Blogger Payola

Recently the concept of blog shilling has been in the news. Apparently some bloggers that review products on their sites have been receiving payouts for positive reviews. Under a new rule from the FCC, bloggers that are compensated for their reviews need to make this information clearly and conspicuously available. This whole business of blogger payouts has really taken me by surprise because I have a blog that reviews stuff, and I haven't received one red American cent. Come on H. Beam Piper, I probably gave Fuzzies the best review its had in 30 years. Where is my money?

So after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized, maybe I am not reviewing the right kinds of things. Ski School is a 20 year old movie, And Tuf Voyaging is old enough to rent a car in Korea. Today I am going to review a few products that I recently got my hands on. While I am not getting paid for any of these reviews, I would like this to act as my audition for companies looking for a blogger to shill for them. My specialty is book reviews so lets start there, then move on to a product review.

Book Review:

The Guinea Pig Diaries by is a new book by A.J. Jacobs, the author of Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically. A.J. Jacobs is a writer/editor for Esquire magazine and despite working for "Playboy Without the Tits Magazine", he seems like a pretty decent guy. I have read two of his other books and have thoroughly enjoyed them. The Guinea Pig Diaries is not as good as Know-It-All or The Year of Living Biblically but that doesn't mean it's not a good book. In fact, if I had to describe it, I would call it the ballinest most gangsta book I have read all year.

A.J. is a proponent of what he calls "Participatory Journalism." In this type of Journalism the author takes part in the activity he or she is writing about. In A.J. Jacobs case it takes the form of a series of bizarre experiments. When A.J. wanted to learn about religious peoples mindset, he spent a year trying to follow every single law in the bible. Like a true thug A.J. jumps in feet first and doesn't give a shit about anything.

His books alternate between hilarious, educational and strangely sweet. The Guinea Pig Diaries is different from his previous books because instead of focusing on one Sisyphean task for an entire year, he spends the year on a series of smaller challenges. For one month he outsources every aspect of his life to India. During another month he tries to be the perfect husband, following the every recommendation and command of his wife. In yet another month he tries to live life by the rules of etiquette that George Washington wrote down way back when.

The only thing I was disappointed by was that many of these stories started out as Esquire articles and appear in the book largely unchanged. Why did I just buy a new hardback book when I could have read the articles in "Maxim for Fake Rich People?"

All in all though, The Guinea Pig Diaries is rad to the power of sick. I enjoyed it and I would recommend it to anybody familiar with Jacobs's work. If you are unfamiliar with Jacobs I would recommend reading The Year of Living Biblically 'cause that book is dank as hell and thug as shit.

Product Review:Bigelow Cinnamon Stick Tea is the ballinest most gangsta tea on the planet. This shit is so delicious that when it hits your lips you will swear you just got smacked in the grill by Mike Tyson.

When I drink Bigelow Cinnamon Stick Tea, and then I think about all that bunk ass black tea shit I have been drinking my whole life, I want to demand the hours of my life back.

Iced black tea is an unmistakable force of evil, most likely related to Monsanto or The Builderberg Group. Let me be clear. I am stating with authority that the makers of normal iced tea intentionally released a product that they know causes cancer and possibly miscarriages. The only way to stop the black tea menace is for everybody on earth to immediately switch over to using Bigelow Cinnamon Stick Tea at once.

Bigelow tea makes you irresistible to the ladies, makes you more efficient at work and I guarantee that you will get a promotion while getting a blow job if you drink this tea.

Note to Sponsors: So there you have it potential sponsors. If you like what I'm doing here I will gladly support your products. I am pretty much the awesomest guy ever, and when I talk, people listen. You want me on your side, and I want your sweet sweet money.

Movie Review: Ski School

When in 1991, Moviestore Entertainment (Yes that's really the companies name) announced that they would be basing their next movie on the windows classic video game "Ski Free," they were met with some skepticism. Detractors commented that Video game adaptations were almost always terrible. (reference the Atari game E.T. and the horrible movie made out of it.) More fuel was added to the "Fuck Ski School" fire when it was announced that the movie would be a sports and sex comedy. How could a game with such a serious plot as Ski Free be played up for laughs on the big screen?

Perhaps the genre of Sports and Sex Comedy was not the correct term. I prefer to classify Ski School as an avaunt garde exploration of the limits of film that forgoes all traces of traditional plot or character development.

