Saturday, October 18, 2008

Programming

I been programming a lot for moolah so I ain't had any brain energy for all this stuff lately.

Sorting and sifting through gigantic puzzles for eight hours a day makes "my boys upstairs" turn the light out early.

Plus I'm getting old y'know so all I wanna do when I get home from work is watch some Matlock or whatever and go to bed.

Which reminds me of the way my grampa called the stuff he liked to watch on TV his "programs."

Like, "I want to watch my programs."

The only thing he ever liked to watch on TV was Wrestling and the Three Stooges and kung fu movies, y'know, those were his programs, he was a World War II hero and a CIA guy and he could dance the jitterbug so he wasn't keen on subtleties and wispy bits of fluff and intrigue produced by folks who imagined more than they had ever seen and stuff ahaha.

Anyways its kinda weird that he called the TV shows he liked his "programs."

Like he's loading entertainment programming into his head or something.

Just like its kinda weird that they call that thing they hand you at the opera or school kid's musical events a Program.

Any word with "gram" used that way in it is kinda new and futuristic, y'know?

Like, its weird to think of opera-writers as guys who are programming the opera house or creating programming for the opera house or something, but apparently that's what at least one of 'em thought they were doing, y'know, a long time ago before there were any computers.

So whatever, I spend all day swimming around in real programs, and then when I get home I just wanna get away from programming, so I go home and load myself up with some entertainment programming that helps me get my mind off of my hard day of work programming.

Jeeze looeeze I shoulda been a lumberjack with a pet monkey or something.

Monday, October 6, 2008

American Masterpiece Mystery Theatre

"You ever hear that thing about how Lesbians drive Subarus?"

"What?"

"This thing about Lesbians driving Subarus. Like, Subarus are s'posed to be the Car of Choice for Lesbians. Some demographic percentage thingie, like, forty percent of Lesbians drive Subarus for some reason."

"No, I ain't heard that."

"Do you s'pose Lesbians know more about cars than heterosexual folks?"

"Hmm, probably."

"Anyways I dunno where I heard it. I dunno if it was from a Pro-Lesbian place or an Anti-Lesbian place. I suppose that Subaru wants Lesbians to buy their cars, but they don't wanna let anybody who doesn't like Lesbians to know that they want Lesbians to buy their cars, 'cause they want Non-Lesbians to buy their cars too, without having to feel like a Lesbian, or something, so they prolly play both sides of the fence. But was the Lesbian-Subaru Connection Rumor leaked by Subaru, as some sorta grassroots viral advertising campaign, or was it leaked by an Anti-Lesbian person working for one of Subaru's competitors, or what?"

"Seems kinda expensive to have to buy a Subaru to be a Lesbian."

"What's the cheapest sexual orientation anyways?"

"Haha yah I'm gonna switch to that."

"It does tend to make a Lesbian who drives a Ford seem kinda punk rock and cool though. Y'know, 'cause who-the-hell would want to be a run-of-the-mill hum-drum go-with-the-crowd sheep-Lesbian."

"Yah."

"I do know why I remembered that weird thing about Lesbians and Subarus, though."

"Yah?"

"Yah. My aunt drove a Subaru. She wasn't a real aunt, she was a friend-of-the-family-aunt. Made me wonder if she was a Lesbian, though, on the side, when I heard that Subaru Lesbian thingie. If she was a Lesbian, she was definitely a Lipstick Lesbian. There's three kinds of super feminine folks, and she was the Pretty Sexual kind, not the Mother Nature or Hospice Nurse kind. Anyways that's why I remember it."

"Hey, you guys solve that murder yet?"

"No."

"What the hell do you think this is, a cop show where they solve a murder every hour?"

"Dude, murders are hard to solve."

"Nobody ever confesses like they do on TV. You never know if you got it right."

"Yah, this isn't Star Trek, man. We can't just Reverse the Polarity and wrap the shit up in the last five minutes. We're still working the kinks out of some of these Subaru-Lesbian Mysteries."

"Any progress on that?"

"Yep, nope, haven't seemed to hit bottom on that rabbit hole yet."

"I did remember why I remembered it, though."

"Haha yah, his aunt might be a Lesbian, on the side."

"On the side, huh? That'd make her a Bisexual, then, actually."

"Oh man, I didn't even think of that."

"That certainly throws a new twist into the whole Subaru-Lesbian Conspiracy."

"Yah, the plot thickens."

"And that's why he gets paid the Big Bucks."

"Haha yah."

You Look Like You Needed It

Blue Light Operator

Oh man, you know what another bad job is?

Being the guy that operates that blue light that detects bacteria and body fluids.

That's gotta be way the hell worse than being a dude that works at fast food place or a slaughterhouse or whatever, 'cause you know you're gonna bring that shit home with you.

As if computer guys didn't wash their hands enough y'know ahaha sheesh.

Poser Science

Man, the Ig Nobels were a total dud this year.

Yah, guess all the mad scientists are trying to go mainstream and produce crap for the masses now or something.

Its like the Arena Rock Achy Breaky Heart Country Music of Punk Rock Science now, man, what a shame.

Used to be stuff like how different kinds of toads taste when you lick 'em and junk, man, those were the good old days, before the band sold out and started to suck.

Well, okay, the Plants Have Dignity thing was pretty awesome heh.

And the French one with the Fleas on Dogs jumping higher than Fleas on Cats, that's pretty good.

I mean, how the hell could you use that bit of information for anything ahaha.

But the other ones are actually kinda useful and stuff, y'know?

So You Wanna Be a Game Designer

So you wanna be a Game Designer, huh?

Well, the first thing you need to do is forget all that crap about making games and listen to me.

Yah, if you really wanna be a game designer, you should forget all about games, and go into Advertising, instead.

Yah man, Advertising is basically movie-making for folks with super short attention spans, right?

I mean, wtf could be better than sitting around with a bunch of dopes and thinking up dumb little movies that'll catch folks off guard?

Why in the nine hells would you even wanna monkey around with a bunch of miserable underpaid nerds on four years of math problems to create some humongously outdated piece of crap that nobody but a masochist like you would enjoy anyways?

When you could be using a fraction of that time and energy creating ten zillion million-dollar thirty-second gags and come out looking like a cool guy surrounded by swimsuit models?

And look at some of these commercials out there, man, they're just terrible.

And I don't mean Eagle Man terrible in a good way, either, I'm talking about Pictures of Guys In Their Underpants in the Newspaper terrible.

"Hey, now this is a nice little number!"

"Can I have the ones off the model?"

"Oh man they're still warm!"

Its like, oh gawd, here we go again with the split screen and the two kinds of deodorant leaving streaks, or the napkins sucking it up, they're pouring some blue stuff on a maxipad, here's some cheerful music and an over-medicated looking mom making paper-bag lunches, a still picture of a vacuum cleaner and a corporate symbol and some smiling guy in a refrigerator repairman suit, another spritzing can of sweaty pop, a beer and a palm tree on a beach, a chewing gum commercial on a beach (talk about the worst combo ever, sand and gum, awhellyah, crunch-crunch-crunch, that's the mental association you wanna shoot for ahaha), a chick in a white dress floating across a field of golden grass near the sea while a voice-over does the ten million side-effect warnings in a soothing voice, man, those're just brilliant.

I sit there and think, "man, how can anybody think up anything this terrible? Its almost impossible to make anything lamer than that if you were trying to do it on purpose, y'know? I mean, if you knew how to do something that boring on purpose, you could go around using your super boring powers to turn people's brains off and temporarily turn them into zombies, you could use that Friendly Maytag Repairman and Choosy Moms Choose Jif Peanut Butter garbage to make people blank out completely or at least turn away from you so you could rob banks while they weren't looking or something!"

And then you got all the good ones, y'know, and man, I wish some of those guys made feature length films, like that Geico thing, with the Cavemen (not that stupid-ass lizard one, goddam), even though some of those suck, or the ones with the Snickers guys in the costumes, I mean, seriously, that would beat the living shit out of any of the ten million SNL-guy and "coming of age" generic comedy formula movies.

Not that I think you oughta try to do good commercials, y'know, I think its better to not have to try so hard and just make tons of the crappy ones with the split-screen deodorant trials and stuff.

Plus you won't piss the other advertising guys off by raising the bar or anything, everybody can make their money and get the hell out of there for the weekend, easy peasy.

And that's what you should really do, if you wanna be a Game Designer, you should wanna be something else, instead, besides that, basically, anything but that.

Now, if you've accidentally become a Game Designer, then that's a whole different problem, you couldn't help it, you were forced to wear weird costumes and locked up in a basement or whatever, its not your fault.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Samwisdom

There are meals that smell so good when you are cooking 'em, meals that take so long to make, that a chef, stuck in close proximity to the cooking dish for most of the day, can't help but get sick of being teased and tortured by it before they can finish cooking it.

