I have always considered my personal YouTube channel more archival than promotional.

Nevertheless, my channel has spawned a minor hit. “Baseball Revenge,” a short sketch comedy video Jason, and I made with Matt the summer before college, was featured on Yahoo! Sports over the weekend. It’s the first video from my personal YouTube channel to be viewed more than 20,000 times. For that matter, it’s also the first to be viewed more than 2,000 times.

Here is “Baseball Revenge.” It is nine years old:

This is a very mathematical YouTube graph showing video views for this video:

You may not be mathematical enough to understand it. That green spike on the right is the day people viewed the video. The green line to the left of that, which runs along the bottom of the graph, represents the entirety of human history all the way back to November 19, 2008, a dark time during which no one watched the video.

 

I knew the video had been posted somewhere popular when I was notified that the number of comments had more than doubled:

Now there are four comments and even a (hidden) spam comment! Wow. To top it all off, none of the commenters are telling me I should get cancer and die. That’s a refreshing change.

 

There is a neat new feature on YouTube that, if a video has lots of views from a different website, YouTube automatically displays an “As Seen On:” title underneath the video. In this case, underneath this video, it says “As Seen On: sports.yahoo.com.”

Better Than The Machine doesn’t have any official YouTube “As Seen On:” links, although, I’m certain we would if the feature had been implemented way back in Twenty Ought Six.

If you’d like to check out any of the other videos in my archives that I do not believe will ever cross the 200 view threshold, let alone the 20,000 view threshold, mosey on over to my YouTube channel. Or don’t. If I’ve learned anything from this, it is that lethargy is the key to success. Write that down and look at it often, kids. Or don’t.

–Reid.

I know you are all very interested in the findings from my potentially world changing anthropological study because you keep emailing me about it. We’ll get to those findings in just a moment. Like I said before, the results will probably surprise you!

Before we get to that, I’d like to thank all of you for your feedback on the study. Anthropology is really about people, so it goes without saying that all of you people’s emails and messages really had something to do with anthropology. Without people, there would be no anthropology, or so I am lead to believe. Imagine that. Okay, enough imagining, let’s move on.

As you will no doubt recall, I set out to collect data about who would be more impressed by a modern, 80″ flat screen, high definition color television with over 300 cable channels, 100 premium channels, the Playboy Channel, and a terabyte DVR. The two groups studied were an American family from 1950 and a Neanderthal family from 33,000 years ago.

The study revealed fascinating results. The Neanderthal family destroyed the TV before it could even be hooked up in their living room, and then they badly wounded two of my interns in the process of stealing the time machine, which led them straight to the American family in 1950. Those damn interns never listen! How many times do I have to tell them to reset the dates in the time machine?! Needless to say, the unsuspecting Homo sapiens stood little chance for survival against the more warrior like Homo neanderthalensis, who tend to lash out when scared. And boy were they scared!

Despite the deaths of three unpaid interns, and more importantly, the TV setup, I think this study bears repeating. As I covered up the Neanderthals presence in 1950′s America, it really hit me just how much I owe it to mankind to complete this study correctly and reap the millions and millions of dollars I’ll get from the book tour. However, I’m going to have to wait for another grant to begin all over again. I have already sent out my proposals, but have yet to hear back from any accredited universities. Until I get that precious money, you will just have to keep imagining what this study will mean for the human race when it is completed and how extremely wealthy I will be.

Also, if you have any interest in becoming an intern on a potentially world changing anthropological study and don’t mind not getting paid and potentially getting lost in time, please send me your resume.

Excelsior!

–Reid.

I feel superbly crappy, and as a result, I’ve taken a lot of pain pills today. There’s two groups of pain pills I must/can take on a daily basis. If I’m on a pill to fix something in my body, you can bet it also causes pain somewhere else in my body. For every curative pill or two that I take every day, I also take a pain pill in an attempt to balance out the pain causing to pain relieving ratio. Second, I have pain pills that I can take if the normal everyday pain pills aren’t cutting it. Even though I took all of them today, my being remains in a state of crap.

The first day we were in Miami after disembarking, I was diagnosed with Swimmer’s ear and a sinus infection at a CVS Pharmacy “Minute Clinic” ($25 well spent!), who then prescribed me antibiotics that I could get right there and then. The nurse practitioner even called me the next morning to see how I was feeling! How ’bout that?! Remind me again why health care was so hard to fix. CVS seems to have it all figured out–there wasn’t even a wait. I bet this is the future of surgery: “Come in on your lunch break to your friendly and convenient neighborhood CVS to get that gangrenous limb removed for only $25!”

When I got back home to Denver this week, I restarted chemo yet again. Normally for me, there’s a three day pattern of feeling bad, then worse, then better with this stuff. But I’m on day four and am still getting worse. I’m writing on what looks like a blurry laptop monitor while checkerboard-painted walls whiz by as the room spins (which is weird, ’cause I don’t have checkerboard-painted walls). My arm just spasmed! The right side of my brain is in the 396th round of a boxing match with the left side of my brain! My throat is raw!, my eyeballs are hot!, my toes have pins & needles in ‘em!, my knee is out of whack!, my skin itches all over!, I’ve got the creepy crawlies!, I’ve got bone pain!, it feels like the room is spinning the other way now!, I’ve got a cramp in my stomach!, and, WORST OF ALL, none of my complaining seem to be making any difference!!

I couldn’t nap during the day due to the unusual amount of pain. I watched a surprisingly large amount of TV, though, and came up with an important, possibly probably definitely world changing anthropological question:

Who do you think would be more impressed by a modern, 80″ flat screen, high definition color television with over 300 cable channels, 100 premium channels, the Playboy Channel, and a terabyte DVR?

• A. An American family from 1950
• B. A Neanderthal family from 33,000 years ago

Remember, this subjective poll does have one right answer. From the research I’ve looked into on the subject, the answer may just surprise you! Stay tuned!

–Reid.

To my Dear Friend,

I am writing to inform you that I have returned home.

The cruise was delightful. We sailed around the Western Caribbean, to locations both familiar and new. We awoke late in the morning, adventured through the afternoon, and filled our bellies each night with fine cuisine and drink from all over the world. I took much personal pleasure in exploring the second largest barrier reef in the entirety of the world: I swam below the water through many schools of exotic fish and around many ancient volcanic formations. Remarkably, much to my own surprise and glee, I did not fatigue from this extended physical exertion. We stayed in the final port of call for a relaxing wind down in which we were met by several familiar and friendly faces. Thus ended, the journey proved to be quite the successful celebration for our small band, just as intended.

Forgive my ostentatiousness; I do not mean to brag, merely to relate.

How have you been? On my voyage, I met someone that greatly reminded me of you. I dwelt upon this, and deemed it to be an existential sign that I must contact you with utmost haste upon my return. I find, much to my dismay, communication between us has become quite the exception, rather than the expectation it once was. You would have thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience, My Friend, and more than once, I found myself wishing you were by my side. I suppose there is always a next time. I hope you and yours are doing well.

Yours, forever in friendship and folly,

Reid

—————-
Now playing: Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun
via FoxyTunes

How can it be that seeing some of my best friends in the whole wide world–friends that I rarely get to see in person these days–can both make me feel worlds better, and at the same time, fill me with such a great sense of loss?

I have come to the simple conclusion that the world has gone on without me these past few years, and that no matter how I may feel about this, it will probably continue to do so.

Stupid world,

–Reid.

The answer is yes, there is enough to worry about right now, Scientists. So please, if you discover anything else like the recent Chilean earthquake shortening the length of Earth’s days by way of changing Earth’s axis in space, keep it to yourselves until we’re ready to hear it. We can only really focus on one big thing at a time. We’d like to think we’re capable of balancing multiple problems at a time–we really would–but honestly, Scientists, we’re not very good at it.

Thanks,

–Reid.

iSuspect iKnow what this is about…

–Reid.

It came down to a knockoff Wii, a knockoff Guitar Hero setup (with 13 tracks by Fallout Boy!) and this:

Obviously, any product that makes carpet fun deserves recognition. God bless Walgreens.

–Reid.

P.S. I feel like a regular Will Nunziata.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.”

-Edward Albee, American playwright.

Whatever has been infecting my chest for the past week is now evacuating my chest at an alarming rate. I was going to Photoshop a picture of an alien from the movie Alien popping out of someone’s chest saying “I am mucus” to illustrate this point. However, I quickly realized that this was far less funny and far more graphically violent and disturbing than I originally envisioned.

So you can imagine that imagery for yourself as you go to bed tonight. Sweet dreams!

–Reid.

P.S. Tissue Sample.