh and if you must know I'm looking to go to Law School, probably, maybe.

But I think you all should know that I am very happy as an English major and enjoy all the English classes I take very much. Even if I am doomed to a life of living on the streets burning my degree for warmth.

So in reality I'm the unlucky one for having to watch these.

OK, so they weren't that bad. But they certainly could be better. Some characters I thought just didn't need to exist. Like Estelle. Sure she is a funny old lady and is insane and all that, but she really didn't contribute to the overall story. Also, I thought Sharon didn't need to be around either. She was kind of in her own little world with her own little conflict anyway and didn't really effect anyone else. In fact, I think this whole thing could be made into a cliff notes version of just the whole Alan love triangle and the respective woman's husbands. The Bill story was kind of a side story, as was the whole Cucumber incident. As far as how you viewed the whole thing, I didn't think there was a problem with the left to right one through five idea. It made sense to me, as long as you can keep track of 3 or more storylines in your head at a time. I tried to watch it in a way after that had me just follow storylines. For example, if I watched the Frank story and saw Bill, I would go watch Bill's video. If I watched Stella's and saw Alan, I went and watched him. After seeing it this way I didn't feel any different than I did just watching it normally. So I don't think the order effected the story too much. Overall, it was enjoyable to watch, but i certainly wasn't enthralled.

Let Me All Show You Something or The Best Soda In The World

Let me preach to you for a moment about the most delicious concoction ever developed by man. A drink so heavenly and god-like one would call it the earthly Ambrosia.

It is called Mr. Pibb or more accurately, since 2001, Pibb X-tra.



Perhaps some of you have it where you are from but up in Vermont it can only be found in a few places. But they are all hours away and only from soda fountains. You can not find bottles or cans here.

I happened upon it one day in New York City when it was on tap at a subway in the business district. I thought I was getting Dr. Pepper but I was pleasantly surprised by the party my taste buds where having. Let me try and explain the taste. It is kinda like Dr. Pepper but rather then having a sharp kick it is creamy and smooth and fantastic. To try to liken it to anything else is to discredit its flavor.

The history behind Mr. Pibb as best as I can tell originated in the 70's when Coke released Dr. Pepper. Pepsi tried to counter with a soda for the everyman not just those with a PHD. Pepsi made some marketing and distribution mistakes along the way which allowed Dr. Pepper to gain the upper hand in the battle. Mr. Pibb had not lost the war, however, and instead of being discontinued it was luckily limited in distributions. This was due in part to the product selling very well in the Southern areas of the country. To this day Pibb can be found in large quantities down South. Unfortunately for Northern fans it is a bit more difficult to obtain.

I have friends who have sent me pibb up from the south at times. But the cost is crazy. Soda is fairly cheap. But it is heavy. Shipping charges are outrageous. I bought 4 12-packs to send up. It ended up costing me 30 dollars in shipping. I won't do that again for a long while unless I have exhausted all other options. But my stash is running low. I make them last. I don't drink much soda to begin with and I try to drink my Pibbs only on special occasions.

Mostly I made this post to see if anyone has this stuff where they are from and if they do can you get it for me? But feel free to laugh at me and my weird obsessions. Also if you have had Pibb and don't agree with my lauding of it. I will have no Pibb bashing on my blog.

The Lucky Ones

I liked The Lucky Ones and my mandatory post on it will explore some stuff my group talked about in class. This post is probably boring and you should stop reading here. I usually just glaze over all the mandatory posts other people make so don't feel bad.

So someone in my group said that they didn't understand why it was important that we watched this. Those are the questions I usually like to think about when considering a body of work. Does this have a meaning? Did I gain anything by viewing it? What does it teach us? I believe most things have some sort of meaning attached to it. Things have to try really hard to be completely devoid of meaning. Meet The Lucky Ones can teach us something.

So we analyzed Meet The Lucky Ones on the basis of it exemplifying the relation between Conflict and Resolution. Jesper killed Ashley's frog and as a way to resolve the issue he bought her a new one.

Thinking on it more I think the thing I took from Meet the Lucky Ones was a theme of Finality. Every conflict has a resolution be it good or bad. So of course every story had a sort of conflict and resolution to some degree. Alice was unhappy so she left Frank, Sharon felt guilty for not telling the truth so he gives back the car, Frank was petty, greedy and jealous and he lost everything he had. But finality in the videos runs deeper. The motiff of death presented by Bill and Estelle represents the ultimate finality or resolution.

This theme is nice and all and gives the work a tad more meaning but it doesn't really teach us anything we don't already know. Yes everything comes to an end we know that. But what we can learn is how our actions and choices determine what sort of end we will have. So we can further break apart the video into a musing on Atonement. The characters who atoned and faced their problems had a happy ending. Jesper bought Ashley a new frog and they remained friends, Sharon gave the car back and got rid of her guilt, Mike made more time for his family and saved his marriage. All these characters were miserable but fixed their problems in order to be happy. Those who didn't atone or learn from their conflict were doomed to be miserable. Frank was greedy and jealous but did nothing about it. Alan knew he was trying to run away with two married women but went with it. Initially after viewing Meet the Lucky Ones you might be surprised that it could teach you to be a better person.

Something is truly great when it is both thought provoking and entertaining.

Screw names.

I can't remember anyone's name unless I've met them multiple times and had a few conversations with them. Chances are, if you're reading this, I don't know your name. Sorry.

I know they're essential in society because it sets us apart as separate bodies of flesh rather than one being, and they are essential because the main method of human communication is through words. However, this doesn't change my rant because I hate names more than I hate sleazy white man running for president.

