What is “Something I’m going to regret faster than I would have expected,” Alex?

The answer: Legally changing my name to the ridiculous nickname of a television character.

Although Castle has recently supplanted Chuck as my favorite still-running tv show, I am still really enjoying this season of the nerd/spy dramedy. Chuck as both a show and a character had been getting on my nerves ever since the most recent, and probably final, death of Agent Superman (whose actual name I have aleady forgotten).

His abs I remember just fine.

Luckily, the show somehow turned around for me over the last several episodes, and now I’m firmly back on Team Chuck. Even at its worst, Chuck is a smart and funny show that turns its minuscule CGI budget (I guess they’re not too flush after paying all the cool guest stars like Richard Chamberlain, Summer Glau [reunited with her Firefly co-star, the delusional Adam Baldwin], and Nicole’s Future Husband Isaiah Mustafa) into a selling point, instead of a reason for despair.

I guess I’m  not the only one whose life is enriched by Chuck. I watch it for the lulz, and the former Douglas Allen Smith, Jr. watches it for…motivation? I say former because this man’s legal name is now Captain Awesome, which is the nickname of Chuck’s ridiculously good-looking doctor brother-in-law.

Another shirtless/towel pic, merely for comparison's sake. You're welcome, comparison.

I get why this show is so cool and Captain Awesome in particular is pretty special, but why would anybody do this? The real-life Mr. Awesome’s new signature, which is a smiley face bracketed by arrows, has been rejected by his bank because it’s too easy to forge. I can’t even imagine what other stupid consequences he may have to face because of his new name. I think that the judge who granted the name change was smart to allow this; sometimes you have to do really stupid things in order to learn valuable lessons. Unless the world is nicer than I suspect it to be, I give this name change 5 years, tops.

I’m never going to be able to move and/or have children

I really love living in the New York metro area, but it’s so expensive here. I have lived in much cheaper places and loved it (Montreal, how I miss thee!), but this is always going to be my home. I would love to be able to live somewhere else for a while, not only to give my wallet a bit of a break, but also because I like to experience new people and places. The South seems like a worthwhile region to consider, since it’s cheap and I have a lot of relatives there, but it’s stories like this one that make me believe that maybe I’m better off staying here and paying the Northeast Premium.

Why would a middle school arrange the student elections so that only students of certain races can hold office? What student government positions are available to those children who are neither white nor black? How could anybody think that this would be okay? This is why people still find it okay to make jokes about Mississippi.

As somebody on Gawker pointed out, it’s good to see that the school practices what it preaches (scroll down)…

Smoking baby 2.0: Now with 100% more beer

How does a 3 year old, even one with a possible traumatic brain injury, just take up smoking and drinking? And who just gives a kid that age cigarettes on credit? Bonkers.

For comparison’s sake: Smoking baby 1.0

There’s not enough WTF??? in the world

Say what you will about the retardedness of the photos that people post to social networking sites, but I’m pretty sure that these photos are why the universe made sure Facebook didn’t come into being until this century.

Again?

I never tire of asking what is wrong with people, and as usual, the dawning of a new day just brings me new people to despise and pity. The culprits this time? Some stupid yahoos in West Bend, Wisconsin, who think that censorship, law suits, and book-burning (literally) are perfectly cromulent responses to books in the Young Adult section that they find inappropriate. No rational person is going to argue that every book in a library is appropriate for every person who who may walk into that library. And I’m all for parents having a say over what media their children consume (until those kids are over 18 or paying their own way in life). But instead of these people just telling their own children not to read certain books, which would be well within their rights as parents, they want to label and move books and prevent other people’s children from having access to them, too.

Instead of being ashamed of themselves for being so fearful and hiding their intolerance from the world, such people wear it proudly like a badge and want to get more people to join their crusade. Ginny Maziarka is one of the spokespeople for the efforts to censor the library’s materials and amend its policies for labeling young adult material. She seems to be the leader of those in West Bend who are trying to prevent other people’s children from reading things that their own parents may not find objectionable, and runs the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries web site.

This is what I don’t get about so many issues that people object to; if you don’t like it, don’t do it/watch it/listen to it/eat it, etc. Why should I have to live according to what you believe? And who gets to say what is appropriate anyway? I mean, I find those Purity Ball things highly suspect, but I would never force grown men to stop encouraging their daughters to wear prom dresses, don pseudo-wedding bands, and pledge their virginity to their fathers. Because that’s not creepy at all.

Thankfully, Ms. Maziarka does not speak for the entire town, and there is a reasonable response to that site, in the form of Sleepless in West Bend. The library is for everybody (even weirdos)! There are a lot of things in the library that I kind of give people the side-eye for even wanting to look at, but that doesn’t lessen my support for those items to stay in the library. I’m not sure how I missed out on hearing about this sooner, since Gawker covered it over a month ago.