Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only known site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Basically, it's all about all that random stuff floating in my head that I find interesting. Which doesn't amount to much. Unless you're strangely fascinated with what's going on in my so-called life. Not that there's anything of interest going on.
I started running again. I stopped running during the winter since my left knee felt stiff after twenty or thirty minutes while going at a relatively brisk pace (at least for me). And then I stopped completely. Normally, I would have started running again after a few weeks, just to let the knee rest, but it kind of extended for quite a long time. And the results have shown. I gained back some of the weight that I lost. Running, it seems, is quite effective when it comes to my weight. I'm not fully back to what I used to do, but I'm getting back. Slowly, as not to screw up the knee again. Now I'm done with the exercise bit of this post.
KU plays Villanova on Friday night. Most of Lawrence, it seems, will probably be watching the game on CBS, as this is, after all, the home of KU, where basketball is kind of like a religion in some respects. Though with better and more regular attendance. Not to slight religion, but KU basketball is very important here. Heck, even the churches in Lawrence, got involved in 2003 with KU in the Final Four.
It should be an interesting game. The last time these two teams met, Villanova gave the Jayhawks a thorough beatdown. Hopefully, this will end differently with KU beating Villanova. I'm guessing that the Hawks will counter the Nova guards (who have been shooting pretty good). Then it will be up the the KU frontcourt of Jackson, Arthur and Kaun/Aldritch to open up the inside. By Saturday morning, I'm thinking that KU makes it to the Elite Eight. Then again, this is March Madness and anything is possible.
Wearing a suit and tie sucks. I hate messing around with making a tie, though I've done it many times before. It never seems to end up straight. It's always crooked or lumpy or too short. And there's making sure your shirt is clean and not too wrinkly, which involves more work than you think necessary. All the buttons are there. The collar is sticking up. Your jacket has lint clinging to it and that has to get brushed off. Your belt is fine, but it seems a little ratty. Does this tie match this suit? Are the shoes in good condition and not scuffed? Do the suit and shoes match? Does everything look OK? And after you get everything in order, you've probably spent way too much time fussing over these things instead of more important stuff like preparing for your speech or how are you going to answer those tricky questions they're going to ask you. And then, when it's all over, you have to take the suit off. Undoing the tie. Taking the shoes off. Cleaning the shirt (quite likely) again when you're done and making sure there isn't a ring around the collar. And if you're not lucky, you have to wear a suit the next day and the next day. The process never ends.
And that's a sampling of random stuff from my head.
That's all for now.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
March Madness
Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only known site (that I know of) on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Basically, this site is all about me, my so-called life, and the random things floating in my head that I find interesting.
I haven't been posting very frequently for a while. Then again, considering the readership numbers, it doesn't seem like very many people are looking at this site. I haven't entered into some kind of boring life (at least not to me). I have some interesting things to talk about. I just can't muster the energy or at least some time to regularly post. So you get the random posts every so often and not really often. Now that's out of the way, I'm going to talk about something else that's more intersting.
It's that time of the year again. March Madness. College hoops all day, and pretty much every day. For most people, this is not something to be totally obsessed about, but I like in Lawrence, Kansas. Home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. For people here, college basketball is well, a part of life. And when March rolls around, basketball fans expect the Jayhawks to be playing in the NCAA Tournament and making their way to another Final Four (and possibly a National Championship).
This year's tournament seems to be filled with many good games and some crazy upsets. How about Davidson beating Georgetown? And Sienna and San Diego State and Villanova making it past the first round? A few games that went into overtime? The last second buzzer beaters? The really close games that should have been blowouts? Duke getting knocked out is something that brings tears of joy to my eyes.
I didn't fill out a bracket this year. Didn't feel like it. I'm just going to enjoy the games without any expectations of losing or winning a sum of money or some other prize.
Thankfully, the Jayhawks have not been part of any last second games. They've won by confortable margins. Though they exhibit, sometimes, moments of basketball idiocy like making stupid shots from long distance, poor ball handling, and other things that you don't expect from a top team. Or at least as often as it's occuring.
