Semi-Open Sunday Thread: Predicting WWE's Royal Rumble While Bill Belichick Deflates My Balls and U.F.O.'s Attack

As is our habit and tradition, do consider this a semi-open thread to share information and matters of public and private concern that you find interesting and important.

I have not done a "ghetto nerd" related post in some time. I would like to correct that oversight.

[The podcast has touched on that fun theme several times, most notably our conversation with Jason Colavito about ancient aliens and other matters, as well as an upcoming installment with Dr. Adilfu Nama, where will be talking about race, science fiction, comic books, and other related matters.

If you have not listened to my conversation with Slate.com's Jack Hamilton about hip hop, popular music and the colorline, please do so. I think you will enjoy it.]

Tonight is the WWE's Royal Rumble pay-per-view event, airing from Philadelphia (the crowd should be really hot tonight, Philly is a great wrestling city).

The Rumble is always great fun. This year's card promises lots of excitement and surprises as Daniel Bryan has returned, Randy Orton is rumored to be an entrant, the Rock has been sighted in Philadelphia, and the legendary Sting will advance his feud with HHH before their inevitable match at Wrestlemania.

Of course, the three way match between Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar, and John Cena will be epic--if booked correctly.

What do I think will happen tonight in that match? Lesnar is leaving the company to return to MMA. He has to be written out of the story. There have also been teases of turning Lesnar face on the way out the door.

Prediction:

What will happen. Cena is beaten down by Lesnar. Cena does the "Super Cena" comeback and pins Lesnar. Rollins cashes in the "money in the bank" briefcase and with help from The Authority attacks Lesnar. Rollins wins the strap. Lesnar then has a feud with The Authority. Question: what to do with Paul Heyman? Heyman could flip and side with Rollins. I would prefer that Heyman be paired with a floundering Roman Reigns...but that is another conversation.

What I would like to see happen. Lesnar wins clean and retains the belt. Alternatively, as some have suggested, Lesnar loses without being pinned. He is so enraged that he subsequently enters the Rumble with a high number and destroys everyone. The last exchange in the ring is between Lesnar, Bryan, and Orton.

Lesnar wins, but the audience is teased with a potential Wrestlemania clinic and dream match.

"Did you know that Bill Belichick deflated my balls?" Such is a rumor circulating on Twitter in the fun #fivewordsthatruinsex hashtag game from a few evenings ago. "Did you pull out? No" and "the ovulation calendar is wrong" were two of my most favorite examples of pithy witty that I shared with the Twitterverse.

Obligatory thoughts from a near life-long Patriots fan. I do not care what smarty pants folks such as Bill Nye say about "deflate gate", Belichick used his masterful understanding of science to inflate the balls in a warm room after which point they lost air pressure from the cold air outside. Occam's Razor. Right?

I love Belichick and the Patriots precisely because of non-scandals such as "deflate gate" and their ruthless approach towards the sport of football.

My thoughts are best summarized by David Roth over at Vice:

Lose the NFL’s pomp and rum-dummy-dum rhetoric, and we see the NFL as what it is: a moderately skanky business concern selling us something that is both bad for us and extremely addictive. The NFL is welcome to use its delusion however it wants, just as people are welcome to talk about it in the NFL’s own language if they wish. But, as serious as Bill Belichick is about football—and the great gray recession of his personality suggests that this is an acid seriousness that opens onto a big, mean void—he clearly does not see or think about the NFL this way. 

He, and maybe we, can see a rulebook that’s too big and too dimly understood and too lazily mis-enforced to constrain his intellect and ambition. He sees a game that is bigger and weirder than any authority that would attempt to govern it. He sees how soft, stupid, and self-regarding the NFL truly is, and then he does whatever he wants, secure in the knowledge that no one can really stop him from doing it. He innovates in thrilling ways and cheats in trivial ones for the same reason, and it’s the reason that people climb Everest….

Did you know that Saudi Arabia is building an anti-zombie ISIL defense wall?

Have you read the thousands of pages of U.F.O. related information released by the United States government?

Does anyone with any level of common sense actually trust the United States government to reveal the truth about extraterrestrial life, and man's encounters with it, via officially released documents?

Apparently, a U.F.O. was recorded by the International Space Station--because of course any object or glitch one cannot readily identify in a video feed is of course a spaceship from another planet or parallel dimension.

Here on WARN, we discussed Chris Kyle and the movie American Sniper several times. The World War 2 movie Fury is also being released on blu-ray and DVD this week.

The first movie is Right-wing fascist war porn propaganda. The second movie is much less Right-wing fascist war porn propaganda, but still fails because it has one of the most unbelievable endings in a movie about men and war in the history of film.

Saving Private Ryan gave Tom Hanks a heroic cinematic ending borrowed from previous world war 2 movies; Fury has its film as "borrowing from and talking to itself moment" in Brad Pitt's Alamo ending.

I love watching old military training videos online. The German troops who attacked Brad Pitt's tank in Fury should have studied this 1943 training video from the German military.They would have been much more successful.

American Sniper borrowed from Dr. David Grossman's theory of "killology" and how to psychologically condition people to kill in battle. His techniques are a more evolved version of the training video "Kill or be Killed" produced by the U.S. military during World War 2.

Any ghetto nerd discoveries to share? Any other thoughts, insights, news items, or revelations to offer for the new week?