Sad isn’t it?

Anyways, I used to come to this blog with fresh, new ideas. I’d let my mand expand and be shown through my writing, to the pleasure of some actual people. Most of which were just my friends, but that’s not important.

As 2008 comes to a close and a new year begins, I am now saying goodbye to this blog. Forever. I’m not saying I will never write again, and I’m not saying I’ll never write online (or in blog-format) ever again, but as of now, The Blender is now dead.

On a side note, Happy Chanukkah.

When I was younger and I used to go to Costco, I would really get lost, both figuratively and literally. But I didn’t care. There were enough things; books, computers, toy cars etc, in there to distract me for a week. So with only an hour or so to get lost in this Costco universe, I had to make my time count. And as usual, my journey would end with a hot dog, fries, coke (actaully usually root beer,) and a chocolate soft-serve ice cream.

I’ve gotten the exact same things to eat there for over ten years, so how have “things changed” at all then? Well, in the years since I was last there, I’ve changed dramatically as a person. My character is still pretty much the same, but little details have changed. For one thing, I’m a bit more a mature. No, seriously. I may still get a little hyper sometimes, but the usual wandering around aimlessly has toned down.

So basically, my ability to get distracted by a large chain store has been lowered considerably. Also, in the past few years, I’ve become more of an adult. I have a job and facial hair, two things I didn’t have a few years ago. When I was younger, the electronics department of Costco (and really, of any store,) was one of my major indulgences. Now that I work at an electronic store (Future Shop,) other electronic stores don’t really pique my itnerest as much. Oh and the staff discount helps a bit also.

But still, when I first walked into Costco today, I naturally gravitated towards the electronics department. Even though I work at Future Shop, the sight of 42-inch LCD TVs in there shocked me. I remember a few years ago when a 27-inch tube was considered a big TV, ansd just saying that makes me feel so old.

When I was younger, I would walk out of Costco with something like a book, a movie, and a model car as my haul for the day. Now? A razor and body wash. It’s funny that something so simple as a stupid trip to Costco helped me realize how much times have changed.

Oh yeah, I wrote this entire post in three separate “notes” on my phone. Thank G-d for T9.

But really, the title is telling the truth. Football, and all its intricacies, is wonderful.

I know the way I’m writing about this may seem a bit creepy, but I don’t care. I care about three things in my life: Football, Heroes, and my girlfriend. In that order.

(Just kidding…)

Anyways, the great thing about football is there’s so many ways the average fan can enjoy the sport. There’s the NFL, NCAA, CFL, and even the AFL for people who are that crazy. (Note: I’m actually not one of those people.) There’s TV, Radio, Internet (GameCast and things like that, where every single play is document along with constantly updated stats,) and so much more.

(Sounds like I’m trying to pitch something to you eh? I’m not… but read on.)

The single greatest thing about football though: fantasy football. Fantasy sports, in which people draft real-life NFL players onto their “fantasy teams” in a league with either strangers or friends. It’s often played for money, and when the players do well in real life, so do the players in the fantasy league. Now that we got that little intro out of the way, allow me a little paragraph to gloat.

Last year, though I did not finish first in the league, I won the championship, and therefore, most of the pot. My key league move was a mid-season trade that got me Tony Romo, Joseph Addai, Brandon Jacobs, and Kellen Winslow. Forget their performances this year, but last year they really helped in the stretch run.

Anyways, onto this year. I had the fourth pick in a ten-team league, and here’s how I drafted:

I dropped Bush, McCalister, and Chris Perry almost immediately, to pick up a Defense and a kicker (two useless postions which I’ve changed on an almost weekly basis.) I also dropped Eli Manning before the season started. Who did I pick up? When Steven Jackson was banged up and I badly needed a running back, I traded Eddie Royal and Calvin Johnson for Marion Barber. So with a likely win in the semis, I am now headed into the finals with this starting roster: QB Matt Schaub, HB Steve Slaton, HB Steven Jackson, WR Greg Jennings, WR Larry Fitzgerald, WR Andre Johnson, TE Zach Miller, WR Devone Bess as my flex (or Marion Barber, haven’t decided yet,) K John Kasay, and New Orleans D (they’re playing Detroit.)