The chef becomes completely saturated with the meal's never-ending assault of temptations, wave after wave after wave of flavor and empty promises, hammering against their doors, and wants only to get away from it when they're done.

But two chefs can takes turns preparing the same malevolently delicious chef-withering dish on different nights, and trade the cooking of the dish back and forth, so that they can both enjoy it as an undamaged member of the dinner-table audience, without being subjected to the appetite-destroying standing-in-front-of-a-roaring-blast-furnace-of-intense-sensory-information-all-day preparations that are required to bring the dish to life.

If it wasn't for that trick, we'd have lost a lot of recipes that were too great for a single chef to handle, y'know?

And there might have been some dishes that were too great for even two chefs to handle out there.

Mmm I'm getting hungry.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Jungle Bus Airlines

Oh man you know what we need?

A cargo plane that can land in the water.

One that we can turn into a recreational vehicle on the inside.

And a pilot guy to fly it.

I'll be co-pilot and crack jokes and shit to keep him awake.

And then we'll also need an Arabian Prince or something to keep us supplied with fuel.

Yah man, then we just fly the thing down to the tropics and make a website where folks can charter us for vacations, easy peasy.

We can come and pick 'em up and everything.

Dude if there's a VTOL cargo plane that can land in the water we could land on the street in front of their house.

If they ain't got one of those maybe we can get the Arabian Prince to build one for us, like in one of those A-Team Montages where they built crazy vehicles in a junkyard.

And we could even make it into some kinda Internet TV-show thingie or turn it into some kinda weird airborne late night talkshow or something so more people will wanna sign up for vacations with us.

Add Captain Bob's Treasure Hunt thingie into it.

And sell some Wish You Were Here Postcards for Pets and stuff.

Or we could make it into a fake reality TV show like the Office mixed with the occasional actual cheesy vacation charter thingie, if we're feeling lazy but we still need the tourist money to pay for hula dancers and alcohol.

Mixed with a little "Lost" so that it doesn't have to make any sense.

With random stressed-out looking people walking through jungle bushes for five minutes at a pop between commercials and stuff.

Easy peasy man.

Australia's Joke

Australia was this 65-year-old hitman-looking guy from Australia who used to ride the train with us in a stylish black leather jacket, and he had this joke he did over and over again until all of us starting repeating it with him whenever he did it, and then eventually all I had to say was the first few words of his joke and everybody would start laughing.

We'd be on the train together and you know how the conductor will speak over the PA on the train and declare "Next stop, beautiful downtown Lemont!" or whatever to tell everybody what the next stop was, that was what triggered it, the repetition of that day after day until we had it all memorized, there were a couple towns on the route that were just godawful shit-holes and it was kinda funny to hear the conductor say how beautiful they were 'cause you know he couldn't possibly be honest or anything about it so that sorta called all of his other PA Opinions of Town Beauty into question even though some of the other towns were actually pretty cool looking y'know its like listening to him lie about how beautiful your town was just made things worse for the people who had to get off in the crappy towns 'cause that's where they lived.

Yah, the conductor saying that crap in his cheap little prison-guard uniform with a smile on his face and his eyes twinkling and his keys jangling day after day made him seem like some kind of creepy claymation cartoon character in a Twilight Zone Episode that you couldn't trust fer shit ahaha.

Anyways, once you guys got off at your shitty town (so that you couldn't be offended), Australia would always do this "First prize is one week in beautiful downtown Lemont! Second Prize is two weeks in beautiful downtown Lemont!" routine while imitating the way the conductor sounded on the PA (and just about everybody who ever had to ride a train to work for any amount of time can imitate their conductor perfectly, that shit gets burned into the back of your brainpan after being subjected to it day after day after day).

That's why I only had to say "Second Prize is two weeks..." in my version of the train conductor's voice and everybody would laugh.

And because that was sorta like an inside joke, y'know, 'cause you ain't got enough information unless you heard the whole thing before, I could do that bit as we pulled up to a shitty town and the people who lived there wouldn't have any idea of what I was talking about but everybody from the stops farther down the route would be laughing.

Yah that's awful and evil or whatever but that's what makes it funnier, y'know, when you are covering your mouth and making those weird hitching noises while yer trying not to laugh ahaha.

Australia was a good-hearted guy so his face would turn all red and his eyes would be watering from how hard he was laughing-while-trying-not-to-laugh even though I took his joke and made it way the hell more awful and stuff by changing the timing of the thing.

Like, what the fuck are you gonna do about it anyways, y'know?

Damn ugly town might as well be worth a laugh to somebody ahaha.

Hey, I didn't live in a good looking town either man.

And I never said anything like everybody else did on the train about how all the people from Lemont looked they were related to each other and it was weird how they were so awful to each other in the parking lot y'know I was one of the good guys man I hardly talked any shit at all compared to all the old ladies and everybody else!

Actually Lemont was one of the prettier towns I just used them 'cause saying the real names of the shitty towns involved seemed like adding insult to injury and shit.

Well, actually Lemont was that town where everybody looked like they were related to each other and they were all mean and pushing each other out of the way and acting like little kids in the parking lot but I was talking about everything I said aside from that.

Television City

I noticed the Three Stooges called a cigar a "heater."

And its always been a bad sign as a Time Traveler if you ever get stuck with a guy who calls a handgun a "heater."

That's the kinda thing that makes Time Travelers laugh in an uneasy, worried laugh kinda way.

And then there's what we called "heaters" when I was a kid.

Which was a girl's boobs.

'Cause I come from a place where it snows a lot.

So cigars, guns, and tits.

Has all the makings a brand new elite government-funded cult-fighting strike-force: "Mammaries, Tobacco & Firearms" or something ahaha.

While there is some kinda cool-guy link between those things, its a little weird that those things are all tied together with the word "heater," even if you're a cool guy with a medically limited vocabulary 'cause of some kinda weird motorcycle accident or something.

I think the Three Stooges "cigar" usage of "heater" is the odd man out, though.

I mean, we used to say stuff like "don't point those things at me!" when I was kid, so the link between the other two seems okay, you can see how that'd work.

But the "cigar" one is a little weird.

Maybe that's 'cause the world I'm used to is pretty much cigar-free.

I don't smoke cigars, maybe some of the people I know smoke cigars, but they don't smoke 'em in public, so its like, you basically never see anybody smoking a cigar.

But if you think about a world where everybody has a cigar in their hand twenty-four-seven, where little kids and housewives and everybody is always smoking cigars all day long and running around with cigars in their hands, then people pointing cigars at each other might be a bit of problem, too.

And saying "hey man don't you point that heater at me!" might be a pretty common thing, then.

So I guess that's the strange world of the Three Stooges.

Man, its no wonder that they're so weird.

Joe Six Pack

With all the hockey mom crap lately, its made me really start to appreciate how smart the soccer moms were.

I mean, soccer moms have started to seem almost unobtainable and aristocratic in their intellectual elegance and magnificence.

Soccer moms are practically supernaturally graceful and delicate at this point, like the scent of nectar from the elder days of yore that we can only half-remember in dreams that are too strange and silky to survive the moment we wake, chased like the dew before the clumsy warmth of the morning.

And while my mind may ineffectually ponder the passing of creatures in the mists of even more ancient times and of even greater beauty than the Soccer Mom, my heart knows that is not fit for the adventure, and it dares not to follow, for fear of breaking!

The Hessian

I know you're a little scared, being pulled over in your strange little horseless coach, as it were, by a Headless Spectre mounted atop a Nightmare on an ancient dirt road in the middle of the Old Dutch Country that never seems to notice the passage of time, where everyone can still smell the old-time fairy magic lingering in the air that will doubtlessly make them dream strange dreams every night that they remain here.

But I've been thinking about things while I've been riding up down these paths over all these years and something funny just occurred to me and I felt that I just needed someone to talk to y'know and I noticed that you happened to be a schoolteacher and I thought "oh man now this would be sorta perfect and ironic and stuff!" ahaha ghosts love that sorta junk!

So like, relax and fear naught and let me speak my peace and thus shall ye shortly and safely be transported on your way unharmed by me and whatever.

Washington Irving, right?

You know who I'm talking about.

First Great American Author blah blah blah and all that.

Guy wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, y'know, starring me, of course, but he also did Rip Van Wrinkle, and a bunch of other stuff that was just sorta okay.

Made fun of a lot of things, but he's probably most famous for his portrayal of Ichabod Crane, the greedy and craven dorky-looking schoolmaster slash con-artist who wanted to marry everybody's daughter so he could steal their farm and eat everything on it.

Which was bad for his reviews, 'cause reviewers are generally craven dorky-looking schoolmaster slash con-artist types like you ahaha just kidding yer not all that bad actually.

But that means, when you read a review of Washington Irving, you got to take it with a bit of salt, right?

Especially if the guy doing the review don't ever say nothing about Irving's profound sense of humor.

I mean, that's pretty much a sure sign that its some craven schoolmaster con artist type doing the review, some fool with no sense of humor, right?

And if a guy like Irving writes a two-page "why I write" gag claiming that he admires the way Europeans think about Americans as Degenerate versions of Europeans, and that he'd like to meet the Great Men of Europe who must stand as tall as a mountain in comparison to him, that's probably a joke, right?

Any fool can plainly see that that was probably a joke, right?

Well the jokes on you if you can't!

And its as if anybody could write an accurate explanation of why they write that should be taken at face value in the first place ahaha!

Sorry I'll try to quit laughing so much I know its a little freaky.

Anyways, I think folks mostly feel the desire to write in order to fill a void, to put something into circulation that they feel is missing, something that's been tumbling around in their head that they wanna get out there, something that they don't see anybody else doing.

Much as we all did as children, standing atop logs and waving our sticks at each other and imagining that we were pirates on a great adventure, specifically because there was actually nothing of the sort to do about the dreary farms and weary cities where we grew up.

Or, at least, that's the most common inspiration, or the thing that governs how they select what they're gonna write about, even if they're doing it for money on a schedule and whatever.

And that's got to be one of the bigger reasons that its kinda stupid to compare the things Irving wrote to the stuff that Poe and Hawthorne did much later.

Its okay to say you like the stuff that Poe wrote more than the junk that Irving wrote, that the kinda stuff that Poe wrote was the kinda stuff that you have an appetite for, that Poe filled one of your voids better than the stuff that Irving produced did, whether its the style you like or the subject matter or the plot structure or that you thought that being a fan of Poe would do more to get you in the good graces of loose high-performance women or whatever.

And of course Poe is going to have more appeal to the schoolmarm type folks who don't have any sense of humor 'cause Poe was a lot of things but he definitely wasn't much of a comedian ahaha!

Sorry, sorry, the laugh, I know.

Anyways you see how the schoolmarm Ichabod Crane types might like Poe a bit more than scruffy-old Irving with his gags and con-artist characters and stuff?

Heck man, Ichabod Crane was totally into reading scary stuff about witches and junk, the kinda stuff that Poe wrote, Crane used that kinda stuff to tickle the imaginations of all the farmer's wives he was always hitting on.

In my story I'm actually just a legend that provided Ichabod Crane's competitor (for the affections of a farm lass) something to dress up as, and not even a real character!

I know!

There's actually no ghosts or magic or anything at all in my story ahaha!

Ah sorry sorry sorry I promise I'll try to keep the creepy echoing laughter under control but you know how it is with being a Literary Apparition and all that I'm fighting against my own overly simplistic design specifications here and I don't have a lot to work with!

Anyways some people got this idea that there's One Best Thing, and thinking that way makes them think that diversity is something you need to snip away, to whittle things down to perfection, insteada appreciating diversity, insteada thinking of everything as a quilt made out of all sorts of different patches that make the quilt more interesting, the more patches, the more different the patches, the more detailed the patches, the better.

Where all the different authors of each patch give you something different to look at night after night as your tastes change over the years and you start to think that this patch is actually better or more suited to your present situation than the patch that was your favorite patch of yesterday.

Its whatever fits the times the best, whatever fills the void of the moment.

I'm sure when Irving looked out at everything going on in his current frame of reference, he was inspired to put something into the pot that would make the stew taste better that very night, something that nobody had ever seen before, each detail of it carefully selected for different reasons.

And you can't really judge that against what the stew seemed to need when Poe showed up and what Poe decided to season everything with during the course of his frame of reference.

And its not just the time, its also the place and the scenery, and the people and ideas around them, and how old the chef was, and what sorts of things he was going through.

You can have a taste of what they decided to season the stew with, and that might tell you a little bit about the stew they were looking at the night they wrote whatever it was they were gonna write, or at least, what each of them thought the stew needed, or maybe what sort of seasonings they had the most of in their pockets, but you can't really taste the stews themselves, and so you can't really compare the stews, and so you can't really compare the chefs.

You just don't know enough to do that.

Especially if you still ain't got a sense of humor after all these years and Ichabod Crane still offends you ahaha!

And that's all a book report is, really, too.

Some bit of seasoning designed to make the daily stew of some craven and humorless schoolmaster con artist who hates Washington Irving more tasty.

That's all we're really getting graded on, in a book report, how well we can please all these cowardly guys that wanna sleep with our sisters and eat everything on our farm and never have to do any honest work!

Please them by telling lies and saying that we don't like Washington Irving, pretending that we didn't even notice all of his jokes, pretending that the guy was obviously a hack and that he wasn't anywhere near as good as the Really Really Great Greats like Edgar Allan Poe or Hawthorne, when you look at everything from some bizarre-ass no-frame-of-reference frame-of-reference!

And so book reports are actually just support systems for evil people!

You shouldn't be training the children to do that kinda stuff!

And that's why nobody should have to write book reports!

Well, whatever, y'know, its just something I was thinking about lately, while I been looking for my head.

Ha ha ha.

Like I never heard that one before.

You ain't seen it, have ya?

Yah I figured.

Well, I think they wanna keep me like this so they can milk me for royalties for all eternity or something, the bastards!

Well, have a good night.

And remember that stuff I said about the kids in school and those damn book reports of yours.

Nah, I'm not going to threaten you with some sort of supernatural doom, that's too cliche.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Witty Title Number Blah Blah Blah

He couldn't handle compliments.

That was the first thing anybody ever told me about him.

That he wasn't any good with compliments.

I was saying something like, "hey wtf! why does this guy hate me so much?"

And then some good-hearted person felt bad for me and they said "oh don't worry, he's always like that, he just doesn't know how to handle compliments."

So then I said something like "so what are we supposed to do if we like something he did? Call him an asshole?"

And then I laughed at my own joke 'cause I always laugh at my own jokes even if its a really shitty old joke I mean hell man I ain't never been picky ahaha.

And then he saw me laughing and he laughed too.

Later on I saw other new people going through the same thing as me.

They'd say "hey wtf! why does this guy hate me so much?"

And then I'd get to say "oh don't worry, he's always like that, he doesn't know how to handle compliments."

And then some of 'em even did the "wtf should I call 'em an asshole?" joke.

And some of 'em even laughed at their own shit afterwards.

And then he'd laugh too.

And then I'd laugh 'cause there's some weird kinda multidimensional humor to the way the pattern keeps repeating, y'know?

Its not exactly ironic, and its not deja vu, I dunno wtf it is, but its funny.

I mean, at first you're all like, "ah, he ain't gonna laugh this time, 'cause he's heard this one before."

But that's what makes it funny to him, y'know?

That he keeps hearing this same joke over and over again.

That's why he laughs.

And that's why I laugh, 'cause he was laughing at how he keeps hearing the same joke over and over again, and that's funny.

It never occurs to anybody else to laugh because I always laugh 'cause he was laughing at how he keeps hearing the same joke over and over again, 'cause that's just way too complicated and multidimensional for humans and stuff.

Plus you need an extra guy for that.

And nobody laughs because its funny that it don't matter how funny the original asshole joke was, nobody is that smart.

But it is kinda funny to explain all this stuff to you heh.

Well, whatever, I'm easy.

Yah, nobody is ever gonna tell you "oh don't worry, he's always like that, he doesn't know how to handle compliments" about me.

'Cause we ain't all like that guy that wasn't any good with compliments, I'm totally fine with compliments, if you think I hate yer shit, then I probably do totally hate your shit, and for a good reason, too heh.

That would actually make it even funnier if you asked, "hey wtf! why do he hate me so much?" and then somebody lied and said that I wasn't good at handling compliments, even though I actually was pretty good at handling compliments and I really did hate your ass just fine ahaha.

But nobody on top of nobody is that good man, so don't worry AHAHA.

Anyways what I meant to say was thank you.

Thank you for making me laugh.

Even though I been mostly laughing at my own jokes the whole time.

Well, I prolly woulda never thought of the jokes that made me laugh if it wasn't for you.

Just kidding, I prolly woulda thought of all those jokes whether you were there or not.

Actually I always kinda hated you for no good reason, even when you were giving me compliments.

Hmm, maybe I actually ain't any good with compliments.

That would certainly explain a few things.

Oh Canada

You know what else the U.S. could do for money?

Get Canada to pay us to make them look cooler at parties.

We could be like, Canada's rent-a-friend Hot Chick.

BFF! looools!

Monday, September 29, 2008

Vote For Rent

I'm hoping John McCain's campaign numbers really start to slide in a huge way.

'Cause that would drive up the value of supporting him.

That's where the big money is, his wife, y'know, she's got more money than all the rest of 'em combined.

But she ain't gonna pay us jack shit for our votes unless he really needs us.

Yah, see, this whole "close race" thingie is totally ruining the economy, man!

User User

Dude, I think we can make a feature-length film for like, a couple hundred bucks.

If we all lived in one of the many abandoned mansions that are currently littering the landscape and made big batches of Ramen Pride Noodles to feed the volunteer cast and crew.

With campfire marshmallows for dessert awhellyah.

Hell, we could make a reality show about a bunch of people trying to make a feature length film with a couple hundred bucks for a couple hundred bucks.

And a documentary about a contest for positions in a reality show about making the feature length film awhellyah baby that's like three-to-five birds with one couple hundred bucks right there, if any one of those things actually work we'd be sitting on a goldmine!

All you need is a bunch of random character-based bullshit to get people into it, like, you need a nerd, you need a psychic, you need a jock and a cheerleader and a doctor and an indian and a construction worker, blah blah blah, make 'em all weepy, easy peasy.

Yah, its sorta like a cross between going camping and a cooking show and Survivor and Lost.

Yah, where you get the people on the Reality Show to do all the work as if that was part of the Reality Show.

Hey man, if it turns out to be shit, you can just say "I meant to do that" and call it a comedy.

And if it turns out good, its like, high quality drama or whatever.

Dude, I'm totally in to this User-made Content stuff.

Blabberjockey

The first thing most people do when they first get on the internet is vent all of their fury at the universe.

Not everybody does that, some folks seem to keep a cool and sorta-professional Disney-quality exterior no matter what, but most of 'em do that.

And then most of them give up and disappear.

Meanwhile the rest of us are like, well, thanks for venting all your acid and bile on us, I dunno what folks expect to get back from that ahaha.

Anyways, after you been blabbering on the internet for about a million years, you start to evolve a bit.

How exactly you evolve sorta depends on why you were blabbering about stuff in the first place, so I'm not familiar with all the different kinds of guys, I only understand my own selfish thing, where you're trying to cheer your buddies up and make 'em blow milk out of their noses and shit while you rub your brain against the grindstone to keep it sharp.

And so when it gets tough to think of something that would cheer my buddies up, when I'm feeling bummed out myself, that's when I'm the most proud of what I do, that's when I give myself the highest points for difficulty, the hardest times to do it are when I feel like I oughta be doing it the most.

And that's like the exact opposite of the folks who first show up and use the internet to vent the junk that's bugging 'em and whatever heh.

Of course, this is just my own small corner of the shit, I got all sorts of complex little rules that govern how I do things, and there's a million other ways to do it, and a million other things you could do with it.

And I'm mistaken by strangers for a lot of things I ain't, y'know, like, I'm not a public entertainment system and whatever-else ya might think just 'cause I got talked into putting most of my shit in one place on the internet so that it wouldn't be so hard to chase me around.

And I'm not really against strangers joining up with my team of buddies, I'm pretty big on the need for new blood, compared to the crustier and more jaded folks, but the junk I put out there is designed to naturally select what I want to get back out of the mess, so I don't usually gotta deal with folks I wouldn't like, I'm always meeting cool folks with tons of personality that know about all sorts of shit insteada loud-ass know-nothing robots like me ahaha.

Yah there's only room for one loud-ass know-nothing robot like me in my universe, buddy AHAHA.

But enough about me.

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yah, I'm right in the middle of doing some kinda super-manipulative thingie where I try persuade folks to write some shit that'll cheer me up make me laugh heh.

Pfft, this isn't gonna work, you guys suck ahaha.

The Mad Scientist Party

Its stupid that there's only two political parties when even the Planet of the Apes had three.

Oh sure, they combined scientists and hippies, and separated the might-makes-right and religious folks into two separate groups, and that's a damned dirty hippy-ape trick to get the scientist-apes on their side, 'cause hippy-apes are the "artistic and persuasive" apes who make ape-movies.

Everybody wants the scientist-apes on their side 'cause they want weapons to use against the apes they disagree with.

But then everybody hates the scientists-apes.

Oh sure, all the fashionable and artistic hippy-apes are like, dude, scientist-apes are nerds, they collect comic books, they're ruining the planet, Paula Abdul is drunk, Ben and Jerry should use breastmilk, crystals have healing powers, do these flared jeans make my butt look fat?

And then religious apes hate us and cast their spells on us and stuff.

And the might-makes-right apes can't be bothered to learn anything from smart little scientific weakling apes but they need kickass futuristic helicopters and lasers and stuff to kill us with.

And then everybody is all like, no you scientist-apes can't have your political party 'cause it would only mess up whether the hippy-apes or the religious apes win.

Kinda hilarious for the math-hating apes to dictate the math of the situation to us ahaha.

Anyways I propose that we create a new party.

Yah, the Mad Scientist Party.

Only thing that sucks is that its gets kinda annoying to have your research interrupted all the time when the public demands to blabber with you.

I've been trying to do it for a while now and every time I turn my back to continue my research the villagers go right back to being depressed and crazy and demanding I do something about it and stuff its soooo annoying.

Its especially bad if I have to appear in person instead of communicating through holographic projection 'cause I live in a top secret underground research base near the planet's core, y'know, for the free geothermal energy, and its takes forever to teleport to the surface.

Yah so maybe we should just find a new planet.

Dude, I wonder if somebody even smarter than us already thought of that, y'know, like, its theoretically possible that somebody left all the moron-apes of our planet behind them a long time ago, and all the morons that got left behind were too moronic to make a record of it.

Yah, and then they just watch the morons do their little junk like a bunch of hamsters in a hamster cage, it'd be pretty easy to baby-sit all the little aluminum-foil space programs and laugh while making sure that the morons don't intercept any of your signals.

Our planet might actually be some sort of Prison Planet for the mentally inferior and unstable or something!

That would certainly explain of a few things.

Hmm, I'll need to check some of my instruments, try to figure out what I did wrong, why I got put here.

Yah, that'll be an embarrassing day, when we finally meet the "aliens" and learn that we've all been sentenced to Life on a Cosmic Short Bus!

Well, I don't care if they're smarter than us, I just want to be able to say "See! I told you so!" when it happens muahahaha *rubs hands together evilly*

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Pattern

You know, I been thinking lately about how things from the past keep repeating themselves.

No, I'm not talking about the Great Depression and the first failure of trickle down economics and the rise of isolationism and the world-wide economic crash and the rise of fascism and the start of World War II with militant countries testing the waters to see what they can get away with and FDR showing up with his New Deal, goddam you guys are depressing.

And wtf are you trying to say that a black dude is like a guy in a wheelchair?

Sheeyit.

Yah hell no I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about Blazing Saddles, man.

Dude the shit that happened in Blazing Saddles is almost exactly like what's happening right now, its totally freaky how there's soooooo many similarities, its like they were psychic or something.

Ahaha yah whatever man that movie was awesome.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Gunga Galunga



Anger comes from misunderstanding.

Hostility comes from your lack of appreciation.

Let's try to get that through our fat heads before you people really piss me off ahaha nyuk nyuk nyuk.

The Mysterious Island

Instead of looking for a job, you should be starting your own company.

And then you should hire me.

Ahaha no seriously man I'm not good at anything except leeching off people but I am honest and stuff and oh man I hate it when somebody else comes along and starts to leech off the guy I'm leeching off of y'know so I can protect you from that ahaha.

Yah you should make a company, and then we can get a boat and go around the ocean visiting all those weird-ass rich guys that own their own islands and stuff until we find a good one.

If we bring a camera along we can make a reality TV show out of it, Weird-Ass Rich Guys That Own Their Own Island's Got Talent or something.

Well, whatever, its something to think about.

Serious Political Opinion

People probably wonder what I am politically.

I'm not anything.

I'm pretty liberal if we're talking about sex and shit like that.

But I support the right for folks to be different, so I'm not against conservatives, 'cause that's just one of the ways you can be different, imho.

A republican is just a kind of democrat to a guy like me.

I'm not against anything that rewards folks for innovation and stuff but I don't think that we need to reward people for preying on each other to do that, so take what you will from that.

I think the most important thing about America is the way that we're made up of the greatest adventurers from all over the world, that there's some place on this planet that folks can run to when they're being persecuted, some place that appreciates and welcomes 'em based on the fact that we're all exactly the same kinda strange adventurers as them, a place that appreciates anything anybody is willing to bring to the table and share as far as the wisdom and beauty and comedy of their culture and traditions and ancestors goes.

