I always promised some of my friends that if I ever went public with my blog, that I\’d give them a little free advertising. So here goes:

For the best cup of coffee in Madison, head over to Indie Coffee on Regent Street and say hi to JJ and Barrett. Get yourself a waffle and a cup of coffee and mooch off their wireless internet.

In fact, they also have live shows by national acts there from time to time, and they\’re usually free. There\’s a Portland, Oregon band named Horse Feathers that I had in my Top 5 CDs of the year list last year, and they\’re going to be at Indie this Thursday night at 8. I\’m fired up for the show, and it\’s free-ninety nine.

So come on down, enjoy some coffee and tunes, and know that you\’re sticking it to Halliburton in the process.

Also, until now I\’ve been afraid to say anything, but I noticed that you\’ve been putting on a little weight. Fortunately for you, I have the perfect remedy – grab yourself a Piladio video from my former co-worker Valerie, who left our office on a mission to give you rock hard abs. It\’s a mix of pilates and cardio, and it guarantees that you will never look like me (I have offered to be the \”before\” model in her next commercial).

For a preview, click here – and be prepared to drop a few pounds just by watching the video.

And finally, a buddy of mine told me about Lala.com, which is a service that allows you to trade CDs via mail with people across the country. If you have CDs piling up that you never listen to, you can trade them for CDs that you want for $1.75 per disc (75 cents of that is postage).

Basically, you go on line and list the CDs you want to get rid of. If someone has requested one of them, you ship it to them in the prepaid envelopes they give you and get credit for one CD. Then, when someone has a disc you want, they ship it to you. Pretty simple, and you can\’t beat the price.

So there you go – the economy\’s humming along, so you have the money to spend. What else are you going to spend it on – going to see a movie about having sex with horses?

(An irrefutable argument – I should have gone to law school.)

If you were questioning the value of the new Sundance Theater here in Madison, a new movie showing there should put those concerns to rest. According to the synopsis of the movie \”Zoo,\” it is \”a look at the life of a Seattle man who died as a result of an unusual encounter with a horse.\”

Ummm….that \”unusual\” encounter with a horse happens to be him having sex with the horse. I\’ve had many \”unusal\” encounters with women, and sadly few of them ended with sex (they usually end with her calling the Dairy Queen manager to get me out of the store). I suppose sex with a horse isn\’t unusual… if you happen to be another horse. However, there\’s not much change of horses going to this movie, seeing as how they refuse to pay $4.50 for popcorn.

Oh yeah, and it\’s got a guy banging a horse.

Final thought: Did he have to buy the horse dinner? Oats and an apple is pretty cheap. \”Is that a carrot in your pocket?\”

I was too busy drinking on Saturday night to express my feelings about the state of the Brewers\’ season, so one of my good friends did so for me:

Mark the date and time. Saturday, June 9, 2007. 10:16 pm. The Milwaukee Brewers are mentally destroyed and their playoff hopes are dashed. Yeah, yeah, the Cubs lost too and we\’re still five games up and we play in baseball\’s worst division. Nope, its over. This is a mental nut-punch from Mike Tyson wearing brass knuckles. Wouldn\’t be surprised if the franchise never wins another game.

I hope I have this email rubbed in my face three months from now as the Brewers are wrapping up a division title and Prince is clearing space on his mantle for an MVP trophy, but I\’m terrified that tonight was one of those crucial games that will haunt this team; probably forever.

I don\’t even know if there\’s really a joke here, but this video is instructive…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwgvfp3jlvc]

This kid seems to be the most depressed masturbator ever. It looks like he\’s thinking about 9-11 while he\’s strangling the ostrich. And couldn\’t the mom spring for a magazine, as long as she\’s that open minded about the whole deal?

Yet another reason for teenage boys to lock themselves in the bathroom with hand sanitizer:

Instant hand sanitizers have grown in popularity, but there may be reason to keep some of them away from your kids. In a 27 News Parenting Project Medical Alert, there have been recent cases where children have gotten sick from ingesting hand sanitizer. The problem is, many popular brands have very high levels of alcohol…some more than 60-percent which translates to 120 proof.

Is that why after I wash my son\’s hands, he orders a pizza and starts calling all the one year old girls in the neighborhood?

I actually feel sorry for Lindsay Lohan now – it\’s not that she goes out and gets bombed and crashes her car on purpose, it\’s just that she has really dirty hands.

The other day, a friend of mine sent me this video. I\’ll give you a couple minutes to watch as much as you can.

Okay, all done?

Yes, that is the new Avril Lavigne video for her song \”Girlfriend.\” I found this all disturbing on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that my friend is an Avril Lavigne fan. (In fact, see my previous posts for proof that Canada is secretly taking over our country.)

First of all, from what I could tell by looking her up, Avril Lavigne is 23 years old. In this video, however, she looks like she could be 15. I feel like after watching it, I am now going to have to report my new address to the Department of Corrections every time I move.

But what\’s really odd about it is how it reflects the new ethos among American teenage girls. This makes me seem really old, but I actually remember the days where boys were the ones that actually did the chasing and the girls were the ones who showed some sort of discretion in picking who to \”date\” (if that term still even exists).

Back in my high school years, it was the days of girls wearing big sweaters and stirrup pants. Modesty actually was still considered somewhat of a virtue. The drill was pretty well set: I asked girls out, and they said no. Girls as aggressors didn\’t really happen. It was the natural balance of the universe. (I am, of course, blaming the fact that I could never get a date on cultural factors, rather than the fact that I was a zitty geek. In fact, I asked the same girl to the homecoming dance for four straight years – she said no the first three, then finally relented our senior year.)

This even leads to a broader point about \”female empowerment,\” even if it is at the high school level. Why does \”feminism\” usually mean \”women being as boorish as men?\” If we\’re truly after equality between the sexes, why does that necessarily mean we need to accept women doing all the obnoxious stuff men do? Couldn\’t we also attain some level of egalitarianism by expecting better behavior by men?

It just seems that if we\’re looking to level the playing field, we should be expecting more of people, not less. I don\’t know of anybody who would look at the problems of the world and decide that what we need is more people acting like frat guys.

And…. scene.

Clip 1:

It\’s Business Time

H/T: DD

Clip 2:

Possibly the funniest fight scene ever recorded:

H/T: Sports Guy

For those of you that use newsreaders, I\’ve changed my feed. You can now access it at:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/atomictrousers

Otherwise, just click on the feed icon on the right side of the page.

I\’m not even sure what this all means, or why I\’m doing it.

One thing struck me about the National Spelling Bee last night – there were three Canadian spellers in the finals. Who let all these immigrants into our spelling bee? Isn’t it the NATIONAL spelling bee? Are these kids from Canada willing to spell words that our American kinds aren’t?

According to the Washington Post:

The 80th annual bee began Wednesday with nearly 300 students traveling from across the country; some also came from Europe, Guam, Jamaica, American Samoa and New Zealand. Three finalists were from Canada.

First of all, kids from Canada on average are smarter merely because Paris Hilton doesn’t live in their country. That raises the Canadian national IQ by about 10 points per person. Secondly, Canada is secretly plotting to take over America\’s most sacred institutions. You think it’s just coincidence that Steve Nash won two straight MVP awards? If we don’t fight them now, your kids will be speaking Canadian.

On the other hand, this influx of immigrant spellers could provide Scripps-Howard with a valuable marketing opportunity if they play their cards right. They could set it up like the old WWF, where the Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik come on and insult Americans before they do their spelling. Can you imagine the tension when the kid from Al-Qaeda stands up, spells “quixotic,” and wishes death to America before he settles back into his seat? It would be the greatest TV show ever.

And as long as we’re on the topic of spelling bees, and since everything is always about me, I thought I\’d relay my spelling bee story. Back in 5th grade, I worked my tail off to excel in spelling bees. I won my class, school, city, and county spelling bees, and went to the state bee in Richmond, Virginia. (I punctuated my school bee victory by thrusting my arms in the air and falling to the floor, like I had just won the Tour de France.)

At the state bee, I worked my way into the top 10. If you made it into the top three, you got to go to the national bee (the one on TV last night.) I stood up to spell the word “proctor,” only the guy pronouncing the words had an accent, so I couldn’t totally understand. I even asked him to repeat it a couple times. So I spelled the word “poctor,” not hearing the “r” in his pronounciation. Then, I got dinged.

I was so mad, I took off the cardboard number around by neck, ripped it in half, and threw it on the stage. (If I really were smart, I would have lit it on fire.) I stormed off the stage and out of the auditorium. The next day, there was a picture of me in the Richmond newspaper in my happier times, before I was rudely forced out of the competition. No mention of my meltdown.

Needless to say, my parents were aghast. I think they covered their faces before slinking out of the auditorium. But I had missed my one chance to be a nerd on national television. I may have even been able to meet Jessica Alba – had she been born yet.

So I guess you could say I was the Bad Boy of Virginia Spelling Bees. Kind of like the Dennis Rodman of nerds. Had I gone on to the nationals, I likely would have gone on stage with a cigarette and a flask of Wild Turkey.

Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel features an article about how the Brewers are trying to make inroads with their female fan base by… offering more Brewer-related women’s clothing. (A male friend of mine suggested they could make more inroads with men by featuring Caitlin Suess more prominently – something I wouldn\’t have noticed, of course, since I am married.)

Some professor of “women buying sports clothes” or something is quoted:

\”They know women are just as much a fan as men are . . . ,\” Reamy said. \”Women are demanding this type of look, and they want it to be a more feminine look.\”

First of all, let’s dispel this myth that women as a whole are equal in intensity to male fans. There, of course, are some women that are crazy Brewer and Packer fans. But for the most part, women go to Brewer games to drink and socialize. In fact, women are a large reason teams are building new stadiums – they are trying to attract people who aren’t all that interested in watching the game by offering more off-field options in the stadium. Actual baseball fans were fine with sitting in County Stadium and watching the game.

Furthermore, this idea of women as equal sports fans to men is contradicted higher up in the same article:

“But perhaps the best reason to pitch to women is having an exciting team that\’s drawing national attention – especially a young team populated with attractive single men.”

So wait – I thought women were these big Brewer fans: but they go to games to ogle J.J. Hardy’s butt? I consider myself a die-hard Brewer fan, but I honestly haven’t ever gone to a game in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Bill Hall’s undulating cheeks.

My research on the \”hotness\” of the Brewers led me to the Channel 6 \”Hottie of the Week\” contest, which once featured J.J. Hardy. It seems I may be underestimating the physical allure of the Brewers\’ soon-to-be-All Star shortstop. (If I were unscrupulous, I would make a joke about how a lot of ladies wouldn\’t mind seeing Hardy go \”deep into the hole,\” but my impeccable morals won\’t allow me to peddle such filth.)

Of course, now that I think about it, I might actually prefer watching the Brewers play the rest of the season naked than watching Derrick Turnbow pitch a single more inning.