Volleyball

Freedom of the press (to charge you)

Rupert Murdoch did it. He pushed the big, red button. After months, maybe years of holding his trembling, anxious hand over it (the button's pretty darn big) he shooed his butler out of the room, wiped his furrowed brow of the pooling sweat and pressed downward.

Those who repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past

Everyone complains about Hollywood's reticence to create something new. The film industry has essential been a broken record for the past five years, with nearly every blockbuster having been based in intellectual properties that have already been established for decades.

Weekly Mixup

Have gun, will travel

He holds a counter productively-large gun, eyes in a wrinkled, taut squint with a mouth distracted by a cigarette, a toothpick or just the undeniable urge to contort into an ever-shrinking sneer.

Queens of the Last Arctic Monkeys

As one of the people who first found out about the Arctic Monkeys through Myspace (remember that?) I found their debut album, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not," to be entirely enjoyable for some time, though they'll forever be lumped with the exuberance that everyone approaches new music with when they're just starting to build up their rotation. They were British!

This is probably old, but...

You know how in Family Guy, the brilliant writers will land on one single thing, usually "awkward stare" or "irritating noise" or just maybe "Hey, it's a gay baby.

Back in my day, things were (better/worse)

It turns out that things have actually been worse than you thought they were, after they were apparently slightly better than you remember at an earlier time.

Weekly Mixup

Comedians dying of cancer is funny...right?

Let's talk about Funny People. Note the capitalization, so we're not actually talking about humorous things, of jokes and quips that we find hilarious via our own thought processes.

There's no such thing as mistakes

Every kid, whether it be when they ride their bike right into a shrub, fail to hit a baseball off of a tee or decide that bagel bites belong in the DVD player, is told by their parents that they need to learn from their mistakes.

Only naturally-born U.S. citizens can read this post

Are they gone? Did every single foreign computer user abandon their post and run off to tip over old ladies, or whatever it is non-Americans do?

Who will still be the division leaders in September?

Pam Richter With the MLB midway point past us now, it is time to take a quick glance at the standings and make some predictions in each division.

Spend weeks in your basement playing video games gearing up for this one. I know I will be.

For a while there I really thought there was a betterment in the standards of the movie industry. Obviously there were always exceptions, but the last couple years I've been an advocate for the path Hollywood was taking, producing some pretty good movies on high budgets with big name actors.

One nation, under whoever or whatever the majority in the board of education decides

Kids are often compared to sponges, absorbing everything they see and experience then presumably, scrubbed against the backs of the geriatric or on a crusty plate.

Weekly Mixup

Celebrate with well-deserved fightin' words

To commemorate the 100th post on the blog, as well as pay respects to Walter Cronkite's passing, here's the very first podcast courtesy of the Opinions Blog.

Finish your veggies dear, there are starving robots that would love to eat you

It was reported earlier this week that a military robot, the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR, aren't they cute with their acronyms?) would have the ability to feast upon the remains of dead people.

F&%k it! We'll yell at callers live!

Mommy, keep the Glenn Beck away from me... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGeZQrpZbjI] "KATHY!

The mind says yes, but the eyes say no

Don't get me wrong here, I love Thomas Pynchon and his labrythntine, self-indulgent and completely enthralling prose.

The Ever Expanding Comic Book Film Industry

If you've ever seen some of the old Batman cartoons or that utterly ridiculous rendition with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, you can appreciate the leaps and bounds taken by Marvel and DC Comics over the last few years in the film world. Developed through a sense of actually-decent film making in the Spiderman and X-Men series--at least in comparison to the large budget, non-thought out style of the last few decades--the two comic book titans have started to boast their4 abilities to fund better movies, and it's most obvious in the choice of actors. Alongside a couple serious movies, an Aronofsky film being one of them, Natalie Portman has signed on to do Thor, which is set for release in 2011.