Like with UNLV. They had the chance to blow UNLV out of the water, but they got sloppy on defense and with the ball handling. It wasn't until the second half did the Jayhawks put the game out of reach.
The Jayhawks have an excellent chance of making it to the Final Four. Now that Davidson knocked out Georgetown, and their opponent is Villanova, it should be somewhat easy cruising to winning their bracket. However, I do say this with some caution. It's March Madness and anything can happen.
Easter is an odd holiday. This is not meant to be an anti-religious statement, but some things about Easter seem strange. And I have a wandering mind. And I tend to think too much about totally random stuff.
Who came up with the idea of eating ham on Easter? Pork products aren't kosher and therefore, Jesus didn't eat ham. He never said, "Hey, pass me the honey baked ham" during the Jewish Passover. I can understand lamb, as the traditional Passover meal probably had lamb as lamb was more accessible to the Jews at the time. Though there is something unnerving about eating a leg of lamb when you'e celebrating a holiday all about the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
And the Easter Bunny. Where do the colored eggs come from? Is the Easter Bunny like the Cadbury Bunny who magically creates them out of nowhere? Or is there some other explanation?
And how did one get from Jesus dying for your sins and coming back to life all the way to finding colored eggs hidden by a giant Easter Bunny? I seriously doubt that Jesus told his disciples, "In the future, to celebrate my death and resurrection, I want you to have a giant Easter bunny hiding colored eggs. I also want children to find them. And it's double bonus points if you can put candy in those eggs. If you don't, I'm not coming back for a second time." Highly unlikely. Maybe that's why Jesus hasn't come back yet. He's not digging the colored eggs that much or something.
Maybe there is some religious symbolism to the bunny and the eggs. I'm pretty sure there is some kind of symbolism. But if there is, it got lost in all of the commercialization. After all, nobody respects holiday traditions more than a retail store...especially if it gets them cash.
I've now used up enough of your time. So that's all the random stuff in my head at this moment. It's now time for you to do something more interesting or important.
That's all for now.
I haven't been posting very frequently for a while. Then again, considering the readership numbers, it doesn't seem like very many people are looking at this site. I haven't entered into some kind of boring life (at least not to me). I have some interesting things to talk about. I just can't muster the energy or at least some time to regularly post. So you get the random posts every so often and not really often. Now that's out of the way, I'm going to talk about something else that's more intersting.
It's that time of the year again. March Madness. College hoops all day, and pretty much every day. For most people, this is not something to be totally obsessed about, but I like in Lawrence, Kansas. Home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. For people here, college basketball is well, a part of life. And when March rolls around, basketball fans expect the Jayhawks to be playing in the NCAA Tournament and making their way to another Final Four (and possibly a National Championship).
This year's tournament seems to be filled with many good games and some crazy upsets. How about Davidson beating Georgetown? And Sienna and San Diego State and Villanova making it past the first round? A few games that went into overtime? The last second buzzer beaters? The really close games that should have been blowouts? Duke getting knocked out is something that brings tears of joy to my eyes.
I didn't fill out a bracket this year. Didn't feel like it. I'm just going to enjoy the games without any expectations of losing or winning a sum of money or some other prize.
Thankfully, the Jayhawks have not been part of any last second games. They've won by confortable margins. Though they exhibit, sometimes, moments of basketball idiocy like making stupid shots from long distance, poor ball handling, and other things that you don't expect from a top team. Or at least as often as it's occuring.
Like with UNLV. They had the chance to blow UNLV out of the water, but they got sloppy on defense and with the ball handling. It wasn't until the second half did the Jayhawks put the game out of reach.
The Jayhawks have an excellent chance of making it to the Final Four. Now that Davidson knocked out Georgetown, and their opponent is Villanova, it should be somewhat easy cruising to winning their bracket. However, I do say this with some caution. It's March Madness and anything can happen.
Easter is an odd holiday. This is not meant to be an anti-religious statement, but some things about Easter seem strange. And I have a wandering mind. And I tend to think too much about totally random stuff.
