Quick show of hands. Who’s tired of zombies?

If your hand isn’t up, you’re going to love this clip for a Norwegian sporting goods store called XXL. In it, a town gets attacked by zombies and the citizens band together and kill them using sports. And, uh, fine sporting goods, available at your local XXL, I guess! Zombies lose their arms trying to play golf, get soccer balls kicked at their heads and get herded into a stadium where a bunch of hockey guys and gymnasts and waiting to Braveheart them to death.

It’s the kind of thing that wins Emmy awards in the United States, but the people of Norway weren’t having it — the commercial is getting the Madonna “only play it after x-o’clock” treatment, because I guess “in the middle of the night, when you are lonely and watching television” is the only time you are mentally prepared to be hypothetically killed by dead people.

Despite its gratuitous comical nonsense, viewers in Norway complained after the commercial for sporting goods store XXL aired during family-oriented programming, calling it irrelevant, disgusting and stupid, according to a Huffington Post translation of a Norwegian news website.

The commercial will now air after 9 p.m., when it will target teenagers and other zombies. (via HuffPo)

Of course, this is HuffPo, so there’s a chance the website said, “lol, watch this funny commercial” and nobody in Norway cares.

Anyway, here’s the clip. Wait until after 9 PM to watch it, please.

Read the rest of this entry »

See, ma? All those years you thought I was turning my mind to mush in front of TV, when this study shows watching sports actually engages your mind in beneficial ways. Turns out it was the drugs that made me an idiot. Wish I’d seen that coming.

Being an athlete or merely a fan improves language skills when it comes to discussing their sport because parts of the brain usually involved in playing sports are instead used to understand sport language, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

Brain imaging revealed that when hockey players and fans listen to language about hockey, they show activity in the brain regions usually used to plan and select well-learned physical actions. The increased activity in motor areas of the brain helps hockey players and fans to better understanding hockey language. The results show that playing sports, or even just watching, builds a stronger understanding of language, Beilock said.

And they only tested this on hockey fans. Imagine the benefit for people who watch interesting sports!

[Lion in Oil, Deuce of Davenport]