An Inconcludent Truth, er, Theory, no, uh, Pant-load. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'm sure you all know by now that the all knowing, all seeing, all eating Al Gore won an Oscar for his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". The premise of this Oscar winning film is that THE WORLD IS GOING TO END, AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. Let me quantify that. The world is going to end because of global warming, and because you drove to work today in a vehicle that doesn't burn hair clippings from your local barbershop, but burns petroleum products instead, it's your fault.

I can appreciate the fact that Al has too much time and money on his hands and that, mixed with his need to be in the spotlight yet again, he needed to make this film. What I can't understand is the fact that seemingly intelligent people actually buy in to this thing. His contention that humans are primarily responsible for global warming is not a fact. I repeat: Is. Not. A. Fact. It's a theory. I've got a theory that says that I'll eventually marry a Hooters girl with a PhD, should I crank out a film on it? Maybe if I convince the UN and every other government in the world to throw billions of dollars into my theory it'll get some play. If Al Gore, a man who has absolutely zero scientific background, can stir up such a crap-storm maybe I can as well. I'm just as unqualified as he is. But I digress. My point here is that it's a theory. A theory that several people have been shooting holes in for a decade. What holes you say? Well I'm not surprised that you haven't heard them. Which title would you expect to hear on the evening news:

"World ending shortly because of Global Warming"

or

"World in another warming trend"

Probably the first. It makes for better news. People couldn't care less that the worlds temperature has increased by .0029 degrees over the past few years (and yes I know that's not the actual number). But if you tell people that the world is going to end, well, people might accidentally tune in to Katie Couric to hear that...maybe.

Another theory, and yes it is a theory, is that global climate change is brought on by sunspots primarily, not "greenhouse gases." The sun is hot. Sunspots are hotter. Seems to make sense that if there are more sunspots, more radiation will reach the Earth, thus heating it. Now, this is not a one time occurrence, this "global warming". It happened 8000 years ago, and it's been happening off and on since then. It just so happens that this also corresponds with the sunspot data that we have. If Al Gore's theory is sound that would imply that Hummers and Suburbans were cruising around in 6000 B.C. See if this makes sense to you:

Sun is hot.
Sunspots are hotter.
More Sunspots = More radiation
More radiation = more heat
More heat = global climate change

Makes sense to me. The fact that it's happened before, and that ocean levels have been steadily rising for hundreds of years, I'm more apt to believe the sunspot theory. While we're on the ocean thing let's discuss this as well. We're being told that due to "global warming" we're all going to end up drowning because the polar ice caps are going to melt. Hmmm. Let me ask you this question: When you drive through McDonalds in your Prius and order a large Hi-C, put it in your cup holder, then leave it in the car while you shop for hemp shirts, do you come back to the vehicle and find that your cup has overflowed? No? Well all the ice melted didn't it? Ice displaces the same amount of liquid as water does. So, when your ice cube melts, the cup doesn't overflow, the volume of liquid stays the same. I'm not saying that if all the ice melted that the ocean levels wouldn't rise...but most of the polar ice caps are already in the ocean.

Anyway. I felt that I needed to tell all two of you this. Now go and do something productive.

The Night the Lights went out in Texas...A mathmatical conundrum

As most intelligent citizens of Texas know, a light-bulb will not turn on without electricity. It just won't. Most people also understand the following equation:

More People + More Light-bulbs = More Energy used

Seems simple enough. The next part of the equation is what the eco-nuts can't grasp:

More energy used + More Power Plants = No problem

That also seems simple, but for those of you who can't follow, let me make it multiple choice. Please select the equation that will NOT plunge Texas into rolling blackouts in five years:

A) More Energy Used + Solar panels and magic heat generating gnomes = No problem
B) More Energy Used + Wind farms and beanies with propellers = No problem
C) Less Energy Used + Wishing in one and and crapping in the other = No problem
D) More Energy Used + More Power Plants = No problem

If you chose anything other than D please stop reading this blog. Don't tell me that there's another answer. Don't tell me that we can do without more energy. Save it. The bottom line is our population is growing exponentially, and without more power, we'll be in the same situation as California. TXU, the largest energy supplier in Texas, has asked to build several new Coal-Fire Power Plants. Hippies don't like it. they need more time to "evaluate the environmental impact" which is hippie speak for "need more time to cook up some hair-brained, half assed suggestion that will never work".

Is coal clean? It can be. Not cleaner than propane, butane, or unicorn tears, but it's OK. Hippies don't want nuclear power plants, because it contains the word NUCLEAR. No air pollution there...but no good. So, we're in a pickle, we need energy but we can't make it. What's the answer? Ignore the freakin hippies, build the plants, keep cranking out those sweet sweet megawatts, and life is good. You can't walk out your front door without impacting the environment in some way, shape, or form. If you don't like the thought of having to build new power plants, then pack up your hippie friends and move to a less populated state. That could solve the energy problem, and the smell (yes, I'm insinuating that hippies smell).

Had to say what was on my mind. Now back to it.

