Spring is Here...

Annually, on February 2nd, the undeniable meteorologist of the animal kingdom, Punksatony Phil, emerges from his hole in the ground and forecasts the coming of spring. That’s right, to millions of Americans, the fact that whether a fucking groundhog sees his shadow or not actually determines their meteorological future and alters their lifestyle choices. Seriously, I’ve heard of people not going on vacation because Big Phil saw his shadow. Good job guys, way to up the learning curve.

By the way, that whole process doesn’t even make sense… So legend says, “If Punksatony Phil sees his shadow, he gets scared back underground, and we have two more weeks of winter.” Or something, I dunno, don’t quote me on that. But, seriously… If he saw his shadow, wouldn’t that mean the sun was out, and thus Spring is on its way? The whole process is flawed, but that isn’t why I write to you today. Nay, I write to inform you of the true weatherman of the order rodentia; the squirrel.

That’s right, fuck Punksatony Phil; that pudgy bastard... If you want to know spring’s around the corner, turn to your bushy tailed, arboreal allies. Why, just today, I walked out my front door and saw two squirrels absolutely humping to the max on the tree in my front yard, and that, my friends, is how I know spring is here. Squirrels know what’s up… They definitely plan ahead. These guys spend months hording acorns so they can make it through the winter, there’s NO WAY they’re going to blow their proverbial load--well, okay, maybe not so proverbial--and have a litter of offspring when it’s still winter out. I’m not sure exactly how long a squirrel pregnancy cycle lasts, but I guarantee that spring comes whenever that is from today.

Yeah, that’s right, fuck Groundhog’s Day, fuck Punksatony Phil, and most of all, fuck Bill Murray. It’s not about a hypoglycemic rat seeing his shadow, it’s about squirrels getting their freak on. Pass the word, and let’s put an end to this ridiculous holiday… Although, I always did think that it was an awesome excuse to drink. But, then again, what isn’t?


Is his thumb in that rat's ass? I think it is! That guy is waaaay too close to that rodent!

Pass da Valentine from de Left Hand Side.

Pass de Valentine from da Left Hand Side…

Like a diaper clad ninja, Cupid has once again snuck up on us and heralded in another Valentine’s Day. Not that ninjas generally herald in Valentine’s Days, or do any heralding at all really, I just meant that Valentine’s Day kind of came out of no where this year. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a girlfriend that’s reminded me every day since Christmas that, “Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!” Or maybe it’s just because this entire year is flying by in a weird haze of boozing and folding T-shirts. Either way, I feel like I should take a minute to talk to you all about Valentine’s Day and how utterly irritating it is. (As is the custom amongst bloggers.)

I hate Valentine’s Day for two separate, but equally annoying, reasons… Neither of which is what you assume I’m going to say. I could really care less about being single on the most romantic holiday of the year*. I also don’t care that Hallmark’s stock will go up eleven points based on tomorrow’s last minute shoppers alone. I DO, however, care about how annoying everyone else in America gets about these two facts.

Seriously, there is not a single Valentine’s Day that can come and go without some jackass telling me it’s a, “Hallmark Holiday,” and how they invented it just to sell greeting cards during the non-Christmas season. I mean, they don’t want you to know this, but Hallmark actually did invent a time machine, went back to the fourteenth century, and offered Geoffrey Chaucer a twelve thousand gold bullion endorsement deal to include the first ever Valentine’s Day reference in his pseudo-literate love poem, Parlement of Foules. Seriously, shut up… You don’t have to prove how fucking punk rock you are by quoting the same anti-corporate bullshit that we hear every year.

In fact, a Hallmark greeting-card might just be the only place that will ever publish that mediocre, coffeehouse, beat neck poetry that you carry around with you in that oh so indie black and white speckled notebook. So, you might not want to run them out of business with those neon-yellow, anti-corporation flyers that you ironically made at Kinko’s. They didn’t invent Valentine’s Day. End of story. They did, however, invent Leukemia in a dastardly ploy to bolster the sales of “Get Well Soon” cards, but that’s a different story all together.

Secondly, attention single girls and emo kids… Stop crying about being single on Valentine’s Day. You are not any more alone than you are every other day of the year. Sure, society flaunting its collective romantic success in your face might make that microwavable soup-for-one taste a little less sweet, but it’s not that big of a deal… Use the holiday to your advantage. Undoubtedly there will be other lonely people freaking out about being alone on Cupid’s birthday too, and I hear that there’s these places called bars that serve this stuff called alcohol. Go, drink, and take advantage.

Personally, I found a “Fuck Love” Valentine’s Day party… Which, although sounding inherently cheesey, is boasting $2 shots of Dewars and $1.50 PBR’s. So, hooray for lonely people marketing ploys! Anyone who wants to come get wasted, hit me up…

If not, be safe and remember, it’s not that big of a deal. Don’t contribute to Valentine’s Day’s epic battle with Christmas for holiday supremacy in the domain of suicide numbers.


* Arguably, Thanksgiving might be the most romantically skewed holiday, because, well… Let’s face it, fat guys and gravy equates to a venerable supernova of romance.

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.

The Malort Report.

As this week heralded in temperatures of above eight degrees to the greater Chicago land area, the thick layer of frost that has kept the Ruckus Maximus production center frozen to the core has been melted, and bloggatry can once again commence for your viewing pleasure. In other words, I've ceased my recent lazy streak and have decided to assault the keyboard with a volatile barrage of alcohol, ruckus, and five syllable words. But, seriously... It's been so cold, that no good bands have came to Chicago, nor has anything interesting occurred outside of me hiding indoors with five jackets on, heating up whiskey in the microwave in a vain attempt to stay warm--certainly nothing that you want to read about! As hermitesque as that may sound, and as boring as it actually is, I do have one story for you all. Wait, let me scratch that... It's not so much a story as it is a preface to a ridiculous story that will spawn from this New Years. That's right my Las Vegian friends, this December 31st I will be introducing you all to my new alcoholic friend, Malort.

Malort is an alcohol whose corporate slogan boasts, "For Two Fisted Drinkers." I thought, "Yes... finally a liquor that understands me!" So, I decided to do some research and found out that Malort is an oppressive juggernaut that has been feared across all of Chicago for the past seven generations. I'd heard it described as, "Nail polish remover mixed with Robotussin, because nail polish remover isn't thick enough." Needless to say, I was intrigued... And once I found out that The Motel Bar, in downtown Chicago, offers shots of Malort for twenty-five cents, I decided that it was time to try out this sinister beverage for myself. By the way, Miller High Life bottles are two dollars at the Motel Bar, so, five dollars gets you two beers and four shots... Or, umm, one beer and twelve shots. Which one do I recommend? Both.

Sitting at the bar, a lone shot glass resting in front of me,I knew it was time for me to meet my destiny, and with that thought, I did my generic courage building ritual, said goodbye to my loved ones, and consumed the mythically evil shot. To be honest, when Malort first hit my tongue, I was both shocked and surprised. I mean, I went in expecting the worst; this shit is not only legendary, but only costs a quarter--not exactly a recipe for a quality beverage... But when all was said and done, I actually kind of liked it. The obvious question aroused by my findings is whether or not Malort is, in fact, "good" or if I just, in fact, have a "drinking problem."

We'll leave that answer up to you... But, as a testimonial towards how evil this breed of booze actually is, this is the only picture of it Google could find.



So, in colclusion, I look forward to this New Years' Eve, where you will all be introduced to my latest creation: The Malort and PBR Bomb. A hoppish concoction that could quite possibily leave you paralyzed with bitter-beer face for the next fifteen years of your life.

Salute!

Also, go buy the Swan Lake album, Beast Moans, and listen to nothing but it for an entire week. I did, and I feel I'm a better man because of it.

Also, also, I heart you all!