Here’s what we know about the last Senate election.  Franken won by 312 votes and we have some of the most lax voting laws in the nation.  The combination of those things means that maybe Coleman actually won, but hold on all of you salivating liberals, it also means that he might’ve won by 312 votes or maybe he won by 624 votes.  Why are the state’s lefties flipping out over T-Paw asking someone to look into a potentially serious problem.  Our election laws allow for someone to show up with a cable bill, or a registered neighbor to vouch for them and allow them to vote.  Since votes are secret, you can’t remove that vote if it’s later found out that said voter is ineligible to vote for some reason.  The reason could be that they’re a felon, it also could be that they’re 17 years old, or a foreign refugee that’s not officially a citizen.  Bottom line is that nothing that will be found will be able to reverse any result of the last election, but it sure could be a good argument for making our registration process a little bit more precise.  We pride ourselves on our high voter turnout, but perhaps voting shouldn’t be so simple.  Now I’m no expert in these areas so feel free to point out any flaws in my logic, but try to leave the grudges against T-Paw out of it, after all he never would’ve become governor if the DFL didn’t put up shitty candidates like Roger Moe & Mike Hatch.  I mean seriously!

I have to admit that I found the ad pretty amusing and then I thought about it for a second.  Time machines aren’t available so they’re not selling those.  They’re trying to sell beer and they’re doing it by showcasing the stupid situations you can get yourself in by having a couple too many.  Nice strategy.  Hope that works out for you.  I’ll stick to my Grain Belt.

In this post-Avatar world, it seems that just about every week there is a different movie in 3D at my local cineplex.  Of course 3D stands for three-dimensional, but here’s the problem, since the birth of movies, they’ve all been in 3D.  What we have now is the beginning of the 4D era.  If you’re confused, I’ll try to explain myself.  The first two dimensions are width & height.  With just them you have yourself a picture.  The third dimension is depth.  A pop-up book or a relief map add this third dimension to the first two.  3D movies also add the dimension of depth, the only problem in calling 3D movies new, is that they’ve already had the fourth dimension.  Without the fourth dimension a movie is a photo.  The fourth dimension is time.  So the new 3D movies are actually 4D, however I doubt they’ll start marketing them that way.  There actually is a possibility of making a 5D movie.  The movie would be the hippie classic “Hair”.  If you added the depth dimension to the pre-existing width, height & time, you might be surprised to find that the movie already has the fifth dimension, and the fifth dimension is of course is The Fifth Dimension, the 60′s & 70′s pop & soul vocal group most famous for singing “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine” from the movie.

I watched quite a bit of soccer in the last month.  I tried to come into it clear of any pre-conceived notions and really take it at face value to see what America has been missing out on.  I even developed rooting interests.  At first I played the homer card and cheered for the U.S. team, after their demise I switched to my ancestral roots and cheered for Germany, and after they lost out I turned to the Netherlands, partially for the cool orange kits, but mainly to see whether or not the Dutch porn star who promised bj’s for all of her Twitter followers would have to pay up.  In the end Spain ended up winning which probably ended up saving Bobbi Eden from getting her stomach pumped more often than Rod Stewart, Elton John, David Bowie & Mick Jagger combined.

My conclusion is it’s not for me and I think I’m in the majority here.  Cue the soccerphiles to insist that I just don’t get it.  Maybe they’re right, but I think I’ve given the sport a month of it’s best competition and still walk away with a bad taste in my mouth.

First off you have the tedious nature of the play.  This is a sport that I have no doubt is very enjoyable to play but as far as a spectator sport goes it’s tedious.  Now don’t get me wrong, 90 minutes of play does usually result in 90 seconds of good highlights, it’s the other 88 1/2 minutes that are tough.  To make the game exciting the rule changes would have to be so extreme that it wouldn’t come close to resembling the game.  I’m not sure if the pitch is too large, or if the complete under-utilization of substitutions, or if the match is too long due to an antiquated time management system, or if an infraction system that doesn’t penalize a team committing fouls until their next scheduled match are the problem, but you can take your pick as to what leads to the monotonous nature of the game.

One of the biggest obstacles to any widespread American popularity will be the diving.  Maybe I’m guilty of having an oversensitive macho gene when it comes to watching sports, but I love the fact that there’s an unwritten code of manly behavior in hockey, I like that baseball uses a sensibly-placed beanball in the small of the back to police other teams from showing them up.  Soccer repeatedly rewards players from faking injury.  My beloved sport of hockey has a penalty for diving and enforces it.  I heard that soccer has a similar foul, but if it only exists in theory, you can debate whether it truly exists.  To correct this problem, league front office and sport sanctioning bodies could start to handing out some significant fines.  For the on-field referee it is often difficult to judge an injury immediately following the incident, but the beauty of video tape is that if a player cries two broken legs at the beginning of a match, but then jumps up after a yellow-card is issued and proceeds to run eight miles over the remainder of the match you can pretty accurately come to some conclusion about the extent of his previous injury.  But the only real way to discontinue this behavior is too stop glorifying these pussies.  Also, if they started handing out red cards for this behavior, or to just continue the game around the artificially maimed players.  My guess is that here in the states, if Landon Donovan showcased the acting chops of a B-movie star and flopped like a dead fish a handful of times a game during this past World Cup, that people would’ve gotten really tired of it really quick, but for the rest of the world, this behavior has to be at a minimum accepted if not full out glorify it.  In case your curious about how bad the diving gets, take a look at this “highlight” reel.

