The Civility Webpage II

What Separates Man From Beast

2009-10-21T16:26:00.003-05:00

I don't care what anybody says; what separates man from beast is the sense to not eat our own throw-up.

Shattered Illusions

2009-10-20T19:28:00.005-05:00

Our confidence is nothing more than an illusion which shelters us from our insecurities. Shatter that illusion, and all we're left with is worthlessness. The worthlessness is no more realistic than the confidence, but if no one reinforces our value to each other, our insecurities begin to dominate.

However, no one is ever truly worthy or worthless. We just are, and what we are is only determined by what we mean to each other, and what we mean to ourselves. We can spend as much time as we want building ourselves up or tearing ourselves down, but in the end it doesn't change the reality of what we are, only the illusion of what we feel.

We get to choose whether we are ugly or attractive, whether we are worthy or worthless, whether we are confident or insecure. We have control over these things; not anybody else. Our reality is only as valid as we perceive it.

np: King Crimson - "Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part 4"

Seriously, Congress Needs To Look Into This

2009-10-16T16:10:00.001-05:00

CNN reported that China only trails the US in billionaires. Then why the hell are we borrowing billions of dollars from China? I think, when China comes to collect on our debt, we should sell them our billionaires first. Let them fuck up China's economy with their greed for a while.

Seth MacFarlane

2009-10-12T17:27:00.000-05:00

I think Seth MacFarlane should do something quirky and irreverent, like design a show that doesn't shove quirky and irreverent down our throats.

Look, whether you like it or hate it, I will admit that Family Guy broke ground. Then there was American Dad, and you could buy the talking fish and the ambiguously gay alien because the guy worked for the government. Now there's The Cleveland Show. It's pretty much a rip-off of Family Guy right down to the talking animal, only now the gags are just becoming cliché and boring.

Perhaps a straight hour and a half of Seth MacFarlane is a bit overkill. Perhaps he should have waited until Family Guy was finished before cloning the formula.

Someone Whip Me Up Some "Scillow" Fanfics

2009-10-02T16:34:00.001-05:00

I'm about to blow all your impressionable young minds.

Contemplate this...

Alyson Hannigan and Scarlett Johansson, with Scarlett Johansson as the dom.

Have fun with that thought tonight.

Slippery Slope

2009-09-27T22:31:00.003-05:00

How about that health care crisis, huh? Is that some wacky stuff or what? To take our minds off of the Obama re-election crisis, let's discuss another serious political issue that has slipped through the cracks during this whole sordid affair. I'm talking about the serious threat of the gum disease stupidity.

The one argument I hate for pretty much anything is the "slippery slope" argument. For instance, I hate it when people say that allowing homosexual rights is just one more step toward allowing incest, then bestiality, then pedophilia. I just want to slap them shitless. You should consider it an insult to your intelligence for anyone to think they can motivate you with such obvious scare tactics.

To illustrate the point, let's apply the same argument to the controversial topic of abortion. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we decide life really does begin at conception. I think, should we all come to that consensus, we would all agree that abortion does equate murder and is thereby inherently immoral.

However, that would also imply that using certain forms of birth control, such as all of it, is also a form of murder because it prevents a life that could have been formed had the birth control not been in place. By that reasoning, the ultimate and most effective form of birth control, abstinence, would also be a form of premeditated infanticide. Therefore, one would logically conclude that we would need to keep having sex without protection until such time as a baby is conceived.

Furthermore, anything that wastes the male's sperm such as masturbation or any form of sodomy, whether it be oral or anal, would also prevent the conception of a human being, which would also be a form of murder, so we need to make sure that any orgasm the man has can only take place inside of a receptive womb. To be fair, just as a missed opportunity for the sperm to fertilize an egg would be murder, so would the missed opportunity for an egg to be fertilized. By that reasoning, a woman is a cold-blooded killer every time she undergoes her menstrual cycle.

Are you keeping track? According to the Pro-Life argument, as opposed to masturbating, men must always be having unprotected sex with fertile women who cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to ovulate. This is the same style of argument being employed by a large number of lazy sycophants to criticize the alleged "gay agenda" because they claim homosexuals shouldn't have more rights than heterosexuals.

What rights? Name one right gay people want that straight people don't have. I dare you. I bet you honestly can't.

Whether or not you believe in abortion or gay rights, stop using the slippery slope argument to make your point. It's the most painfully stupid of the logical fallacies, and it just makes you look like an lazy imbecile every time you try to pass it off as a rational argument to prove any point outside of your own intolerant bigotry. It's like, "Oh, I don't care about this topic enough to do any research on it or form an opinion of my own, so here is a hearty helping of someone else's of abject stupidity so I can stubbornly adhere to a core belief without putting any real thought, time, or effort into it at all."

This Is Why Japan Is Kicking Our Ass

2009-09-17T16:42:00.002-05:00

For those of you who care about Transformers, and possibly even those of you who don't, the sister company in Japan, Takara, is doing some pretty nifty things while Hasbro is immersing itself in the Shitformers from Michael Bay.

