Another Sledding Injury

After the awesome Arsenal match today (1-0 thanks to a late winner from Bendtner), I took the kids to Highland Cemetery where they'd been too afraid to sled last month... not to be confused w/ St. John's Cemetery, the Cemetery across the street in which Solstice & I got locked over the summer. We had a great time, but the hill I assumed would be sweet was actually kind of shit. It was covered w/ large (maybe 10 inches in diameter) clumps of frozen dirt that made for a rather bumpy ride & didn't do my 2-hole a whole Hell of a lot of good. Of course, the quick stop @ the bottom didn't make things much better & I jammed my hand which didn't do my finger a whole Hell of a lot of good. Once that spot was nixed, we decided on a smaller area right by some tombstones which ended up being really cool. We even saw a grave of a dude who was born in 1788. Solstice was impressed that he was born before the Constitution & the French Revolution. Aiden was impressed that his grave was so close to a good sledding hill. They were also interested in the grave of the 2 year old kid from 1897 which meant we got to talk about infant mortality & scientific advances over the last 100 years.

The Second Post of the Year is a Soccer Post... But Read On

Much has been made over the years by women around the world (& by Donnie) about the hottness of soccer players like Ronaldo & Fabregas, so I thought listing starting 11 ugliest players in world football would be a good way to celebrate the opening of the January Transfer Window & the 3rd round of the FA Cup (not to mention the fact that U-Verse just got Setanta Sports). I spet a few minutes debating my formation, but in order to keep it as realistic as possible, I'm going w/ a 4-4-2, w/ an advanced central mid-fielder acting almost as a 3rd striker. Here it is:
D. James
W. Brown--C. Puyol--J. Lescott--M. Silvestre
S.Ireland
----------------------------------G. Bale
F. Ribery--------Ronaldinho-----------
-----C. Tevez------P. Crouch
Goalkeeper David James will also make the list later this month of footballers w/ weird hair. He's a sort of 2-face in that I think he could probably be a good looking guy, but this is just ridiculous. I don't get this guy. He's a talented right back @ Man U w/ a bunch of international caps, but his weird albino black dude look creeps me out. That's not a racist statement because albino white dudes & albino dudes of other races creep me out too. I can't even listen to the guitar stylings of Edgar Winter. Everton Center Bacl, Joleon Lescott was probably a fine lookin' guy before he took a boot to the face a few years ago... now he's just fugly. Spain & Barcelona captain Carles Puyol would look as @ home in a BC comic strip as he does on the football pitch. The Arsenal right back is more comfortable in the center, but has been decent cover for the injured Gael Clichy.. while the shadow cast by his enormous noggin has been decent cover for most of N. London. Disfigured in a car accident @ 2 years old, the France & Bayern Munich star, Frank Ribery, may have a good excuse for being ugly... but he's still ugly. Steven Ireland of Man City looks like a cross between Skeletor & some meth-loving trucker... nasty! Ronaldinho, the Brazilian super-star, has lost a bit lately due to excessive partying... which is conveinient because he'll always be availible to open a beer w/ those bottle openers that hang down below his nose. It's not an amazing logical mind that has garnered Gareth Bale, the Welsh left winger, a pile of Spock comparisons. I can't figure out how Portsmouth striker Peter Crouch doesn't break a leg every time he walks on the pitch... he's a gauky mother fucker. The Argentina & Man U striker could have had his burn scar fixed while playing for Boca Junior but thought they make him who he is... admirable, but disgusting.

Holiday Post #12: Your Visions of Ypsi Celebrity M.I.L.F. of the Year

While 4 of the nominees got no votes whatsoever (Heche, Simpson, Foster, or Driver), none of other nominees ran away w/ the title either. It was a much closer race than in previous years, but like last year, it has come down to the tie-breaker vote. Before we get to that, I'd also like to point out that while a few regulars failed to cast a vote... which apparently means they will now die... we have a few newbies & they have our gratitude. Now, w/o further ado, we give you your 2009 Visions of Ypsi Celebrity M.I.L.F. of the Year: Gwen Stefani. As you can see here, she's always fulfilled her Milfy duties well, & she offers what few others have offered in the past... she's hotter preggers than pre-preggers.Usually, she looks a bit on the anorexic side of things, but while knocked up she puts on a little weight & looks really good. I've never been a fan of her music, but that's not what we're judging her anyway. I' sure she's excited to have this opportunity & to face the challenge that is being The Visions of Ypsi Celebrity M.I.L.F. of the Year. Matching the standard set by Maggie Gyllenhaal a few years ago might be too much to ask, but she'll definitely do as well as Michelle Williams & she'll probably out-milf Angelina Jolie... oh, & Happy New Year to you all.