The $10.00 Hamburger and the Frozen Wasteland

No, it's not the title of the next Harry Potter book. It's the theme of my latest trip to Pennsylvania. Oh it started off OK, cold, but OK. That all changed yesterday. I crawled out of my hotel bed bright and early, showered and dressed, then turned on the TV to see that there was a "Winter Storm Warning". Bad news. But how bad could it be? I looked out the window to see that everything was covered in ice, and it was sleeting heavily at that very moment. Ice. Not snow. Snow is fun, you can drive on snow. No one ever made an "Ice Angel", no one ever has "Ice-Ball fights". Ice, for lack of a better word, sucks.

Nonetheless I loaded up my sweet Chevy Malibu rental car and proceeded to bobsled all the way to the airport. Ten miles in an hour and fifteen minutes. I was early, 6 hours early to be exact. I checked in, only two canceled flights, things were looking up. Somewhere around hour number three at the airport they announced that they were no longer going to scrape the runway. Bad news, yet again. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that nothing was going to leave the airport on a plane. So I called a hotel, no rooms, another hotel, again no rooms. Finally I managed a reservation and asked when they could come and pick me up in the shuttle. "We don't want to risk anyone's life, it's awful out there" was the answer they gave me. So, how about a taxi? No dice. Not a single one. This is Pennsylvania for crying out loud. Not Arizona, not Hawaii, Pennsylvania. YOU'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. Oh I was told that this was the first storm of the winter, but I've got this crazy feeling that some of the people that live in Penn State are more than A YEAR OLD. Maybe the bitter cold of this place affects long term memory, I don't know. So I book a rental car, a Cobalt this time. I walk out to the car, step in a hole that lands me knee deep in snowy, icy, slush. Oh, did I mention that it had actually began snowing at this point? Keep that in mind. I get to the car, unlock the door, and it's frozen shut. That's right, frozen shut. So I go to the passenger side, open the door, bend over to load up my luggage in the back seat because THE TRUNK WAS FROZEN SHUT, and proceed to have what felt like five pounds of snow fall directly down the back of my pants and into my crack. Do I have to tell you what a massive load of frozen water in your crevasse feels like? I didn't think so. So I crawl over the console, get in the drivers seat, fire up the Cobalt and get ready to ride. NOT SO FAST. Some carpetbagging yankee had pulled both windshield wipers straight up. I try to open the drivers door from the inside. No deal. So, I closed my eyes, collected myself, and waited for thirty minutes until the door unfroze.

I took off for the hotel, checked in and went to the room. Around supper time I thought that I'd go and grab a bite at the hotel restaurant. For those of you who don't travel often, take this advice: Hotel restaurants blow. The food is way, way over priced and is almost always the worst food within fifteen miles. I check the menu, extremely overpriced. 10oz New York Strip=$30.00. Club Sandwich=$10.00. So I limit my options to the hamburger (a 10.00 venture) and the Philly cheese-steak (also ten bucks). I ask the waitress which she preferred, to which she replied "Oh the Hamburger!". Sounds promising. I ask for it to be medium-well, with cheddar and grilled onions. Forty-five minutes later, I received what looked like a burger, on some tricked up, stale, roll. I notice that there are no grilled onions on it. I also noticed that it appeared that someone had managed to slice cheese that was only one millimeter thick, an impressive feat. I asked the waitress about the onions, she looked lost, so I said never mind. Then I notice that I have no mustard, mayo, ketchup, not even a package of sweet and low. I ask for mustard. I'm brought a tub of some of the most non-mustardy mustard on this planet. Mustard is yellow. I know this because I've eaten mustard for going on 25 years. This was brown. Don't tell me about dijon mustard, because that doesn't qualify. Anyway, I put it all together, took a bite, and dust shot out the end of the burger. It was more than well done, it appeared that it had kissed the sun at some point. I ate what I could of the fries, paid out, and resigned myself to a night of hunger and cold.

But now, as we speak, I'm in the airport. Flights are leaving, and I'm bound for Cincinnati, then Dallas. I'll be there soon...just not soon enough.

Worst. Commercials. Ever.

The NFL season is over...now we're left with the NBA (yawn), NHL (eh), and MLB (quadruple yawn). Superbowl XLI was a great game, lots of twists and turns, lots of mouth smashing and what not, but the commercials...just...sucked. Granted there were a couple that got a moderate giggle out of me, but nothing like in years past. I saw more local, dumpy commercials in this Superbowl than in any other year. I blame FOX. "Well why blame them?" you may be asking yourself. Because they didn't pony up the cash to broadcast it this year, so CBS got it and mucked it all up. Who even announced the game for CBS? Phil Simms? Give me some Aikman and Buck, throw in a little Madden, maybe some Michaels? Hell, Tony Kornheiser, with his big bag of nothing, trumps Phil Simms. OK then, that's about all I have to say about this...just needed to get it off my chest. I'll leave you with the only commercial that stuck out in my mind. Feel free to comment if you have anything else.



Oh...almost forgot this one...pretty decent as well: