The Stewart Adams Project

February 24, 2010

Figure Skating is Nascar On Ice

Posted at 11:17 am

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games seem to be quite popular this time around despite the fact that they are being held in Canada. This is most likely due to the fact that Shaun White landed his Double McTwist sandwich on a victory lap after his first run was scored higher than everyone else’s combined scores. It could also be because people like to complain and dish on the amazing sport that is Curling, where women compete to see who is the best at sweeping the floor. The third and final all conclusive reason for the popularity of the Olympics this year is that a man died while traveling 88 mph (The same speed at which time travel is possible) in training for the Luge. Though tragic and sobering, this turn of events has drawn a massive amount of attention to the winter games. Which brings me to our main topic of discussion…

Figure skating is exactly like Nascar. Cloaked under the guises of “Art Form” and “Athletic Sport,” figure skating is comprised of about 123 seconds of fluff and amateur level moves and about 7 seconds of masterful intense action – which is really all the audience came to see anyway. Watching a dude in spandex tights skate around the ice in sweeping arcs with arm movements in sync with the music is about as boring as watching stock cars drive around an oval 500 times. Like Nascar, many viewers of ice skating really only care about seeing amazing feats of skill as well as the occasional crash. In reality, figure skating routines should take a fraction of the time if they were simply a long chain of awesome toe-loop-jump-double-salchow-flip-triple-lutz-tripple-axel-toe walley-half loops. Which brings me to my next point, if this were the case, it would be much more clear cut who was the winner and who was the loser. Since most people wouldn’t even be able to finish their routines, the judging would become much less subjective – i.e. prejudiced in favor of their own country. When the difference between Gold and Silver is a tenth of a point because one judge doesn’t like euro-pop music, the system is broken.

And so my friends, I propose a new sport to serve as a replacement to the traditional flavor of figure skating. Routines last 10 seconds and start at the top of an ice ramp. The skater gains speed and does as many tricks as possible within the time limit. If he or she completes a certain level of difficulty and doesn’t die, they are awarded a gold medal. We can call it Stewart Skating…but fear not people who still wish to see the hum drum boring non-sport version of figure skating, you can still see it at the Ice Capades and Disney on Ice where it belongs.

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February 22, 2010

The Investigator

Posted at 9:19 am

Originally posted February 18, 2009.

_________________________________________________________________

It was another rainy night in Roswell. It’d been a long day and everything around me seemed to be in a dank and dismal state, with colors turning into grayscale before my very eyes. I sat at my desk, the sound of the ceiling fan whirring above me and the plinking of precipitation hitting the roof above that. As I slouch in my chair I tilt my fedora back on my head and contemplate what my next action should be. I ultimately decide that a drink would be appropriate for such an occasion and am then forced to think about whether whiskey or coffee would be more suited to pulling me out of my lackluster. As my mind wonders onto tangents regarding the consequences and benefits of mixing stimulants and relaxants, there is a soft knock at my office door. I pull out my pocket watch; ‘10:23 pm,’ long past visiting hours by anyone’s calculations yet I remain here in my chair none the less. I should go home and sleep…yet that would require me to walk through the rain, I hate it when my socks get wet… My mental wonderings are again interrupted by a knock at the door, this time a little quicker, just a slight bit louder and with more desperation behind it. Curiosity fills my imagination and begins to overpower my tightly grasped desire to be left alone. Realizing that I had left a light on and the blinds on my window open, I decide that my visage was easily visible from the street below and I would not be able to hide in pretending I was not in. “Enter” I say with a slight rasp clothing the edges of the lonesome syllables. With a slow and arduous creak my office door swings open…I need to lubricate those hinges to prevent further auditory torture in the future, but I know as long as it’s on my time it will never be done.

My attention is then focused on my guest, a slender figure hidden beneath an overcoat dripping with rainwater. Turning back toward me after closing the door, the visitor confirmed my suspicions as her face shone in the light of my desk lamp, yes, she is a woman. My stomach churned inside me as she removed her hat and made plain the fact that she was indeed a girl of unquestionable beauty…the very thing I had been dreading. While most would consider this good fortune or at the very least a bonus to brighten my previous state of being, not I, for I know the implications of the situation. I had already played it over in my head…she would take a seat and begin telling me all about how the mob was after her and that she’s pretty sure they murdered her husband though she has no evidence. She’ll say she has no money and will eventually shed a few tears all with the hope that I will pity her and become her pro bono private investigator. Despite the fact that I know all this will happen I also know that there is no way I will be able to resist her. I will end up nearly getting myself killed, might lose my license and will then have the mob after me, all this just to be a hero for a beautiful girl. When it’s all over I’ll get a kiss on the cheek and she’ll say “you’re a great fella,” she’ll turn around and I’ll never see her again.