The film opens with a montage that cuts between slow motion shots of ski stunts and regular motion shots of young revelers at some sort of modern Bacchanalia. Though the film never completely gives up on slow motion, most of the remainder of the film is presented in regular motion.

The film proper starts with a cold open. Expecting us to be able to identify the characters without any sort of introduction. And we can!

The characters in this film all represent archetypes based on those of classical mythology. Many of the characters do not have names, or at least, this reviewer does not recall them being named.

The dark haired dopey looking guy plays the rogue-ish good guy with a checked past. Similar to Han Solo or Robin Hood, he is talented and Capable but undisciplined and not adverse to breaking the law to do what he thinks is right. Most of what he thinks is right seems to be partying and sneaking peaks at girls while they are undressing.

The brown haired good looking guy that always wears all black is the bad guy. He is also talented and capable but he is a douche. He has a hot girlfriend (not named) but shows absolutely no interest in having sex with her.

The other dopey looking guys are the comic relief/side kicks. They are not talented or capable but love partying just as much as the dark haired dopey looking guy. They fill much the same role as Friar Tuck, Little John, C3PO and R2D2. Needless to say their shenanigans are hilarious.

Finally there is the Blond haired good looking guy. He is new to Ski School and is eager to impress people. He has a vast natural talent for skiing and a pure heart. He is the Luke Skywalker of the movie.

Although the plot is made of of a series of vignettes that are loosely related at best, a common thread does seem to occur. The good main characters are are in some sort of skiing competition against the bad character and his team of expert skiers. Although the competition involves skiing proficenctly the main characters prepare for this competition by drinking massive quantities of alcohol and tricking women into taking their clothing off.

Also at one point two of the comic relief good guys hypnotise the third comic relief good guy into thinking he can no longer have sexual intercourse. This clearly hearkens back to the fear of feminine power and castration that provaded so many ancient Greek myths. The character then spends most of the rest of the movie explaining to various women exactly why he will not have sex with them. It is hilarious.

After this point the plot becomes difficult to follow. It is difficult at times to determine if the films plot is progressing in a linear fashion or if it is going out of order similar to Memento.

Also in keeping with the non traditional nature of the films construction the movie seems to keep introducing important characters throughout its entire running time. In a movie that had any sort of character development this would be a problem. But in Ski School a character introduced within the last ten minutes of the film can be just as developed as a character introduced in the first ten seconds.

The film does break with its source material in several areas. Mainly the inclusion of dozens of pairs of naked breasts and the lack of the original "yeti eats you" ending of the game.

Many critics also commented that extending the running time from the original 1.4 minutes to the extended length of slightly more than an hour made the movie unwatchable. I believe that these reviewers were missing the point that many of the events represented in the film were happening simultaneously in 4 dimensional space time. If the film were compressed down to the its linear events I believe that it would only run 10-15 minutes longer than the original game.

All truth be told, the movie does have some flaws. The motivations of the female characters are never quite explained. For example, the female characters are clearly only motivated by sex, but they never explain why they spend so much time hanging out with the grown haired good looking bad guy, who has little to no interest in sex. In fact unlike the Good Guys he never ONCE sexually harasses a woman. I do not know why these poor sex starved women would spend so much time with him. This incongruity really took me out of the movie in any scene featuring the brown haired good looking bad guy and his hot girlfriend. Luckily one of our main characters is up to the challenge of satisfying her carnal urges.

The ending of the film appropriately devolves into madness as the Good Guys and Bad Guys use various wacky methods to try to cheat each other out of victory on the ski slopes. I will not spoil the ending, but it is good. (lets just say that the wacky good guy isn't the only person who gets hypnotised over the course of the film!)

Eventually the film ends but the emotions it stirs up will stick with you for years. Sometimes I like to rate things on a scale of one to five, but I will use a qualitative measure for Ski School. Ski School is Life Altering. This is a paradigm shattering movie that proves that comedies don't have to be funny or even make sense.

holy crap

I am blogging on a train! Technology! I may or may not liveblog every single event in my life from now on

Review: Deals with The Universe.

Hello hello, Warrior here! I recently applied for a job. Like a real deal job.

Actually it kind of fell into my lap. A friend of mine happened to work for a very large and very important Consulting firm. He knew that I am an getting my degree in the Environmental Sciences. So one day I was complaining about not having a (high paying) job and he says "Why don't you apply to (Consulting Firm Name) I will give you an internal referral."

