Since I'm already on the subject of football, let me say something here: I hate black uniforms. I know I've mentioned this in regards to UGA before. But last week, Oregon wore all black uniforms for their game vs Arizona. (Oregon's uniforms had silver wings on the shoulders. I shit you not.) And FSU wore black jerseys in their game against Boston College. "Maybe this all-black thing is getting a little out if hand," I think to myself.

Then I read that FSU was wearing their all black jerseys as a favor to Nike. (Thank you for your honesty, Bobby Bowden.) It's not uncommon to hear athletic programs espouse such PR bullshit as, "we're doing it for the fans," or "black helps us recruit." Clearly, that's not true. They're doing it for Nike. (Nike has uniform contracts with all 3 colorblind schools mentioned above.) So that Nike can sell more jerseys.

While I'd like to call Nike the devil here, I'm not quite that naive. In a capitalist economy, the ultimate power is in the hands of the consumer: if you don't like something, don't buy it and they'll stop selling it. If Nike keeps making black jerseys, it's probably because many someones somewhere are buying them. So my gripe ultimately ends with those fools who would like to wear the jersey of their favorite player, but only if that player's team colors are black. That totally says just about everything about America's obsession of the individual over the team, doesn't it.

And if the people speak, the salesmen listen. I got the new NFL Holiday 2008 catalog in the mail today. Now, in addition to the abysmal pink jerseys ("with sugar glitter on front and back" -- I blame this sort of crap for my perpetual bachelorhood), you can now order "black & white jerseys." Sorry, Nike, but these jerseys are manufactured by Reebok. Which just goes to show you that for every bad idea, there's someone waiting to steal it.

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Today was supposed to be the end of the world. So if you're reading this, we must all be dead.

A lot of furor was made this summer over the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. The LHC is a $6 billion chemistry set designed to replicate the natural collision between sub-atomic particles at near the speed of light in order to substantiate the existence of theoretical particles of matter. Try doing that in your garage!

However, some grizzled curmudgeons have complained that the replication of the natural collision of particles could result in black holes that will rend the Earth atwain! But who ever listens to the town drunk who warns us not to go down to the lake? At least these complainers are smart enough not to make the more logical complaint that Switzerland has built something the size of a city to explore a purely academic scientific pursuit instead of throwing that $6 billion at something more practical, such as clean coal, hydrogen fuel cells, or growing hamburgers on trees. It's the more sensational fear of the apocalypse that grabs headlines, not simple whining about political boondoggles.

This morning, it turns out that sucking sound you hear is really just the implosion of the U.S. economy. Fortunately for all of mankind, the LHC sprung a leak (meaning that it could no longer contain those black-hole spawning particles) and was shut down last month, long before it could reach the tests scheduled for today that would end the world. Those Earth-destroying tests have been rescheduled for next year.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am pleased that we have several more months until an artificial black hole births a rampaging energy being that threatens to destroy the Earth, as depicted in the Sci-Fi Channel documentary The Black Hole. Even though scientist Judd Nelson will no doubt arrive to save the day, I'm already constructing a rocket ship to blast my newborn son to a distant planet where, in comparison to the primitive men that populate that planet and aided by the world's white sun, he will have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

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The same day I discovered how much spam I was receiving (see previous post for details), I watched the 1973 Michael Crichton-written film Westworld in which the attractions in a lavish theme park inexplicably become murderous. (Really, it's exactly the same movie as the 1993 Michael Crichton-written film Jurassic Park but with less explanation for why the attractions are killing people.) Perhaps it's because I had already been looking at numbers that afternoon, but I became captivated by the economics of Westworld.

The park guests attending the theme park Delos (of which Westworld is just one part, like Frontierland or Adventureland at Walt Disney World Resort) each pay $1,000 per day for a week-long visit to the theme park of their imagination. So for a mere $7,000, these guests spend a week surrounded mostly by robots who simulate the lifestyles, behaviors, and mores of inhabitants of the mythical American West. While that may seem expensive for simple park admission, think about it this way: for $7,000 they get to abuse, kill, or sexually molest machines, who for all practical purposes, are human beings. Says one fellow in a promotional video at the beginning of the movie, "I shot six people!" When you look at it that way, the price of admission becomes a bargain when you consider that the costs of the same actions outside of theme parks is likely life in prison or worse.