First they came up with Soundwave as a working MP3 player:

Then I caught wind of Ravage as a working 2GB flash drive:

Now they're not only making Grimlock and Trypticon as a mouse:

But also Soundwave's arch-nemesis Blaster as a working USB hub in the shape of a laptop:

You Do Not Want To Go To War

2009-09-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

I'd like to tell you about the most powerful, most heartfelt, touching speech I'd ever heard in my entire military career. This speech wasn't given by a commander. It wasn't given by a general. It was given by a master sergeant in charge of my aircraft inspection dock.

Over the course of the days following September 11th, 2001, talk ran wild amongst the younger Airmen that this was their chance to go to war and to kick some ass and to have their moment of glory. Many of them were exciteda about the prospect of going to war, especially for such a tremendous cause, saying that this was what they had signed up for.

On the third day after the attacks, MSgt Arrington called us all in for an impromptu briefing. He had had enough of this foolish, misdirected bravado.

He stood before us, directly outside the closed door to his office, and I will never forget the way he looked when he delivered this speech. There were no walls. There was no rank. There was no pride or confidence. He looked like a broken man talking to a group of broken men. He was not a supervisor, not a senior enlisted official, but a human being, speaking from his heart, to his fellow human beings.

He shook his head in remorse as he spoke the first line: "You do not want to go to war."

He told us there is no pride in what we do. There is no pride in leaving our families, our wives who love us, our children who admire us, and our parents who respect us, to murder other human beings who are only trying to do the same thing we're trying to do, fight for the cause they believe is right. There is no pride in having to shoot a child who has picked up a rifle and is pointing it at you. There is no pride in having to see your friends shot, killed, blown up, and slaughtered right next to you.

He said that if any one of us signed up to go to war, he wanted us out of his military right now.

He said that no one should ever want to go to war. No one should ever wish to see the things he has seen. No one should ever desire to do the things he has had to do.

He said that any of us who have been excited about going to war just to prove ourselves just don't know what we're talking about.

He ended, tears in his eyes, by repeating the first line: "You do not want to go to war."

I didn't want to go to war. I was terrified of having to leave Amy behind to fend for herself, to worry about whether or not I was coming home. I was terrified of making her a widow. I didn't sign up to go to war.

To hear someone in the military, someone who had been a part of the first Gulf War, not only echo my concerns, but tell me that it was okay to feel that way, it moved me in a way that no other speech given during my entire time in the service had ever moved me.

This wasn't some pompous commander with an over-inflated ego trying to rally his troops around a some misguided cause. This was a scarred human being in a moment of sincere, unbridaled humanity, exposing his wounds so no one else has to, because no one else would.

Those words still echo in my head as I fight to hold back the tears of the pain I felt in that man that day: "You do not want to go to war."

Depends On How You Look At It

2009-08-27T21:56:00.000-05:00

Patti: What are the benefits of a computer oriented society?

Me: Skynet.

Poetry Corner #7: Too Late

2009-08-22T00:47:00.000-05:00

I haven't done one of these for a long time. I was recently going through my old songs that I'd written, and I found this one. I don't ever remember writing it, but apparently I had. It must've been in the last couple years of my military service, which I have apparently blocked out large chunks from my memory. I have no idea why this was written or who it was about, but I love the angst and the hints at vampirism throughout.

Too Late
You've known a lifetime of pain
Your face is pale, your color drained
Smeared black mascara like darkness hangs
Blood red lips encircle bloody fangs

Hurting like a vampire's kiss
The living dead in a state of bliss
All you'll get is just one wish
But you don't know what to make of this

All you know are the growing pains
All you know are the living pains
All you can do is run away from the pain
Run away from the pain

I gaze upon your pale face and into your dead eyes
You are so angelic and I somehow want to cry
I've never understood what kind of a God on high
Could let someone so wonderful endure so much pain in life

And all you can do is run away from the pain…
And all you can do is run away from the pain…

The hounds of hatred and greed and lust
Follow you everywhere you try to hide
Every time you find someone you feel you can trust
They make sure you'll die just a little more inside

And the dogs they feast upon your flesh
And the vampires feast upon your brain
You cry out from the far reaches of your soul
No one comes; no one cares; all you ever know is pain

All you know are the growing pains
All you know are the living pains
All you can do is run away from the pain
Run away from the pain

Then I come upon you a little too late in life
Kindred spirits – just a little we each have died
It's too late…
Too late…
You no longer remember how not to hate
I could never hurt you, but it's too late
You can't remember how to trust
All you can do is hate
I see you, and I love you
I need to protect you
From the vandals
From the vampires
From the abuse
But I can't protect you from you

You no longer remember how not to hate
I come upon you just a little too late…
Just a little too late…
Too late…

I gaze upon your pale face and into your dead eyes
You are so angelic and I somehow want to cry
I've never understood what kind of a God on high
Could let someone so beloved endure so much pain in life

And all you can do is run away from the pain…
All you can do is run away from the pain…

And I can't save you
It's too late.

And There's Johnny Chonko On The Snort Tank

2009-08-15T20:10:00.000-05:00

This is great. A couple of the SomethingAwful editorialists made a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style Rifftrack of an old 1940's steel town documentary. I laughed so hard at one point that I had to backwash my water back into my glass in order to keep from choking. It's only about fifteen minutes, but it is perfectly worth it.

Your Dying Town Sucks II: The Movie
by bobservo

Has House Jumped The Shark?

2009-08-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

This is the promo for House Season 6, in case you haven't seen it.

Okay, this is the real promo spot.

Two hours of House in an asylum? I can't wait. The song is called "Grounds for Divorce" by Elbow. I'd like this song even if it didn't conjure up fond memories of House.

Recent Text Conversation

2009-08-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

Tasha: "In 2010 the US gov will start shipping retards away. My eyes watered when I thought of losing you. Be strong. Take your crayons."

Me: "So, what? Are we gonna start sending all the Bush & McCain supporters to fuck up China?"

There's Nothing I Would Change In My Graffiti Soul

2009-08-06T19:09:00.002-05:00

Some recent conversational quotes.

(Our boss, Troy, was enquiring on the status of a past-due service unit.)
John: Brenda keeps calling, but they aren't returning her calls.
Troy: What a coincidence! We're not returning their product either!

(Watching fear-based Republican propaganda ads on health care reform.)
Me: I wish we could make a decision in this country based on facts and not fear.
Lehi: It's the start of Socialism.
Me: Socialism is a fear.
Lehi: Mmm-hmm.
Me: Fear is not logical.

(Dave Grohl > Kurt Cobain x ∞ + 1)
Teressa: I am grateful for Kurt Cobain's influence on Courtney Love's career, though, because I just adore Hole.
Me: I'm grateful for Courtney Love's influence on Kurt Cobain's career, too, actually.
Teressa: OOOOOOH!!! You are going straight to Hell for that one! Straight to Hell!

(A customer rejected a unit because the bottom plate wasn't the same color as the assembly and they wanted us to verify that it was coated with the same material. We all knew it was, but a coworker and I were discussing it.)
Ted: They just want to be sure it's built to spec.
Me: It is. The specs just say it needs to be coated. They don't specify that the... carpet has to match the drapes.

Test Results Inconclusive

2009-07-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

Comments On Weed

2009-07-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

So I cross-posted the "Thoughts On Weed" entry to my OKCupid Journal. Amusement ensued.

Yahoo Users Explain How Is Babby Formed

2009-07-19T11:31:00.000-05:00

A recent Google search for something completely unrelated brought me, as most Google searches for obscure unrelated topics do, to the Yahoo!Answers forum, particularly the conception section. So I decided that I missed this a little and dug around for some stupid questions and answers, as people often post in Yahoo!Answers. This is not a return to form; I don't plan on doing this every week. I'm still not ready for that yet, if I'll ever be again.

All natural baby preserves.

Trust sex advice from this guy. He sounds educated.

Sperm are lazy fucks.

I don't care what it means in the United States, what does it mean in England?

Something about this question is convincing me to advise you not to reproduce.

Yes, his girlfriend is going to get knocked up by some other guy and he's going to carry the baby. What kind of ultimate cuckold fantasy do you have going on there, Gavin?

"TopFixer" is a true lady-pleaser.

Kind of like counting beans in a jar. Get an autistic kid to guess the number based on the dimensions of his nutsack.

Avoiding ovulation is unbelievably easy. Just don't think about it, and do other things to occupy your mind whenever you find yourself having a craving. If you need support, there are many Ovulators Anonymous groups and outreach programs in your area.

It seriously depends, are you Republican or Democrat?

How dare my wife defy my wishes? I specifically told her, "Don't get pregnant!" as I was shooting my sperm deep inside her unprotected womb. She has dishonored me, and my family.

Best answer, chosen by users.

Thoughts On Weed

2009-07-17T20:10:00.001-05:00

If the government legalized marijuana, China would just lace it with lead.

Or GHB.

Or the FDA would inject it with salmonella.

The Other Side Of The Aisle

2009-07-09T18:57:00.000-05:00

You know, people think political parties are these clandestine, super-secret, underground organizations conspiring against each other to control the world, but they're really not. The truth is the Democrats are just as fucked up as the Republicans. If one party really wants to know what the other party is hiding, they just need to look at what their own party is hiding because it's the exact same stupid shit.

Hitchhiker's Guide To Hotel Safety

2009-07-06T21:49:00.004-05:00

Idea courtesy quirkytizzy. Caption courtesy me.

Improper Times To Recite Your Wedding Vows

2009-06-29T20:20:00.004-05:00

— When the voice from the speaker at the fast food drive-thru asks "May I take your order?"

— While having sex with your girlfriend for the first time.

— When the police officer asks for your license, registration, and proof of insurance.

— During the field sobriety test.

— When the drill sergeant asks what your major malfunction is.

— While you're being chased by a homicidal maniac wielding a large machete.

— When your five-year-old daughter asks you to tell her a bedtime story.

— To the anonymous woman sitting on the barstool next to you after you've had a few too many beers.

— To the large, burly man sitting on the opposite barstool next to you after the anonymous woman rejects your advances and you've had a few more beers.

— When you take the stage, grab the mic, and 150,000 madly cheering fans are expecting something more along the lines of "Rockin' in the Free World."

— When Satan offers to buy your soul for cursed favors. Actually, it might make him just a little uncomfortable.

— To your mother on Mother's Day.

— When the bailiff asks you if you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

— "Tower, my main engine's on fire, am I cleared to make an emergency landing?"

— On your first date, puking out the words right after the girl asks if you liked the movie.

— At the humane society, as you pick up one of the cats you're considering for adoption.

— To the jerk who cuts you off in rush hour traffic.

— While delivering the State of the Union Address.

— When your younger sister comes to visit you after being away for college.

— To a hooker, in the middle of a blowjob.

— After taking a large hit of PCP, cocaine, and ecstasy. You're just not in the right frame of mind to be making any sort of commitment.

— TextIM.

— When you're standing over the body with the bloodied knife still in your guilty fist.

— Among the closing credits of a movie.

— At the divorce hearing.

— Visitor's day at the insane asylum.

Gas Cap

2009-06-24T00:08:00.000-05:00

Quick, easy way to tell if the person in front of you is an idiot and should be avoided at all cost.

Seriously, how do you even manage that?

My Ex Is Fucking Awesome

2009-06-22T19:43:00.002-05:00

Part of a text conversation:

ME: "You might also want to check out Lennon Murphy. She's what Avril Lavigne wishes she could be."

AMY: "At this point, I suspect Avril wishes she could be anyone who can sell a record."

Addressing A Growing Concern

2009-06-14T18:48:00.000-05:00

There's a growing trend I've recently noticed in people while driving. I'd like to take a moment, as a public service, to address this concern.

When you're driving along a two lane residential street, and a vehicle is parked on your side of the street, it is your responsibility to stop and wait behind the parked vehicle if another vehicle is coming down the street in the oncoming lane.

It is not acceptable for you to drive around the parked vehicle without consideration for the vehicle in the oncoming lane. It is not that driver's responsibility to stop and wait for you.

I swear to God, I will keep going and let you hit me, because you are in my lane. If you hit me in my lane it is automatically your fault, because you are in my lane. Fuck, the argument could be made that you intentionally crossed into the oncoming lane for the purpose of crashing into me, because that's certainly what it would look like.

So, in summary, stay on your own side of the street.

np: VNV Nation - "Saviour"

Hi, I'm A MarvWHOA!!!

2009-05-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

Deadpool and the Watchmen spoof the "I'm a Mac & I'm a PC" commercials.

Reflections On The Swine Flu

2009-04-30T00:28:00.000-05:00

Now every time I feel a little sick, I'm going to have to worry that I might have contracted the swine flu. I don't even know what the sympoms of swine flu are, except I'd be willing to bet that they'd fall into the category of flu-like.

I think the swine flu would be more awesome if it would actually turn people into pigs. Or pig people, like on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now that would be an epidemic! People would be like, "Great. Pig people. We still have bird people walking around from 2007!" At least, that way, it would be easy for health experts to identify if it was the swine flu and not some other virus that killed a person. "That pig is wearing a shirt — must have been the swine flu."

Announcement: I'm Taking A Hiatus From Updates

2009-04-19T16:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I now officially fail at the Internets.

I need a break. An honest to God break. A hiatus.

I need to not post for a while.

I have a lot of major things going on in my life right now, and I don't have the time or the attention span to put into creating quality posts of any sort. When things get straightened out, I'll be back, and I think, better than ever.

Just... not right now.

I never wanted to be one of those people who couldn't update on a schedule, but I think after four and a half years online, all but one of those years writing daily updates, I don't have a bad track record. Everything must come to an end.

But this isn't an end, just a break.

I promise.

I need to go away and dream it all up again.

Don't worry — BELIEVE ME when I tell you that the reason behind this...

Is a good thing.

Don't Panic. We're From The IRS.

2009-04-15T21:04:00.001-05:00

Today is National Income Tax Filing Day, a day of community, where people from every walk of life can come together and share the common bond of standing shoulder to shoulder in the post office lobby. I don't know much about income taxes, other than no one understands them and they freak me out. Seriously. Every time I start a new job, they give me a W-4, or a W-2, or a WD-40 form to fill out, and it makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the floor and sob, and the only thing I have to do is mark a "1" in certain spots.