Now for those of you who don't know how this works, lots of corporations have a system in place that allows current employees to endorse new applicants to the HR department. This is called an internal referral. Having an internal referral does not guarantee the applicant will get a job but they do get selected preferentially if it comes down to them and somebody without a referral.

The Warrior was pretty excited about the opportunity. Many of you that know me know that I am a pretty big skeptic. I don't believe in magic, the Lock Ness Monster, or Sarah Jessica Parker. That being said, sometimes I do what I call "Making a Deal with The Universe." For example: I am really bad about staying alert on long car trips. Once when driving between Clemson and NoVa (that's what the cool kids call Northern Virginia... I like it!) I made a deal with The Universe. "Universe" I said, "If you keep me alert, and out from under tractor trailer trucks, I will listen to nothing but heavy metal, all the way down to Clemson and all the way back." And so I did. I listened to CD after CD of face melting riffs, blistering drums, and brutal vocals. Well I stayed awake on that trip, and I made it safely to Clemson and back and here I am today Writing a silly blog that has been re-purposed to talk about basically what ever I want it to. Today I will not be reviewing a book. Instead I will review the latest deal I made with The Universe.

Review: Failure Bowls, Chicken Broth, And Andre Pink.

At first I was pretty unsure of my ability to land a real deal environmental consulting job. But then, in late December I got a phone call from (Consulting Firm Name). They were calling me in for an interview. Needless to say I spent the rest of the day doing the robot. After 24 solid hours of roboting, I got scared. What if I get called into the interview and then screw it up somehow, or just don't interview as well as the other people that are getting interviewed. That's when I made the first part of The Deal. "Universe," I said "If I get this job, I will eat a Jimmy Dean Failure Bowl." For those of you not familiar with the Jimmy Dean Failure Bowl, it is a disgusting mixture of every single breakfast food on the planet, blended into a near liquid form and slurped out of a bowl.

It looks like this:


I should take this time to point out that most of my "Deals with The Universe" operate under the assumption that The Universe enjoys watching humans do eccentric or disgusting things. The Universe also enjoys heavy metal.

After the the first round of interviews I felt really good about the job, but they hadn't officially offered it to me yet. Then I got a second call. "Hey [Warrior]," said (Consulting Firm Name) "We liked you, but we are still considering other people too, and we want to make sure that you know how to eat food without looking like a stupid idiot, hows about you meet us at the office and we do a second round of interviews over a fancy lunch at (Restaurant Close to Consulting Firm Name)." I was psyched but understandable insecure. "Crap," I thought, I still didn't have the job. Well time to up the ante Universe. I made a second deal. If I got the real deal consulting job I would drink two cups of chicken broth strait. I selected my favorite sipping broth.

It looks like this:

The second round of interviews went well, I got to eat some free butternut squash ravioli.

After a few weeks of not hearing anything from (Consulting Firm Name) I got a little worried again. I called HR and attempted to follow up. HR hadn't heard anything. They said that they would contact me again in 2 business days.

Three business days later I get an emails saying I didn't get the job. I emailed the person who had interviewed me, thanking them for my time and wishing them the best of luck with their new hire. Another day passes and I get an Email back saying "Hold everything [Warrior] HR is crazy. They were talking about another job that you didn't get and didn't even know you were applying for." After another day of waiting I got the call. I got the job. I would start March the second, but before I started work I knew I had to make good on my end of The Deal. The Universe got me a job, so I owed it a little horrible food related entertainment.

Now with the back story out of the way, on to the actual reviews.

Jimmy Dean Failure Bowls:

Jimmy Dean makes a product known as the "Breakfast Bowl." Me and the Ladywarrior have always mocked them for their ridiculous nature, naming them Failure Bowls after a Patton Oswald skit about a similar product. The Failure Bowl combines eggs, cheese, bacon and potato into a single bowl friendly mush. It's kind of like the most disappointing omelet you have ever had. It is prepared in the microwave so that you get that weird effect where parts of it are over 9000 degrees and parts of it are still frozen. Also the amount of grease in a Failure Bowl is approximately equal to the amount of grease needed to lubricate a jet engine. Still the combination of eggs, cheese bacon and potatoes is a crowd pleaser. It's not that it necessarily tasted that bad. its just that its a lazy and unnecessary product. Why can't you eat your eggs, cheese bacon and potatoes separately in the form of eggs, bacon and home fries\hash browns. This is a combo that is available at every single restaurant that serves breakfast on the face of the entire planet. This is how a normal person with some dignity eats these foods.