It's worth noting here that the Grecian island of Delos was once sacred to the ancient Athenian civilization. Besides being the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis -- god and goddess of arts and the hunt, respectively -- Delos was also famed as a location upon which people were forbidden to be born or die. Quite fitting for a theme park populated by robots. And a way better name than Six Flags.

But more to the point, there are approximately 20 guests seen delivered to Delos by hovercraft for their weekly stay. (Apparently, even in 1973, monorails were artifacts. And to be fair, an actual count appears to be 18 people, but I'm rounding up, figuring in Delos' favor that this was an off-week as they appear to have a slightly greater capacity than they are using.) That means that the gross weekly income at Delos was $140,000, or over $7 million per year generated by 1040 guests, assuming there is no "off" season.

Delos is a very large enterprise, consisting of three "worlds," each populated by dozens of unique and technologically-advanced robots, period-accurate buildings and an underground central command and control complex coordinating the entire site's operations. Weekly expenditures for power and maintenance of such amazing facilities and mechanical marvels would have to be staggering, well exceeding $140,000! (Walt Disney World doesn't release operating costs, but they recently bragged that an energy overhaul saved them 100 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. At the average Florida commercial price of 10 cents per kwh, that's a monthly savings of well over $800,000!)

To compare, Walt Disney World, opened in 1971, is a huge operation maintained not by expensive robots but by teenagers dressed as "cast members." Well more than 10 millions visitors pass through the Walt Disney World gates every year, 10,000 times greater attendance than Delos achieves! A well-to-do modern day visitor to Walt Disney World could pay well over $5,000 for park admission, room, and food for a week, all of which are included in the admission price to Delos. Transform that $5,000 in modern cash to 1973 dollars, and you find that it's roughly equivalent to... $1,000. Just think about how much red ink there must be on Delos' books!

While having your rides assassinate all of your guests and staff is certainly bad for business, it's probably a better option than actually letting your guests shoot holes in your rides. I'm certainly no business major, but I'm pretty sure that Business 101 includes the maxim that if you construct one-of-a-kind replicas of famed Western actor Yul Brenner, don't let your customers destroy them for a mere $1,000 a day. After all, also in 1973, the United States Government spent six million dollars upgrading just one man! And that was only 2 legs and an arm!

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While performing some routine maintenance on Wriphe.com last week, I counted that in the past 60 days my email address had received 17,776 junk emails. That's an average of 8,888 per month, more than 296 per day, more than 12 per hour, or more than 1 spam email every five minutes.

That made me a little curious, so I did some research. In the same 5 minute span between my spam emails, 24 Americans died, 40 Americans were born, 62 Americans were in car accidents, the average American heart beat 350 times, the Earth moved 5,584 miles around the Sun, Americans consumed 1,045,624 servings of Coca-Cola, and the United States Federal Government spent approximately $25,655,864 (before any bailouts).

Now, every time I receive a spam email, I have the urge to spend $25 on a glass of Coke.

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The American economy is in shambles, banks are closing, the housing market has crashed, gasoline shortages have strangled travel, and none of the Presidential candidates or their seconds appear appropriately qualified for the job. Making matters worse, actors are on the verge of the second crippling strike on entertainment in as many years, potentially destroying the one industry that traditionally performs well during economic recessions.

The good news? Newnan, Georgia is in the headlines: "Rough Economy Felt at Redneck Gourmet," reports CNN. When a place named Redneck Gourmet is suffering, you know times are tough.

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As I type this, though it is still technically "Opening Day" for the The Dark Knight, the film has already grossed over 18.5 million dollars and is steamrolling its way to the record books. [Update 07/19: It's now officially made $66.4 million, an opening day record. Update 07/20: The weekened still isn't quite over, and it's up to $155.4 million, breaking the all-time opening weekend record set... last year. Who says the economy is in the toilet?] And I still haven't seen it.

There was a time when I would have been first in line for this sort of thing. In fact, I stood in line for Batman in '89 in the opening day crowd while wearing Batman Chucks, a Batman T-shirt, and a Batman baseball cap studded with Batman pins. While I still have all of that stuff, I'm not about to trot it out for a movie anymore.