Basically I’ve got a good chance, nut you can never be too cocky.

By the way sorry for wasting the last few minutes of your life. This was barely a real post. Except maybe the first paragraph. I started this post off expecting to write about how much I love football (oh, I also love Madden, the ultimate [and only] football video game,) and ended up just bragging about my fantasy team, and wasting your precious life. For that I apologize, and I promise will try to step it up in the future. Keep checking back.

Oh and I feel bad for the time I wasted, so here’s a video:

Oh and check yesterday’s post for the video I was talking about but forgot to put in. It’s a collage featuring every song Kanye West has sampled in its original form, as well as a few seconds of how Kanye used it. It’s pretty cool.

In a month, the average man can burn 27,000 calories in a month by simply walking three hours a day. The Beatles wrote/recorded most of the songs from their first album, Please Please Me, in about a month. So surely during a month long absence I must’ve been up to something groundbreaking? Absolutely not. For the past month, I’ve been lazier than a $@&^ing high turtle. That simile did not even make sense. See what an absence from the internet does to you?

Actually that’s a lie. I have not been absent from the internet at all, just this blog, and my other attempts at blogs. (Sorry Yining.) I tried starting a politics blog with my asian friend, and that failed miserably. You’d think that a blog written by two young people, with similar views on the same topic, who are both interested in writing, would take off now? Well you thought wrong. I gave up on it almost right off the bat, and for that I apologize.

I find it kind of funny that my last post was talking about how my writing was going in a different direction, how things would change. How my procrastination days were over, and how the blog was going to be better than before. Funny how I never seem to fllow through on promises like that eh? Anyways, that’s why I’m intentionally not making any promises in this post.

When I have something on my mind, and I want to write about it I will. When I see something interesting on the internet, I’ll post it. When something big happens in the REAL WORLD (the place beyond your computer screen,) I will try to get my thoughts down on paper.

But hey, I can’t make any promises.

Over 300 words already, that’s quite an accomplishment for me. (Barely more than ten words a day if I had spent mt month of absence writing this.) Ok now my sentences are starting to not make sense, so I’ll leave you with a video I found on the web:

It’s a video montage featuring snippets of the original songs that Kanye West has sampled. If you’re a Kanye Fan, then this is pretty cool. If not well, this sucks I guess. Anyways it plays a video of the original song, and then shows how the Kanye sampled it for his specific songs. The more sentences I write, the less sense I make. Shit. It’s like my brain has run out of fuel, actually a common occurence around 2 AM. But here it is:

So that’s it for now, check back often because I MIGHT be writing more. (Notice how I didn’t make any promises?)

Here I am, writing yet ANOTHER post about how I’ll be improving my blogging from now on. Believe it or not, I actually have a pretty busy life. Between work and school, I don’t have much free time to do anything at all. But a blog post really doesn’t take that much time at all. A few minutes and I should be able to whip up a little post, and the very least a paragraph or two.

So that is where I am now. Eexperimenting with Twitter and Digg (google them), trying to feel for myself what it’s like to be a real blogger. And by “real blogger” I mean someone that actually updates semi-regularly. And not just stupid updates about what I’m doing right now, for that I use Twitter. From now on I’ll be trying to actually do the one post per day minumum I’ve promised.

This blog will have more posts, more variety, reviews on movies and music (old and new), commntary on sports and politics, and even comments about the mundane life of a 19-year-old student. Hopefully I’ll actually begin to use this blog not as an escape into the virtual world, but as sort of an addition to my life, something that only makes it better.

Like an extra arm, but less gross.

Originally, motivational posters were used for their actual purposes: motivation. There would be a picture of a hiker, for example, followed by a subtitle like “perseverance” or something like that. Recently, the creation of motivational posters has been turned into a fad. Find a funny picture, enter it into a generator, and text, and you’re done.

So that’s what I did for the last few minutes. Click here for a full collection, and check back later tonight for the election recap.

11:30 – I was actually very moved my John McCain’s concession speech. He said what he needed to say and united the party, choosing his words very wisely. Onto Obama’s acceptance speech…

11:09 – Gonna go watch his acceptance speech. Thanks for visiting The Blender and check back later for more analysis.

