Muttroxia

You might not know that John Mayer rocks. After all, he made his reputation from a solid string of wishy washy nothing songs. On his breakthrough album, Songs for Pussies, every song sounded the exact same. True story: For our first child’s birth, I bought this album so we’d have music to play during the delivery that my wife liked. When it first went on, she gave a big grin and squealed at how thoughtful I was. Five songs in, she suddenly sat up in bed and yelled, “Turn this crap off! Find me something that rocks to distract me from this pain!” I gratefully put on some Aerosmith.

Yet, John Mayer is an absolute monster. If you get a chance to see him live, do it. We saw him a couple months back. The first two songs were exactly what I dreaded, mid-range acoustic ballads. But when those were over, he threw away the acoustic, picked up an electric and went nuts. For the next 90 minutes, he shredded and shredded. The songs are so-so. His voice is boring. His patter is annoying. But boy can he play. Every song featured extended solos that he ripped to pieces. It’s the closest thing to Stevie Ray Vaughn I’ll ever see, with a healthy dose of Clapton thrown in. If he would release those songs, he’d be a rock star instead of a pop star.

Here’s some good acoustic stuff.

Mrs. Muttrox had a conversation with a high school teacher friend of hers that confirmed a pet theory of ours.

Mrs. Muttrox: Do the kids still say “bling”?
Teacher: Not really.
Mrs. Muttrox: I heard something about it on NPR.
Teacher: If they use the word on NPR, the kids aren’t saying it anymore.

To put it another way, any piece of urban slang that I know isn’t actual current urban slang.

Yo, Peace out.

In the New York Times today, there’s fairly prominent links to a video discussion entitled, “Who Can Beat the G.O.P.?: Mark Schmitt of the New America Foundation and Matthew Continetti, above, of the Weekly Standard debate who is more electable, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.” Once again, we see framing in action.

You only see questions about electability for Democrats. Why is this? There are occasional articles about how weak the field of Republicans are, but they are framed a different way, that the GOP hasn’t yet found a candidate they’re in love with. Electability is assumed. This is very odd, since the country is tilting more and more towards the Democrats every month. Every poll for years has shown every important issue going towards the Democrats, and indeed pretty much all the major Democrats beat all the major Republicans in every poll.

Yep, all the Democrats beat all the Republicans. But one name stands out. John Edwards absoultely creams the GOP, and is far and away the best of the Democrats for head to head matchups. So why is there no mention of him? He’s obviously the most electable.

The Muttrox clan is growing, we’re having a third child! Due at the end of May, stay tuned true believers!

(This is for the few of you who don’t know already.)

I’ll come out and say it, ONCE might be the best movie of the year. A little movie from Ireland that nobody saw, including myself, when it first opened in selected theaters this summer. I kept hearing that it got rave reviews from every critic that saw it, but the poster was so non-descript that I never got the motivation to actually get into a theater and see it. Here we are, many months later, and it’s what I call “free movie season” in Los Angeles – meaning that if you’re a member of certain unions or associations, the studios invite you to free screenings of the movies they want nominated for year-end awards like Golden Globes and Oscars in the hopes that they’ll get your votes. Seeing as how your correspondent is a member of the Editors Guild, and also unemployed due to the Writer’s Strike, this is proving to be a particularly packed free movie season.

But back to the story – I see a lot of movies and I’m a harsh critic. Working inside the machine of Hollywood makes me very aware of the tired tricks and regurgitated stories that so often stain our country’s movie screens. I’m not just a harsh critic – I’m a brutal critic. Just ask my fiancée, who suffers through my heavy sighs when movies take a wrong turn. Well, in this weekend’s screening on the 20th Century Fox lot, the only sounds coming from me were sniffles after profoundly emotional moments. ONCE is simply a magnificent little movie. No huge drama, no robots crashing through cityscapes, no murders, rapes, or revenge, just a simple story of a few very real human beings, one of whom makes his living as a street musician on a busy commercial street in Dublin, and the girl he meets one night on the job. Anyone who loves music will love this movie. The acting feels completely real and natural; the story feels completely real; and the music is tremendous. Right after seeing the movie, I went out and got the CD and it’s been playing in my car ever since. Anyone who loves playing the guitar will love this movie. Anyone with a heart in their chest should love this movie. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m just going to say, go see it. If it’s not playing in your area anymore (which is very likely), don’t worry. The DVD is out December 18th.

And if anyone’s interested…
My favorite popcorn movies of 2007 were probably PLANET TERROR and TRANSFORMERS. Yeah, I know TRANSFORMERS was really dumb, but it was also a lot of fun. And SURF’S UP was wicked good too!

How to raise smart kids.

Tunnel baby.

You can buy houses in Detroit for $250. That’s $1 a month. Really.

Learn about the dangers of marijuana from Dewey Cox.

The best lunch ever.

The Bill of Rights under Bush: A Timeline

Let’s think of those in need. The unfairness of Christmas babies.

Christmas beer tree

What is it with Bush and bald guys?

Well, we pulled it out somehow. Baltimore outplayed us on offense and defense and special teams, and somehow we got the W. We were lucky, and luck favors a disciplined low-error team like the Patriots.

The worst point in the game was the Ravens stuffing Brady on 4th-and-1, only to have it called back because a Ravens coach had called a timeout just before the snap. Why are coaches allowed to call timeout? This is a dumb rule. Only players on the field should be allowed to call a timeout. The coach is not on the field, he is not a player, he shouldn’t be allowed to have direct effects on gameplay. Referees should only be looking at the field. It’s hard enough to call the game correctly, and now they are expected to be looking at the coaches to see if they are calling timeout? Even worse, it’s not just the head coach, apparently any old coach can call a “T”. This is a dumb rule, and I hope it’s changed in the offseason.

In the meantime, 12-0 baby!

Yesterday, the pope issued a encyclical which came down pretty hard on atheism.

Atheism may be “understandable” when mankind is confronted with evil and suffering, Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his second encyclical, issued on Friday. But the attempt to banish God, he wrote, “has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice,” whether through Marxist revolution or the science that produced the atomic bomb.

I imagine the original document is much more subtle and sophisticated than the summaries I’ve read. And the article also shows the Pope Benedict has opened up Christianity for self-critique. Nevertheless, his reasoning is way off. The line of thinking seems to be composed of several false dilemnas.

The choice is not simply between belief/goodness and unbelief/evil. I am atheist. As far as I can tell, I’m as moral as the next guy. This is often hard for believers to understand and accept; that atheists can have a code of beliefs that guides them just as strongly as a Bible.

The Pope has failed to distinguish between different kinds of atheists. One kind of atheism actively rejects that God exists. Another kind, more relevant to scientific understanding, merely proclaims it irrelevant to the topic. Science does not actively reject God, it just isn’t part of the field.

The Pope’s example of the atomic bomb is interesting. How is it linked to atheism? Many prominent scientists, including physicists and mathematicians are believers in God. Robert Oppenheimer (“father of the atomic bomb”) quoted Shiva when the bomb was tested, he was aware of the impact of this invention.

And where are all the other inventions that godless science has produced? Where are the mentions of eyeglasses, sanitation, hot water, increased food production, artificial limbs, quality fabrics and weaving, the internet, guitars, recording equipment, vitamins, natal care, automobiles, plastics, satellites, windmills, telecommunications, airplanes, kevlar, velcro, etc. Atomic power fuels most of Europe – the world supports billions more people in relative health and happiness than it could have without all the things that science has given us. If atheism is to be held responsible for all the bad things that science produces, it should be held responsible for the good also.

I was buying a kids mattress yesterday. I took a casual tour of the store to see what the most expensive mattress was. $3599! Holy Belichick, that’s a lot! Me and the two-year old were dumbfounded.

Me: For that kind of money, this thing had better go down on me also!
Him: em.. meh! Scoo-bus! Daddy hide!

Pat Buchanan nails it.

The dollar has plummeted in value, more so in Bush’s term than during any comparable period of U.S. history. Indeed, Bush is presiding over a worldwide abandonment of the American dollar. Is it all Bush’s fault? Nope.
The dollar is plunging because America has been living beyond her means, borrowing $2 billion a day from foreign nations to maintain her standard of living and to sustain the American Imperium.

All six Rocky movies in 5 seconds.

Holy cow. Flying humans.

Meet Sarah Carmen – 200 orgasms every day.

The mathematical basis of rap, or fun with Excel graphing. Just hilarious, for example:

A key endorsement for the presidential race. Chuck Norris!

An amazing wedding dance.

Fantastic trick play in football. Works in college also!

It’s a pleasure to read a David Brooks column and agree with it. He’s absolutely right, immigration and globalization are good things, and the USA is still number one by a long shot. Apart from his bizzare obsession with giving every idea cute names (was there any reason to coin “Dobbsianism”?), Brooks gives a great rundown of the big picture.

Hopefully in a future column he will talk about how globalization can be good for the USA as a whole, but bad for some people in it.

I had my 20th high school reunion this week. Many of the things I’d like to blog about, I can’t, since a lot of the old high school gang reads Muttroxia. I’ll switch to one morbid train of thought, for one of the coldest posts I’ve ever written.

We’ve had four people from my class die, out of approximately 500. That’s an 0.8% death rate, over 20 years. That seems like it’s very low to me, so I tried to figure it out.

I looked at Social Security Administration data. I think if you divide the age=38 survival rate into the age=18 survival rate, that would mean the probability of surviving to 38 given that you had already made it to 18. I get 97.98% survival, or 2% death rate. Much higher than our 0.8%.

The CDC tables look similar, from them I get a number of 2.1%, that looks like a unisex cohort.

So our class is dying off more than 2 times slower than normal. Way to go!

Update: I’m told that the class size was closer to 525, and we have an unconfirmed fifth death. Let’s call it 1%. If anyone wants the list of the deceased, email me privately.