Who came up with the idea of eating ham on Easter? Pork products aren't kosher and therefore, Jesus didn't eat ham. He never said, "Hey, pass me the honey baked ham" during the Jewish Passover. I can understand lamb, as the traditional Passover meal probably had lamb as lamb was more accessible to the Jews at the time. Though there is something unnerving about eating a leg of lamb when you'e celebrating a holiday all about the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
And the Easter Bunny. Where do the colored eggs come from? Is the Easter Bunny like the Cadbury Bunny who magically creates them out of nowhere? Or is there some other explanation?
And how did one get from Jesus dying for your sins and coming back to life all the way to finding colored eggs hidden by a giant Easter Bunny? I seriously doubt that Jesus told his disciples, "In the future, to celebrate my death and resurrection, I want you to have a giant Easter bunny hiding colored eggs. I also want children to find them. And it's double bonus points if you can put candy in those eggs. If you don't, I'm not coming back for a second time." Highly unlikely. Maybe that's why Jesus hasn't come back yet. He's not digging the colored eggs that much or something.
Maybe there is some religious symbolism to the bunny and the eggs. I'm pretty sure there is some kind of symbolism. But if there is, it got lost in all of the commercialization. After all, nobody respects holiday traditions more than a retail store...especially if it gets them cash.
I've now used up enough of your time. So that's all the random stuff in my head at this moment. It's now time for you to do something more interesting or important.
That's all for now.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Tourism Commercials
Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only known site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Basically, this blog is all about me and the random thoughts and things floating in my head that I find interesting.
While watching television, I saw some tourism commercials. Mainly one for California and several for the state of Kansas. After seeing the California commercial, I want to go visit California. It seems like a really fun place to visit, if not live in. Sure, there's the big cities filled with pollution, the long commutes to work, and some other serious negatives, but damn, it sounds like a lot of fun.
If you see the commercial, you'll notice that it's very clever. It takes the concept of work and what makes work terrible--overtime, long hours, working on the weekends, etc.--and cleverly twists them around. For example, nobody wants to work on the weekend, right? However, their version of "working on the weekends" involves going to an amusement park. And board meetings involve surfing and skateboarding. Long hours involve being in the outdoors with the family. And to top the deal off, the Governator appears at the end. He's wearing a suit suitable for summer, sitting at a table, eating food, drinking wine, and it's a glorious, sunny day. And the tagline at the end is great. If this sounds like a job for you, then come to California. Now that's a tourism commercial. It's funny, clever, and it shows the best of California. Who wouldn't want to go visit California?
Now compare this to the dreck that is considered a tourism commercial for the state of Kansas. All in all, Kansas isn't such a bad place to live in. It could be worse. Then again, it could be better, but you make the best of what you've got. Kansas is more of a quieter, slower place. It's a little bit country, a little bit metropolitan. Not a lot to work with, but hey, they made South Dakota and Oklahoma sound like interesting places to visit, so why not Kansas? Hell, if the city of Manhattan, Kansas can make their city sound interesting and not some place in the middle of nowhere, then surely the state of Kansas can do the same.
What did the State of Kansas consider a good commercial? A bunch of pictures of wide open prairies, some sunflowers, some windmills, and a lot of empty skies. And a tacky, kind of lame country/folk song that would make Peter, Paul, and Mary proud. Not so great in luring in tourists from California or anywhere outside the Midwest. Then again, I doubt people from the Midwest would want to spend time in Kansas after seeing that commercial. They already have the flat spaces and empty skies that populate Kansas.
I mean, they could have done something more exciting. I don't know. Show some KU basketball. Clips of K-State or KU football (think Orange Bowl). Some exciting clips from the Kansas Speedway. Some images of the cities that portray a little cosmopolitan, a little small town(nice ones, please). I don't know, maybe people walking down the street with shopping bags. A park scene. Then add in a limited amount of the folksy images of sunflowers and prairies and nature. You don't need to pound that image of stereotypical Kansas, especially if you don't want to portray Kansas as that flat state in the middle of nowhere. And change the music to something more...well...modern. The fiddle and guitar routine is a little stale. And the vocal yelps and whoops don't help either. At least in my opinion. More importantly, change the damn slogan. "As big as you think" is corny. And it's ambiguous. It can be interpreted in a positive or negative way. If that's the best they could come up with, then that was a waste of money.