'Cause that's why I got Egg Rolls and Tamales to eat insteada Haggis, thank the gods.

And that's how we got Isaac Asimov (thank you Soviet Union), and Enrico Fermi (thank you Mussolini), Groucho Marx, all 47 flavors of beautiful women, and everything else.

That's how I got the wisdom of teachers from all over the world (including the Native Americans, who came across the Ice Bridge a zillion years ago).

And that's how we got Amish Hobbits and plastic dudes from the 80s living together in peace and harmony.

Hell, even Bon Jovi is still allowed to be popular in some places *stares at Rockford*

And I wouldn't want to go back to the places my genetics crawled away from and live in some town where every dude looked like me, that'd totally freak me out, man, I dunno how those people can do that, I'd go crazy, that's like something out of a scary movie man ahaha.

And I understand that you need to let folks keep some dignity, even though I ain't any good at it heh.

And some of the dudes in the countries we came from are all wise and stuff, too wise to be adventurers like us, the adventurer lifestyle ain't for everybody.

Oh and I'm not a big fan of monarchies that you don't get to vote for.

That's about all I got for serious political opinion, really.

So am I still free to go?

Or have you guys changed that.

Eat the Rich

The rich people need our help.

Oh sure, you're unemployed, the house you are paying for is worth half of what you still owe on it, your town is flooded with toxic waste, you can't leave because gas is so expensive, food prices are soaring and malnutrition is rampant, all the money you put toward your retirement got spent by somebody on coke and hookers, you don't have any health care, your educational system sucks, your kids are under constant surveillance, you're at war with ten or more countries that you probably couldn't even find on a map, there's terrorists everywhere, and the earth is melting.

But even with all that, we haven't been heartless and selfish toward the rich, we've provided the rich with all sorts of loopholes over the years, we've provided them with the time and materials to hire lobbyists and bribe officials with extravagant parties and gifts, and we don't even think to ask 'em for as little as a thank you.

But the loopholes we provided for them aren't enough, and our political system has failed, the politicians they hired turned out to be idiots, and now there's nothing left in your retirement fund to steal!

You don't understand the seriousness of the problem, rich people don't know how to take care of themselves, y'know, you may be comfortable living an post-apocalyptic wasteland where civilization is a thing of the past and rats are good eating, 'cause you're all resourceful and adventurous and stuff.

But these people need to solve all of their problems with money, and they're completely unequipped to deal with the vulgar details of day to day living that you peasants find so enjoyable.

So for only three hundred and fifty dollars a day, slightly less than it costs to fill up your tank with gas, you could adopt a rich person.

And let your show of heartfelt support give these poor unfortunate souls who are medically incapable of considering anything but their own self-interests the chance they need to get back on their feet and go dormant while you figure everything out and fix everything so we can all start cannibalizing your future again together.

Don't let their parents be the last to do it, that'd be like, totally unfair.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Parallel Universe 42's Got Talent

Man I just watched the debate and there's these two dudes standing there making lists of all the countries that they're going to attack as president and its like they picked every single country EXCEPT France wtf obviously neither of these guys wants my vote!

I'm not even from this stupid-ass parallel universe y'know in my parallel universe President Mondale united the entire world around our mutual hatred for France and then we figured out Time Travel and now Afghanistan's Got Talent is a popular TV show so I dunno wtf is gonna happen over here but seriously you guys need to start thinking this shit through a little better!

It'd be a shame and like totally bad for my career as a Time Lord if the only parallel universe where Conan was elected to public office self-destructed before we got a chance to see what kinda crazy-ass shit you freaks did next!

That's Life

I don't think France has ever made me laugh.

Well, not on purpose, anyways, heh heh heh.

And I think Indiana could probably take France in a fight.

But I'm not totally anti-uh-francotronic or whatever it is you are when you don't like France.

I know all about "Lafayette! We are here!"

And I knew a bunch of other shit about France that I can't remember, too.

And I went out with a totally cute French chick once.

So I know everything there is to know about that, I explored the French Culture extensively *nudge nudge wink wink* knowwhutImean heh.

I even took two years of French in high school, but as fate would have it, I sat next to a hot spanish chick, so I learned more Spanish than French ahaha.

Well, whatever, I don't mean to pick on France all the time, its not like I really hate the place or anything, even though their food is gross and I can't really think of anything else I like about the place besides their women AHAHA.

Yah I hate art so you ain't gonna get me on any of that shit that Jim Morrison fell for ahaha.

Oh I'm just kidding, only place I really hate is Canada, but I can't even hate them 'cause they invented Insulin, the bastards.

Seriously, who else can we make fun of, if we can't make fun of France?

Its like they're the last guy out in musical chairs or something, the process of elimination burns everybody else up for one reason or another, y'know, s'like, there's a ton of places that ain't psychologically healthy enough to handle a bunch of stupid-ass jokes, so that rules them out, and all the places that can take a joke have great senses of humor and that sorta ruins the whole fun of picking on 'em!

Yah, France, France is awesome, man, what's that one song they got, Psycho Killer, yah, see, now that shit is awesome, Psycho Killer! Qu'est-ce que c'est! fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fahaha *does the robot*

Fawlty Wiring

I am so jealous of the Monty Python guys.

A comedy team funded by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

Like, those are your bosses, that's who you have to please, that's who you are supposed to be entertaining when they get off duty, holy shit.

And you get to work with all these other dudes who are totally hilarious.

Y'know, like, could it get any better?

And its not like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were the least creative bands that ever lived or anything, either, y'know, you're getting up there into that Jim Henson level of creativity, man, without the Ewoks Ruined the Trilogy crap where you gotta do stuff for kids heh.

Of course, now that we can download everything off the internet and there's no money in music, the only musicians who are making any money are the ones that are grinding out garbage for all the computer-illiterate folks who still have to go to the stores to buy things, and those guys are a bunch of bland pap-producing idiots, so us intellectual know-it-all folks have sorta totally screwed ourselves in the ass there man ahaha.

Y'know, its like, who wants to be the comedy team produced by Britney Spears?

Wtf kinda sad-ass Bob Saget shit would be involved in making folks like that laugh?

Its like our intelligence and cunning has somehow turned around on us and thrown us under the Ewoks Were Awesome Bus or something.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Oogly Woogly Hypno-Eyes

Y'know, when chicks try to protect themselves from my witchcraft, I know they're just playing hard to get.

Dude, could this chick get any hotter?

Clankety Clank

Dee dee dum dee dee dee dum dee...

Dee dum dee dee dee dum dee...

...if I only had a brain. I'd...

Dum dee dee dum dee dee...

Dee dum dee dee dee dum dee dee...

...if I only had a braaain.

Got My Eyes On YOU, Pal

There's this thing lately with people telling us that the "world is watching us as Americans to see what we'll do" or something.

I don't like it.

Dude, nobody is watching me.

And there's definitely nobody watching all the crazy hillbillies in the woods, that's why we're afraid to go in there.

And even if there was somebody watching me, they oughta be watching those crazy hillbillies in the woods so that we won't have to be afraid to go in there no more.

Dude, I bet the rest of the world is just trying to goad us into watching them back with that "we're watching you" stuff.

Well, you know how they're always getting all mad at us for not paying any attention to them and being ignorant of where they are located on maps and shit!

Watching them, watching us, watching them, yah man, that'd be a huge waste of time, that's why the rest of world ain't doing anything worth watching, they're too busy watching everybody else, if we fell fer that, then nobody would be doing anything worth watching, it'd be like a French Apocalypse of Nothing Happening or something, what with everybody sitting there, sipping coffee, watching each other watch each other!

Plus watching people is just snoopy and creepy and disrespectful.

That's why I'm proud to maintain my ignorance in all these matters, I consider it my patriotic and sacred duty as an American to conform to the highest standards of excellence in ignorance, I'm not willing to sink to everybody's elses dishonorable level, snooping on each other and invading each other's privacy and treating everybody like shit and rumor mongering and filling the world with jealousy and hate, no matter what it may cost me in Geography-related points on Gameshows, somebody has to maintain some integrity around here and quit cannibalizing the less fortunate in a never-ending illustration of our personal superiority while we smoke cigarettes and try to get laid!

Or whatever, y'know, what do I care, really ahaha.

Shanty Momma

Hey, if we're gonna end up living in cardboard box shanty towns, then we're gonna come together as Americans and make sure that our cardboard box shanty towns are the best cardboard box shanty towns that the world has ever seen!

We can like, attach our cardboard boxes together and make huge-ass cardboard box mazes and mansions with tennis courts and exercise rooms and treehouses with working elevators and shit, it'll be awesome, we'll be the envy of the Better Cardboard Boxes & Gardens community baby.

