The 'Stache; Week 2.

Welp, this past Sunday, in miraculous fashion, Rex Grossman crawled out of his hole and saw his shadow… Which, of course, means: Two more weeks of moustache! That’s right, with the Bears’ Superbowl hopes still alive, so too lives on the moustache. Personally, I’m pretty excited that the ‘stache got a two week reprieve; it’s been both an amazing and eye-opening experience sharing my time with it for the past week.

Fist of all, everyone that I know has either told me that my cultivation of the most awesome facial hair ever is either, “The greatest thing they’ve ever seen,” or, “Retarded.” So, I’m not going to claim to be winning over the masses with the hypnotic power of my ‘stache , but it’s definitely entertaining - at least to me.

Secondly, anyone worried about the hygienics behind owning a moustache of your very own, trust me, once it grows in, it automatically becomes the cleanest part of your body. Mine gets dipped into 100+ proof alcohols so often, doctors have performed open-heart surgery on top of it (or some other “ridiculously sterile” analogy.) And the smell? No problem… If you drink a wide enough array of liquors, it’s a venerable potpourri of freshness under your nostrils. Why, just this weekend, some Jager, tequila, whiskey, and PBR combined to create a sort of ivy-vine, wheat grass, pomegranate odor; pleasant to the max.

Finally, your moustache will instantly become the life of any party. Granted, people could give a fuck about you… But your ‘stahce - that guy’s alright. Seriously, if you grow one, all weekend long people will approach you and say, “Hey, Beastie Boys, alright! Sabotage! Yeeaaah!” And once you hit them with a “Cochese” reference, they will, I repeat, they will, freak the fuck out and buy you a drink. It’s great.

As for the accuracy involved in this Sabotage theory, it may actually be a case-to-case scenario, but I’ll let you be the judge.



I dunno… Either way, it’s going to be a ruckus couple of weeks.

In other news, this guy is fucking awesome.

Linguistics Homework.

Linguistics is rad! Wait, Linguistics are rad! Wait, umm, shit!
Anyways, I thought I'd post my linguistics homework that I just finished, because it made me giggle... I'm sure you'll all enjoy it too. (Check out the amazing "Jerry" reference!!!)

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“You are rad.”

Such a simple sentence, but it can mean so much. Let’s apply the five tiered definition of, “language,” and find out why.

Systematic
The sentence contains a subject, a verb, and a predicate, and they all fall in the proper and familiar order that allows us to recognize it at a complete and understandable English sentence.

Conventional
In the English language, words are expected to fall in a particular order, and thus there are systematic rules to keep us from just shouting random gibberish at one another. If the subject, verb, and predicate start getting mixed up and put in an unconventional order, such as, “Rad are you,” people will think you’re weird and trying to talk like Yoda or something. Even if a speaker uses seemingly unconventional words in their speech (such as rad), the other person can rely on verbal and non-verbal signs and cues to decode the intended meaning, so long as the sentence is formed in a conventional manner.

Vocal
Assuming that somebody orally utters the phrase, “You are rad,” at an audible level and that somebody else is standing around to aurally hear it, it qualifies as language.

Signs
“You are rad,” is a sentence that might mystify certain audiences, but relying on cultural signs associated with the English language, they should be able to decode its meaning. For example, even if somebody doesn’t know what the term, “Rad,” means, they should be able to figure out that being referred to as rad is a good thing by the speaker’s accompanying smile and thumbs-up gesture.

Human Beings
The predetermined fact that both the speaker and the audience are both human beings is probably the number one requirement of using audible sound to express meaning. You can tell your dog that it is rad all day long but its self esteem will not be bolstered. Any positive reaction is due to the speaker’s tone of voice, not their specific choice of language.

Mmm, Bears!

I want to sit down and take a moment to share with you some wonderful news. Yes, that’s right, there has been a new addition to the Ruckus household, a bouncing baby boy! Weighing in at 3.5 ounces and comprised mostly of hair and beer foam is my brand new Chicago-style mustache. Mahzeltov.

Why? As if I need a reason for something so awesome… But, for those of you who require explaination and closure in your lives I present: a short essay.

When you hear the name, “Chicago,” your head is immediately filled with several images; Wrigley Field, the Sears Tower, blues guitar, and most predominately, mustaches. In fact, there is no other style of facial hair in the world more synonymous with a city than the mustache is to Chicago. Everybody in the world - nay, the universe - can picture exactly what I mean... No, I’m not talking about a handlebar mustache, or a fu-man-choo, which, although are both awesome, lack the ability to encompass the spirit and truly inspire togetherness in a community like the Chicagoland mustache.

In case you are uninformed and have never read the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Moustaches, the Chicagoland mustache, or Mustacheous Chicagus, is a straight, cropped, and often bushy growth of hair that thrives in the region located between a man’s upper lip and lower nostrils. The Chicagoland mustache is most noteworthy due to its unique ability to act as a breeding ground for various odors and life forms - a distinct manifestation of the excessive Polish sausage residue and over malted beer foam often found in the area.

While the top minds in mustacheology can not agree on this fact, many theorize that these astonishing creatures are capable of forming a symbiotic relationship with their host. In this relationship, the host provides a steady supply of sauerkraut and Old Style, both of which the Chicagoland mustache needs to survive, while the mustache helps filter the host's blood - enabling him to consume massive amounts of cholesterol without suffering fatal cardiac damage. In addition, experts hypothesize that Mustacheous Chicagus' amazing empathic ability actually links it to the host's brain, increasing his ability to coach defensive football to superhuman levels.




For the above reasons, and for no reason at all, I have started growing this amazing and spectacular facial apparatus. May it’s growth and glorious brilliance act as a beacon of unity for our great city, and bring us all together in our quest for the one thing we all yearn for, Superbowl victory. May my ‘stache grow with great vigor and virility until the one and only Chicago Bears win the Superbowl. Mmmmm, Bears!

The Dubba on 60 Minutes.

George W. Bush was on Sixty Minutes tonight, and somehow he didn't come off looking stupid… Of course this arouses the obvious question, has CBS been bought out by Fox News? What's going on? I’m confused.

I don‘t know, maybe it’s not that conservative media has delved its rusted fishhooks of manipulation into the Sixty Minutes empire, maybe it’s just that the process in general is at fault. I mean, watching The W in a live interview is an amazing comedic experience. There’s just so much going on; clichéd phrases borrowed from Sergio Leone movies, facial expressions mirroring several different genus of lower primates, and my personal favorite, his heroic struggle with three syllable words. However, on Sixty Minutes, not so much.

The interview was filmed in advance, edited, and probably prescreened for approval by a White House press staff. And, while I’m sure it’s fun for some people to watch Scott Pelley lob softballs at the president, it just doesn’t create that certain mystique of political entertainment for me. Furthermore, I’m fairly certain that the interview questions are given to the president’s chief of staff beforehand, thoroughly eliminating any chance of the president getting caught off guard by anything. This is undeniably what led to The W looking intelligent, and you know what? I don't really even care if he looks good on national television. I mean, I sort of want the chief executer of our country to look competent - trust me, it's a good thing... What really pisses me off, though, is that it gave him a plethora of opportunities to give us all, “The Look.”

Those of you who know me already know what I’m talking about, but for those of you who don’t, here’s some exposition. Whenever The W says something that he deems particularly clever or feels like he really, really defeated the interviewer in verbal combat, he gets this little grin on his face. A ridiculously devilish grin that makes it seem like there's this big inside joke that I'm not in on or something. Like, after the interview, him and Dick Cheney, and probably Arnold Schwarzenegger, will all get together in a smoking lounge at the lower levels of some clandestine castle and laugh about how stupid they think I am. I can almost imagine exactly how it goes...

Dick:	Good job on Sixty Minutes tonight George, you didn't tell them anything about what's really going on.
Dubba:	Yeah, but I hinted at it reel good... the idiuts didnt even knotice.
Arnold:	Ja, they were too busy sitting on their couches, shoving potato fries into their mouths. Flabby idiots.
Condoleeza Rice:	I know! They didn’t even notice that you slipped a bill through Congress to legalize the conscription of minorities!
Dubba:	Hay, who let you in bitch!

Then the whole thing sort of just breaks down as Arnold starts grabbing and fondling in the general direction of sweet African American hooters and Dick Cheney probably has a heart attack or something because it’s only the second time in his life that he’s ever seen a black person. I don’t know, maybe Bill O’Reily shows up, drops a couple “N-Bombs,” and then later apologizes for it, claiming that he’s never heard that particular word before. I’m not totally sure, it’s all very secretive... All I know is that I want to know what the joke is. Not being “in” of the joke is definitely one of my personal pet peeves; I can not stand it when people don’t have the bravado, or at least the courtesy, to make fun of me to my face. But maybe that’s just me.

To those of you on the West Coast, you can still catch it, those who missed it, you can check out videos and transcripts and such on The Sixty Minute website. Bush fans, you can actually get to see a moment where The W looks prepared, informed, and educated… Although, I’m sure that none of you actually own a computer, or live in a trailer park that has internet access, so I doubt that any of you will even be reading this. For everyone else, here are some of my highlights:

• Bush referring to himself at the “Educator in Chief.” Something that, at first, made me laugh, but then after remembering that it is an actual title and duty assigned to the presidency, made me cry a little.

• The freaked out looks on the president’s face every time he got asked a question about Iran’s future involvement in Iraq.

• When The W said that his friends showed him the Saddam Hussein hanging on the internet, but he couldn’t watch the actual hanging and shut it off before the trap door opened.
  
  The only reason I put this as a highlight is because, I’m pretty sure that the whole viewing party included ten-gallon hats, kegs, and a barbeque. In fact, it was probably a lot like a Brokeback Mountain Oscar-party, except without all the anal. (Well, okay, maybe a little anal.)

• Finally, and perhaps most entertaining, was watching Bush ‘wrassel with the urge to break the fifth plane. Classic entertainment for those of you film-major types.