Debate: What is the best time zone?

By Glenn and Jake 



Stop. Immediately look to the upper right hand corner of your computer monitor or iPed (Chinese bootleg of iPad). What time is it? It’s debate time! But it’s also reflective of your time zone. Somewhere else in this great nation it’s a different time for someone else. Wherever you hear two people arguing over time zones (in Indiana, southwest North Dakota), we’ll be there. In the following debate, Jake and Glenn use the Socratic method to determine which of the four American time zones is the “best.”

Jake: Out of all of the timezones in the United States, my allegiances always have and always will lie with Central Standard Time (CST). It is right in the middle, so you get to experience the best of both Pacific and Eastern Standard Time. You even have a shadow cast over you by Mountain Standard Time. In this age of global warming and rising temperatures, it is occasionally nice to find some shade to cool down. CST is an old friend to me. If I left CST, I would feel like I was leaving my wife for a much uglier and stupider woman. I will never leave my wife and I will never leave CST. If that makes me a hopeless romantic, than so be it.

Glenn: It certainly makes you hopeless. Mark Twain once said “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” You aren’t doing any of those things if you stick with Central Standard. I too sprang forth from the womb of CST but have since managed to travel through or live in all other American time zones. Mountain Standard was by far the worst, and I would rather spend the rest of my life trying to climb Mount Rushmore than live under such a detestable regime. PST and EST are the same insofar as both show the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on TV at 11:30pm, which is late enough to prevent children from watching it and falling down a dark spiral of milquetoast comedy. CST cannot say the same, showing what amounts to a live execution every night at 10:30pm.

Jake: Quotes about boating aside, your point does not say which time zone you think is the best. At least I had the guts to put my horse in the race. Your horse is still in its stable, being pumped full of performance enhancing drugs, but, as we all know, you can’t win a race if you don’t enter it. CST is the time zone in which people with bold opinions live. Glenn, who currently lives in New York, has become as indecisive as a regular New Yorker. EST and PST is not a true choice. This is war, pick a side. EST contains Rhode Island and most of Indiana. Sure, I lived in Indiana, but in the CST part around in the Chicago metropolitan area. Rhode Island is the most insignificant state in the union because of its small size. Plus, everything happens later there than it does here. PST, things happen too early! I don’t want to watch watch a live TV event two hour earlier than CST or, God forbid, three hours earlier than EST. That is my nightmare, and it keeps me up at night more than any of the Leprechaun films or Jay Leno.

Glenn: I wanted to confuse you, like a Missourian visiting California for the first time and expecting to see NBC’s hit show Parenthood on at 9pm. Turning on the TV, he fills with despair at seeing the show’s 10pm start time. So instead he decides to peruse Twitter and has a heart attack. The heart attack stems from looking at the feed and seeing the results of that night’s show spoiled (someone has autism and someone has a secret) because it’s 11:30pm back in Missouri. The show has been over there for an hour and a half and your friends are already tweeting about it. Since you’re on the ropes let me deliver my knockout blow: Eastern Standard Time is the best. You get everything first (the sunrise, the Tonight Show, incoming ICBM nuclear missiles launched from Iran) and contain the best things in the US (Rhode Island, most of Indiana, the Liberty Bell). As a teenager, I used to hate EST more than myself, but now that I’m living in it I couldn’t imagine going back. It’s time to force everyone to move east the way liberals employed forced busing in the 60s and 70s.

Jake: First of all, NBC doesn’t have a hit show. Some of their shows may be of quality, but none do all that well in the ratings compared to American Idol or other excellent reality programming. In fact, many of NBC’s shows are set in cities using EST. Coincidence? I don’t think so. NBC seems to have put all of their eggs in the proverbial basket that is the Eastern Time Zone, and all of those eggs are either broken, rotten or hard boiled far too long resulting in greyish green yolks which are not at all appetizing. Much like our president, I am a moderate. That is why I choose to reside in his favorite timezone (he is a citizen of Chicago, IL) and support the three wars in which we are currently involved. CST is the timezone where the most patriots live. Shortly after 9/11 everybody else threw away their American flags like they were yesterday’s bagels and replaced them with pennants of their favorite sports teams. In the CST, people are still dressing like Lex Luger in 1994: head-to-toe in the red, white and blue. The two greatest colors and the greatest neutral in the entire color wheel. God bless America, and God bless Central Standard Time.