We should make a fake documentary about failing to make a documentary about some guys who failed to make a successful Greeting Card For Pets company, where the whole thing takes place next to a rack of "greeting cards for pets" at a tourist shop on a tropical island or something.

Y'know, where they're all like, "Missing You" and "Wish You Were Here" cards for all the guilty rich people on vacation to send back to the pets they have locked away in kennels and shit, rich people don't actually care about their pets, but some of 'em do care about how they seem to care about their pets, its just that the poor people at the Greetings Card For Pets company over-estimated their vanity and under-estimated their stingyness, that's like, the whole statement of the movie, its this existential tension thingie where you watch one rich tourist after another make faces and noises as they decide not to buy "Wish You Were Here" postcards for their pets.

I'd rather make a fake documentary about failing to make a documentary about some guys who failed to make a successful Travel Show on PBS but that sounded too expensive, y'know.

Unless the reason they failed to make a successful Travel Show was that it was too expensive to actually travel to the places they were supposed to do the shows about, that'd be kinda funny if they never got to go anywhere and they got caught (by a competing Travel Show Star) for trying to trick everybody into thinking that they actually went to the places they were talking about ahaha awhellyah man I am a veritable goldmine of shit like this.

See, no matter what happens, the folks who live in my cardboard box shanty town are never gonna have to worry about what we're going to do for some entertainment.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Bush Rider

Dude this economy thingie must be pretty serious if George W is willing to risk pissing off the last of his supporters by interrupting Knight Rider to blabber about it.

Ah he's going on at 8pm after Knight Rider is over boy that dude is one sly fox huh nothing to worry about there man he prolly just wants to be the first to talk about how cool Knight Rider was ahaha.

Hey, I got an idea for a new gameshow:

"Are You Smarter Than Somebody Who Married a Millionaire"

It'd work, trust me, its got everything it needs built into it already ahaha.

Yah its one of those "bittersweet victory" thingies even if you win, those are worth extra points y'know heh.

Hey, I told you asshats to marry a millionaire but you hopeless-ass romantics were all like "oh no dude I think I'd rather be poor" so I don't wanna hear none of yer shit dude I should be living large in your poolhouse as your "spiritual advisor" or something already ahaha.

Big Brotherocracy

This is pretty goddam funny.

I think it would get more people involved in the democratic process if we switched the whole thing around so that we were allowed to vote for who we hated the most and get rid of them.

Hate has way less accessibility issues than love does, y'know?

Like, on our touch-tone phones, we could just press 1 to get rid of this guy, or press 2 to get rid of that guy, y'know, it could be all instantaneous and futuristic and stuff like that.

And then the guy we voted off the show would be notified on his phone with a foghorn sound effect or something heh.

Have it all happening in real-time with camera phones everywhere, y'know, government should be reality-tv style, totally, none of this crap where folks have all this time to dick around and have folks write 'em speeches and shit, we need to pick up some speed here, baby, think a little quicker on our toes, I don't wanna hear all these stupid excuses for everything, things need to start getting done.

Democracy oughta be all smooth and responsive and super adaptive and shit like that.

Dude, now that is the way to do it, one slip up and blam, the People Have Spoken, you are outta there, pack yer shit, flintstone.

Huh?

Yah well we'd have to come up with some kinda secondary system for putting people up on the Block and shit, I still got some kinks to work out and junk ahaha.

The Smoking Monkey Show

When I said we should do a TV show, I didn't mean a good one.

I don't wanna get trapped doing anything like the Mentalist, where we got characters that are supposed to be all super smart and stuff, duking it out in a battle of wits every episode, that kinda shit is way the hell too hard to write.

Yah, you can go ahead and try to pull shit like that off week after week after week, we'll see how long you last heh.

Yah, naw, I meant that we should do something with totally low standards and properly managed expectations and shit, y'know, like Knight Rider or something, something where folks would be surprised and happy any time we accidentally did something that was halfway decent.

Just thinking about all the parents that are gonna be stuck watching that Knight Rider show makes me laugh man ahaha.

But we could do something good for those people.

Maybe not something as good as Knight Rider, y'know, 'cause that's a lot of work, actually, you need a fancy looking car with like, working lights and stuff for that, and you gotta do jumps and stunts and stuff, there's way the hell too much effort and money and danger involved in something like that.

Naw, see, I was thinking more along the lines of one of those shows where they got a talking monkey or something.

Yah, naw, see, we don't need a monkey that can actually talk, we could just have the whole show be one of those voice-over narration type dealies, from the perspective of the monkey, like they did everything on the Wonder Years, y'know?

So we can save ourselves some money there, we could just get ourselves a nice cheap non-talking monkey fer something like that.

Yah, I dunno how much monkeys cost but they can't be that expensive, a non-talking monkey has gotta be cheaper than a talking car, its prolly only a couple hundred bucks or something.

See, that'd be perfect, and all the parents would be stuck watching our talking monkey show, too, y'know, 'cause you can't watch shit about serial killers, if yer a parent, and kids love that talking monkey shit hahaha suckers.

Dude c'mon seriously the added bonus of getting to torture all the parents stuck watching our talking monkey show with their kids really puts this one over the top heh.

And we can make the monkey do all sorts of bad shit, too, like smoking cigarettes and crap, so that the parents have to be mean to their kids and not let 'em watch the show 'cause the monkey might teach 'em to smoke ahaha awhellyah y'know now that's the kinda awkard and awesome shit that makes life worth waking up for in the morning ahaha.

Meanwhile all the cool kids at school with cool parents that let 'em watch the Smoking Monkey Show will get all the chicks, and the ones that aren't allowed to watch it will end up as social misfits and rejects and they won't be able to find anybody to go to Prom with let alone reproduce with and thus the Smoking Monkey Show Fans will eventually take over the world.

Heck, the controversy alone is all the publicity we need, y'know with the way the journalists on the news are all insane-o with the health consciousness stuff, trying to keep everybody frightened so they'll keep watching the news for answers, they're gonna look like extremist dietary whackos going after our cute little Smoking Monkey, what with their barbie doll plastic surgery faces all twisted up into unnatural and rubbery looking masks of corporate pharmaceutical-fueled outrage ahaha.

Hell yah man, we could probably even get some fundage from Big Tobacco, too, y'know, like the talking car commercial show gets money from whoever makes the car.

Dude, a smoking monkey is a million times more loveable and American than a smoking camel, I mean, c'mon, wtf, don't camels spit and shit?

And Tobacco is a plant, man, so its all "green" and automatically environmentally conscious and stuff, just like the peaceful nature-loving Monkey ahaha.

"The Smoking Monkey is against Global Warming!"

Yah man, see, this idea just keeps getting better and better.

The Good News

Teachers, frustrated with how stupid their students are, unanimously voted for a shift in the grading system today, where a score of 1% will now be considered a "D," and anything over a score of 50% or more will now be considered "unanimous."

All the other letters are in the middle of them two things, they didn't get rid of any.

"This is a huge win for teachers," said this hot teacher chick, "now we won't have to waste so much time with that crap."

"And this will make the students be smarter," said this other guy, "and that's what teaching is all about."

"Now the teachers won't have to teach us so hard," said another person who was shorter than the other guy.

As for the rest of the community, they seemed to be under the mistaken impression that I was auditioning them for that America's Got Talent thing on TV, you know, with the English Judge guy, it seems kinda weird that we use an English Judge guy to judge American Talent like that, don't it?

Its like they're looking for English talent or something, really.

See, that's probably why people are having such a hard time winning the thing!

Which reminds me, isn't it kinda dumb to call the news "news" just because its new?

I thought this stuff was supposed to be all smart and serious and spelled right and junk.

Calling it "news" just seems kinda cheesy, to me, if you really think about it, its like the "s" on the end is supposed to make it sound cute or something.

Well, whatever, some of them really could sing pretty good, and there was a couple of ones that might actually make it.

We'll be keeping our fingers crossed over here, Bob.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

What Is Good In Life

You people need some cheering up.

So I want you to imagine some hobbits.

Spending their entire day doing something related to the food they were eventually gonna get to eat, y'know, churning butter, taking care of animals, growing spices, perfecting recipes, making silverware, building booze barrels, baking bread, whatever.

That's all nice and everything, right?

And after a hard day of that shit, and a nice huge feast, they hang out on the porch in the fresh night air with a cool breeze moving through the trees and they eat desserts and smoke pipes and crack jokes and tell stories for a bit and they watch all the lights down there in town twinkle along with the reflections of the stars and everything on the lake or whatever.

Totally cool and smooth.