11:03 - Obama is now projected to win Washington, Oregon, and California. Game over.

11:00 – OBAMA WINS VIRGINIA!

10:52 – Virginia and Florida still way too close, with Obama leading 51%-49% in both states with almost all (over 75%) precincts accounted for in each.

10:47 – “The fat lady hasn’t sung but she’s got her costume on.” Wow, I love CNN radio.

10:38 – Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Missouri are all insanely close, within 2 or 3 percentage points max. Because of this, even though polls have been closed for hours, no winner can be projected. If Obama wins California, he needs ONE MORE STATE to clinch.

10:25 – McCain has won Mississippi.

10:22 - John McCain has won Texas. Big deal. That’s like throwing a hail-mary pass when you’re down by 35 with a minute to go.

10:21 – McCain aides have been quoted as saying they see “no path to victory based on the results for tonight.” Sucks for him. Obama is virtually guaranteed to win California, so he just needs one more state.

10:08 – Obama has earned another vote from the state of Maine (they don’t have a winner-take-all system.) Eight more…

10:06 - CNN projects that Obama will win Iowa. His real magic number? 215. When he hits that it’ll be recognized by almost everyone that he has one, because he pretty much has California in his pocket.

9:56 – My newly updated predictions, click to enlarge:

9:50 – OBAMA WINS NEW MEXICO! GAME OVER! (Not officially…)

9:44 – The race is pretty much over. California, Oregon, and Washington, which have a combined 73 electoral votes, are all very blue, meaning they will more than likely vote Obama. Though the results for these west coast states won’t come in until later, we know that if and when Obama wins then, he will be merely 3 electoral votes away from the magic number: 270.

If Obama wins just ONE of these remaining states: Nevada, Hawaii, New Mexico, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, in addition to the three west coasters, it’ll be curtains for McCain. And those are all states where either Obama is projected to win, or in a very close race.

9:36 – Obama wins Ohio! Game, set, and match.

9:32 – Obama has leads )albeit small ones,) in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. This could get ugly.

9:24 – McCain won West Virginia.

9:14 - John McCain has won Georgia.

9:09 – So where do we stand right now? Obama has won Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Illinois, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York, for a total of 174 electoral votes.

Meanwhile, McCain has won Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, Wyoming, and North Dakota, for a total of 49 electoral votes.

If Obama wins four of the west coast states he should win (Washington, Oregon, California, and New Mexico), he’ll be just 14 electoral votes away from clinching the presidency. McCain cannot afford to lose Virginia, Florida, or Ohio, or else the election is pretty much going to be official.

9:02 – Rhode Island, Michigan, Wisoncsin, Minnesota, and New York will go for Obama and Wyoming and North Dakota will go for McCain.

9:00 – Alabama will go for John McCain.

8:58 – Most of the Midwest are closing polls in a few minutes, and some big states (New York, Texas, etc,) will officially be awarded (almost 100% likely to be Obama, McCain, respectively.) expect a bunch of announcements soon.

8:55 – Not too much is happening that I haven’t stated already, but Elizabeth Dole, the wife of former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, has lost her bid for election in North Carolina. Can that state swing over to Obama’s side? We’ll see…

8:42 - Obama wins Pennsylvania.

8:41 – 54%-46% for McCain in Virginia with 43% of precincts reporting.

8:31 – Obama wins New Hampshire.

8:25 – Arkansas’ polls close in five minutes. Woo-hoo!

8:22 – McCain is winning 56%-43% in Virginia, with 26% of precincts reporting.

8:19 – Obama has a 54%-46% lead in Florida, with 24% of the precincts reporting. McCain has a 52%-47% lead in Indiana, with 34% of the precincts reporting. Other states are still too close to call, and even these two are still too close.

8:12 – It’s still a bit early to make any more projections, but personally, I project CNN will show the crowd in Chicago (who have gathered in extremely large numbers in anticipation of an Obama victory,) at least 100 more times tonight.

8:05 – Obama has a big lead in Florida, which would be great for his chances. It’s still early though.

8:03 – Barack Obama is now projected to win Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, and Illinois. While McCain is projected to win Tennessee and Oklahoma. This is in addition to the previous projections.