Glenn: God bless Central Standard Time? No no no - god DAMN Central Standard Time! God damn the Central Time Zone — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people (the great Chicago Fire). God damn CST, for treating our citizens as less than human (Scott Walker’s attempt to destroy collective bargaining rights). Eastern Time, like Eastern religion and culture, is the pinnacle of human development. Even if we put aside Jake’s criticisms of #1 network NBC, full of hit shows like Cheers and Perfect Couples, his argument still falls apart. He is selfishly arguing for his own time zone just as I am selfishly arguing for mine, but the difference is that I have lived in three of the four American time zones. Pacific is nice, but it’s too close to the poisoned ocean and by the time you wake up at 1pm, the day is over in EST. Jake says that the CST is full of patriots, and this may be true insofar as Texas resides in the CST but what about South Carolina, the only state patriotic enough to secede from the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. They, and I, are sitting happy in the Eastern Time Zone - waiting for our second chance to defeat the North.

Debate: Does ALF Believe in God?

By Jake and Glenn


When the alien life form (ALF) Gordon Shumway crashed his spacecraft into HAM radio enthusiast Willie Tanner’s garage, America’s pulse rose to a near catastrophic level.  This sarcastic alien made the country roar with laughter, and, I’d like to think, existential dread.  While America was having a love affair with this fuzzy brown space aardvark, making cucks of us all, one question lingered like a pervert outside of a maternity dressing room: Does ALF believe in God?

Jake: The famed folkie Joan Osborne once pondered a similar question: “What if God Was One of Us?” We never got a satisfactory answer (and she has since been murdered, so we never will) but at least we can attempt to answer this pressing question in honor of her memory.  ALF does, in fact, believe in God.  In several episodes he clearly states that he does.  While these were unscripted lines and always hidden behind clanking pans during cooking scenes, this is undeniable proof.  ALF may not be a Christian, as much of his planet’s iconography most likely revolves around cats, but he surely believes in God.  As a Christian, I find it impossible to wrap my head around somebody, even a space puppet, not believing in the same God I do.  I guess we can just wrap a bow around this debate, because it is over.


Glenn: This debate, like our national nightmare, has only begun. What we have here is a case as old as time itself: a skilled debater projecting his own beliefs onto a genderless, HILARIOUS alien. Alf has specifically condemned many, but not all, of the religiously-inspired terror of the last few decades. Alf condemned ISIS throwing homosexuals to their deaths. Alf condemned Christian anti-abortion activists murdering doctors in cold blood.  Alf condemned orthodox Jewish women for wearing thick dark clothes on a summer day. Does this sound like the actions of a monotheist? Not to me, and I’m a polytheist.


Jake: If ALF, the famed space monster, does not believe in God then there is simply no God. That's how this works. Let me spin you a yarn, then knit you a scarf of a tale, that you will wrap around the neck of your brain to keep your thoughts warm. In 1986, I was a mess. My wife had left me for a guy with a motorcycle louder than my own. I was low. I was drinking a whole six pack of Zima every evening, and I was skipping church. Not just on Saturday, but Sunday, too. Wednesday was not even considered. Then one evening as I was stumbling around my loft, a lovable alien appeared on my TV and said, “No problem.” Sure, I had problems. I had more problems than I had pubes, and I have more pubes than there are stars in the sky. This declaration by ALF jostled me awake and sent me down the righteous path. And that's why I voted for Gary Johnson in the 2016 presidential election.


Glenn: You made the right choice in the election, but the wrong choice in this debate. What you describe here, historical inaccuracies aside, does not make the case that ALF believes in god but rather the case that ALF is god. I ask our readers to loosen the straps on their adult diapers and bear with me here. More and more low-grade science fiction (Arrival, Prometheus, 2069: A Sex Odyssey) are positing the theory that there’s no “god” as we conceive of it, but rather aliens who came in our ancient history and in some way set the stage for the amazing, contemplative, sustainable species we are today. Might ALF simply be one of those aliens who so loved the humanity he created that he gave his own life, so that he could stay with us instead of returning to his home planet? Seems absurd, I know - but no less absurd than moviegoers seeing Prometheus and then paying money to go back and see its sequel.


Jake: While it may be interesting to posit if ALF is God, as you so recklessly propose, it doesn’t fit in with the true words of The Bible. The Bible is “the good book,” which is confusing because technically it’s two books. It’s sort of like how Nymphomaniac is one movie, but they split it into two. And, buster, I am a “nymphomaniac” for the word of the lord and ALF. Of course, ALF believes in God. How could anybody not? It’s actually physically impossible to not believe in God, as a recent study in The Journal of Christian Science conclusively proved. If the only magazine I subscribe to says it, then it has to be true. “The Good Book”? How about “The True Book”? Right? Yeah, I think I am. And I think that ALF isn’t God, but does believe in God. I declare myself the winner, as I always do in both debates and the Winter Olympics.


Glenn: Glad you brought up the Winter Olympics since it was around that time ALF first denied the existence of god outside the sitcom. After those low rent thugs kneecapped Nancy Kerrigan there was infamous video of her screaming “Why? Why?” To whom is unclear, but assuming it was our NON-dark lord is extremely reasonable. In the longer, unedited clip you can see ALF trying to comfort her as she’s taken to the hospital by saying “Because there is no god, Nancy. Nothing happens for a reason!” Now, you can make the case that four years removed from his sitcom being on the air ALF was despondent and in a dark place where he was more willing to accept atheism - lord knows it happened to both of us - but the point remains: ALF, from the time his show ended to the day he was murdered with Joan Osbourne, did not believe in god. And let’s honor him by committing blasphemy today!

Welcome to The Resistance

By Jake

Ever since Donald Trump became president there's been an elite group standing up to his agenda of hatred and class warfare: The Resistance.


To join The Resistance one needs to do little more than vocally disavow Donald Trump. The Resistance goes beyond political lines. It's a partisan effort to do whatever one can, outside of anything actionable, to stand in Donald Trump's way.

Here are some stars of The Resistance:

Hillary Clinton
The yas kween herself, Hillary Clinton, ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 US General Election. She somehow struck out on a slow lob, but nobody holds it against her. Instead, the fingers point at much more nefarious characters: Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. Hillary has done some exciting resisting like charging $50 to $350 for tickets to her book tour, not marching in the Women's March, and hanging out in the woods with her sexual predator husband.

John McCain
Earlier this year, John McCain was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That didn't keep him from coming back to vote against overturning the ACA. It also didn't keep him from more recently voting for a tax reform bill that overturns the ACA that was passed at almost 2AM, which is way past his bedtime.

Jeff Flake
Jeff Flake called Donald Trump something like "a rude McDonald's bitch," and then continuing to vote right in line with the Trump agenda. Jeff Flake is proof that anybody can and should resist.

Mitt Romney
This Mormon robot has often spoke out against Trump. At the rate the democrats are moving, it's not fully unlikely that he's the DNC's dream candidate for 2020, even if he's an abhorrent conservative piece of shit.

Jimmy Fallon
Many people have pointed to the Tonight Show host tusseling Trump's fucked up hair as a humanizing moment that possibly helped get Trump elected. Yet, Fallon has been sticking it to the president in milquetoast monologue jokes and dances that mock his tiny hands. Jimmy Fallon, you're forgiven and my sides are split.

See? It's not difficult to be welcomed into The Resistance. You can 100% fall in line with Trump and still be part of it, just as long as you call him rude or make a far noise when he's on television yelling "blood and soil" at an audience of white dipshits. Keep resisting everybody and when all the entitlement programs have been killed and we're fighting over moldy scraps of bread that fell out of Steve Mnuchin's pocket on his way to a sex museum, we can reflect on how we sat at home and resisted an administration of bigotry.

Fart Sketch

By Jake



[Employees shuffle in.]

Sheryl: I'm excited for this presentation. I've never met the CEO. What's he like?

Will: He does a solid presentation, but you gotta be careful around this guy. He's a bit of a hard ass, pardon the language.

Thomas: oh definitely. I heard that he fired a guy for farting.

Sheryl: For farting?

Thomas: it was at a Chillis.

Sheryl: A waiter?

Thomas: No, he can't fire a waiter at a place he doesn't work. It was Bob Fresno. He invited him to lunch. Made him order 3 plates of beans, too. Fired him for farting.

Will: I heard it was because he didn't wipe.

Sheryl: You're supposed to wipe?

Thomas: Not unless it's wet. And I heard this was real dry.

Will: Bob had some of the driest ones I ever heard. He farted like he was in the vacuum of space.

Sheryl: Wow.

Thomas: The guy slipped up. He's not the only one either.

Will: Remember Seth Harding? From accounting?

Thomas: Of course. Good guy.

Will: Yeah, a great guy. He got fired for farting at a party.

Sheryl: Boulder fired him at a party for farting?

Thomas: It was his party, too. Seth’s.

Will: He went to the bathroom to do it. He wiped. Washed his hands. Sanitizer. Everything. Still got fired for farting.

Sheryl: That is crazy.

Thomas: Boulder lost a lot of money in the market crash. Fired his investor.

Sheryl: For farting?

Thomas: No. For losing all that money. That one was justified, I guess.

2017 Oscar Picks

By Jake and Glenn

Death. Disease. Pollution. Fascism. Gamers. Our societal collapse seems imminent. We are in freefall. School children are taught to cross out the first half of the famous line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  What remains? What hope do we have?

The 2017 Academy Awards!

Jake and Glenn are back with the ninth edition of our longest running feature: picking the Best Picture winner so you can skip the ceremony, instead having missionary sex with your husband and go to bed early on a work night.

2016 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
Hidden Figures
Jake says…The biggest problem with Hidden Figures is how it reminds me of all the times I lost my toys when I was a kid. I lost them all the time. They were always in the same place, too: inside the stomach of whichever sheep was living with my family at the time. This is why I didn't like this movie. I didn't see it, either.

Glenn says… Unlike Jake, I was legally allowed to see the movie. Though I didn’t, I know it spends a lot of time dissecting what it was like to be a woman and black and an astronaut. If you’re into that, I would recommend previous Best Picture winner The Adventures of Pluto Nash instead.

Lion
Jake says…I would be “lion” if I said I didn't love this movie. It had me roaring! It is my mane pick for Oscar’s Movie of the Year this year.

Glenn says… Puns aside, finally we have a movie marketed towards the adopted! A growing demographic, we have a lot of pride at our stories finally being told on the big screen. However, the well documented biases of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences against adopted families is likely to blunt Lion’s chance at Best Picture.


Manchester by the Sea
Jake says…Manchester is not by the sea. It's by an ocean. Not even one of the good ones, either. It's by the Atlantic, the Terence Trent D’Arby of oceans. Still, a cool movie. I liked the clothes.

Glenn says… I deeply enjoyed this movie, but more deeply enjoy defending accused sexual offenders like Casey Affleck. Remember: innocent until proven guilty and even after proven, still innocent. Separate the art from the artist!

Batman V Superman
Jake says…When Superman and Batman fight the winner is the American public! When Batman punches Superman and Superman punches Batman I was like “oh hell no!” but what I meant was “oh hell yeah!” I was so excited I misspoke. And I'm eloquent as heck.

Glenn says… Having an extremely tiny dick and microcephaly, I LOVED this movie! To see these two hulking brutes punch each other so hard, wrestle so voraciously that they almost kissed...this was ecstasy for me. The climax of the movie involving a surprisingly explicit penetrative anal sex scene was enough to pull this film out of “comic book hell” and right into the Best Picture category.

Arrival
Jake says…Dumb alien shit for virgins.

Glenn says… Smart alien shit for lotharios.