But they suck in bed, what with the weird little rubbery noises they make, and the way they're all inhibited and twisted, totally unable to express themselves and get comfortable and shit, its nothing but sheer sexual frustration there, the biting and hair pulling is actually the good stuff, there ain't no hobbits that know how to kick off their shoes and let their hair down and sink into each other with kisses, they seize up and freak out when they grab on to each other, their whole process of reproduction is all awkward and terrifying and unsatisfying and traumatizing to everybody involved, that's why Bilbo lived alone and never talked about it and shit man ahaha.

So don't be all jealous of the hobbits, man.

That's like being jealous of homeless people 'cause they get to go camping all the time.

Yah, Eating is only one of the Big Three.

Yah no, Shitting isn't one of 'em, Shitting sorta goes with Eating, I think.

Well, I'm not an expert or anything, y'know, so maybe you're right.

The Art of Plagiarism

Its interesting, the way artists steal stuff from each other.

Like, books steal stuff from real life.

And comic books steal stuff from books.

And movies steal stuff from comic books.

And television steals stuff from movies.

In these cases, the stolen goods are traveling from a less-well-known source, something edgier and more underground with a cult following of people who are willing to put a lot of effort into getting at the highest quality entertainment, to a more widely accepted format that's easier to get at with a lower barrier to entry.

And even if the stolen goods weren't all watered down on purpose, in preparation for their delivery to the masses, or cut with something cheaper, so you could spread a tiny bit of goodness over a longer period of time, they'd still lose some of their potency, just due to the process of copying 'em, 'cause nobody understands what they're copying as well as the dude who made the original copy that they're all copying off of, and so there's always little bits and pieces that don't get copied.

Which is why, given the choice, you'd probably want to make your copies from the most intense and original sources, and not the most bland and over-boiled sources, just to increase the odds of capturing more of the colors and flavors and textures involved.

But that's not how games do it.

Nope, see, I think games actually have a tendency to do things the other way around, 'cause they got self-esteem issues and they want to steal acceptance by the masses more than they want to be thought of as "artistic" and "edgy" and "original" and all that heh.

Yah, y'know, you might be tempted to steal from a bland and widely accepted format, if your medium was having problems with acceptance, if your medium was considered "nerdy" or whatever.

Which is the exact opposite of the problem with TV, where its thought of as "stupid," and it needs to steal stuff that makes it seem more original and edgy and artistic ahaha.

Of course, books also steal stuff from comic books, and comic books steal stuff from movies, and there's all sorts of cross-pollination stuff like that, I'm generalizing here.

And you can also play semantics, and say that we're not really stealing things, that we're just being influenced by things, that these things are our "influences," there's a whole art to that shit.

And we can make an art out of stealing things, where we sorta admit that we're stealing things, we can say that we're doing a nod or a hat tip to something we like, or bringing some edgy cool and underground thing to the masses, as if we were doing them a favor, we're Prometheus Bringing Fire, we're the well-paid herald of Galactus or something.

Or we can just try to not get caught at it heh.

And then fall back on the Prometheus stuff if we do get caught or something ahaha.

But everybody is actually stealing things, imitation is the highest form of flattery and all that.

And every once in a while we do think up something new and original, while we're stealing stuff, 'cause the stuff we're stealing has a tendency to inspire new ideas and new twists and stuff.

I'm not one of those guys that go around moping about how everything has been done before, I mean, just because something is tough to do doesn't mean its impossible and that we should all just give up or whatever, all the cool things are tough to do, and I'm all totally into doing new stuff that nobody has done before, even if I'm not the kinda guy to worry about holding my nose when I need to steal shit 'cause I can't think of nothing new to do heh.

You gotta explore the map out to the edges to get to the new stuff, y'know?

Hell, you gotta explore the map out to the edges to even know what the new stuff is.

Anyways, there ain't nothing wrong with thinking of story-telling as being a DJ, where you spin records, or in this case stories, there's an art and a skill and a craft and a bunch of knowledge and appreciations and understandings that go into spinning 'em good, even if you ain't responsible for any of the songs that you are twisting together.

Its probably better to think of it that way than to think of it in any other way, actually, 'cause it tends to get less and less honest the more you move away from that heh.

And you can also get so good at mixing crap together that you can start making new songs out of bits and pieces of old songs, too, y'know, at that point, the line between doing that and sitting in a rocking chair and plucking out your favorite chords on an old guitar is starting to get pretty blurry.

And there's another rule I have, probably the most important rule of all, and that's to not ignore a thing just because "its been done before."

Everything is a tool, and you don't ignore all the things a tool might be able to do, just because some other dude used them once.

You don't need new tools, all the time, to make new things, we'd still be living in caves if we all thought shit like that ahaha.

And you don't wanna ignore the tools that bad guys use, either, just because a bad guy used it to do bad things, 'cause there's no such thing as Bad Guy Tools, its all in how you use it, as soon as a Good Guy picks up a Bad Guy Tool it tends to turn into a Good Guy Tool.

That's why I'm okay with drinking, y'know, it shouldn't be "against the rules" for the Good Guys to seek a little lubrication when they need it, after a long hard day of doing Good Deeds and all that shit ahaha.

Anyways, all of these things can be done well, or done poorly, that's how you know that there's an art to 'em.

And there's even all sorts of arts involved in stealing things.

But you ain't never gonna figure 'em out unless you start with being honest with yourself about how dishonest you are.

Y'know, yer just gonna end up being some crazy dude in the land of make believe heh.

I'm not an expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure that Artistic Integrity doesn't start with a river in egypt ahaha.

Well, whatever, we really should get together and make our own TV show.

Yah man, apparently we can just copy shit scene by scene from movies like the Fly and whatever nowadays and we don't even have to do the usual reach-around hat-tip thingie where we do a little name-dropping and point folks in the direction of the thing we stole it from ahaha.

Yah, I dunno, I'm guessing that its 'cause most of the TV audience right now is too young to see R rated movies, so we can just steal willy-nilly from Rated R shit and pretend we came up with all that junk!

Could it get any goddam easier?

See, we should be striking while that iron is still hot baby ahaha.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Emmy Fever

I am neither proud of nor disturbed by the fact that I don't even know what the Emmies are.

I could guess, without looking in the wikipedia (the fact that I can't be bothered to even look it up in the wikipedia oughta tell you all you need to know, you ultra-hip folks can stop reading right now AHAHA), that they're for TV shit, insteada movie shit, 'cause I'm pretty sure (although not totally sure) that the Oscars are for movie shit.

But then there's the Academy Awards and the People's Choice Awards and I have no idea who the Academy is or who The People are but I am sure that nobody has ever asked me to vote for any of this shit so I apparently don't belong to whatever clubs I need to belong to in order to care about the opinions involved in the outcomes of those contests.

I've never watched an award show for anything, now that I think about it, I mean, you name it, I ain't watched it, so my lack of interest in the opinions of invisible people that I don't know anything about isn't limited to movies and television heh.

Oh, this movie won an Oscar, oh that actor won a Egor and an Ernie, y'know, it's all the same to me, that's great, good on you, there, buddy.

I do like those awards for the worst research of the year, the Ignobles or whatever, now that shit is a riot, but I just read about that stuff, y'know, I don't need to see anybody with weird hairdos struttin' up and down a runway with their boobs hanging out (although it certainly wouldn't hurt, now that I think about it heh).

Then again, I dunno who gets to vote on the Ignobles either, who the hell even knows what all the mad scientists are doing, man, I really oughta join that club, I could be hanging out at underwater supervillain research bases and stuff, checking out the latest info on which toads are the tastiest to lick, holy shit man, that'd be sweet ahaha.

A Three Hour Tour

I heard Heroes is running from 7 to 10 pm central.

That's three hours of Heroes Goodness, man.

That's a lot of Heroes Goodness, actually, I mean, seriously, damn, three hours, man, hmm, that's a lot of Heroes to take in, y'know, in one sitting.

I think Boston Legal is starting up today, too.

Yah, its on at 9pm.

Man, there's an interesting who-would-win, Hulk Vs. the Thing type of fight, y'know, Boston Legal fans vs. Heroes fans, gonna take me a bit to get my aching head around that one ahaha.

I'm a fan of both shows, so its a contest between my Inner Boston Legal Fan Versus my internal Heroes-fan-who-has-already-been-stuck-eating-Heroes-for-two-hours-and-I-dunno-if-I-can-stand-three-hours-of-broadcast-television-in-a-day sorta Clash of the Titans thing going on there, which complicates things a bit.

And Fringe is tomorrow, y'know, the show where they give you sixty seconds to pee.

Sixty seconds is not enough time to pee and wash your hands afterwards, y'know.

Well, I'm just saying.

Yah you Fringe Fans ain't fooling me man, I ain't sharing my popcorn with any of you fuckers ahaha.

Spread Around S'more of This Rare Talent

Man, I need to hook up with somebody making movies or something.