Like any red-blooded American, I want to do my civic duty to properly report my filing status as accurately as possible to withhold the maximum amount of money from the government without being accused of perjury. Unfortunately, there are two factors working against me when it comes to income taxes. One is specifically designed to work against me, as it's specifically designed to work against most people who are not criminally insane, (by which I mean "lawyers and politicians"). The other, I'll admit, is that I am easily confused by anything combining numbers with completely abstract concepts.

The IRS combines both of these factors into one big, scary process specifically designed to make me panic and give them a lot of money, then worry that they're going to throw me in jail anyway. This is the same thing that makes it impossible for me to perform any sort of financial transaction more substantial than buying gum without direct supervision.

Like, I'll decide I want to go buy a car. To me, buying a car should be pretty self-explanatory. You go to a store, and you buy a car. Only in this case the "store" is called a "dealership," and it's loaded with "salesmen" who are trying to "take advantage of you." You find a car that fits your price range and your needs, and you tell the salesman that you want the car. The problem comes in when the salesman sits you down in his office for several presidential administrations and starts talking about scary car things like features and options and dealer incentives. Then I get all confused. Then he'll start throwing numbers out at random, and if he starts comparing it with another car, my brain shuts down. By the time I'm done, I might walk away with three cars. I might walk away with no cars and a 237% interest rate. I might walk away paying for someone else's car. I have no idea!

I'm also really gullible. If the salesman tells me I need to have something on my car, oftentimes I'll agree to it just to make him stop throwing numbers at me. That is why I always need to have someone with me who knows what they're doing when I'm buying any expensive items like a car or a house or furniture or pretty much anything involving a contract.

Contracts are the worst. Insurance companies will list a bunch of policies, and I have no idea what any of them are really for because they all have names like "Balanced Assured Compensation Liability Mutual Licensee Aforementioned Deduction Allowance," and of course I need every single one. I end up with an entire contract, and I don't even know what it even covers, but I can rest assured knowing that whatever problem I have, it isn't included in the contract.

This brings me back to today's topic, which is income tax filing, a topic that makes me a total neurotic mess who seeks the advice of people who may or may not know what they're doing. I don't really know anything or care about income taxes, and therefore I had to fill the bulk of this article with completely unrelated filler. This is a time-honored technique that most professional writers perfect in college, where they are assigned essays on topics they care nothing about, such as the United States Tax Code. They have to answer such important questions as "Is the President of the United States exempt from paying income taxes?" and "Or what?" Both of these can be answered by copying and pasting any relevant section of the tax code, such as:

If an eligible person sells any property pursuant to a certificate of divestiture, at the election of the taxpayer, gain from such sale shall be recognized only to the extent that the amount realized on such sale exceeds the cost (to the extent not previously taken into account under this subsection) of any permitted property purchased by the taxpayer during the 60-day period beginning on the date of such sale.

TAX TIP: If you don't owe the government any money, you can file up to three years past the deadline, but if you do owe the government money, trained IRS agents will kick down your door and take it from you.

Easter Break

2009-04-12T22:53:00.003-05:00

I'm taking an Easter break. I'll try to pop out a Sunday update later this week, but knowing me, I might just skip it all together.

It's been a difficult weekend and I'm just not in the right frame of mind today.

Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Easter

2009-04-08T05:25:00.000-05:00

March came in like a lamb, bounding and bleating and eating all the grass in our yards until we got fed up and cut off all its hair to make coats because March went out like a lion, raining all over the place. March contained no holidays meriting free days off work, although, in my opinion, the release of the Watchmen movie should have been considered. If only our country was run by former comic book nerds. At least they would have the sense to understand that Bruce Wayne would make a far better Treasury Secretary than Lex Luthor.

Directly following March naturally comes April, or unnaturally comes August, but since this isn't a leap year I'm going to stick with April. April brings us the elusive holiday Easter, which falls on a different Sunday every year, ranging from the beginning of March to the end of May, given certain astrological calculations based on the positions of the stars and the mood in the air and the groundhog seeing its shadow on the day that Jesus died on the Cross. The Bible is not quite as specific about Easter as it is adamant that Christmas is to be celebrated on December 25th. Apparently two different Ancient Roman Bureaucrats were keeping records at the time.

DATE ON JESUS' BIRTH CERTIFICATE: December 25th, 0 A.D.
DATE ON JESUS' DEATH CERTIFICATE: The First Sunday Of The Third Trimester Of The Second Shepherd Moon Following The Super Bowl, Carry The Remainder, And No Less Than Six Weeks After The Groundhog Sees Its Shadow, 33 A.D.

Not much is known about Easter as it is not a highly publicized holiday. Christmas gets roughly 147 billion different songs on constant rotation everywhere you go from the beginning of August through the end of December. Christmas gets a slew of television specials and movies aired so aggressively some of them need a government mandate limiting how many times they can be shown on television each year. Easter, on the other hand, gets one song by obscure progressive rock band Marillion, a movie by Charlton Heston, and another by Mel Gibson.