So there I sit, staring into her sparkling, frightened eyes, I can see the path that’s before me and I know it is the road I will take despite the less than favorable outcome. Playing along with what I already know she’s going to say, I offer her a chair. But then something happens that shakes up my entire decision making paradigm. Rather than taking a seat and telling me about all of her misfortunes and how she’s at the end of her rope, she walks around my desk, puts her hand on my shoulder and whispers in a low, mellow tone: “All your base are belong to us.” At that moment I hear the bang of the gun firing but do not feel the resulting pain until several seconds later. The last thing I remember was me lying on the floor looking under my desk toward the door. I watched as the woman walked through the door and the skin of her ankles changed to a scaly green color, then everything faded to blackness. –July 7, 1947

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February 17, 2010

The iPad

Posted at 3:10 pm

As you may have heard already, Apple is releasing a brand new tablet device unfortunately named the iPad. Steve Jobs is touting this new piece of hardware as ‘magical’ as it will attempt to compete with reading devices such as the Amazon Kindle as well as the ever popular Netbook PC. Let’s go ahead and throw out any fanboy loyalty we may have for either system and take a completely objective and unbiased look at the pros and cons of the iPad in comparison to its competition.

iPad: “Hi, I’m an iPad.”

Netbook: “And I’m a Netbook.”

iPad: “I can only run one program at a time, if you want to view pictures, or type out a grocery list…you have to stop surfing the web.”

Netbook: “I don’t have that feature…”

iPad: “I can watch movies as long as they are downloaded wirelessly or synced through a computer and will fit on my 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash memory (btw, we charge you $100 more for each memory upgrade).”

Netbook: “I can use an external DVD drive to watch DVD movies and have unlimited storage space by way of external hard disk drives. The high end Netbooks have as much as 320 GB internal storage with the average being over 100 GB.”

iPad: “I can stream YouTube videos by way of the YouTube app…but don’t have support for flash on web pages.”

Netbook: “Whoa…really? So no Hulu, no flash games like Kitten Canon or Farmville? No blip.tv embeds? No flash based web animation? You do realize that 97% of what’s cool on the internet requires flash right?”

iPad: “Ahem, moving on…I have an on screen keyboard that has no tactile feedback and takes up half of the screen.”

Netbook: “I come with a real keyboard built in.”

iPad: “I have access to the Apple App Store…which can already be obtained with the iPhone.”

Netbook: “I can install and run real programs with full feature sets that aren’t limited to the fact that I’m an iPad.”

iPad: “I have no external connection ports except for a 30-pin proprietary USB connection used for syncing and charging. So I can’t attach any peripherals unless they are specifically designed for me.”

Netbook: “I can use practically any USB peripheral, and often have VGA ports and memory card readers.”

iPad: “I have up to 10 hours of battery life.”

Netbook: “Depending on the model, I can get up to 15 hours of battery life.”

iPad: “My cheapest model costs $499.”

Netbook: “I average around $300.”

iPad: “I have the apple logo on my back.”

Netbook: “I definitely don’t have that…”

iPad: “I have a 9.7” backlit display so when you’re reading it’s like staring at a computer monitor.”

Netbook: “You know the Kindle has the same size display but it is specially designed to look like paper and be gentle on the eyes without glare.”

iPad: “…I’m like an iPhone, but bigger so that you can’t carry me around in your pocket and without the Phone part.”

Netbook: “So basically you’re telling me that you’re not useful as a cell phone, a laptop or a reading device?”

iPad: “No, I couldn’t possibly be saying all three of those things, that would be multitasking and I can’t do that.”

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February 15, 2010

Singles Awareness Day Revisited – Revisited

Posted at 10:32 am

In the spirit of vain repetition and pure laziness on my part, I am re-posting last year’s Valentines blog post for your nostalgic enjoyment.