Screw this game crap, its too much work for everybody involved, its too much work to make the shit, its too much work to play the shit, and it don't pay enough.

Not when we could be having fun eating donuts on location and being creative while making something that was an hour and a half of fun to watch and eat donuts to and be done with it.

Something that was composed of short, cheetah-like bursts of energy, captured on film, something we could prepare ourselves for and execute over and over again, insteada some long-ass overly drawn-out endurance-test-of-a-thing where only the most exhausted shit manages to make it through the spanking machine and leave faint impressions on the tape.

Something that would matter more in the long run anyways by virtue of its sheer accessibility alone.

A television show would probably be better than making movies, movies are kinda bad for some of the same reasons games are bad, its the timing of the it, the pacing involved in the making and enjoyment of it, time is really the red-headed step child of dimensions, we're not real good at looking at it and understanding it yet, y'know, compared to length, width, and height, we're just barely starting to get our heads around the way things move through time, we like to look at stuff as snapshots, frozen in time, 'cause we get confused when all the parts start to move again, and it gets hard to measure things, and we get lost.

Movies are bad 'cause you got too much time to make 'em, and you don't gotta make as many of 'em, same as games.

But whatever, somebody's gotta be making a TV show that we could hook up with, and I don't mean something that's already famous, I don't wanna work on Battlestar Galactica or Stargate or any of that shit, I want something that we're free to give personality to, something we can bring to life any way we want without getting yelled at ahaha.

Oh, its probably just as bad as everything else, where some idiot execs from somewhere tell you that you oughta change the ending of the season finale and whatever, but there's a million ways to get around that kinda shit.

Yah, the only thing really bad about TV is the censorship stuff, when you automatically sorta tone yourself down and self-edit, but that can actually be a good thing sometimes, too, y'know, I could give examples, like the way the dude from Hill Street Blues mellowed out Lynch on Twin Peaks, and the result was better than the sum of the parts, there's an art to toning things down in places, its the big difference between Hitchcock and Tarantino, really, ain't it?

Y'know, those are the calm little avenues of shadowy accessibility for folks with more delicate sensibilities and your points of contrast amidst the hot and glaring splashes of technicolor zombie blood spatter sizzling on the pavement and the daisy duke hitchhiker climbing-into-the-VW-bus ass-shots in the orangey-orange sunshine.

Dude, somebody should get Tarantino to produce a TV show, and then hire me to help them eat the donuts and act as an advisor or something.

Yah, we can sell it to Showtime or some shit, pfft, those dudes will buy anything, juss lookit that Medieval piece of soft-porn shit they got and all the marketing behind it, I mean, seriously, could a show be a bigger waste of time and more boring than that?

I feel bad for the marketing geniuses that are wasting their lives and talent trying to prop pieces of crap like that up.

Y'know, how many times have you said to yourself, "man, the goddam commercials are better than this show, I wish the guys who were making these commercials would do a show!" ahaha.

I think the furniture is the most interesting thing on the Tudors, its like Antiques Road Show With Tits or something heh.

Oh whatever.

Seriously though, somebody get on that shit and hook us up!

Y'know, its like, wtf, I could write a season of Lost every day, there's all this "rare talent" that's just going to waste ahaha.

"Dude, I think you mighta painted yourself into a corner there, y'know, with the polar bear sequence."

"Pfft don't worry about it, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually."

"Well, whatever, as long as this whole thing don't turn out to be some kinda stupid-ass dream, where the guy wakes up at the end and goes..."

"..."

Shit man, I could write a full season of a show about a bunch of guys making a show like Lost in a day ahaha.

And heck, Sundry could probably wrote two seasons worth of that kinda shit in a day AHAHA.

Yah man, we should all band together and create some kinda Creative Consulting Company.

All we really need is somebody specialized in creating Creative Consulting Companies, some kinda creative creative consulting company creative consultant guy from a creative consulting company creation consultation company or something.

Yah, I dunno how to do that shit, "I'm just a cheerleader" ahaha.

Flying Man

"Your character is supposed to be going through a rough patch, where he's filled with sorrow over the loss of his brother and turned to drinking, that's why we need you to grow a beard or something."

Later...

"Hmm, he still doesn't look like a drunk going through a rough patch."

"Yah, naw, he looks like a News Anchor celebrating Abraham Lincoln Day with a Fake Beard or something."

"Man, this is bad."

"There's like, no way to make this dude look kinda scuzzy and rough around the edges, he's just too 80s or something."

"Yah, its just gonna end up being confusing for the audience."

"Mebbe we oughta write this part out."

Hay Fever Hero Rundown

First off, you got your Hiro Nakamura.

He's really the heart of the show, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, we could just skip the rest of it and stick with Hiro the whole time and I'd be perfectly happy, he's an old fashioned superhero, cheerful and optimistic about people and all that (and he's got his officespace sidekick Ando to carry any pessimism that needs carrying), but its cleverly done and totally believable and everything.

That whole samurai thing from last season was kickass.

Where it turns out that his dad Sulu raised his kid on stories of this hero from ancient times that turns out to be the very kid that he's telling the stories to who went back in time and made sure that all the stories he heard turned out right?

Goddam that was good, seriously.

Then you got Noah Bennett, Claire's dad, who is a totally kickass character, which is why they keep threatening to kill him off, to keep us watching.

He's sorta like the Revenge of Clark Kent and Batman and the Husband from Bewitched or something, 'cause he ain't got any super powers, y'know, he's just got training and smarts, but he's also got this "is he a good guy or a bad guy" thing running along on the side.

Bad guys that turn into good guys is always a good one.

Like his buddy, the Haitian, who started out as a totally scary dude that never said a word, with the totally freaky power to make you forget shit or even turn you into a vegetable.

And then, when he finally speaks, he turns out to be this sweet-hearted and gentle religious dude who is anything but selfish, he's like all tapped in to the bigger picture and stuff.

Even though his power and the stuff he has to do is anything but sympathetic and gentle heh.

That's pure gold, baby.

And I like Syler, the bad guy, but I think they totally screwed up when they did that stuff with his mom, where they made him into one of those serial killers that was abused when he was a kid, as if that explains everything.

That's the same kinda thing as any movie where the serial killer is a serial killer just because he's gay, as if that explained everything.

Syler woulda been a better character without that "I was abused so I became a serial killer" shit, y'know?

He woulda been better as a regular guy, with a horrible-to-use needs-to-eat-brains super power, who gave in to using it just 'cause it made him incredibly powerful.

Its like the choice between morality and power right there, you can be good guy, and be all weak and stuff, or you could eat brains and fly and lift things with your mind and read people's thoughts and live forever.

You don't need any "mom whipped me in the tub" shit for that, that's a tough one even if your momma didn't love you enough heh.

Aside from the dumb reasoning, Syler is totally kickass as a badguy, I loved the junk where he was driving around in Mexico with that girl with the black stuff that came out of her eyes and her brother and that dude that they busted out of jail, that was award-worthy writing and directing and everything right there, they coulda easily had a spin-off show based on Joyrides with Syler or something heh.

Well, aside from the way they clumped it together with the Big Cowinky-dink that made everybody groan, where they're driving along and they find Syler laying in the middle of the road, ugh man, that was beyond terrible, and the Recovery of Syler, previous to that, with that chick who do illusions (which was cool), made no sense at all.

But I assume they'll go back and make more sense out of that later, in a world where people can travel through time and read minds and predict the future and stuff, its easy to explain away bad bits of plot with a quick flashback or whatever, I assume that the illusion chick was only working for the people who fixed Syler up, that she was sorta like a tasty little mouse dumped into a snake cage, and that there's more to that story.

As far as the rest of the folks on the show go, they're just kinda marching along in place, I wouldn't quit watching the show if any of the rest of 'em got killed off.

A lot of 'em had good setups, as characters, and they got some really good and likeable actors, like that almost-too-pretty-to-be-a-man Mohinder guy, but they haven't really gone anywhere with 'em, the Policeman who can read minds is bottoming out and losing his humanity (which was the only thing he had going for him as a character), the flying senator never had any humanity, Claire's "you don't know what its like to have super powers" crap is really getting old.

And they're completely ignoring the murderous internet porn chick with split personalities, who is the show's version of Wolverine.

And I really don't like the good guy Neo-wannabe version of Syler, the guy who doesn't have to eat brains to steal everybody else's power, I mean, it seems so unfair to have that dude be the "superman" that fights Syler, 'cause his power was so easy to aquire in comparison, where the bad guy actually had to put some elbow grease into it, to say the least heh.

I seriously hope that Syler eats his brain, and gets that guy's power, 'cause then Syler won't have to eat brains anymore ahaha.