Holiday Post #11: A MILFY Reminder

The final votes need to be cast by midnight on Wednesday & since I know many of you will be incoherent by that point in the evening, I suggest you get on it before then... you drunken bastards! As of right now, the exit polling is looking like this:
Gillian Anderson 1/2
Rebecca Romijn 1
Naomi Watts 1
Michelle Monaghan 1
Amy Poehler 1 1/2
Jennifer Garner 3
Gwen Stefani 3

If you don't want me to have to cast the tie-breaker, be sure to vote now!!! That doesn't mean that you have to pick one of the leaders though; there's still plenty of time.

Holiday Post #10: Christmas Cheer

We woke up Thursday to find Santa had come & left the kids a shit-load of stuff they are now loving. In fact, they are still going on about how it was the best Christmas ever! I suppose we need to pat ourselves on the back for the X-Box, but on the other hand, they are still in the midst of figuring out how to share it fairly. After they opened their presents, I my our traditional X-Mas morning Breakfast Pizza. About 6 years ago, we were discussing the interesting development of breakfast burritos & wondered if other popular foods could be breafastized like that. That query lead us to develop the greatness that is Breakfast Pizza... try it & love it!

After breakfast we went to Stephanie's Mom's place in Whitmore Lake & had a great time opening more gifts & enjoying a fantastic meal before we had to rush off to Elizabeth & Dan's for more gifts & another fantastic meal. Stephanie said she heard the other day that most people only put on about a pound over the holidays, but that people who already eat too much or have a bit of a weight problem can add 5 pounds to their already bulbous asses... I have a feeling I've added about 10 pounds to my bulk recently.

Yesterday, after the Arsenal match during which I was able to wear the sweet sweet new Arsenal hat that Stephanie got me, Jason & Joe came by for pizza & beer before we headed out to the Corner & then Sidetrack for a festive evening of beer & Scotch.

After you're done checking out these pics, be sure to cast your vote & take the quiz!!! The Tree w/ the gifts
Isaiah in my sweet sweet hat
Sledding the other day... the pictures I promised
The frozen stream Aiden refused to sled near

Holiday Post #9: The Attention Whore Quiz

If you'll recall, only Kate Winslet scored a 100% on last year's quiz. Let's see if you can do as well this year as she did last year. We have 10 multiple choice questions based on things posted on Visions of Ypsi over the course of the last year. Click here for the Visions of Ypsi Attention Whore Quiz, & then post your score in the comments! (The question about the free haircut has the wrong answer... it should be the one about getting my ear clipped, but it's actually the one about wowing the woman w/ my poolside story. The web-site won't let me edit it.) And since we're in the spirit of whoring out for attention, here are a couple pics of me @ Plum Market today in the Horizon Organic Milk Pantomime Cow Suite (Not quite as cool as a pantomime Princess Margaret, but close.) Of course, after taking the quiz, cast your vote for the Visions of Ypsi Celebrity MILF of the Year!

Holiday Post #8: I got a lot of problems with you people!

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Holiday Post #7: Words

A few words about the previous post:
Before we get into the post of the day, I want to remind everyone that they need to scroll down to vote or just click here The Official Visions of Ypsi Celebrity MILF of the Year Contest has taken off, but Jennifer Garner is leading @ the moment... & that's no good.

