I Gallantly Solve the Economic Crisis

October 11, 2008 – 6:21 am

I’ve heard more or less the same things that you have: the sub-prime mortgage crisis has affected all sorts of markets, leading to all sorts of problems. The Dow has been plummeting. Paul Newman died.

What this all basically adds up to is that the country is on the brink of almost certain doom. It’s hard not to picture a future full of warming one’s hands over oil drum fires, sleeping in tree houses, and eating old tennis shoes while desperately trying to convince myself it’s roast beef.

In fact, I won‘t be surprised when the entire Earth becomes a barren wasteland. Also - because I happen to believe that the Mad Max series is really a sophisticated form of prophecy - I believe that people will assemble into wild tribes that rove the landscape in strange vehicles, wearing improbable armor, wielding axes, and searching for gas to take back to Thunderdome. It is a bleak future with terrible dialogue, and we must do all that we can to prevent it from ever taking place.

That being said, I have applied my powers of immense concentration to the economic problem at hand.

I’ve spent years training both mind and body in the hidden martial arts temples of the far East. I did many splits, and shattered stone tablets with my forehead. When I wasn’t busy doing that, I surrounded myself with scented candles and meditated. Finally, I know the names of some pretty smart books.

So, you see, I’m at least as qualified to advise the entire nation as every celebrity that ever ran their mouth about any socio-political issue ever. Maybe more so, because I’ve never “accidentally” leaked a sex tape.

My fantastic ideas: Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Business World, Columnist, Current Affairs, Editor's Pick, college, humor | Comments (0)

Republicans and Democrats Debate “the Issues.” Sort of.

September 27, 2008 – 4:43 pm

I’m not especially versed in politics. I know the basics: things like which amendment grants us the constitutional right to punch dolphins, or who that president was that bit the head off of a bat and got banned from the Alamo. But I’ve been doing a little reading on the internet of late, and I’m a little surprised. Now, I don’t know how many of you will have heard this, but there’s an election coming up.

Apparently, tensions are running incredibly high because, for the first time in history, a tiny alien in a white guy robot suit is facing off against… *gasp* a black guy. There are many calling this the most momentous election in recent history, and for good reasons.

Of course, I’m something of a newcomer to the world of political discourse, so I might not throw around words like “paradigm,” or “rock the vote,” or “flag.” But I’m bringing something of my own to the table: impartiality. I base this claim on the simple fact that I don’t like either of the major parties. I never really have.

In terms of campaigning, the issues don’t matter. Rather, it’s whoever can enforce their perception of whose fault those issues are that will win the day.

Politics is a matter of seizing the moral high ground. If you could replace Obama and McCain with the pure, unfiltered spirit of liberalism and conservatism respectively, then this is what I believe the debates would sound like: nothing but sniping, infighting, and the conspicuous lack of any sort of logic. Logic doesn’t win elections, after all. So everybody get ready for Joseph’s Political Jamboree (and Lobster Boil)! Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, election 08, humor, north america, politics | Comments (2)

A-list Actors Hug Polar Bears; World Is Saved (Not Really)

September 24, 2008 – 4:16 pm

I find celebrities just a little presumptuous. Not all celebrities, really - mostly just the A-list actors. What bothers me isn’t their posturing, their preening, or their living in giant houses that God could not have possibly intended when He cobbled together our mudball of a planet.

After all, opulence is part of the job. Being an A-list actor involves just as much driving cool cars, laying around on expensive beaches, and panty-flashing as it does acting in movies, some of which are occasionally required to be good.

Good or not, the public loves seeing the same easily recognizable faces on the big screen. Why this is, I couldn’t really say, but I can say that most big studio movies in this day and age do not star actors.

Actors are people who convincingly and dramatically pretend to be other people. This sort of pretence, however, is impossible to a large degree for most A-list celebrities. Rather, they play themselves pretending to be other people. When all is said and done, celebrities are paid to be celebrities.

And that is fine. It makes me jealous, to some degree, that other people my age or younger are being paid vast sums of money for just being the sort of people that are paid vast sums of money. After all, I’ve never been paid simply for being myself (1).

While with enough therapy (I.e. drinking and befriending genuinely ugly people), I have learned to get past most of it, I’m still not entirely Zen on this subject. There are a few things about celebrities that get under my skin. Two, really. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, humor, movies, music | Comments (0)

Another Parenting Pitfall: Childhood Confessions and Dentist Bills

September 15, 2008 – 4:33 pm

Veteran parents argue that you never stop worrying about your children, which makes one wonder how George and Barbara Bush get to sleep at night. I sense, too, that part of the ongoing parental worry comes from the insidious mind game older children can play on you by leaking dribs and drabs of “the real story” to you at their leisure regarding incidents long forgotten in the dim recesses of our addled parental minds.