Am I getting old? Probably. But it's not the years, it's the mileage. More often than not, movies simply aren't providing me with anything worth watching. Should I pay $12 to be bored for two-and-a-half hours? And if experience is defined as "practical knowledge derived through observation" (which it is), I'm sure I picked up a thing or two while suffering through the utterly wretched Batman Begins three years ago.

The many favorable reviews of this latest Batman film laud the moral and philosophical aspects of the story's representation of the Joker and Two-Face as warped reflections of Batman's driven dual-identity. Been there, done that. I distinctly recall having this conversation with friends in high school. And that was most of a decade following the publication of Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which covered this territory while, unlike Christopher Nolan's movies, actually showing us Batman landing punches on his enemies as he managed NOT to kill cops or any other good guys for that matter.

Since I'm on the subject, a few more movie-related gripes:

• You want to explore someone's psyche? The Joker smiles not because he is physically deformed, but be cause he's just crazy enough to think that the sick things he does are funny.
• How can anyone fight crime while squeezed inside a suit like toothpaste in a tube? If Bale is method acting, apparently he's trying to portray a sardine.
• Can we please just stop calling him "Harvey Two-Face"? They're not called "Edward Riddler," "Oswald Penguin," or "Selina Catwoman" (you win this round, Victor Fries!), so let's just let Batman Forever fade away already, okay?
• Scarecrow, Joker, Two-Face all in one movie? Is Batman even in this thing? I guess that's why it's nearly 3 hours long: no direction.
• Batpod? Seriously? If you're just going to feature stupid vehicles, let's see some Whirly Bats.

But even I have to admit that there is good news. There is no Katie Holmes in this movie.

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The world is a fascinating place. Earlier this week, it was reported that an 11-year old boy from Kentucky sold off his worldly possessions (which at his age amounts to what? A skateboard and some video games?) to raise $400 for the Clinton campaign. The story here is not that the child was willing to raise money, but that he was willing to raise money for the Clintons.

Think about it. A child (too young even to see Iron Man without adult supervision) has pledged all of his assets to invest in the political campaign of a candidate that has already passed the point of mathematical elimination from the race (unless the Democratic party loses its senses and ignores the popular vote). He's pledging towards a campaign that has simultaneously decried excessive government spending and unbalanced budgets while running up more than $20 million in campaign debt in the past year (does anyone remember Brewster's Millions?). And, here's the kicker, he's pledging the efforts of his closet-clearing fundraising, all $400, to the campaign for a multi-millionaire.

Who are the parents that would let their child do this? When I was 11, I worked odd jobs to earn enough to buy Optimus Prime. I wasn't concerned with helping Michael Dukakis overcome stupid tank photo-ops.

The boy was quoted by the Associated Press: "I think she can do just like Bill Clinton did in the '90s and we can have a good economy,'' he says. "I think the majority of people around here are struggling due to the economy. And she can get us out of the war.'' When the 1990s ended, this boy was no more than 4 years old. The only war he's familiar with is a card game.

I've long feared that American politics was a play put on for the naive. What's more naive than an 11-year old boy who thinks that Hillary Clinton can end a war? I sure hope that this story is fiction. I'd hate to "think of the children" and be faced with such distressing facts.

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I received my Congressionally-approved $300 of Economic Stimulus yesterday alongside my income tax refund.

I've given a lot of thought about how to spend it. I decided to donate the sum to a presidential candidate's campaign fund.

No, I'm kidding. That'd be throwing my money away. I'm spending it on lottery tickets.

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Two years ago, my father decided that he wanted to start keeping bees. So he invested in a hive, a suit, and a starter swarm. This week, he finally collected his first honey, which he put into those familiar little bear-shaped squeeze bottles.

He gave me a bottle and let me sample it. The locally produced honey does indeed taste fantastic. Then he revealed that after dividing the cost of the enterprise by the number of bottles that he was able to produce, he figures that each bottle was worth about $85.

It doesn't taste that fantastic.

Maybe I'll be able to afford a bottle when costs come down. In about 5 years.

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My mother was cleaning out some old scrapbooks today and I found this ad in an issue of an 1967 The Daily Tar Heel newspaper from North Carolina:

Adjusting for inflation, those shoes should cost me over $50 today. Yet I can buy Nike-produced Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star high-tops for under $40 in local department stores now. That's a pretty good deal, really. Thank you, underaged, third-world sweatshop workers!

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