That would be a much more exciting and vastly superior commercial. It give a more balanced picture of Kansas. One that would appeal to people a bit more. If you want shopping, some city life, some small town charm, or the great outdoors, then Kansas is your place. And this idea for a commercial only took me less than a minute to think up. No need for consultants or anybody else.
And the older commercials that talk about historical figures? Stupid as well.
As much as I find Eisenhower to be a great military leader, the commercial was dumb. Yes, you too can be a military leader who liberated Europe and became President, even if you lived in some small town nobody has ever heard of. But you have to come from Kansas to get those qualities. "Kansas, as big as you think." No, that was stupid. The concept was good, but the execution stunk. If you're talking about Eisenhower, you have to show something more than a boy in a cornfield. You need to show Eisenhower leading the troops. You need something visceral. Not some boy in a cornfield and some Eddie Albert sounding dude doing the voiceover. That's just lame. And a waste of money. I'm thinking that a lot of other states can take clamin in making Presidents. Not just Kansas.
What would have been better? Talk about Eisenhower and how he saved Europe from the Nazis and then became President. Then say something like "He came from Kansas. See what made him a hero." Forget the "As big as you think." It just detracts from the commercial.
And the Amelia Earhart commercial? Again, good concept, bad execution. What screwed up the commercial was the question at the end. I guess it was supposed to be rhetorical and the answer was supposed to be along the lines of "Earhart was a great pilot and pioneer; Kansas builds that kind of character." When I saw the commercial, I started to laugh. Um, didn't they read up the history books? Amelia Earhart, though a pioneer in female aviation, went missing over the Pacific Ocean. She left behind important communication and navigation instruments for some odd and amazingly idiotic reasons. If you're going to fly over a relatively empty ocean like the Pacific, you need communication and navigation instruments, so you don't get lost and crash and die. That says a lot about a person from Kansas. You could interpret that question and come up with a decidedly negative answer: "Yeah, Kansans are stupid idiots who leave behind important stuff to survive. Don't trust them with anything important, like your life." That's a great impression. "Kansas, as big as you think."
I don't care if the commercials wins awards. If nobody's visiting and you're winning awards, then what's the damn use for the awards? It's the tourism revenues that really matter.
Oh well. Kansas still has a reason to keep the roads maintained every year. And it's not for the tourism that's staying in Kansas. It's so that the vacationers driving through Kansas won't have any flat tires while they go somewhere else in the United States. Like California or Florida.
That's all for now.
While watching television, I saw some tourism commercials. Mainly one for California and several for the state of Kansas. After seeing the California commercial, I want to go visit California. It seems like a really fun place to visit, if not live in. Sure, there's the big cities filled with pollution, the long commutes to work, and some other serious negatives, but damn, it sounds like a lot of fun.
If you see the commercial, you'll notice that it's very clever. It takes the concept of work and what makes work terrible--overtime, long hours, working on the weekends, etc.--and cleverly twists them around. For example, nobody wants to work on the weekend, right? However, their version of "working on the weekends" involves going to an amusement park. And board meetings involve surfing and skateboarding. Long hours involve being in the outdoors with the family. And to top the deal off, the Governator appears at the end. He's wearing a suit suitable for summer, sitting at a table, eating food, drinking wine, and it's a glorious, sunny day. And the tagline at the end is great. If this sounds like a job for you, then come to California. Now that's a tourism commercial. It's funny, clever, and it shows the best of California. Who wouldn't want to go visit California?