Hacksaw Ridge
Jake says…More like “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan Ridge. Just kidding, this is a movie about building a house on a Ridge, which is boring. It's also 3 months long, which is too long. I have business meetings to go to for this fucking plant watering app I'm trying to get off the ground.

Glenn says… I won’t forgive Mel Gibson and I’m not sure the Academy will either. He told his wife that he hopes she gets raped by a “pack of niggers.” That’s pretty fucked up! Occasionally soapy on the homefront but cataclysmic in combat, Hacksaw Ridge is a worthy addition to the WWII canon. If it loses, it’ll be the last we see of Gibson who has promised to kill himself at the ceremony.


Suicide Squad
Jake says…If there was a real suicide squad I would join it because this movie sucked so bad I killed myself after watching it. The Joker isn't funny like he is in the Batman joke books I read as a kid.

Glenn says… Scathing reviews did not stop this comic book-style film from being nominated nor the controversy surrounding Jared Leto wearing Heath Ledger’s skin for the haunting portrayal of Bane. A huge money-maker, grossing over $15,000 its first weekend, this is the film to beat on Sunday night.

La La Land
Jake says…Everybody loves this musical about singing in LA. It's about a cisgender heterosexual white man who dreams of opening a jazz club. This movie is what happens when you elect a reality TV vulgarian to the highest office in this country. Now we have to endure four years of dipshit white people dance in IMAX 3D and we have no other recourse than to give it a fucking Oscar. The only solace we can take is that we will all be dead soon, but not soon enough.

Glenn says… I liked the songs.

OUR PICKS
Jake says… La La Land will win and we will all suffer. There's an old saying that goes “Jews run the media,” well guess what, fuckhead: white nationalists who are dumber than I am are running the whole country. We're giving mentally ill people guns, so why not give this white washed bullshit movie an Oscar. Fuck it all!

Glenn says... As a white nationalist, I have no vested interest in any of these films winning. However, if you set aside the sentimentality, the “politics” behind them or who the ZOG wants to win, and instead just rank them objectively, it’s pretty clear that your best winner will be La La Land. Until man finally realizes how to suck his own dick, Hollywood will continue to do it for us.

RIP David Bowie (One Year Anniversary)

By Glenn

The last thing this rotten world needs is another David Bowie memorial with a "personal twist," but it's all I have to give. He died a year ago today.



The above four pictures are the oldest ones I can find saved on my computer (evidence below) and they raise the following three questions:

  1. Why do I have seemingly random pictures of Bowie on my hard drive that haven't been opened in ~15 years?
  2. Why do, on further inspection, the pictures perfectly encapsulate his four major periods of creative excellence?
  3. Why am I still using the same computer that I was at the turn of the century?
Answer to all: David Bowie was my gateway to a new world of music.




There is no great victory in being into the music of the present era. In the late 90s for me that meant some combination of rock, alternative rock and grunge rock. I simply didn't listen to anything that was popular before "my time." While we could blame many players for this cultural deficit - my parents, my friends, Tipper Gore - the point is that my ignorance of music was holding me back. I lost an election for class president based on tired references to nu metal and killed myself in front of my English class because my favorite music video of all time was Pearl Jam's Jeremy. 

My much more learned and culturally adventurous friend Bryan didn't have these problems and it was through his suggestions that I got into David Bowie. Using money I stole from my fast food job, I bought 1999's ...hours and 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on CD from Best Buy.  I remember earnestly and passionately watching the Thursday's Child music video on VH1 (internet did not yet exist) and blasting Moonage Daydream from my Sony Discman on my grandma's couch. History will ultimately judge which album is better but it didn't take long for me to get hooked.

1999-2000 was not Bowie's "coolest" period but he was still cooler than me - and had a vast mythology and discography that hinted at something deeper my favorite bands of the alternative rock era. His back catalog had recently been rereleased on Virgin and I spent the next few years searching out these and rarer versions - the rarest being two RCA releases from the early 80s that sounded like complete shit but looked different and may sell for as much as $50 now on the CD black market. Later in life I randomly won an auction that included a rare version of the All Saints instrumental collection that is apparently worth hundreds of dollars. Still haven't sold it.