My wife and I have just recently experienced this first hand. Our youngest son had a dead front tooth and needed a root canal. The dentist had dutifully mentioned this to us six months ago, and my wife was surprised to hear this when she brought in son #3 for his check-up. The dentist had made a huge mistake, you see, those six months ago. He hadn’t talked to my wife, nor had he left a message on the machine.

He talked to me at length about it, and I forgot to pass the information along. Oops. But, hey, a dead tooth is just a dead tooth, right?

This incident gave my wife another opportunity to remind me of my parental incompetence, and also resulted in our son confessing the real way in which he hurt his tooth. The original story had him telling us that he ran into a door.

I, of course, do not recall this moment in our parenting past, but my wife remembers it and recalls wondering how he could have been so clumsy as to literally ram his front tooth into the door. Perhaps my lack of recall stems from the fact my children have ground me down to the point where nothing they do surprises me anymore. Nothing. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Society, family, humor | Comments (0)

Michael Phelps vs. The Large Hadron Collider

September 11, 2008 – 2:25 pm

It’s been an amazing year so far, a year for records, accomplishments, and individual triumphs that have shaken the world. We all watched the Olympics, in which dedicated athletes would compete against the best in the world. It was a human drama filmed on different fields and in many arenas. But the themes were always the same: life-affirming victory, or crushing, alcoholism-inducing defeat.

The world in general, and the U.S. in particular seems to have fallen in love with Michael Phelps, the swimming champion who has, thus far, been much too busy with being famous to answer any of my letters. I have been writing to offer my sincere congratulations, and also to request a blood sample, which I plan to use to determine if he is actually part manta ray. His steadfast refusals at first angered me greatly, but now they only serve to make me more and more suspicious. However, whether he is fully human, or is in fact an unholy hybrid of sea creature and doomed man, we must applaud his many accomplishments.

The scientific community is having its own grand event this year. The activation and implementation of the Large Hadron Collider could literally change life as way we know it, by filling in any number of theoretical gaps and answering a horde of questions concerning the very nature of matter and reality. To this end, the LHC was officially fired up on September 10th.

I believe Michael Phelps and the LHC to be more alike than different. In its own way, the LHC is a champion, a brave young contender that will attempt to do what has never been done before. It also looks great in pictures, has a humble personality when interviewed, and will be making a guest appearance on “Entourage” this season.

The most important question then becomes immediately obvious. Who is the greater of the two? Is it Phelps, the wunderkind of the aquatic world? Or is it the LHC, who was worked on by over 8,000 physicists, and looks a lot like the machine that used to give orders to the Power Rangers? Let’s find out together! Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Science & Technology, humor, sports | Comments (1)

On the Passing of a Hip Hop Icon

August 24, 2008 – 3:59 am

Today marks the passing of an artist and a legend. Some of us were able to call him our brother, or our son. Another five people called him husband. But one thing we could all call him was… “friend.”

L-Shock was taken before his time. Initial police reports indicate that he slipped on a stray banana peel, and then tragically fell onto roughly seventy large caliber bullets outside of a crowded circus. While the police have heard rumors of foul play, nothing has been made definite at this point.

Rather than mourn the passing of a titan, we at the network would like to celebrate with you the life of a legend. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, humor, music, north america | Comments (0)

Thanks, Hollywood! The Joy of Unneeded Sequels

August 1, 2008 – 2:52 pm

We see it on blogs, websites, magazines. We hear it on radio shows. We even comment on it to each other. Believe me, I know how cliché it is to say that Hollywood is out of ideas. But in that same vein, it’s also cliché to say things like “Gravity points down,” or “1=1”. So you see what I‘m getting at.

Now, historically, Hollywood has always done one of two things: it has produced good movies or really bad movies. Some of the more baroque and stylistically bad movies were passed off as good movies, everyone swigged some red wine that they all secretly didn’t care for, and everyone did their best to ignore the fact that the Oscars should only be held once every four years. However, the new trend that has emerged in these last few years is far more forbidding.