Now compare this to the dreck that is considered a tourism commercial for the state of Kansas. All in all, Kansas isn't such a bad place to live in. It could be worse. Then again, it could be better, but you make the best of what you've got. Kansas is more of a quieter, slower place. It's a little bit country, a little bit metropolitan. Not a lot to work with, but hey, they made South Dakota and Oklahoma sound like interesting places to visit, so why not Kansas? Hell, if the city of Manhattan, Kansas can make their city sound interesting and not some place in the middle of nowhere, then surely the state of Kansas can do the same.
What did the State of Kansas consider a good commercial? A bunch of pictures of wide open prairies, some sunflowers, some windmills, and a lot of empty skies. And a tacky, kind of lame country/folk song that would make Peter, Paul, and Mary proud. Not so great in luring in tourists from California or anywhere outside the Midwest. Then again, I doubt people from the Midwest would want to spend time in Kansas after seeing that commercial. They already have the flat spaces and empty skies that populate Kansas.
I mean, they could have done something more exciting. I don't know. Show some KU basketball. Clips of K-State or KU football (think Orange Bowl). Some exciting clips from the Kansas Speedway. Some images of the cities that portray a little cosmopolitan, a little small town(nice ones, please). I don't know, maybe people walking down the street with shopping bags. A park scene. Then add in a limited amount of the folksy images of sunflowers and prairies and nature. You don't need to pound that image of stereotypical Kansas, especially if you don't want to portray Kansas as that flat state in the middle of nowhere. And change the music to something more...well...modern. The fiddle and guitar routine is a little stale. And the vocal yelps and whoops don't help either. At least in my opinion. More importantly, change the damn slogan. "As big as you think" is corny. And it's ambiguous. It can be interpreted in a positive or negative way. If that's the best they could come up with, then that was a waste of money.
That would be a much more exciting and vastly superior commercial. It give a more balanced picture of Kansas. One that would appeal to people a bit more. If you want shopping, some city life, some small town charm, or the great outdoors, then Kansas is your place. And this idea for a commercial only took me less than a minute to think up. No need for consultants or anybody else.
And the older commercials that talk about historical figures? Stupid as well.
As much as I find Eisenhower to be a great military leader, the commercial was dumb. Yes, you too can be a military leader who liberated Europe and became President, even if you lived in some small town nobody has ever heard of. But you have to come from Kansas to get those qualities. "Kansas, as big as you think." No, that was stupid. The concept was good, but the execution stunk. If you're talking about Eisenhower, you have to show something more than a boy in a cornfield. You need to show Eisenhower leading the troops. You need something visceral. Not some boy in a cornfield and some Eddie Albert sounding dude doing the voiceover. That's just lame. And a waste of money. I'm thinking that a lot of other states can take clamin in making Presidents. Not just Kansas.
What would have been better? Talk about Eisenhower and how he saved Europe from the Nazis and then became President. Then say something like "He came from Kansas. See what made him a hero." Forget the "As big as you think." It just detracts from the commercial.
And the Amelia Earhart commercial? Again, good concept, bad execution. What screwed up the commercial was the question at the end. I guess it was supposed to be rhetorical and the answer was supposed to be along the lines of "Earhart was a great pilot and pioneer; Kansas builds that kind of character." When I saw the commercial, I started to laugh. Um, didn't they read up the history books? Amelia Earhart, though a pioneer in female aviation, went missing over the Pacific Ocean. She left behind important communication and navigation instruments for some odd and amazingly idiotic reasons. If you're going to fly over a relatively empty ocean like the Pacific, you need communication and navigation instruments, so you don't get lost and crash and die. That says a lot about a person from Kansas. You could interpret that question and come up with a decidedly negative answer: "Yeah, Kansans are stupid idiots who leave behind important stuff to survive. Don't trust them with anything important, like your life." That's a great impression. "Kansas, as big as you think."
I don't care if the commercials wins awards. If nobody's visiting and you're winning awards, then what's the damn use for the awards? It's the tourism revenues that really matter.
Oh well. Kansas still has a reason to keep the roads maintained every year. And it's not for the tourism that's staying in Kansas. It's so that the vacationers driving through Kansas won't have any flat tires while they go somewhere else in the United States. Like California or Florida.
That's all for now.
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