7:58 – John McCain is projected to win South Carolina’s eight electoral votes, despite being down in the current polls.

7:55 – “If John McCain can’t carry Pennsylvania, he’ll have a tough challenge ahead of him.” – Wolf Blitzer. He is so right… if McCain loses it, he’ll need to perform extremely well in the other states, including Florida, where winning by 16 percentage points, 58-42, with 11% of precincts reporting. Please feel free to comment by the way.

7:53 – Polls are closing at 8:00 pm in 15 states, including battlegrounds Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, and Missouri. We should get some detailed results soon.

7:30 – Polls closed in Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Not enough data is available to predict a winner in either of these states.

7:24 – Polls getting set to close in Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina. A projected win for Obama in Ohio would be devastating to McCain’s chances.

7:02 – Polls close in those six states. CNN projects Obama will win Vermont and McCain will win Kentucky (no surprise here.)

6:47 – A number of states, including Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Vermont, end polling at 7pm. Stay tuned. These results could be big…

6:45 – Check out the “pages” at the top of the blog for various election material.

But because today, (well probably, tomorrow or even later,) a new president will be elected, choosing a new president for the next four years, I figured I needed something.

Sometime today, before polls being to close (around 7) I will submit my last election preview. In addition to that, I will have a live updated post, stating and discussing each result as it comes in. You can go to my blog, and keep refreshing every few minutes for brand new updates.

Enjoy.

So what motivated me to make the switch, not to WordPress, but to a real blogger instead of an occasional one? My friends (everytime I say that I feel like John McCain.) Every time they posted more often than me I began to feel inadeaute. With them writing more, I felt I should to, in an effort to “compete” with them. So with that I’ve begun searching for new gimmicks, updated the overall look of the blog, and then the huge switch over to WordPress.

Once I figured out how to make the permanent switch (meaning, importing all my old Blogspot posts so readers would not have to click there to read them,) I knew I was on my way to becoming a better blogger. With the “search” feature, readers can now search for any topic that interests them (Obama, NFL, etc,) and find out if I’ve ever written a post about their desired topic.

Also, I’m beginning to take advantage of WordPress’ “pages” feature. With this new layout, the “pages” I write will be at the top of the screen, just above the banner, which I will customize shortly. This will enable me to write new, daily (or semi-daily,) updates. Some “pages” I’ll have, if you don’t see them already, are; links of the day, photo of the day, video of the day, and more. I just haven’t thought of everything yet.

So if you like what you’ve been reading, keep checking abck as I update it with more than jsut posts, and explore so you can take full advantage (also check the “What’s New” page often, because that’s where I’ll post my updates.

Stay tuned.

So I hit up Google immediately and started searching online. It was Sunday night, and I needed something that would arrive 100% before Halloween, tomorrow night. Not wanting to take the risk, I tried searching for some costume stores in Montreal. A few seem to have Barack Obama masks in, but no reservations could be made. With no time to shlep all the way to Lasalle (there’s a store called “Giggles” there, that guaranteed they had it,) I asked my friend to go buy me one on his trip to Giggles. He agreed, and I forgot about it for two days, until i got the text message: they’re sold out.

So I panicked, except, not really. While I would’ve loved to be Obama for Halloween, I realized it was not the end of the world. I would probabaly never wear the mask again after the night (actually, that’s a lie,) and $35 is a lot on jsut a mask, especially when that’s the same price of the party. A mask or an all-you-can-drink ticket… hm, tough decision. Actually, ididn’t get a chance to make that decision at all because of my idea’s apparently extreme popularity amongst Canadians who have no vote.

So I started thinking about what I could be; Curious George? Nah, don’t have time to paint my body. A streaker? Nah, no trenchcoat. Marty McFly? Nah, don’t have that kick-ass red vest. I started thinking about other costumes, mainly ripping ideas from my favourite movies. William Miller from almost famous? Nah, hair’s not long enough and wouldn’t be recognizable anyways. What about Forrest Gump? I like the idea, but you need that beige-ish suit to complete it. Oh well.

So now, hours before Halloween, I’m still thinking of a costume I can believe in. I’m writing this post as a request for suggestions, hopefully you, my readers, will see a man in need and help me out. Thank you.