I can't recall much about the Charlton Heston Easter movie except it probably had something to do with guns, or maybe apes. I do happen to remember that easily influenced Christians blamed Jews for the death of Jesus Christ because Mel Gibson's Easter movie told them to, even though the Bible explicitly states that it was all God's fault. In fact, according to the Book of Matthew, Chapter 26, Verses 39 and 40:

³⁹Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, "My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me."

⁴⁰God looked down and whispered "No."

In response to the outrage over his negative portrayal of Jewish people in his movie, Mel Gibson expressed his sincere regret with a drunken, anti-Semitic tirade. There's much more to Easter than the irrational hatred of Jewish people, though. There's also bunnies. Since Easter takes place in the springtime, it's been largely associated with bunnies, chickens, ducks, eggs, green pastures, blue skies, yellow sunshine, and whatever occurs in nature that can be associated with the color pink. (Strawberry Nestlé Quick?)

In the weeks leading up to Easter, parents can take advantage of the opportunity to frighten their kids by taking them to the mall and having them sit on the lap of a man in an anthropomorphic bunny costume because that is slightly less creepy of a holiday mascot than an emaciated bleeding guy in a diaper. This is the Easter Bunny. Unlike Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny would steal chicken eggs and hide them to antagonize farmers, who would send their formidable armies of confused toddlers to retrieve them. As far as I can tell, this is the basis for the Easter tradition we still honor to this day of sending our college students to tropical paradises to have uninhibited, drunken sex for a week straight.

Most importantly, Easter is the last chance to get worthwhile holiday candy until Halloween. I highly recommend Brach's Bunny Basket Eggs. These are basically pure cane sugar packed inside hard candy shells. These are so rich that most people eat half of one and put the other half away for later, but I can eat an entire bag of these at a time because I am an advanced candy eater and have been eating candy products for so long I will probably die from diabetes before I'm 40, but that is the sacrifice Jesus was willing to make to save the world from sin.

Cheer Up, Emo Post

2009-04-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I like to play with my cat, just to see if I can still feel.

Online Dating Guide, Part 17: Checking Out The Competition

2009-04-05T15:48:00.002-05:00

Really I'm not "checking out the competition." I don't care about the "competition" and have not cared about the "competition" for years now. If I were more worried about the "competition," my profile wouldn't be the lyrics to a Genesis song because I know there's nothing chicks dig more than mid-Seventies prog rock sung by Peter Gabriel.

I am in probably the best relationship of my life so far, and the only reason I still lurk on OKCupid is that I am fascinated by the little windows through which I get to peer into other people's personalities. I was originally going to revisit an incest forum that I mocked a couple years ago since SomethingAwful raided a similar incest forum, but I got distracted by the stupid profile of some guy on OKCupid, from which I linked to the stupid profiles of other guys on OKCupid, and overall, I feel much better about my prospects if my current relationship were to end in a tragic bus accident, because I'd probably just spend the rest of my life alone and miserable like House if something like that ever happened.

Yes. Health issues. Just keep telling yourself that.

When she's having a really bad day, what every woman really wants is a man to tell her how to get the work done quicker.

Yes, and my Ph.D. is worthless now.

He believes in finality, and he has no idea how he loves chess.

He almost had us fooled until he revealed that he was the most articulate and communicative vascular murmur.

What I'm doing with my life is attaching exclamation points to sentences that have no need for them!

What is that coming out of the ocean? Oh my god! It's the N-i-cK!!

Hey, times are tough for everyone right now.

You're not musically diverse when you list off a bunch of similar artists. If you say you're musically diverse, say you like Nevermore and Simple Minds, Edvard Grieg and Hank Williams, Cypress Hill and Dizzy Gillespie.

I used to be a cheerleader in high school. I'm the product of dog rape. I have purple skin and an arm with no hand and one finger growing out of my head. Strange men in black suits and sunglasses are constantly trying to extract the secrets from my brain. I have a celebrity crush on the hypothetical offspring of Jack and Kelly Osbourne. I can be a bit clingy, and I drool acidic slime only during sex, but I'd like to think of myself as extremely unique!

It used to say that I can consume large amounts of Coke in one sitting, but I had to be more specific because the totally wrong types of women were contacting me.

The Osbournes: Relaoded - A Review

2009-04-04T17:04:00.004-05:00

This show is stupid.

It's not crazy or outrageous or unpredictable like the commercials promised. In fact, it's the worst kind of predictability, the kind that tries way too hard to look unpredictable.

The pacing is forced, and each Osbourne has the comedic timing of a soap opera full of preschoolers. Each "joke" consists of the following three parts: 1) The setup. 2) The moment of startled silence. 3) The obligatory obscenity.

