From The Desk of...


You might not be able to read it, but the price tag says $7.99 for this note pad.

Right now on my desk I have a pad of paper with the following written on the top sheet in pencil:
-Ultrapasteurized Milk
-FieldTurf
-Under Armour Performance Wear
-Tempurpedic Sleep Products
If I were to write out a complete list of my likes and dislikes, these four things would be way up there on the likes list. Other likes include womens butts & breasts, acquiring money by correctly predicting the outcome of uncertain events, the feeling in my brain when sipping drink #5 of the night, and of course snuff films. The list goes on and on. But it is not my intention to present every person, place, thing, or idea that delights me. Instead, I would like to highlight the above four items. One is a natural product made better by a process that someone came up with and the others are revolutionary man-made products that make life better. All have been introduced in the last ten years or so. Two of the four would make good Christmas gifts. One is an excellent source of calcium. One comes from Baltimore area, the Charm City, a US city with one of the highest percentages of black people (some of my best friends are from Baltimore). One, wait no, two of them can be used as a surface to rest or have intercourse on. Of these two, one would be far more likely to leave a fornicator badly chafed and with tiny rubber beads stuck in his or her pubic hair. Here are some facts about each and some reasons why I love them so.

Ultrapasteurized Milk

Way back in eighteen hundred and sixty-two, Louis Pasteur and his crew gave the world a nice little process later known as pasteurization, which keeps liquids like milk from going bad for a little while by raising those liquids to a temperature that kills pesky germs and molds residing inside. What a great guy! They say you don't get your resume read at your funeral, but that probably was not the case with Louis.


I had sex with your great great great great grandmother.

Unfortunately, while pasteurization works quite well in homes where multiple milk drinkers dwell and share one container at a time, it comes up a little short in the homes of single males like myself. You see, Louis, we like to party. We like, we like to party. When you are a party animal, you eat out a lot. You stay out late, drink too much, and wake up late or feeling nauseous or both. This lifestyle and milk consumption just don't come together all that often. Plus, you throw in the occasional trip out of town and you've got yourself a stinky situation where the milk expired almost as long ago as when you last had sex with a girl you respected the next morning.

Ultrapasteurization has changed all of this. I bought a half gallon of milk last week that does not expire until Christmas Day. I can't get enough of this...Christmas fucking Day! Now I never have to throw away spoiled milk, and I even started buying half & half for coffee on the weekends. I used to use regular old 1% milk in my coffee, even though it lacked the richness I desired, because I was always worried about the damn milk going bad and I knew that I would never be able to finish even half of a container of half and half, which by the way, is half whole milk and half cream. Ultrapasteurization simply raises the milk to a higher temperature, around 140 degrees Celsius, and quickly cools it down. Compare this with pasteurization, which brings milk to 71 degrees Celsius for 15 seconds, and you undoubtedly will understand how ultrapasteurization got its name.

FieldTurf


Field Turf supported them so well that there is no longer a single disabled child in Quebec, as far as I know.

If you have been a reader of this blog for several weeks or just started but have gone back into the archives for more fun, you are fully aware of what Ladanian Tomlinson and I share: a fondness of FieldTurf. When I was in middle school, the really cool thing to do for your birthday party was to rent out the indoor soccer field at Turner's sports complex in South Bend. It was a hell of a lot of fun, you got to actually use the cool looking indoor soccer shoes you wore all the time, and by having your party at Turners you showed all of the other asshole kids that your family wasn't poor. Middle school sucked. High School sucked too, come to think of it. But running around on the green carpet was fun though. Unfortunately, it burned like hell if you fell wrong on that surface. Professional athletes forced to play on artificial turf often had knee and ankle injuries from playing on such a hard surface. I think it also caused turf toe.

I wrote some reasons why I like FieldTurf in the link above. Now I present to you some new information, man, on what FieldTurf is exactly (from the FieldTurf site):

"...FieldTurf’s grass fibers are surrounded and stabilized by a special blend of 'synthetic earth' - FieldTurf’s patented mixture of smooth, rounded silica sand, rubber granules, and NIKE GRIND made of re-ground athletic shoe material...The rubber granules are a key component. Tire rubber is cryogenically frozen, shattered into smooth, clean, rounded particles, sized and shaped to stay 'in suspension' with the sand, which is of a similar size, shape and weight. The sand and rubber are precision layered to guarantee uniformity, with an installation process that is also patented."