Now a few words about sledding yesterday:
When I was a kid, we'd take our sleds & walk through the woods & fields until we found a new spot, a spot void of sled-tracks, a spot we'd never seen before. In Petoskey, we'd spend as much time finding a sledding area as we'd spend sledding... & it was good. We lived on a huge hill overlooking Lake Michigan in a pretty rural environment so the new sledding areas were seemingly endless. Dodging trees & ducking underneath electrified cattle fences were par for the course. In all those years, only once was someone rushed to the hospital when he slammed into a tree & ruptured his appendix. (Of course, this led to his sister claiming abdominal problems ran in her family when she had a cramp @ soccer practice after having eaten a plate of tacos before running for a 1/2 hour.) There were obviously some particular hills that bore repeated sledding, but the best was the exploring. Yesterday, I thought I'd take the kids sledding, but I wanted to go somewhere we'd never been. We found a great hill on the back side of a cemetery, but Aiden was unsure of that because he "doesn't really like cemeteries." I then suggested a hill @ then end of Clark Rd, but they were apprehensive because of the "No Trespassing" signs. When we were kids, "No Trespassing" signs simply meant that we were the first to sled there. We then went to Parker Mill Park, but they thought it was too close to the creek... 30 yards from the bottom of the hill to the beautiful frozen creek. We ended up on campus using the small hill behind the Porter Building. They had a blast, but next time, we're going to the cemetery. (I'll post the sledding pics when I get new batteries for the camera which are needed before I can up-load them.)

Now a few words about words:
According to The Economist, some ridiculous group in Texas, The Global Language Monitor, has predicted that April 29, 2009 will mark the debut of the 1 Millionth word in the English Language! As problematic as that count might be, be sure to check back here @ 12:01 AM (+12 GMT) on that date as I debut the new. In celebration of this, I'll work on coining some new terms over the next 4 months as a sort of build up to the great day. Today's word?
Chimilicious
1. The greatness of pseudo-Mexican food including but not limited to Chimichangas. This also includes burritos in a "jam band" parking lot, nachos in a movie theater (often refered to as "Phantom Menace Nachos"), or quesadillas in a chain restaurant like Applebee's or Red Robin.
2. The cultish greatness of any low quality item including films, music, books, or television shows.

Holiday Post # 6: Your Nominees

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Holiday Post #5: The Specials

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Holiday Post #4: Cookies

I was having a hard time thinking of another quick holiday post until I got an e-mail today which contained this link to some pretty nice holiday cookies. I was already kind of thinking about cookies anyway since Stephanie has been in the cookie-making mood this week so this link was really just the icing on the cake... as it were. I promise to post more after finals week... & don't forget to be thinking about the Annual Visions of Ypsi Celebrity MILF of the Year Contest... we'll get that going soon.

If Facebook was Real... and British

Holiday Post #3: Ho Ho Ho & all that Stuff

Last weekend, we made our traditional trip south to Ida, MI & the Matthes Evergreen Farm to get a tree & have some good old-timey cheer. We've been going there since 2002, & the kids love it. Aside from the "Cut Your Own" trees, they also feature a little craft area where Ida locals sell their fancy X-Mas stuff... Candles & Santas & Wreaths, oh my. In the main part of the barn, they have inexpensive snacks (including free hot chocolate, coffee & popcorn) & live X-Mas music. Of course, there's also the animals in the smaller barn... pigs, rabbits, goats, cows, horses, & (every ones favorite) some nervous looking sheep. Sheep always seem to have that "uh oh, here come some people" look associated w/ thousands of years of domestication that in turn led to thousands of years of anal rape. In class the other night, we were talking about "inner species erotica" & its relation to Paul Beatty's Slumberland, when someone asked why sheep are always the butt of those jokes. I had to explain the rather inconvenient positioning of their said butts, well, inconvenient for them but convenient as hell for those thousands of years of lonely shepherds who tended their flocks in pent-up frustration. While the account in Luke is a bit vague, I imagine the scene w/ the shepherds went something like this:
Shepherd: "oh yeah, baby... "
Angel: "Hey, what are you doing?"
Shepherd: "Um, ahh, nothing. It's not what you think."
Angel: "Put that away, there's a baby in that barn over there. What's wrong w/ you?"
Shepherd: "Baby? Really? I'm gonna go check that out... are there any, you know, animals over there too?"
Anyway, back to the tree place. In their "Wreath Shop," they have Santa. Not any old Santa. Not some 2nd rate "impostor, mall Santa" as Aiden put it, but a guy the kids swear is the 1 & only. Solstice, clearly, doesn't buy it any more, but Aiden is whole-heartily into it. Being that it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, & therefore, the 1st Santa Saturday of the year @ Matthes, he landed in a helicopter across the street while a crowd of people stood & stared like gawkers @ a British car accident. solstice was too embarrassed to to get up close, & it was clear that Aiden wanted to. She refused to go up closer w/ him to which he responded by pretending he didn't want to either. I think that was the closest I've ever been to an in-flight helicopter. They circled the field a couple times while Santa waved to the crowd before landing about 40 yards way from us. I have to add "go in a helicopter" to my list of things I want to do in the air which also includes bungee jumping, sky diving, & pilot's lessons.Over all, we had a great afternoon. I found & fell the tree I record time... it was getting shaken & baled w/in 20 minutes of me parking the car. We got home, put up the tree, & then went to Red Robin & used the kids' coupons they got from the library last summer. I've spent the last 4 months stalling, because I'm not really a fan of that place, but it meant free food & after an afternoon of Santas & tree cutting, neither of us really felt like cooking. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the Red Robin Red Robin like last time though. Be sure to tune in again for the story of our Tofurkey slaughter!

So Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like it's 700 BCE

Graves in the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, China, in the Gobi Desert were recently excavated, & according to a report in the latest issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, 1 of the graves contained a big bag of dope. A whole kilo to be exact of some nice Chinese chronic. These nugs, while no longer potent, are believed to have been as strong as the stuff circulating today. I know that's a pretty vague claim since the quality window is huge, but they're suggesting that this means the guy was using it to get his stone on. It's not clear if it was medicinal or spiritual, but it is clear that it asn't just being used for the fibers as scientists assumed it was only used for then. Apparently, they didn't think the THC level would have been high enough before the more recent (last 2,000 years) growing methods were established. This is the oldest stash ever found, so high-ons (& bloggers like me) world wide have decided it's a grand day for thee cause of legalization... when in fact, it really does very little for the hippies who think they're going to save the world by turning it on. Legalize today; get high tonight. Right.

Superman Revisited

The 1st 2 Christopher Reeve Superman films were on the other day so I thought it'd make for a fun movie night for the kids. As it turns out, Solstice seemed to enjoy them more than Aiden who had a hard time following the stories. They both raised some important questions though & my view of the 2 films seems to have changed a bit since I last saw them.
Solstice's Questions:
- When he flies backwards around the Earth to save Lois, why doesn't he just go all the way back & stop the missiles?
- Why doesn't he use that technique more often? It seems pretty easy & effective.
Aiden's Questions:
- Why do Zod & his lady friend gain the power of telekinesis (Solstice's word, not Aiden's)? Superman can't do that.
- When he "reverses the polarity" in his "desuperpowering chamber," he doesn't look all weird & x-ray like he did the 1st time so why didn't Lois know what was going on since she had already witnessed it once?
Stephanie's Question:
- Why does a piece of rock from his home planet have the power to not only strip him of his powers but to completely incapacitate him?
- Why didn't Christopher Reeve play Clark as a teen-ager? He could definitely have done it w/ the right make up.
These are all good questions, & besides the 1 about Kryptonite, I'd never really thought about them. I am particularly proud of Solstice's 1st & Aiden's 2nd questions. They are pretty complex & in Aiden's case, it shows that perhaps he was following along better than he let on.

Andre's Questions:
- What are the chances that the Phantom Zone thing will be flying by the Earth @ the exact moment that the bomb explodes? It's come from another galaxy & it just happens to be there right then? I don't buy it.
- What the fuck is the Phantom Zone anyway? For a culture that is supposed to be so advanced, they sure seem willing to impose cruel & unusual punishments.
- When holding really heavy things like helicopters or elevators, why doesn't he grab them from a more central position? I understand that he is strong enough to lift them, but unless he also has some as yet unexplained super-balancing ability, holding the helicopter by 1 of the landing bars (I doubt that's the right term) won't stop the other side from tilting downwards.

My overall take on the films is that the 1st 1 is better than I remembered. Specifically, Gene Hackman is fantastic as Lex Luthor. On the other hand, the 2nd film isn't as good as I remembered. I like the Niagara stuff & the love story, but Zod & company destroying some small town never looks right. It's so obviously a set. I know this complaint is coming from a guy who defends the Star Wars prequals despite their obvious fakeness, but come on.