That their trademark obscenties are completely staged is clearly evident. They aren't cursing for any reason except that it's what is expected of them. Upon meeting an audience member named "Nick," Kelly responds by asking, "Do you know your name rhymes with "dick"?" just so she can get one more "bleep" under her belt. This generated big laughs from the exeedingly gracious audience despite this sort of joke only being funny to the most immature of third-graders. You use profanity to add emphasis to your statements. Profanity for the sole purpose of profanity is not edgy or shocking, it's just stupid.

At least when Ozzy utters an obscenity, you know it's authentic because he seems to have no idea what's going on. He shuffles out, mumbles, and drops a few f-bombs in confusion until they tell him to do something crazy like spray the audience with foam, which is the only part of the show that he clearly enjoys.

I am convinced that all of the antics are staged. The Osbournes know what's going to happen well in advance, from the audience members they select, to the situations they're going to put the audience members in, to the outcomes of those situations. Will the guy be disgusted that he kissed an old lady? No. Will the other guy marry his girlfriend? Yes. If he didn't, they wouldn't have their tidy happy ending, and then what? Then they'd have to do something unpredictable, and it's apparent by their forced dialog that they are not the most adept at thinking on their feet.

The two skits were equally as fake. First they presented a "reality" clip of Ozzy and Kelly working in a fast food restaurant. You can't tell me not one customer saw the long-haired guy with the circular blue sunglasses mumbling at them through the window and said, "Hey, aren't you Ozzy Osbourne? Holy shit! Ozzy Osbourne is dumping my food on the ground!" Of course they were all actors. The restaurant managers just stood there and let the two of them drive away business? No customers complained?

The second skit was even worse. At least with the previous skit, you had the benefit of hearing Ozzy's voice over a drive-thru speaker, ("H'elcome taiaiaoai. Hoyowoyoyoooo fuckin' eeeeebejedus bif dupe?"). The second skit featured cursing children dressed up like Ozzy and Sharon at the movies, just to be, you know, shocking. Oooh! Those kids are cursing! Kids shouldn't curse! That's shocking! It's not even original. It wasn't funny when Will Ferrell did it, and it's not funny now. It would be one thing if the kids were cursing at real people who didn't expect it, just to see how they would react. When the people they're cursing at are obviously actors, (and I man "obviously" as in "I've seen them playing bit parts in other things"), then the entire point is just to shock us with profane children, which, again, is stupid, just like the show.

Ozzy needs to stick with making heavy metal.

Harsh Criticism

2009-04-01T05:21:00.001-05:00

When you're someone important such as an Internet humorist or President of the United States, every once in a while, you have to respond to harsh criticism. Unless you're a FoxNews pundit, like Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck. Then you don't "respond" so much as you just shout at your critics to shut up and cut their mics if they don't. However, when you're an Internet humorist, you don't get any harsh criticism because no one really cares about anything you have to say, so you have no choice but to make up some harsh criticism of your own.

Q: In your January 7th article about some guy named Rod Blagosomethingorother who only people in Illinois cares about, you reported a glaring inaccuracy. You mentioned that the town of Jenkinsburg, GA was momentarily commandeered by a man calling himself Jorgo the Wonked. I have lived in Jenkinsburg, GA my whole life, and to my recollection, nobody named "Jorgo" ever "commandeered" this town. He was actually narrowly voted in because we felt he'd do a slightly better job at running the town than his opponent, who was a goat. Please correct this error.

A: In all honesty, I didn't think anybody would catch that because I made the assumption that the town of Jenkinsburg, GA probably didn't have working Internet, or newspapers, or electricity. Thank you for bringing this oversight to my attention. In the future, I will do my best to research important facts about small towns before publishing an article, such as whether or not they do, in fact, have working Internet.

Q: On January 28, you said that Wintember used to be one of your favorite months, but I'm pretty sure there's no such thing. I can't find it on any calendar.

A: Wintember is actually a three-month period consisting of September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and Winter.

Q: In your column about Groundhog Day, you reported that the tradition was based on the observance of Candlemass, a gothic heavy metal band. The celebration that the tradition was based on was actually called "Candlemas," with one "s," like "Christmas." What I want to know is: Is it "Groundhog Day" or "Groundhog's Day"? Which is right?

A: Actually, Candlemass is a doom metal band, not gothic metal band. I felt the average reader, or "layreader," might not be familiar enough with the more obscure subgenres of heavy metal to automatically recognize doom metal as opposed to the more common gothic metal. Gothic metal includes of bands like Type O Negative and Lacuna Coil, whereas doom metal consists of bands most people have never heard of.

Q: Back in January, you wrote something about William Harrison being a grizzly bear. I don't mean to question the extent of your knowledge of American history, but I'm fairly certain that I don't know who William Harrison was.

A: According to Wikipedia, William Harrison was the ninth President of the United States of America, serving I'm pretty certain sometime before 1980, when the order, dates, and names of the various presidents get confusing for anyone too lazy to care. Upon taking office, his first order of business, during the critical First 100 Days, was to get sick and die. This led to the ratification of the 25th Amendment, which states that the current between two points is inversely proportional to the resistance. Wikipedia lists nothing to dispute that William Harrison was, in fact, a grizzly bear.