Don't be ashamed if you are aroused a little bit right now. Whether it had you at "synthetic earth" or "cryogenically frozen" is not important. What is of major fucking importance is that you are now in awe of what a fantastic product this stuff is. Want more, do you? Ok, but just a little bit:

"The tall pile, wide gauge design, and increased infill mass allows cleated shoes to penetrate the fibers, plant into the special sand/rubber infill, twist easily and release (with minimal torsional resistance)...This design accounts for the documented reduction in lower extremity injuries and significantly reduced neural injuries of players who compete on FieldTurf, even compared to natural grass!"

Oh man...I, I gotta go take a shower.
Lastly, remember that Monday night game a few days ago? Brett Favre's saliva soaked balls weren't the stars of the game, and neither was Shaun Alexander. It was the field.

Under Armour Performance Wear



Let's start this thing...
Now we on top, everyone wants to knock us off.
It's US vs. THEM.
We Must Protect. This. House.
Will you protect this house?
I will! I will!
Under Armour!
We must protect this house!

Man, that really gets my motor running...
A few years ago I was not the finely sculpted man I am today. I was thin, but soft and feeble. I was going through life in a safe but fucked up relationship, smoked cigarettes, and ate $5 Little Caesars pizzas and Taco Bell when I had enough money to eat. None of these things is really bad, other than the first one, but something was missing. After getting dumped and having to move down to the basement of my ex-girlfriend's house because I couldn't afford to move out, I realized my problem: I was not protecting my house.

It was time to strap it on and get back into shape and get my life together. I started running. I may have started out running from my problems, but at the same time I was preparing to face them. At my front fucking door. By the time I got a job and moved to D.C., I was a pretty strong runner. I still smoked and ate pizza, but I did not eat Taco Bell anymore--probably because there were no Taco Bells nearby, but whatever, I was moving toward something. I decided that I was going to run in the Baltimore Marathon, sponsored by none other than Under Armour. The registration packet of goodies included a free Under Armour shirt. I knew that there was just one final step, finishing the race, and I would then finally be fully equipped to protect my house.

I finished the race. It was painful. My nipples bled. To this day I'm not really sure if I am protecting my house or not. I live in an apartment and it's not really in a high crime part of town and you need a key to get into both the front door and the front door to my unit. But I'll tell you what, those shirts sure are comfortable. I now have three of their shirts, a pair of shorts, and even a pair of underwear by Under Armour. I can't really give much detail about the construction that makes their products what they are, but they do hold less sweat than Nike Dri-fit. Additionally, I feel like a legitimate athlete when I'm wearing their products. And isn't that what performance is all about? Sadly, no.

Tempurpedic Sleep Products




I own a Tempurpedic queen size bed as well as a pillow. The pillow was one of the greatest Christmas gifts I have ever had and the bed was one of the big purchases I made just after closing on my apartment. It was a lot of money but have not regretted it at all. Once you try it, you never want to go back. Normal mattresses feel like park benches after sleeping on a Tempurpedic. Girls like Tempurpedic products too, which is nice. It won't bring them to the bed, but once they're in, they don't really want to leave.
Some properties of the Tempurpedic material, originally developed by NASA in the 70's:
- open-celled
- viso-elastic
- temperature sensitive
You that whole "ring around the collar" thing that shirts can get if you have a really greasy neck? Yeah, well the Tempurpedic cover gets this all over. The damn thing is orange at this point. I now use two pillow cases.

At Least We Covered the Spread

After The Game Saturday my mood was similar to what it was following two recent sporting events that are especially relevant to fans from the great state of Michigan: the 2006 World Series and the 2005 Rose Bowl. Both were also losses. One was a close finish while the other was anything but. A baseball series and a single football game have almost nothing in common, but for some reason these three events left me with the same aftertaste.

The World Series was a major letdown after the Tigers lost only won game in defeating the Yankees and A's. The Tigers were certainly favored to beat the Cardinals, who appeared to have given everything they had to get past the Mets in seven games. Other than the dominating performance by Kenny Rogers in game two, the Tigers were outclassed. To quote Randy Quade's character in Days of Thunder, we looked like a monkey fucking a football out there at times. Outs were given away with costly errors in the infield and impatient at-bats at the plate. It was frustrating to watch, but after it was over I appreciated how far my team had progressed in a single year and was excited about the prospects for success in the coming years with all of the great young pitchers in the organization.

The 2005 Rose Bowl ended with a game-winning Texas field goal. Like Saturday's game, it was extremely high scoring and watching it gave you the feeling that the team to have the ball last was going to win. Vince Young gave the large intestine of our defense a nice splintery broom handle massage with his runs when our defense broke down their pass plays. I think he ended up with over 200 yards rushing. There's nothing more frustrating as a football fan than watching a big running play against your team's defense, so I screamed at the television more than any game I've ever watched during that game. It really sucked losing that one, as Texas is one of the most hateable teams in sports. Yet after the sting of the field goal died down, I appreciated that we were right there with a very good team in an incredibly entertaining game, and just like with the Tigers we were loaded with young talent that seemed destined for success in meaningful games in the next few years.

