Blog on the Run: Reloaded

Rogers Cadenhead, a technical writer in Florida, has something the Vatican wants — the domain name BenedictXVI.com, which corresponds to the name of the newly elected pope. Cadenhead apparently registered that domain and five others a few weeks ago on the off-chance that the new pope would not choose to be known by a heretofore unused name.

Yeah, I laughed, too, but you can make one in a day, they’re stronger than concrete and they could have practical applications in very poor countries and places that’ve just had natural disasters.

So don’t be harshin’ on the foam. The foam rules.

Stephen at thesneeze.com thinks the McDonald’s slogan “I’m lovin’ it” is too constrictive. So he has offered to broaden the campaign a bit.

Ogged dispatches one of his exes across the country to find him a potential wife (She and the other ex, who also is involved in the search but not this particular trip, are perfectly cool with this, by the way, which I’m having trouble picturing happening in real life.), and who does she find for him? A lesbian he already knows.

I did not know this, my demand for this particular product having slackened a bit of late (read: since about 1989), but apparently the town of Chapel Hill, once documented as the beer-drinking capital of the world, was considering requiring keg purchasers to register with the government.

You know, the day might come when I might want (yea, need) to buy a keg again. And when I do, you’ll take it from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Unless, you know, I had to put a sizable deposit down or something.

Really. Apparently, if you’re a woman, having a college degree cuts your risk of getting a divorce within the first 10 years of your marriage just about in half, a finding one of the researchers calls “a big ‘wow’.”

What’s not clear, of course, is why. A couple of possibilities occur to me: 1) More education = more money. Disagreements over finances are a huge cause of divorce, and having less money, all other things being equal, makes such disagreements more likely. 2) Higher education gives you more of the people skills you need to make a marriage work. Or, to put it another (slightly more entertaining) way: Women who spend four years in a politically correct atmosphere, being indoctrinated by tenured radicals, emerge from the experience with stronger family values.

Of course, the standard research disclaimers apply: There may be no causal relationship between these two phenomena at all, or both might be caused by some other factor(s) for which the study did not account.

They’ve found some long-lost masterworks of Western literature:

Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world.Among treasures already discovered by a team from Oxford University are previously unseen writings by classical giants including Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging.

The Oxford documents form part of the great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. The thousands of remaining documents, which will be analysed over the next decade, are expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years.

Now, if life follows bad fiction, the custodians of the “lost Christian gospels” soon will begin meeting all kinds of gruesome, and highly unlikely, fates. Stay tuned.

Over at the Norbizness blog, which I hadn’t heard of before today for some reason, there’s a tournament of cinematic comedies going on. Perhaps this is an outgrowth of March Madness. Anyway, here’s the first round brackets, with my votes (too late to be recorded) in bold, plus some comments:

Bracket 1
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1) vs. Heathers (8) — Tough one. Both are among my personal favorites.
Sullivan’s Travels (4) vs. Animal House (5)
Some Like It Hot (2) vs. Repo Man (7) — Another tough one. SLIH is one of the all-time greats, but Repo Man is just on a whole ‘nother level.

Blazing Saddles (3) vs. The General (6) — A no-brainer.

Bracket 2
Modern Times (1) vs. Slap Shot (8) — Not quite a no-brainer.
Dr. Strangelove (4) vs. Trading Places (5) — Strangelove trounces TP, which wanted to be a Preston Sturges comedy but couldn’t stop being mean long enough to do so.

The Ladykillers [1955 Alec Guinness version] (2) vs. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (7) — I haven’t seen Ladykillers, but DRS sucked.

Waiting for Guffman (3) vs. M*A*S*H (6)

Bracket 3
Duck Soup (1) vs. To Be or Not to Be [1942 Jack Benny version] (8)
Caddyshack (4) vs. Royal Tennenbaums (5) — A mediocre movie redeemed by Bill Murray’s over-the-top incarnation of handyman Carl.

Airplane (4) vs. A Shot in the Dark (5) — You had to have lived through the ’70s disaster-movie craze to appreciate the genius of Airplane. I did.

The Philadelphia Story (3) vs. Office Space (6) — I like Office Space and I’m not even a huge Hepburn fan, but c’mon.

Bracket 4
Annie Hall (1) vs. Bedazzled [Moore/Cook] (8) — another no-brainer.
Safety Last (4) vs. Hollywood Shuffle (5)
The Bank Dick (2) vs. South Park (7) — TBD = great comedy. SP = great satire. All other things being equal …

Raising Arizona (3) vs. The Incredibles (6) — It’s not that I buy all the Ayn Randian c— being spilled about The Incredibles; RA was simply a funnier movie.

Two comedic works notable by their absence (not sure whether they were eliminated in earlier rounds or were never in to begin with): Young Frankenstein and Used Cars. I also loved The Kings of Comedy — I laughed so hard during Steve Harvey’s Rae Carruth routine that I thought I was going to have a stroke, and my ribs hurt for days afterward — but since it’s a concert film rather than a true comedic movie (i.e., one with characters and a plot), I don’t guess it counts.

Looks like someone left a key theocratic domain name lying around unattended….

Guy hits car with four old ladies in it; they get out and beat the snot out of him; eyewitness tells all (audio only).

My congratulations to Tar Heel Nation, and especially to Tony and Roy, on the win. It has been a long, painful time coming.

From the Rude Pundit: Correction: Last week, the Rude Pundit referred to Terri Schiavo’s brain as a “rock.” More properly, it should be called a “puddle” or a “soup.”

Greensboro’s Fecund Stench performs one on OJ Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran.