NCAA adds 12th football game

NCAA adds 12th game to the college football schedule and eliminates the bye week in order to not elongate the season.

...so why not just keep the 11-game sched, eliminate the bye week and start the bowls a little earlier to squeeze in a playoff system? Why is it so difficult for them to implement a short 2- or 3-game playoff?

Birds May Be Behind Exploding German Toads

Once again, Yahoo/AP news comes through with an outstanding headline. Hell, they could've called it "Exploding German Toads" and I'd still be hooked.

Oranges

I don't know what to say about this, man. How can one expound on the following sentence: "I am a pulpy orange who likes to draw and observe the world of oranges."

All I can say is, I'm jealous I didn't think of this idea first.

Ants freakin rock

Check out ZayZayEM's post about this incredible trap ants built. It's pretty damn cool. And by "cool," I mean "I now fear ants."

Love is in the snare

From the Yahoo homepage, we are treated to the following article, "Questions to ask on a first date." This is far too easy a target to mock, despite whatever primal urge I may have to savage these noodleheads. Nevertheless, a key portion of the advice begins, "Print and cut out these cards to use on your next date." Why? To ensure a long, lonely trip home, no doubt. Great jumping jeebus. Follow the link at your own peril; follow the advice at your date's.

Yahoo 360

Hi there,
Contact me (address top left) if you want a Yahoo 360 invite (it's like Friendster and Blogger smushed together). It's invite only at the moment. All I ask is that you join the ol' forum.

24: Chloe in action

The lackluster episodes of the past couple weeks are forgiven. This had everything: bad-ass Kiefer, pouty Chloe, return of an old character...and hot dog, Chloe in the field! I cannot account for how mind-numbingly silly I am for this show.

The only thing that could've made that episode better is if Kiefer had punched the Secret Service guy. I'll cross my fingers for next week.

Blog Shares

Am I the last person on the planet to check out Blog Shares? It's a stock market game in which the commodities traded are blogs. The "catch," if you can call it that, is that buy/sell transactions are limited unless you upgrade your membership for something like $15 a year.

Interesting concept.

Building MaximumAwesome.com Wishlist

Okay, here's what I'd like to do in the near future on www.MaximumAwesome.com:

1. Search bar on the main page to search the content on the site.
2. Banner exchange system for other webmasters to submit their banners and generate traffic (and hopefully regular readers) for all sites involved.
3. Fantasy sports system ONSITE. I'd like to get something that people can log onto onsite and NOT have to go to Yahoo.
4. Declutter the main page.

Any other suggestions?

Fighting stupidity

Ugh. Maybe I'm getting stupider. Perhaps I can blame the interweb for that.

I was working on rejiggering my home page to decrease the clutter. I figured I wasn't going to update it until Monday, so I left it half finished. This morning (Sunday), I find an interesting link, write a snarky comment and post it up...without finishing my rejiggering. Hours later, I've just posted the fully jiggered version.

Am I honestly worried about becoming stupider? Or was this post just an excuse to write "rejigger" and "jigger" as many times as possible?

Fairy tales linked to violent relationships

A grad student in London writes that young girls have become overconditioned to believe in the expectation that love conquers all and that their partners will change. This, she contends, is a contributing factor to abusive relationships.

Good thing I spent my childhood watching Star Wars, G.I. Joe and Transformers. Now I know the truth about relationships: there's no problem that can't be solved by a giant, gun-toting transformable robot (in disguise!).

Autobots, roll out.

R.O.C.K.

One of my friend's bands, The Border States, who I've discussed at some length already, are playing their first Manhattan gig, called Bright Lights, Big City. Will they survive? Or will they be chewed up by the city they so desperately revere? (Sat. 4/23 8pm The Delancey, NYC) Oh yeah, Cliff the bassist is doing something totally un-rockstar-like. He's trying to run his first triathalon. I think it's some type of Herbalife scam or something cuz he's asking for money, and judging by this link, not a small amount of money either. I'm fairly certain the demographic of my readers consists mostly of people earning gazillions of American dollars. So I'm sure you'll have no problem coughing up a few ducats for Cliff's rather dubious enterprise. And then you should throw some cash money my way. I absolutely guarantee none of it will go towards my running a triathalon. Ah, one more thing, yet another gig at The Delancey: Dynasty is debuting their first CD April 27. Could someone please act as my ad rep and wring some money out of these Delancey people? Not incidentally, if Maximum Awesome ever becomes a "valued source of rock band listings" I hope you'll have the courtesy to crack my noggin with a heavy blunt object.

Popcorn and evolution

The mystery of unpopped popcorn has been solved! Thank christ. Because I'd hate to think research money was going to try to find the cure for, say, AIDS or cancer. Better, fluffier popcorn for all! ...oh, look, I can't stay mad at Science. After all, it's given us cool stuff like evolution, electricity and the ever-horrifying prospect of nuclear winter. Speaking of evolution, Scientific American ran a funny editorial about it on April Fool's day: "We had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence."

Curse my stupidity

I just realized I didn't have the 404 document for my main site, Maximum Awesome, in the right place. Smart I are.

Pope Benedict?

Are you kidding me? Look me in the eye and tell me Pope McAwesome doesn't have a better ring to it. I'll tell you this: He's sure as hell not going to have as cool a Pope-mobile as I would have had. Not to mention, I'm decades younger. I could've led the Catholic flock for years. Plus, I'm much better looking. Speaking of leading a flock of sheep, Wonderland or Not blog reports of an Alan Sokal-esque hoax perpetuated on some rather lazy academics. A group of MIT grad students wrote a program to generate nonsensical papers (complete with charts). One of the papers was accepted by an "academic" conference. In the spirit of Alan Sokal, here's a postmodernism paper generator. Now you too can sound snobbishly pretentious without having to crack open a single book. Boss.

McAwesome Pope-mobile 5000

Today I unveil my plans for eight cylinders of consecrated cool. link-a-thon '05

Border States update

Gah, the link to the Border States page finally works. I feel too stupid to live for making such a dumb html error.

Superman's a dick

This is quite a funny link and I'm jealous I didn't think of it first. Off you go then.

24

I'm a little underwhelmed by last week's ep.

Granted this week got a little better at the end, but have they run out of budget already? This was the "tell not show" episode. My personal favorite: "a nuclear convoy got shot to pieces and the warhead's missing." Super. You don't think we viewers might actually get to see that, eh? That sounds like riveting television. So no, we didn't get to see it. But we got to see half a dozen scenes talking about it.

Today's episode, by the way, fully showcased Chloe-of-a-thousand-pouty-faces. Just thought you should know.

Exclusive interview with Greg McAwesome

A reporter tracked down Greg McAwesome for a chat about his Papal ambitions. link-o-mation

Them's fightin' words

The Papal lunacy continues: Dave responds to Greg's vicious attack ad.

Greg on the attack

The claws are out. Greg's savage fusillade of insults and half-truths catapults him to the head of the race for Pope. link-tastic

Border States: the band

For a brief respite in the recent Papal nuttiness, Dave reviews the next Franz Ferdinand. "For the life of me, I can't understand why there weren't more (or, for that matter, any) sexed-up, 19-year-old sorority types clawing at the stage." link-o-rama

Quick-o summary of Conclave '05

Here's a quick rundown of the past few days' events (thank you Blogger for preventing me from updating them as they happened):

4.3.2005 I'm running for Pope
I'm the dark horse candidate, baby. Like Rocky.

4.4.2005 Greg breaks from ranks.
Greg has announced his own underdog campaign. Also like Rocky.

4.5.2005 You thought I was bluffing.
Witness my first campaign ad. For pope.

4.7.2005 The media onslaught continues as I unleashed my second ad.

That's where we stand, kids. More updates to come on the main site. Next up: Campaign ads turn nasty.

The Official Maximum Awesome Fantasy Baseball League

Join the official Maximum Awesome fantasy baseball league (ID# 295037, pass# ci11563). Discuss in the forum. Kudos to Team Awesome's Cris for setting this up.

Conclave '05 takes a turn

My own brother has forsaken my underdog run at the Papacy to try his own hand at election. Sacrilege.

Can an insignificant shareware program screw up your computer?

The answer, to my chagrin, is an unequivocal 'yes.'

Jeebus. Only took me, what? The better part of four hours to fix?

Meanwhile, Blogger is having conniptions again. C'mon Google, could you please try NOT to be the next Microsoft?

Whoa, what's this? A techno-centric post? Sorry about that. I better end this now before this blog descends into talk of 'pop3 servers' and 'firewire ports' and all sorts of junk I only have a passing understanding of. (ending sentence with preposition...good writer I are...)

Blogger retires?

What the hell? I was counting on this guy's support during my run for pope. Now he retires? (Are bloggers even allowed to retire? I thought bloggers just pratter on about insignificant nuttery until you get canned from your job and can no longer afford an internet connection. This guy was a bit of an oasis in that there was never any incessant whining.)

The McAwesome campaign has taken a hit, but we will prevail. Got some kickin campaign ads coming up on the main site this week and next.

I'm running for Pope

You heard right. I'm running for pope. Alert your local Cardinal.

I cannot improve on this headline

Easter Bunny Gets Pummeled by Boy at Mall. Enjoy.

Comeuppance for the talentless Pat O'Brien

Pat O'Brien is a perv. Opie and Anthony broke it. Some dude broke down the voice mail tapes in hilarious detail. Enjoy. ...Oh, and on an unrelated note, what the hell happened to spring?

Quick newsbit recap action

Hush now, child. Tread carefully. One false step could send Blogger into conniptions again. Got to post these little news items while I've pierced the short window of time that Blogger is functioning properly.

Of course, had you hit up Maximum Awesome on a semi-regular basis, you would have read these already.

Okay, Wondertwin powers activate...form of: posting goodness.

Border States

On Monday (Sunday night, really), I'm finally posting my review of Cliff's band, Border States. I even included a shiny new logo for them to use.

Aiding and abetting humanity

Holy crap. I've actually posted something on my site that contributes to the betterment of humankind. Of course, we're talking about blogging tips.

April Fool's

This year, Team Awesome is taking a resolute stand against April Fool's Day. No hilarious redesign of the site. No interweb equivalent of the whoopie cushion. Nothing. We. Got. Nothin.

Star Wars goodness

Buying overpriced merchandise is how we tell our social peers that we like something. In that spirit, 'toot toot' for the last stop on the Star Wars money train.

Vestigial organs

Cool...here are the top 10 vestigial organs. Includes: Dandelion sex organs. Who knew?

Argh! Problems with Blogger

Been having a lot of problems trying to do anything on the the Blogger site lately. I was shocked to see the "ugly animals" post even went up at all.