Lock It Up, Scientists!

Ladies and Gentleman of CERN, crafters of the Large Hadron Collider and altogether geniuses amongst geniuses, my coworker Bobby Ferguson and I have something for you to consider. To steal an idea from Bill Simmons, we're offering our services as CERN's new Vice Presidents of Common Sense. Why do you need these positions filled? I'm glad you asked, scientists.

Regardless of what Stephen Hawking may tell you, Bobby and I are here to tell you that recreating the Big Bang is an absolutely terrible idea. I mean come on guys, wasn't there someone in the room when this idea was brought up that was like "maybe we shouldn't recreate the Big Bang." No? Well, that's why you need us!

If you're not wasting billions of dollars and thousands of hours slamming atoms together and trying to track down the Higgs boson (what is a "God's Particle" anyways?) or to better understand the universe at a fundamental level, you could be solving some of the more pressing matters in the world. Once again, you're lucky Bobby and I are here as we figured out exactly what those things should be.

1) Hangover Proof Alcohol

This is a no-brainer. What is the number one thing that affects people named Bobby Ferguson or David Harper between the ages of 25 and 30? If you didn't answer hangovers, you haven't been paying attention scientists. How this hasn't been a priority for years I really have no idea. This would make the party you throw after you prove that supersymmetry is realized in nature so much more badical. Think about it...CERN rager with Alaskan IPA that doesn't make you feel bad in the morning, all next to a multi-billion dollar supercollider.

There is no way this could go badly.

2) Turning Unhealthy Things into Healthy Things

Let's say I wanted to eat a box of samoas I bought from a Girl Scout earlier today for dinner...what would happen? I'd get (bigger) lovehandles. But what if you focused all of the energy you are using to discover new dimensions on making sure that the things that go into cookies or pizza or Philly Cheesesteaks are actually good for you? Obesity would plummet in America, the utterly realistic dystopia from Wall-E would be averted (not the trash part, the fat part), and I could eat a box of cookies for dinner. This is a win win situation, folks! How is this not on the agenda?

3) Three Words: Zombie Amusement Park

You're scientists, so you're nerds. It's a fact. Bobby and I are nerds, and you know what we talk about? What we'd do in a zombie apocalypse. I'm sure you guys talk about it all the time while smashing atoms together at crazy speeds ("Hey Gunther, what would you use if everyone else in the building turned into a zombie right now?"). Everyone wants this to happen, but you guys are a) in a position to make a zombie strain real and allow us to have a sweet zombie theme park where we can get our real (but contained) zombie apocalypse on  and b) working near something that theoretically could cause a zombie apocalypse. Have you never played Half-Life? We all know how this is going to end. Cut out the middle man and at least make it fun for us.

4) Flying Cars

Before you spent every waking hour messing with a thing that could destroy the world if somebody pressed the wrong button, I'm sure you watched a lot of sci-fi. Come on now, you're scientists. You know what the "sci" part of sci-fi stands for...you guys are drawn to that stuff like moths to light. So you know of Blade Runner and Back to the Future 2. Deckard and Emmett Brown had flying cars - why can't Bobby and I? This is something you should be focusing your time on. Do you know how long I've been waiting to say "where we're going, we don't need roads" and mean it?! Pretty much since birth! In my infancy I knew that flying cars are sweet and recreating the Big Bang was lame.

Address this problem...so sayeth your VP's of Common Sense.

5) Devastatingly Effective Spider Repellant

I know you guys love math, so here are some equations Bobby and I came up with to describe why this needs to happen.

David Harper + spider = little girl

Bobby Ferguson + spider = running away

David Harper and Bobby Ferguson + New CERN branded Spider Slayer 2010 = HAPPY!

You can't fight mathematics, scientists. If you could make a industrial strength liquid that made spiders stay out of people's business, you could fund ten Large Hadron Colliders. I'd be buying that stuff by the gallon. This is just logical - why wouldn't you want more money and a happy world? It's not rocket science guys.

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All in all, I hope you don't brush us off. Bobby and I are serious. Like...The Hurt Locker serious. If you haven't seen that movie, it's pretty damn serious and properly reflects exactly what we think about all of this business. Now let's shape up and get some sweet hangover proof beer at the very least.

Lazy Tuesday (now with links!)

I'm pretty sure they're trying to kill me at work. Okay, perhaps that's a tad on the dramatic side, but my responsibility levels are through the roof and I'm fairly certain that they think I'm some sort of marketing equivalent of Atlas. Between that and being physically beat from a lack of sleep and intense basketball after work with Colver, I don't have the energy to really think something out. There were a number of things I wanted to post about, but due to the lack of energy I'll do another smattering of mini-posts with links to satisfy my horrible, horrible addiction to blogging.

Enjoy!

• Think comics are just for nerds? You know who disagrees? Kobe Bryant. Read this awesome article about what his reading materials were for the trip to Beijing for the Olympics (100 Bullets and Preacher! Good call Kobe.) along with pics for proof. Thanks to blogger "To Infinity and Beyond?" for dropping that knowledge on me.
• CERN lit up the world's largest particle collider - the Large Hadron Collider - in an attempt to discover how atoms are created (amongst other things, such as finding God's particle in the mess). Some skeptics suggest this could be catastrophic to the Earth if things go wrong, as a black hole could potentially open. Clearly scientists are too busy making particle colliders to watch sci-fi, as they haven't thought of the possibilities of zombie breakouts, monsters from other dimensions, or even big glowing fields sucking in all metal and people in the room.
• Portugal. the Man's new album Censored Colors is streaming on their myspace page. In typical P.tM fashion, it's massively different than their other albums but is also really, really good. Congrats on being perpetually surprising and good guys. You represent Alaska well.
• Suck it Kindle! A company called Plastic Logic is working on an e-reader similar to Amazon's Kindle that is 8.5 by 11 (like a standard piece of paper), light weight, flexible, loaded with wi-fi, adobe/office compatibility, and has a battery that lasts days. It pretty much rules, and is looking at release some time in the first half of 2009.
• Proving people really can waste time and money on anything, a group at the Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, England did a study of 36,000 people to figure out if musical tastes have any relation to personality types. Their findings? People who listen to indie rock are creative, but are lazy, unkind, not generous, and have low self esteem. I disagree.
• Michael Caine claims that Johnny Depp is playing the Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing the Penguin in the next Batman movie. I'd love to know how he knows this when Christopher Nolan has yet to start writing a script. Not a huge fan of Depp in that role - it's a pinch obvious and Depp would be more distracting than anything.
• Preacher was sent packing by HBO, as they claimed it "was just too dark and too violent and too controversial." To this I reply with, did they even read the series before optioning it? It's about a reverend powered by the word of god on a road trip with his hitman ex-girlfriend and a vampire to get God to atone for his sins. Yeah. They had to think that was going to be a family show.
• When did James Marsden become so funny? Check out the red band trailer for this new teen comedy Sex Drive to see Marsden really max out on the ridiculousness meter, plus a surprisingly entertaining looking teen comedy surrounding it.