Two Cups of Swanson Chicken Broth:

Hot Chicken Broth is actually quite delicious. It is kind of like chicken noodle soup without all those pesky chickens and noodles. if it did not contain roughly 170% of your daily sodium intake for the day I would drink it more often.

Finally how do you celebrate getting a job with (Consulting Firm Name)? Well I don't know how you celebrate special occasions, but me and the Ladywarrior drink champagne. No, not real champagne. We drink Andre Pink Champagne.

Andre Pink Champagne



It's the only alcoholic beverage that is the exact same color as Barbies convertible. It tastes like sprite with booze in it. It is amazing, it comes in a resealable bottle (no corks here!), and its available for approximately 5 dollars a bottle. I highly recommend Andre Pink Champagne. It gets my highest review yet, 4.5 out of 5 Pterodactyls.

You'll be sayin' wow every time.

Since the dawn of time, mankind has had to endure the moist indignity of spilled soda. No longer my friend, today is the day of the Shamwow. On the 8 day God and the Germans created the Shamwow and God saw that it was good. Many of you are familiar with the Shamwow from its commercials, in which a headset wearing huckster makes outrageous claims about the absorbent nature of this miracle chamois, in the soothing accent of a native Jersean. Today the Ladywarrior and I purchased a set of Shamwows and after rigorous testing I will now give you my honest review.

Review: ShamWow.


The Shamwow is a pretty good absorbent towel-like square of cloth. I am impressed with the size and quantity of Shamwows in one box. We purchased ours at Target and in the box we received 4 "mini" Shamwows and 4 large sized Shamwows. The mini Shamwows are pretty large, in fact they are at least as big as the shamwow seen in the commercials. This may be the only time in history that a product is actually bigger than the commercial presents it to be. In my opinion the commercial makes a few exaggerated claims about the absorbent nature of the Shamwow, specifically the demonstration featuring the cola underneath the carpet. The Shamwow is an excellent chamois but it does not have the near magical abilities displayed in that part of the infomercial. At this point I know what you are thinking, "Warrior, why would you endorse a product that lies in its commercials?" Well, let me tell you. The man in the commercials is named Vince Offer. I will not go into his history, (if you are interested you can read it here.) but basically Mr. Offer uses all of his profits from the Shamwow commercials to fight Scientology. That is something I support. As somebody who grew up in a cult like religion I totally support this New Jersey braggart and his fantastical towels. Also of interest is his commercial for a vegetable chopper named the Slapchop, whose commercial can be viewed here. I would like to mention that the same woman from the testimonial part of the Shamwow commercial is in the slapchop commercial. Man she most love Vince as much as I do.

A new direction for Coverjudge

Hey Guys, this is where I need your help. I have realized that my schedule of working part time, teaching, and being a full time student is not too conducive to my reading of a tremendous amount of silly books. Oh, I read a lot, but I don't think you guys want me to review scientific journal articles. So here is my new proposition to you, I will from now on publish a new article once a week, every Thursday, rain or shine, but it will not always be a new book review. It will however be a review of something. This is a review blog after all. (If you want to read about my daily life then you should read my other blog.) Tell me what you think of this new plan in my comments. I think it is a win win because you get to read more of my witty observations per month, but some of you might feel that it is divulging from the nature of my blog, and I understand that complaint.

-- The Warrior.

A sad day: Defeat for the Warrior.

I must claim defeat. Defeat at the hands of an enemy that I could never have seen coming. Never in all my experience have I encountered, nor even imagined, something so vile as Gatling Three: Border War existed.

When I started this blog I thought I was invincible. Certainly there is no power greater than to anonymously critique others' works through the internet without fear of rebuttal. Is this not what makes our message boards such a potent weapon in the war on artistic expression?

Well I have seen the error of my ways. I have seen that I am not untouchable. For I have seen the face of Jack Slade. An author so terrible that after 6 months of attempted reading I could only make it through about 50 pages of his book. I suspect that Jack Slade is not a real person at all. Perhaps Jack Slade is the name of a secret organization dedicated to the creation of literature so artfully awful that it could potentially be fatal. Perhaps Jack Slade is a complex western novel writing computer program, and someone accidentally left the "unreadable" option box checked. Whatever the truth may be, I give humanity this one word of advice: If alien beings ever make contact with us as a race, please, please, make sure to hide and or destroy all copies of Gatling Three: Border War, before the aliens find it, and know the darkness that lies in mankind's mad ability to create such horrific literature.

Behold the face of true madness: