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.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
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."
"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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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