Cru Jones Society

 

This Happy Friday is slightly different in a couple of ways. First of all it’s on a Monday. Second, in addition to a few current news stories we have gone through and picked out some links from past Happy Fridays, either stories that were a big deal in ’08, or stories that we just plain liked. We put this off long enough so let’s get to it.

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One of the biggest stories of the year has been the struggling economy. Happy Friday #15 gave us Mark Cuban’s insight into the stock market meltdown. A couple weeks later Cuban was accused of insider trading, but that’s beside the point.

Happy Friday #16 gave us an interesting take on how the slumping economy can affect the country. Suddenly the U.S. doesn’t seem like the land of opportunity.

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The other huge news story of this past year was the Presidential election. As we all know, Senator John McCain lost. Talking with many people we found they were deterred from voting for McCain because of his running mate, Sarah Palin. Maybe they would have voted differently had McCain chosen someone else. Some one who was willing to go on Leno’s show and read off his list of VP demands. A story we broke in Happy Friday #4.

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Much like the Presidential elections, every four years we experience the Summer Olympics. While we had a large amount of coverage on the games here at CJS, one of our favorite links was to Dave Barry’s recount of the cab ride he took through the host city of Beijing. Still sounds better than the Gypsy cabs of London.

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As we are all aware Paris Hilton is used to many different positions. This is true not only in hotel rooms but also on the ice. It has been brought to our attention that Paris Hilton played ice hockey in high school, that is until she was kicked out. According to accounts in the article she hasn’t changed much since high school.

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There have been a few links from Happy Friday that have caused permanent changes to the Cru Jones Society. The first happened in Happy Friday #9 where Dagger posted an interesting link about the history of items found in a medicine cabinet. This triggered CJS reader flickerbock to refer to Dagger as Baby Gays.

Two other links, from Happy Friday #10 and #20, found their way over to the Ass Sliding section of our site, and became two of our first stops on the internet in the mornings. These two links are Garfield Minus Garfield and Married to the Sea. We enjoy their gentle comedy on a daily basis.

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It’s no secret we enjoy sports. From Brett Favre being a dumb redneck to Chris Young being a total bad ass, Happy Friday has included its fair share of sports links. There’s also a personal favorite about the Mountain West Conference (fitting now since the bowl games are going on, and our beloved Rammies won). Or Ringolsby taking a look back at the Rockies of ’08 (they’ll do it in ’09 now that they brought in so many players from the A’s). And of course we had to embrace a story about a million-dollar athlete dumb enough to shoot himself in the leg.

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“There’s always next season.” This is a phrase every sports fan has come to embrace and mutter after the point the current season is fucked. No other city is looking forward to next season more than Seattle. In addition to their basketball team being taken away from them, the Mariners we dead last in the AL, the Seahawks were a joke, and the Washington Huskies were only slightly better than the Detroit Lions. So if the rain wasn’t depressing enough at least you have the local teams.

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This is just spectacular. This is the new model of what the modern family man should be. Kyle, we salute you.

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What would an end of the year retrospective be without a tribute to those who passed away during the past year? Before we get all sappy we’ll just give you this link and say thank you to everything the fallen have given us, and that we will let ‘em know we’re there, Mr. Newman.

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Perhaps you remember these lovely ladies and their drinking device, the Flabongo. I know one CJS reader does and they were inspired to get one for Dagger for Christmas. Well, we tried it out this past weekend and it lived up to everything we imagined. It was also a reminder that we do not drink like we used to in college.

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We would be interested in seeing a slide show in the evolution of college drinking devices, but we will settle for this interesting look at the evolution of the college dorm. Always important to remember any dorm can be improved by decorating in early fuck.

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What’s a stroll down memory lane with out going back to the very beginning? So from the very first Happy Friday we give you the story of a stunt driver crashing Bond, James Bond’s car into a lake. You think Q would have installed something to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

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From one British icon to another, Prince Charles may be a vampire. Well, kind of. His family lineage has been traced back to Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracul, the inspiration for Bram Stroker. So Charles has that going for him, which is nice.

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We posted this link fairly recently but we found it fascinating. It gives us a real good idea just how video games can influence popular culture. Tim of Rise Against is a very smart man and we always find it interesting to hear/read what he has to say.

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Our final story this week is about the robots the Army is developing. We bring it up only because it reminds of us the classic movie Short Circuit. Finally the robots from all those movies we love are starting to become a reality. As soon as we can, we’re getting us a bender unit. They don’t just bend things; they’re probably the most useful robots ever.

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Another important issue this year has been global warming and the Demotivational Poster this week seems that up nicely.

See ya in 2009…

…because that’s when we come back full time. We’re putting the finishing touches on our 2009 plan this week and will roll out on January 5th to be back full-time. Our first article will feature us looking into the CJS crystal ball and predicting the year to come. And then it’s daily updates, glorious daily updates! Until then, have a happy and safe holiday season, enjoy the links above, and we’ll catch you in the new year!

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com

edagger@crujonessociety.com

senor.limon@crujonessociety.com