These days, the directors and producers are all either remaking or producing horrible sequels to any film they can lay their grubby hands on. In effect, this takes every single movie from the past few decades and makes them all worse. The good movies we’ve enjoyed for so long are shot in the back of the head and toppled into unmarked graves near lonely metaphorical highways. The bad movies are actually brought back from the dead as slavering zombies, cursed in the sight of God (not a metaphor; every theater that played the new Pink Panther should have been required to sell wooden stakes and pieces of the One True Cross at the concession stand). Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, humor, movies | Comments (3)

Bounty Hunter: Embrace Your Inner Weirdo

July 20, 2008 – 5:12 am

The historic streets adjacent to the University of Arizona in Tucson are famed for their oddity shops and restaurants that sell unusual art and bold the house-made seitan on the menu. It’s only logical to conclude that places that advertise the unique likewise attract the… unique.

Last week I just wasn’t in the mood to shoot the breeze with the hobos, so I attempted to be urban and have my coffee at a more upscale place that caters to the rich and retired snowbirds.

After driving toward the mountain foothills I found a coffee shop in a Wal-mart Neighborhood Market. Taking this as a sure sign the place would be weirdo-free, I ordered an espresso and sank into an overstuffed chair across from the only other customers: a mid-aged woman attached to her Blackberry and a half-asleep grandpa.

And as if on cue, in walks an African-American man sporting two Bluetooth ear pieces, black leather gloves, combat boots and a bulletproof vest. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Society, essays, humor, love, north america | Comments (0)

I Play Grandpa Joseph

July 7, 2008 – 4:56 am

Why, hey there, boy! Good morning! And where are you off to? Why don’t you sit down for a few minutes with your grandpa? Oh, oh, sure. Your friends. Well, I’m sure I’ll still be here when you’re done playing Barbies with your little buddies.

No, of course you aren’t! Grandpa‘s only joking. No, you go right ahead, and I’ll be here when you get back. Or… I might not. Who knows? Now I don’t want to be one of those burdensome old people, so when it does happen, I’ll try to fall forward.

That way the cat won‘t be able to eat any of my face, and we can have a nice, open-casket affair. Would you like that? But here I am, babbling on. You were on your way to play with your little friends.

You will stay? Oh, why, that’s great. Sweet of you, staying just to talk with your old grandpa. So tell me about school. Hm. Interesting. And you’re in, what, the third grade? Well, well. So, answer me this: what would you do if you were in the middle of the ocean, and a whale was about to eat you? Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, family, humor | Comments (0)

The Traveler Hypothesizes

June 26, 2008 – 8:54 am

I’m traveling again. I’ve found that this sort of experience gives rise to much scientific thought. While many travel writers use the tried and true “stream of consciousness” approach, I prefer to use punctuation and not slaughter the English language because I’m incredibly lazy/”creative.”

Hypothesis: I will not find any bookstores open at 4 am, and will consequently be doomed to boredom for about 20 hours as I fly back to the States.
Conclusion: Hypothesis Rejected.
Results: As it turns out, the Bangalore airport might actually be the cheapest place to buy books. Not only does the mighty and domineering dollar stick the rupee’s head in the proverbial toilet, but I am pretty sure that nobody really “buys books at 4 am” at the duty free stores. Furthermore, I pick books in English, instead of Hindi or Kannada. The end result is that the guy at the counter literally just gives me the books. For the next two plane rights, I’ll split my time between reading The Godfather and watching The Game Plan about 2.5 times (I swear to God, just a single decent movie on a single flight would pretty much be the equivalent of the Mile High Club for me.)

Hypothesis: The British have mastered breakfast.
Conclusion: Hypothesis Confirmed.
Results: I actually gathered some delicious data on this during my trip to India. I had a breakfast of fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, sausage, and baked beans at an airport restaurant. Now, on paper, featuring the terms “baked beans” and “airport restaurant,” the experience sounds about as appetizing as a Bea Arthur sex scene. But frankly, it was awesome. It was a breakfast combination that just reaffirms the notion that the U.S. picked the right side in WWII.

Generally, in the U.S., my breakfasts consist of a) an apple, b) a waffle-styled entity that basically mugs me of insulin, or b) hopes and dreams. Sometimes, on occasion, there are omelets. Frankly, this is the biggest drawback to America that I have encountered so far. I’ve heard all of the criticism of our “national obesity epidemic,” and our blatantly outmoded sense of “cowboy diplomacy.” Frankly, in the face of grilled tomatoes and a sunny-side up, I just can’t see how any of that really matters.

Hypothesis: This baby will blink first. I am unbreakable Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, food, humor, travel | Comments (0)