_________________________________________________________________

When it comes to singleness, there are two polar extremes that dwell on the teetering edges of the bell curve. On one end, you have hermits, consistent feminists, and Bill Gothard – people who are to remain single for their whole life. Some are content to be here with little desire to even go on a date that could cause them to become romantically involved with another person. While others are angry…so very angry…and hate everyone and everything so much that no one wants to be near them and/or they can’t find a person they hate little enough to be interested in. In many cases, these people are already married to something else that A) takes up all their time, B) has made them rabidly bitter toward even the idea of finding true love, or C) both. This ‘something else’ could be almost anything…a career, a celebrity obsession, a hobby, playing Halo for days at a time, etc.

At the other end of the bell curve we have those people who are absolutely terrified of the concept of being single and do everything in their power to get as far from single status as possible. Here dwell the traditional Mormons, wealthy Sheiks, the Smurfs, and King Solomon who, consider love to be more a symbol of success than a delicate emotion. To most of these people, a relationship is just another achievement (bleep bloop) on their resume of social and interpersonal prosperity.

But since most of us hang out somewhere between these two extremes, this is all I’ve got to say:

For the single Ladies: Don’t worry about a thing, the man of your dreams is going to find you soon…sweep you off your feet and carry you away to his castle whilst singing “Kiss de girl” and riding upon his magical unicorn. He will marry you and love you forever with an undying passion the likes of which this world has never seen. But, in the meantime…embrace your singleness and have a very joyous Singles Awareness Day.

For the single Gentlemen: I have put your message in binary code:

0100011001100101011011000110110001100001011100110010110000

10000001001001001000000110010001101111011011100111010000

1000000111001001100101011000010110110001101100011110010

0100000011010000110000101110110011001010010000001100001

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0011011101000010000001110111011000010110111001110100011

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1100100000011101110110010101101110011101000010000001110

1000110111100100000011101000110100001100101001000000111

0100011100100110111101110101011000100110110001100101001

0000001101111011001100010000001100100011001010110001101

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0011001100110111101110010001000000111010001101000011001

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0000001100111011001010111010000100000011000010010000001

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1100001011110010110100101101110011001110010000001111001

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0001000000111011101100001011011100111010000100000011101

0001101111001000000111001101110101011100000111000001101

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0000011000110110111101101101011011010110010101110010011

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1101000110100101101111011011100010000001101111011001100

0100000011010000110111101101100011010010110010001100001

0111100101110011001000000110001001111001001000000110111

0011011110111010000100000011000110110010101101100011001

0101100010011100100110000101110100011010010110111001100

1110010000001010110011000010110110001100101011011100111

0100011010010110111001100101011100110010000001000100011

0000101111001001000000110100101110011001000000110111001

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11100000111010001101001011011110110111000101110

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February 3, 2010

Disney Princesses – Part 2

Posted at 11:51 am

In continuation of last week’s article, I now give you Disney Princesses – Part 2 as indicated by the title above. This week we will take a look at the four remaining Disney Princesses and how they are poor role models for young girls and altogether bad for society as a whole.

06. Jasmine – Here we have a young girl who is constantly disobedient to her father (who is also sultan btw), who runs away from home on a regular basis, wears hammer pants, and rather than pursuing a relationship with an upstanding member of society (who just so happens to be rich, handsome and royalty), she decides to go for the ruffian punk kid who steals for a living and is commonly known as a “street rat.” By today’s standards, this degenerate would be accurately known as “drug dealer.” Since when is it okay to tell little girls they should aspire to marry a street rat when they grow up?

07. Pocahontas – The only of the Disney Princesses that is actually based on a historical character, Pocahontas is everything the real Pocahontas was not. The real Pocahontas was about 10 years old when she saved John Smith’s life, she did not know him prior to the encounter and never had any kind of ongoing relationship with him. She also did not worship talking trees and was baptized as a born again Christian after marrying John Rolfe in 1614. But I guess its okay to completely deface a historical figure and add fiction to his/her story if it means box office sales.

08. Mulan – Ah, the Chinese woman who looks like a man. So much like a man that her gender was never questioned throughout months in a military training encampment. The ultimate example of feminist role reversal, Mulan gives the audience the impression that all men are idiots and women are the best at fighting giant hulking Huns. If only the Huns had sent their women to invade China, then they would have won.

09. Tiana – Also not a real princess until she marries a frog, Tiana is an American living in New Orleans in 1912. Wearing a princess costume for a masquerade ball, Tiana is mistaken as a real princess by a frog who just happens to be a prince from a country that still has a monarchy. Since I have yet to see “The Princess and The Frog,” I will not comment further regarding the negative aspects of the film or its “princess.” If you have seen the movie, feel free to add input in the comments section.

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