Why Pro-Wrestling is Better Than Other Sports

I thought this was pretty funny, especially considering the scandals the three major US sports are in right now. I haven't really watched Pro-Wrestling for nearly a decade now, but there is definitely some truth to this.

The following list is courtesy of MisterJ.


The Top Ten Reasons Professional Wrestling is Better Than Other Sports

1. Unlike NBA fans, wrestling fans have known for years that the outcomes are predetermined.
2. Unlike the NFL, when wrestlers harm animals, it's all fake.
3. Unlike baseball players, wrestlers KNOW when they are taking steroids.
4. Like NBA referees, WWE referees are bad. But unlike NBA referees, the WWE referees have an excuse (getting hit by metal chairs, etc.).
5. When was the last time David Stern (NBA Commisioner) faked his death? WWE owner Vince McMahon did it two months ago.
6. Unlike Golf and Tennis, a wrestling grand slam is actually possible (this is when a wrestler wins four major titles within the same company: i.e., tag titles, intercontinental, european, world).
7. Unlike Kobe Bryant, wrestlers can switch sides whenever they want, including in the middle of a match.
8. Unlike WNBA players, a large percentage of women wrestlers are decent-to-good looking.
9. Unlike cyclists, wrestlers cheat AND get away with it.
10. Dead guys, masked guys, burned guys, cowboys, leprechauns, fat guys, teachers, savages, giants, rappers, rednecks, and guys that say "DAMN!"

Speaking of crazy

...this could very well be the craziest thing I've ever seen.

Skydiving...

So I'm seriously thinking about going skydiving. From what it looks like, most places charge around $170 and you only have to take a 30 minute class. Anyone been?

There's one place that does it above Zion National Park, another in Vegas, more in Salt Lake, Tooele, and Ogden. As much as I'd love to see scenic Tooele or the ghetto of Ogden from 5000 feet, I'm kind of leaning towards Zion.

SKYDIVE ZION

Anyone have any recommendations? Anybody want to come? Cheeth, aren't you coming back to the states sometime in August? Wanna go skydiving? It'd be funner than naked billiards, I'd wager.

I wrote a book

So I'm a Harry Potter fan. I didn't read my first one until about 4 years ago, but once I did I was hooked. After the fifth book came out I decided to write my own just for fun because I didn't want to wait for the next one to come out. Needless to say, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Two and a half years and about 300 single-spaced Word pages later, I've finally finished. I've worked it out and discovered this is the rough equivalent of writing 32 consecutive senior-theses (really the only thing I can compare it to). I'm kind of proud of it, actually - it's the largest creative project I've ever undertaken. Here's a link if you want to see it:


Harry Potter and the Legacy of the Founders


I should warn you, I was new to writing at the time, so the first half of it is pretty poorly written. All in all, though, it's not half-bad.

And yes, I am fully aware this makes me a geek. I embrace the designation.

Bear Lake trip

We took a week off after the Vegas trip and went up to Bear Lake, whose 85 degree weather seemed frosty compared to the 143 degrees of Las Vegas.

The first week of July is pretty busy for us. The first is our Anniversary, the third is the wife's birthday, the fourth of July is, well, the fourth of July, and the fifth is baby's birthday. Rather than regretting this coincidence, however, we've decided to celebrate it by taking the entire week off and egaging in an orgy of frivolity and revelry we refer to as "Mickel Madness."

This is probably a good time to make sure everyone knows that the word 'orgy' refers to any act of immoderate indulgence, and usually doesn't have sexual connotations. That's the orgy I'm talking about. Sickos.




My step-father has a great sailboat in a slip at Bear Lake. It's a lot of fun.

Not getting much breeze, we hoisted up the 'spinnaker'. Here is what a spinnaker looks like.


The great thing about having two family members with birthdays in the same week is that you can recycle the cake. The great thing about having a one year-old is that they don't even understand the concept of present giving - they just want to play in the bag.

I was standing behind this girl in the pancake line in scenic Paris, Idaho and had to get a picture of her shirt. It says:

"You can watch things happen or you can make things happen. Bears MAKE things happen!"

Did you get that, everyone? Bears make things happen. So what's it gonna be? You just gonna sit there and watch life pass you by, like, I don't know, a sissy badger, or some dork deer? Or, are you gonna get out there, be a bear, and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN?! Which is it?! Which are you GONNA BE?!?

This is the pep talk I imagine this girl's swim coach gives before a big meet at whatever 1A high-school she goes to.

The baby pulled her first act of shoplifting during this trip, nicking this spoon out of the nicest restaurant in Bear Lake while we were there. This is her giving a celebratory suck on said spoon.

Here she is exerting her human dominance over my mom's small rat-dog. I've just realized that about 90% of the pictures we take are of the baby. I never thought I'd become one of those people. Oh well.

After B.L. we came down to Salt Lake and hung out with family for a few days. Here's a trip to Raging Waters, the place that has "waves above the rest".

Since being married, starting a career, and having a kid, I've realized it's good to get to places like this every once in a while just to get the excitement level in my life up for a bit. Not that married, baby, work-life isn't great - it is. It's just that not many adreneline-producing, heart-pumping things happen and going down a steep waterslide somehow makes you feel alive again.

Yes, I am fully aware of how lame that sounds.

That's it for now. There was also a triathlon that I'll leave for another post. I better get back to work.

Remember everyone -- BEARS MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.

That's it - I'm done with the NBA

That's it. I'm done. I'm forsaking the NBA and becoming a college basketball fan.

I've been a big fan of the NBA for a long time now. Despite the recent success of the Jazz, however, I've found myself more and more disillusioned with it, culminating with the Suns-Spurs debacle in the last playoffs. Now it's just been discovered that one of the referees has been manipulating games for the mob.

Outstanding.

Above are a few clips from game 3 of the aforementioned debacle. The sad thing is I'm actually relieved to hear one of the refs was crooked, because it was even scarier to think someone could be that incompetent UNINTENTIONALLY.

Anyways, I needed just one more reason to say good-bye to the NBA, and this is it. Apparently I'm not the only one either. Here's a good column by the SportsGuy:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070722

I'm going to get into college basketball, where the athletes actually care about winning and some vestiges of actual sport still remain.

Oh yeah, and while I'm on the subject of denouncing things, I'd also like to announce that I'm turning my back on CNN.com and making NPR.org my official internet news source. One can handle only so much celebrity gossip and blatant self-promotion passed off as news.

Toodles.

Harry Potter 7

Finished the last HP book last night. It was ok. Not as good as I thought it'd be, but a way better finale than Seinfeld or Matrix Revolutions. That's all I'm going to say.

More Brian Regan

Here's some more. I love this guy. But not in the way you're thinking. In a more...romantic way.

(That joke courtesy of Sidwello)

Going to see Brian Regan

We just go tickets for Brian Regan this August at Thanksgiving Point. I can't wait -- he's been our favorite comedian for a while now.

If you've never heard him, check this clip out.

Putting the "Man" in Human Resources

So, as promised, here is a brief re-cap of my adventures at the SHRM conferences two weeks ago.

First of all, I just need to say that Vegas is incredibly hot in July. I'm not kidding, it was like 127 degrees there. As I walked the 30 feet from the door of the hotel to my car - polo shirt clinging to the sheen of sweat that had spontaneously appeared on my back - I realized that the heat is just one more similarity Vegas shares with Hell.

It was a good time though. The wife and kid came with me, so we stayed at the Hughes Center Marriot. I'm not big on the whole cigarette-smoke filled, women-in-their-50's-in-tight-cocktail-waitress-outfits, hordes-of-elderly-folks-and-Asian-tourists-putting-yet-another-nickel-into-a-slot-machine-like-so-many-laboratory-rats-Casino-scene anyway, so Marriot was a nice change.

SHRM does a number of conferences, one of which is a huge annual gathering where people come from all over the world. Last year it was in D.C. and Colin Powell was the opening speaker. This year it was Lance Armstrong.

He was great. Very inspiring. He also jokes openly about only having one testicle.

Here we are at the aforementioned Marriot. Great pic of a gate and the parking garage.

Here's what the inside of the SHRM annual conference looks like. They said there were 22000 people there. I don't know about that, but I do know that probably 4 out of 5 HR professionals are women. That's why the profession is so wimpy.

The conference was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is a beast of an enormous building. I read somewhere that it has around 2 million square-feet of space in it. Which amounts to over 1800 of my house put together.

If your mission was to make themickel cry, Las Vegas Convention Center, mission accomplished.

This is a gargantuan, hyptnotic, multi-colored cone in a corner of the MGM Grand. I think they were trying to reproduce the CPU from the blockbuster movie Tron. For the two of you who have seen Tron.

Other highlights:

• Great presentations on employee compensation and retention. Basically I learned my job is only going to get harder over the next few years. Much harder. The baby-boomers are retiring and there is a projected worker shortage of 10 million by 2010. Great if you're unemployed, horrible if you're a recruiter.


• The guy who won American Idol a while back sang at the opening - I think his name's Reuben. I actually don't care enough to Google it and find out. I guess this is pretty big if you're into American Idol.


• SWAG. More swag than you could shake a stick at. I actually didn't get much this year, not wanting to have to cart it home.


• We scored three nights at our choice of 4 different quality Vegas hotels for only $150. All we have to do is attend a 2-hour presentation on Marriot Grand-Chateux timeshares. This special is targeted at older, rich couples who have money to burn, so it will be fun to watch their reactions when a not-quite wealthy couple who look like they're 18 walk in.
  
• And, as always, company funded meals, travel, and everything else. I don't take advantage of this as much as most people do, but still enjoy it. Great restaurants around the Hughes Center too.

Oh yeah, and if anyone gets that, "If your mission was to make me cry" comment, they get a fabulous prize. Here's a hint: replace 'themickel' with 'Kordos'.

Exciting New Update

So the grumpy old minister I wrote about earlier just gave me a good fist-shaking as I passed him on my scooter this morning. This is terrific news because after the article in The Spectrum came out I feared his crusade against people going 5 mph over the speed limit had ended. Now he's back in the game, baby!

I'm not kidding - this guy's nuts. It's only a matter of time before he puts a rake through someone's head, then justifies it by comparing it to when God commanded Joshua to wipe out the Philistines because they were sinners. He's that crazy. Anyways, he gave me a good fist-shake, pointed frantically at the speed limit sign and motioned for me to slow down. I was going 27. So I smiled and sped up.

If you hear about my body being found in a shallow desert grave in the next day or two, you'll know what happened.

The Japanese are WAY funnier than we are

So I'm still out of town. Took a week vacation and am not able to get any pics up yet. This is even better though.

Holy cow. If you haven't seen these already, you've got to check them out. These are three clips from Japanese television that show that the Japanese are not only our superiors in electronics, but in humor and in not-being-lameness as well.

Enjoy.

First, the 100 Man Effect

My favorite is the fourth clip where they throw the guy in the air, then disappear. I think it's my favorite because most Japanese businessmen are so stuffy and morose and could definitely use something like this.

And I still have some pent-up anger from getting kekko'd for two years straight...

Silent Library

This one brings up fond memories of playing the batsu game with Searle, Rands, and Miyasaki every morning in Atsugi.

I'll just give you the link since I'm having trouble posting the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcofZqccSQA

Japanese Bathroom Prank

Warning: several butt-shots ensue. Possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Especially when they work the boat into the whole thing.

Japanese Mission Impossible: Ski Resort spa prank

Serious, can you imagine someone trying to do any of these in America? Do you know how many lawsuits would ensue? Let's take the port-o-potty one: First, the poor sap who had his or her arse put on display for the whole world to see would sue. Then, the spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend who is standing by laughing would sue. After that each passerby would sue, claiming emotional trauma. Then the families of the victims would sue. Then Johnny Knocksville would sue, claiming they stole the idea from him. And if it ever aired on TV, a couple thousand more people would sue. America is stupid that way.

Though, to be completely honest -- if I went to a ski resort and ended up careening down the bunny hill in nothing but a loincloth, I'd probably consider getting some money out of it too. Or at least one of those delicious $12.00 ski resort burgers...