Alas, I am not here to brag about how many cool CDs I own. The point is for the first time in my life I was discovering that older music had just as much to offer as modern music - if not more! I started to make the connections between Beck's Mellow Gold-Odelay-Mutations-Midnite Vulture transformation and Bowie's Man Who Sold The World-Hunky Dory-Diamond Dogs-Young Americans roller coaster ride. Apparently music history can repeat itself, at least amongst devoted Scientologists.

Bowie had all the same periods all of us young men go through:
  1. Faux folk
  2. Weird spaceman
  3. Sensitive poet
  4. REALLY weird spaceman
  5. Pale weirdo
  6. Orwell obsessive
  7. Soul singer
  8. Coked out Nazi
  9. Weird Nazi
  10. Sell out
I devoured Bowie's 1970's output the way he devoured cocaine in the middle of the decade. Young Americans was the first soul record I owned and Station to Station was the first ten minute song I heard about this wonderful drug. I cannot count the number of times I've screamed-sung aloud to Side A of "Heroes" - including, but not limited to, the title track, which is rightly acknowledged as the 2nd best song ever written about the Berlin Wall.  

At the same time I was going through the back catalog I was trying to update myself on "current" Bowie: 90s albums with mediocre songs and and extraordinary names like 1.Outside and Eart hl i ng. I followed him as far as 2002's Heathen before I decided Bowie's older stuff was good enough for me and instead began exploring his peers and predecessors. Over the next decade, I caught up with the few "good" Bowie albums I still hadn't heard but in general left him alone. He returned the favor: after 2003's Reality he basically disappeared from the music world for a decade before releasing The Next Day. I heard the singles from the album and liked them so bought the album and filed it away for later listening. Yes, he was back but still an old man making music, like Neil Young or Bob Dylan. Who rushes out to hear their current stuff?

And then, a few days after 2016's ★ was released, he fucking died. I can't say that I sat there weeping but for the first music legend death in my adult life, I understood those who did. I rushed to order Blackstar before the inevitable post-humous price gouging began on Bowie's catalog and floated through the next few days, listening to his back catalog and trying to figure out why it couldn't have been me instead of him. 

David Bowie was not a perfect man nor was he a perfect musician. He released some absolute shit in his career and honestly I doubt I'll ever go back through and take the time to learn his worst albums when I still haven't heard things like Blood on the Tracks or Double Fantasy. Would I have gotten into artists like Lennon and Dylan without going through Bowie first? Probably, but because he was first I'll always feel the deepest connection to his music, his weird endeavors with the internet, his ambiguous sexuality, his wacky personas and all of the other stuff that makes someone larger than life. If you want to talk more about best saxophone solos in his catalog, just let me know. 

Glenn's 2017 New Years Resolutions

By Glenn

Making resolutions for the upcoming year is, like voting, something we do to assert control in our unstable and uncertain lives. Many times this is the right choice and things actually change for the better. I did not make substantive resolutions in 2016 and the year was a disaster. Compare this to a wonderful year like 2014 where I strongly resolved to stop eating candy and cookies, which led to Robin Williams finally killing himself. It's too late to consider reviewing the material of two years ago so let's assume it all went as planned and dive right into 2017.

Add fruit snacks and yogurt to my banned food list
Like anyone else battling an eating disorder (vegetarianism), I find control from and define my identity by what I put into my mouth. Over the last three years I have successfully cut cookies and candy, as your brain can conceive of it, out of my diet. But like a river finding a new path around a dike, my sweet tooth forced alternate methods of satiation. Have you ever snorted Stevia? Anyway, this dietary whack-a-mole has forced me to add fruit snacks (or essentially any "non-candy" hiding in the candy aisle) and frozen yogurt to the banned foods list.

Take two concrete steps to learn more Spanish
¿Hablas español? I don't, as evidenced by the fact I used the very casual tü format in that question and then incorrectly used an umlaut instead of an accent when trying to explain my mistake. I do however have a background in studying the language and a very real need to get myself back up to a level where I can at least buy drugs or explain why all JJ Abrams creations produce existential disappointment. Taking a class is also a great way to meet friends!

Have a Dave Matthews Band Renaissance
I could have put a different artists in this slot (as there will be multiple renaissances this year) but since this list is online I want to follow the standard online playbook: say something in the most controversial way you can and then slowly walk your audience through unpacking it afterward. In the pretend vision of my social world, getting unironically back into DMB is only a step or two below ironically re-joining ISIS. But I want to be one of those people who loses hang-ups and biases as I get older instead of the people whose world view and interests solidify like the stone monuments I never helped ISIS destroy. So this year I will become a "Davehead" and listen to more sweet ass jams.

No more solitary games
...And I don't just mean solitaire! (Though I certainly mean that.) Whether on the phone or computer, I find myself going through distinct and powerful phases of filling boredom/dread/whatever with games. I'm not officially a gamer, but at one point a few years ago I played Euchre on my phone for a few hours straight! Most recently, I regressed during a trip to visit my parents by getting back into early high school favorite Warcraft 2. This resolution wouldn't be needed if I could leave this shameful the activity there (like my kids) or relegate it only to weekends (like my other kids), but I don't have that level of self control.

Watch a non-TV movie once a week
You: "Glenn you watch movies all the time! Feels like every time I open my AtHome app, I see you on that couch with a cold beer staring at the screen with that dead look in your eyes. Why would you possibly need to make a resolution about watching MORE movies on TV?"
Me: "Hear me out. First of all, the movies don't have to be on TV - they could also be in the theatre. Second of all, the movies I'm watching on my very limited cable package are usually terrible Hallmark or Lifetime productions. I watch them because they're on. By setting this goal, I'll be forced to intentionally choose something hopefully more highbrow - and I can use my new Letterboxd app to track it! Third of all, I hope you enjoyed what I did on Tuesday night. It was for you."

Thanks for reading. Let's check in at the middle of the year to see how everything is going. Below are some things that might help you out as you plan your 2017 resolutions:

How to Make Friends Faster

7 Simple Rules for Getting Lean in 2017
Old habits die hard. Here's how to change your life in 2017
To Live Remarkably, Repeat This 1 Affirmation Every Single Day for the Rest of Your Life
What a Sensory Isolation Tank Taught Me About My Brain
Play Warcraft 2 Online

The Singularity

By Jake Merch

Nobody will argue with you when you say that the singularity is imminent. Sure, you might be standing on a milk crate on a corner downtown, using a makeshift megaphone made out of newspaper you pulled out of a trashcan to preach. And sure, to most people that might wreak of insanity. Yet, that does not make the points you're barking invalid. It just makes them louder. And it makes people avoid eye contact with you, although that is a sign of autism spectrum disorder.


The singularity-- the moment when machines become more intelligent than humans-- is coming folks. That seems impossible, right? Surely there is no indicator of human idiocy. There's not a troll running for president tricking people into voting for him through hypnotically terrible hair and hate speech lifted directly from Adolf Hitler (a notorious jerk). Clearly, we are maintaining a superior level of intelligence. The kind of smarts it takes to respond to mass pollution and the change in climate that it causes. Or at least we have the brains to deny it all because it's easier and there's so many dating competition shows to watch and blog about.

What should we do if the singularity dawns? We do what humans always do when confronted: we get racist, then violent. Racism is the heat source that boils into violence. That violence could even be throwing boiling water in the face of our enemy. Usually it's a bit more hamburgery than that, but there are no rules when it comes to violence.

I have come up with a few racist things we can call robots: clink clanks and bleep bloops. And when you see a group of clink clanks clattering down the street, you can nudge your buddy with your elbow and say, "Looks like the circuit's in town." That's just a jump off point. As the bleep bloop overlords over take humanity with their cold metal fists, we will surely get more desperate and therefore more racist. Yet, you cannot get to that level of racism until you are truly under the threat of oppression.  Like how cops must feel when they see a black teen eating ice cream at an honor society meeting.

Feel free to leave a comment telling how you would be racist toward a robot.