There’s something about killers we are drawn to, serial killers in particular.  For whatever reason; our bourgeois thirst for the macabre, our innate voyeurism, or the search to understand the darkness inside ourselves; we take special note of them.  Bundy, Gacy, Gein, Dahmer, and the Zodiac killer, to only name a few.  These are only […]

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I love being entertained, there’s no doubt about it.  I watch television or a movie nearly every day and I have an X-Box 360 and love playing my favorite games.  Bioshock anyone?  But I also read, I go biking and I hang out with my friends.  Yet something does not have to be entertaining for […]

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Imagine knowing when you were going to die.  I think it would make life too stressful, because there is the greatest deadline possible looming and so much stuff to try and fit in.  It would detract from our ability to sit back, to relax, to simply waste a day just being alive.  Kurt Vonnegut says […]

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I’m still not sure if I’m attracted to girls with short hair or not.  There were a couple of girls in college who had short hair that I liked, but it was still somewhat long compared to a standard male haircut.  However, I have a mad crush on Rachel Maddow and I can’t help it […]

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I am not a particular fan of scary movies.  I watched The Shining, but that’s something like a cultural necessity to live in America and seem smart.  I’ve actually seen a lot of scary movies, I just seldom enjoy them.  Maybe I like to suffer or maybe I just forget how much I hate being […]

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One can only feel sympathy for the Travoltas, who lost their beloved son Jett in a seizure.
They were Scientologists. Was this church related dogma to blame for the child’s failure to use the seizure medicine that could have saved his life?
So when I read that the Travoltas had refused to go along with their son’s […]

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As the holidays are finally over, I am finally able to start getting back into the swing of things after two weeks of being away from blogging and all things Peer Abuse. Now, I am finally able to catch up and boy and figured a continuation of the Rock of Love Charm School scandal involving […]

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I don’t speak Chinese.  I speak an abysmally small amount of German after studying it for five years.  I know enough Spanish to ask for the bathroom and food, but not to understand the response.  In other words, it’s easy to tell I’m middle class from the Midwest.  But your children don’t have to end […]

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There is no doubt that the timeless story of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has been rewritten and rehashed dozens of times over throughout the years. But what if Dickens was a subscriber to Rush Limbaugh’s newsletter and had a penchant for Leslie Nielson films.  Surely you remember Airplane and The Naked Gun, and yes […]

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I was firmly against an auto bailout of any part of the Big Three.  I am a Democrat and certainly have no problem with government owning parts of any business, I simply think that the terrible management of those companies makes them unfit to survive.  Detroit is a mess because of bad oversight and bad […]

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Recently, I read an article in Wired about the prevalence of hard science in television shows.  Obviously, that publication is very much nerd-centric and loves to focus on the geekier parts of life, yet this article was fascinating because of how it talked about all of these popular shows and the science in them.  Some […]

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I couldn’t be king of anything.  I have too fine of a guilt reflex to get to use the powers that come with this job and it’s just about impossible to really change the lives of people within that system.  It still might be fun, mainly because I wouldn’t be a peasant.  Now there’s a […]

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I love sports stadiums.  My Minnesota Twins play in the Metrodome, which has got to be the worst baseball stadium of all time.  It’s like a concrete toilet, which the Twins also have a penchant to play along with as well.  I’ve been to some Green Bay Packers games and Lambeau is the best stadium […]

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Fairy tales are fascinating.  Stories are great, but it takes special staying power to become a story that so saturates a popular culture that it is passed on from generation to generation.  They have messages for us now but meant a whole lot more back when they were originally created.  Now there is a whole […]

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I don’t think there’s scientific data to back this up, but I’m sure it’s a common young male nightmare that you have gotten a girl pregnant.  It’s simply a life shattering type of thing, even if her mother is the governor of a state.  It’s adult responsibilities being thrust on someone that is rarely able […]

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What is it that makes a dystopic vision of the future so appealing?  Perhaps we are drawn to them because they are a form of justification for our dislikes.  We think corporations are too large and irresponsible and it turns out that they are destroying the world sixty years from now.  We look down on […]

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The power of nighttime soap drama shows is incredible.  It was Desperate Housewives which convinced television networks to begin spending money on scripted shows again after the juggernaut which was Survivor.  It was Dawson’s Creek that made the WB into such a power.  It was the continued power of One Tree Hill and the new […]

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I thoroughly enjoy the study of religions and gods.  I majored in theology and some of my favorite classes were spent looking at the Old Testament.  What the prophets spoke about and the attributes they focused on were heavily linked to what was happening in their world at that time.  Other religions are also the […]

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I think technology is fantastic and I go out of my way to keep up on technological news.  I read Wired.com every day and whatever other science articles that jump out at me.  It’s just nice to be able to understand new technology, to be able to talk about harnessing tidal energy or create hydroelectricity […]

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I was born far too late to be able to regularly enjoy those swashbuckling serial television shows.  There were pirates and swordplay and adventures and other things like that.  I prefer a good pirate book – Robert Louis Stevenson being a perennial favorite of mine.  Keira Knightly is the only reason I’ve been watching any […]

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My award for the most absurd article of the week is the one in the Washington Post defending Carolyn Kennedy’s weak resume by insisting she is like the rest of ordinary women who cut back on their work to raise children:
the way I see it, if you strip away the glamour, the name and […]

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Imagine waking up one morning and not having a single clue who you were.  Now, not only don’t you know who you are, but you’re waking up in the middle of a forest outside of Seattle and you still don’t have any clue.  Not only that, but you also don’t have a belly button and […]

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Direct-to-video is the absolute kiss of death.  At least, that’s what I used to think.  Any time a series or a sequel goes straight to video and doesn’t even bother with trying to attract a studio audience, that’s usually a sign that few things are perfect in paradise.  My favorite exception is that third cheerleader […]

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I’ve never been in a real fight in my life.  I’ve given a couple of bloody noses and choked some people, but none of it was ever that real.  Problem is, if it ever had to become real, much of what I learned about fighting comes from this show, now on DVD once again.
Starting this […]

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In the real world, good and evil are seldom as easy to describe as just that.  People are both good and bad, our allies both help and harm people and nothing is quite as clear as it sounds it should be.  In times where that can become overwhelming, it’s helpful to sit down to a […]

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“We did have a very nice, you know, conversation, and obviously I’m not gonna talk about that…she was very encouraging, and that was, you know, that was nice because she’s a huge inspiration of mine. I’ve been a Democrat all my life. I am, you know, a Democrat through and through. I’ve always voted Democratic. […]

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Just released in time with their new Dark Horse album is Nickelback’s Live at Sturgis 2006 DVD.  (Sturgis is in South Dakota and is home to the world’s largest motorcycle events.)  I would rank this concert DVD up high with the best.  The energy, high definition photography, 5.1 audio, pyrotechnics, and performance were all balanced […]

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I remember a skit from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in which a Jewish comedian was going through a calendar of events in December and referred to December 25 as “National Jews go to the movies day.”   Assuming that the adage that there is truth in jest holds true, the idea of a movie about […]

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I know it’s become a little crazy, especially since he lost his sanity during both a Matt Lauer interview and an Oprah appearance, but I still think Tom Cruise and his voodoo magic are incredible.  I think he’s a complete nutjob and all sorts of other unimpressive things, but I have always liked him as […]

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I don’t understand why the Japanese love fighting robots so much.  Even their gundam suits, or whatever they’re called, just seems so strange to me.  Ninjas are one thing and anime is another.  Giant radioactive monsters are awesome, so it’s not like they’re all just crazy or anything.  The whole fascination with making something and […]

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