Pronouns are cool though, they can stay.

Proper nouns, die in a fire.

Jam the jams out.

I hate pop music.

Seriously.

My senior thesis in high school was about how MTV ruins America.

Thus,

As a public service, I am offering an assortment of music by musicians that I feel you should know and respect.

Enjoy...


First up, the classic funky and relaxed sounds of A Tribe Called Quest.



Next, the incredible compositional skills of Bach, accompanied by a really freakin cool visual representation of each note.



Watching the Bach video reminded me of a video that I saw a while back, starring the music of John Coltrane. It's a graphic interpretation of the structure of Jazz, in terms of a basic melody and then improvisation based off of the melody. To this day it's one of my favorite animations of all time. I really suggest you check this one out despite the fact that you can't just hit play.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps (Animation by Michal Levy)

What better way to start the 70's than with the Band of Gypsies? Fast forward to 2:15 if you wanna skip the countdown.



Ok, enough classics, time for a video made after we were born. Virtuosos all around to be quite honest... Time for Jojo Mayer, possessor of two of the quickest hands in drumming today.



What would this compilation be without the incredibly eclectic styles of Bela Fleck and his band, the Flecktones.



And finally, one of the most famous drum solos of all time, courtesy of Stevie Wonder.



72ner out.

Ben Peek.. You attention whore

If you're Ben Peek, stop reading right now.





See what I did there? That's a method of grabbing attention. It's called reverse psychology, and it seems to work pretty well (with teenagers, at least). If you were Ben Peek, would you have stopped reading? Probably not, because you would have been intrigued. Right? Right.

A blog isn't anything like a book. Chances are if one part of a book bores you, you're not about to stop reading it. You'll most likely fight through the boredom to get to the meat of the story. A blog is very different, because it's just a collection of fragmented thoughts, none of which are necessarily connected. If you find a blog post that you don't find interesting, you most likely won't read the whole thing.

If it is interesting though, you will read it and you might even tell others about it. You may even frequent the blog for more. Blogs are all about entertainment and holding the attention of a demographic that tends to have the attention span of a small goldfish. Ben Peek knows this better than anyone.

His blog strives to keep the attention of his readers, and to entertain them as well, and his book/blog hybrid concoction is a testament to the most interesting parts of his blog and his recollection of his (or maybe someone else's... or maybe even nobody's) life.

Take the first entry of the book for example. Abortion.

There's no better way to grab your audience's attention than by immediately talking about something so personal and even taboo in the opening phase. In a way, the entire book seems like putting together a puzzle of Peek's life, and the first piece he gives you is so emotionally charged that it sets a very personal mood that helps to veritably break the ice between you and him. The rest of the book almost feels comfortable to read after starting with such a private entry.

Peek succeeded in holding my attention for the entirety of the book, and started up on a really strong note in that way with this entry.

Meeting the Lucky Ones...

At first I was skeptical to meet the Lucky Ones, because when I get to a website and I'm not exactly sure what its primary motives are for existing, I naturally do a little probing as I was trained by hackthissite.com... Anyway I did a minuscule amount of looking around and quickly found out that it was all an elaborate backhanded marketing move to promote the Mercury Mariner among a younger demographic than is typically associated with Mercury's. And guess what! Apparently, it worked.. According to the company in charge of being paid to make it work.

Anyway... All of this aside, my first impression of the site was already influenced by the fact that it was part of a marketing campaign. Greeted with an atypical and unclassifiable intro song in 6/8, it's damn near impossible to have any kind of assumptions about this piece being anything even comparable to normal. Watching the first few episodes, there was a clear mood of each clip. Most of Sharon's story is somber with moral and commercial undertones, while Jesper and Ashley's whole Cucumber ordeal is slightly humorous but at the same time a little sad, because you can see the helplessness of both of them to control the situation after a large misunderstanding.

As a whole, the entire MTLO piece could be strung together with the clips back to back (after being reorganized chronologically within each episode) to make one complete, standalone episode of a tv show. In class I compared it to a sitcom, because of the form of how there is conflict created in the first clip that you watch, and each of the characters have their various interactions with each other, or in estelle's case (the comic relief of the tension in each episode) interactions with goldfish. In the end, there is a certain amount of closure with each conflict: Bill dies, Frank doesn't change despite his only friend's death, Stella and Alice are freed of Alan's questionable demeanor, Jesper buys Ashley a replacement frog, Mike reunites with his family, and Sharon contemplates returning to graduate school.

Overall, I enjoyed Meet the Lucky Ones. Even though it was all an ad to try to get me to buy a Mercury, although I'm not sure why this would ever convince anyone to buy one.

Haloween: A Sociological Study

A holiday where you can be someone completely different, in many more ways than one. For a college student, it means a river of alternative personalities and appearances; shy? You don't have to be. Ugly? Nobody thinks you are anymore. Not here. Not tonight. Bad mood? That can be cured in one swoop, a tongue full or a mouthful. On Halloween, anyone who wants to be a doctor can be a doctor. It's the one time of year that you can "prescribe someone 50 cc's of Cap'n, stat".

For some, it's just an excuse to go overboard. Some people need that excuse to push themselves to the limit and then some. There are a select few that wouldn't mind destroying their body every weekend, and this is just a socially acceptable outlet for them to indulge, to overdo, and to obliterate notions of moderation.

With no ciestas, universal health care and such an extreme arrogance for the rest of the world, Americans would die for holidays like this. Americans require times designated for indifference and neglect for their own well being in favor of relaxation, shortsightedness and ultimately, endorphins.

If you think there's a message here.. You're wrong. I'm just rambling.