Michigan gave a truly great Ohio State team everything that it could handle this year in Columbus, which I am proud of. We played well enough to retain the number two position in the BCS and the AP polls, which was inconceivable before the game. Writers wrote columns calling for a rematch as adamantly after the game as they wrote against it before the game. Somehow we still have a legitimate chance for a rematch, which would piss off the Buckeyes more than a thumb stuck into their butthole.

A few game notes:
- Get Field Turf, OSU. The shit's awesome to play on. Take it from me--I scored a goal and had two or three assists yesterday on the stuff. If Saint John's College High School can afford it, I think you can. Only a school with the agricultural prowess of Michigan State should even attempt to mess around with real grass.
- It's good to have a safety back in position to prevent long runs.
- The Ohio State center, #50 if I'm remembering correctly, will likely be an assistant manager at a Columbus area gas station if he graduates instead of playing football on Sundays. If he doesn't graduate he will never make assistant manager.
- Troy Smith is good. Really good in fact.
- That "injury" at the end of the game was awesome. It would have been great if somehow we could have had an injury on every one of those downs and stopped them to get the ball back.
- "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" by Metallica is a fucking awesome song. I am listening to it right now. This in no way is connected to the game, but if there was a fantasy song league, this would be a must-start in all formats.
- Michael Hart is a fucking badass. He is so powerful that he could commit a crime against nature that doesn't involve his penis, like beating up a grizzly bear with his bear hands or some such shit.
-Nothing would please me more than shaving "INBRED" into the back of the head of Chris Wells. If he tried to carry Michael Hart's jock he'd fumble it.

What we need to have happen is for USC to lose one of its next two games and for Florida and Arkansas to get disrespected for being the bitch teams that they are. We have to be Notre Dame fans this week, which is almost as shitty as the loss was.

Field Turf the Mall


I wonder how it is getting dog feces off of it?

If you were here between around midnight and 10AM you saw what happens when I start typing after a lot of drinks--bad writing with not much direction. I really need to just avoid the internet altogether at that point. At least you can delete posts. Text messages, however, cannot be retracted or I have not yet figured out how to do this. Man, if it's possible to do this I sure wish I would have known how to do it about two years ago when I woke up and checked the sent texts on my phone and saw "I love you" had been sent to my ex-girlfriend at around 3AM. Simple, to the point, and fucking psychotic.

The National Parks Service announced recently that it would be taking suggestions from citizens on how to best improve the National Mall. If you live in DC or have visited here, you are probably aware that the grass on the national mall is constantly being trampled by tourists, protesters, rallyers for all sorts of causes, and amateur athletes playing football, softball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and such. The fields are mostly in terrible condition and much of it is basically just packed dirt with some dead grass in some areas.

Well, NPS, I have the answer you've been trying to find: field turf. Field turf and the nutty buddy are the two greatest sports inventions ever. Michigan Stadium, where the playing surface is at least 100 feet under ground, used to have problems with the sod not holding because of all of the underground water. They installed the old style astroturf, then tried to go back to grass in the 90's. It was a failure. Players would trip over massive chunks of sod that had been torn from the field. Then they installed field turf (note: it may be called something else, but I'm just going to call it field turf) and all problems were gone. Everyone loves the stuff. I have the privilege of playing sloccer on it in my league games. It's got plenty of give and the ball rolls true all the time.

Fantasy football stud Ladainian Tomlinson loves playing on field turf so much that he had it put into his back yard. That's what I'm talking about. If it's good enough for Ladainian's back yard, it's certainly good enough for our nation's back yard. I'm sure the US & A and Field Turf could work out some kind of deal where everyone comes out happy. It would be expensive, sure, but they could cut the NPS a good deal because it would be amazing advertising for them. Everyone would want a yard made out of the stuff. Who wouldn't want it?
-it sucks mowing lawns.
-it sucks pulling out crabgrass and dandilions.
-it sucks dealing with grubs and moles
Plus, after a few beers with your friends watching football being played on the same shit on tv, you can brag to them that your whole yard is made out of the same stuff. Then you all will want to grab a football at halftime and go out and run around on it, leading to effed up knees, pulled hammies, and wheezing, all of which are awesome.

While this would be an extremely expensive project, it would be durable and require less maintenance. It would be strong enough to stand up to hordes of assholes stomping around on it and would be awesome to play sports on. Visitors would remember the field turf mall as much as the crap in the museums.

If you're with me on this, send in support for it to the NPS.