I was actually thinking about writing a paragraph here about how the large numbers of children playing the sport are only the result of parents following a herd mentality and taking the cheapskate approach to youth sports, but then I realized that Chuck Klosterman already wrote a great essay on this subject in his brilliant collection of essays, “Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs“.  Grab a copy of it or ask to borrow mine, it’s great stuff, particularly considering he’s a NoDak guy.

Now don’t get me wrong, I will continue to follow the English Premier League (go Chelsea!) and future World Cups, and I would still like to attend an EPL game, plus I’ll continue to play the FIFA line of video games, but I’m done watching full-length soccer matches on television at home.

If God meant for us to play soccer he wouldn’t have given us arms & hands.

Not to sound too much like the prick in the movie “Big”, but “I Don’t Get It” when it comes to cycling shoes.  Was feet slipping off the pedals a huge problem?  My primary mode of wheeled-transporation from the age of five to 16 was a bicycle and I just don’t remember to many times thinking to myself, if only I was somehow attached to this bike.  There are certain athletic endeavors that I understand the need to lock yourself into the equipment.  Skiing, both on snow & water, would be very difficult if you had to worry about keeping your feet in place so for those sports I understand the need for bindings.  I’ve seen people wreck because they’ve come to a stop and couldn’t get their feet out.  Maybe some sort of magnetic hold would be better suited for this task.

This all came to me yesterday as I was coming into work.  I was met in the elevator lobby by a co-worker who bikes in to work everyday.  He had on all of the normal biking gear.  I understand that if you’re competing in the Tour de France the need to be as aerodynamic as possible, but if you’re commuting from south Minneapolis, I don’t see the need for all the spandex.  This guy was standing in his socks waiting for the elevator.  His cycling shoes were in hand.  Even ski boots can be walked in, can’t we make a cycling shoe that could be walked in.  My softball cletes defintely make a little extra noise but they are usable on non-softball diamond surfaces.  So the socks were weird enough but to make matters worse, he had an iced coffee from Starbucks in the other hand.  Really?  I’m guessing I would’ve gotten clothed upstairs and come back down to get the java especially considering the Starbucks is in our building’s lobby!

Maybe I shouldn’t get into this now, but what the hell.  Our office has a private bathroom with a shower across from our kitchen.  Our biking friend in this story has access to it so that he can shower after biking in.  I think it’s great but I get irritated at times that only one person has that luxury in our office.  Actually women who have returned after having a kid our given access so that they can pump in privacy.  It’s probably better that there’s only one person in our company who routinely takes his clothes off at the office, and even better that said person isn’t me.

Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert has some thoughts to get off of his chest, so he wrote an open letter to the Cavalier fans.  This letter is certain to get a lot of attention and so far the reactions that I’ve seen lean towards condemnation rather than admiration.  My two cents… I absolutely love the letter!  For all of the U.S. major sport teams I only thought there was one owner brave enough to speak this frankly and that would be Mark Cuban.  Gilbert’s message was from the heart and it spoke to fans more honestly than any other press release could have.  This guy was mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more.  He gave Lebron everything he wanted from players to coaches and Lebron gave him four NBA Finals losses.  Not it’s not to say that Lebron has been very good to the franchise as well, but the lack of media saavy by his team that let his arrogance rule this process was the perfect recipe for the fuel that aided in forever burning that bridge.  Sports are filled with local heroes that leave for greener pastures but maintain a grace that prevents them from becoming a community pariah.  My guess is this self-obsessed exit is what motivated Mr. Gilbert to write his manifesto.  If I have to choose between a Mark Cuban-Mike Veeck fan-type or a Norm Green-Art Modell businessman-type I’ll take the fellow fan everytime.  Dan Gilbert is that type.  Now he made some outrageous guarantees in his letter, but as far as I can see his only truly regrettable mistake was the use of the Comic Sans font.  Good luck Cleveland!

In honor of Frank from the Bachelorette let’s all go to our washers right now and set them to the spin cycle. This guy spins more bullshit into verbal gold than Rumpelstilskin. Here’s a couple of tall tale gems that I’ve spotted so far.

I might have some of them a little off but the spirit is there, by the way I could re-watch this stuff and do the duties of a good court reporter to get the exact quotes but my shorthand isn’t for shit and it’s bad enough that I’m watching the show once without re-watching it.

Spin #1: I left my job in the corporate world because I wasn’t inspired.
Reality #1: I was fired.

Spin #2: I moved to Paris to write my screenplay.
Reality #2: I went to Paris for two weeks on vacation where I sat at cafes with laptop telling people I was working on a screenplay but instead was just trying to nail French chicks.

Spin #3: I gave up my place in the city.
Reality #3: I was a greedy bastard who bought a condo I couldn’t afford and got my ass forclosed on rather than honoring my debts with integrity.

Spin #4: I live with my parents which is great to re-connect with them.
Reality #4: I don’t mind being a complete failure if it means free rent, meals & laundry.

Spin #5: The on-screen graphics that refer to him as a “Retail Manager”
Reality #5: Works at Banana Republic mainly for the employee discount.