Q: IN UR MUSIC HISOTRY COLLUM U WROTE THAT BENJIMAN FRANKLIN INVENTED RECORDING EQUIPMENT DISCOVERED AMERICA PAINTED TEH MONA LISA AND INVETNED THE INTERNET, YOUR WRONG HA HA AL GORE INVENTEND THE INTERNET STUPED!!@!

A: Based on my memory of high school American history, Benjamin Franklin lived for at least 300 years and pretty much invented everything because pretty much all they talked about was how great Benjamin Franklin was.

Q: I believe I discovered a misquote in your awesome and completely accurate criticism of Debbie Schlussel last week. You quoted her as writing: "And we all know what happened after they drank he purple Kool-Aid." Shouldn't you have typed "the purple Kool-Aid"? She doesn't need any help to look like a terrible writer.

A: You're right, but unfortunately, I didn't actually type out the quote. You see, computers have this cool feature. All you have to do is highlight a block of text and press CTRL+C to copy it, and CTRL+V to paste it somewhere else, and as long as you properly attribute the block of text, it can fill word-space without being considered plagiarism. This tip also works really well for college papers. So anything I quoted appeared exactly as it was originally written.

Q: Ha ha! You'd think she'd proofread her articles before submitting them for publication!

A: Yes, and not only that, but also bear in mind that this is all just opinion for the purpose of satire!

Great Trailer? Or Greatest Trailer Ever?

2009-03-30T22:25:00.001-05:00

The greatest children's book of all time brought to life with Labyrinth-style Muppet effects? Seriously, you guys, this is like two of the greatest childhood memories come together in a grand orgy of all that is right with the universe.

DEAR PRESIDENT OBAMA

2009-03-30T18:55:00.000-05:00

Please hire this guy NOW!

Thank you. That is all.

Anime Fans Freak Me Out

2009-03-29T22:11:00.000-05:00

Full Metal Alchemist is a great story, Anime / Manga aside. As an Anime / Manga, it's one of the greatest, and one of the two that I can actually tolerate. However, like any Anime / Manga, its fans freak me the fuck out.

That's just being lazy.

The fact that this thread even exists scares me.

Trying to figure out which is the worst kind of incest pairing is like trying to figure out which is the worst way to be burned to death.

Way to math, dude.

Basically, I just wanted to gauge how normal I am.

Ed should remain pure for his dad.

Stupidity, Punctuality, and Canned Beats were not three of the Seven Deadly Sins.

It would certainly get all of you pervs to stop imagining the two of them having sex with each other, because it's like a universal law of the Internet that Anime fan fiction can in no way be straight.

Now I want to see Winry and "William" hook up. : (

This post hints at some serious issues going on at home.

Your friends might also think you're just a little crazy for carrying around pictures of a cartoon boy and asking what sex they think he is.

The great FMA psyche test continues...

Hitler was a Gary Stu.

That's boring! Why would we want to fantasize about a guy fucking his own wife when we can imagine him fucking his underage sons instead?

Blozor Does Debbie

2009-03-25T05:31:00.001-05:00

If you enjoyed the movie Watchmen, your mother deserves to be raped.

This is not my opinion; this is something that Conservative columnist Debbie Schlussel stated in a recent review of the film. (To read it, simply enter the words "Debbie," "Schlussel," and "Watchmen" into the nearest Google Search Engine.) Now, I am going to extend the basic journalistic courtesy from one columnist to another by refraining from using terms like "total whack job" or "completely [BLEEP]ing insane" to describe her. I shall refrain from suggesting that Schlussel's shallow and ignorant shock value statements are nothing more than an apparent attempt to replace Ann Coulter, who faded into obscurity after becoming a voter liability. I am also not going to use words like "shallow," "ignorant," or "shock value" to describe Schlussel's statements. Such insinuations would be beneath me.

Nor am I going to point out the obvious fact that the name of her syndicated column, "Debbie Does Politics," is a play on the title of probably the most famous pornographic movie of all time. To imagine her saying something like "Oh, Senator Hardwick, what a big caucus you have!" would certainly be below my journalistic standards, and I am not going to stoop to such levels in this column. No sir!

I would much prefer to avoid negative remarks such as these, which I must emphatically state, for the purpose of clarification, cannot be considered libel if they're either matters of opinion or true facts. For instance, it would be a matter of opinion to state that I think someone who named her column after a famous pornographic movie is probably not the most qualified authority to dictate what is and is not obscene. It would also be a matter of opinion to state, if it wouldn't be absolutely beneath me to make such an accusation, that she obsesses over the movie's few brief displays of non-sexualized male genitalia with a passion that would make a person wonder if things are all right for her at home.

It would be closer to fact to say that Schlussel's review of Watchmen reads like a poorly researched junior high book report on a book she didn't read, or that she writes professional sounding statements that only a fourteen-year-old girl could generate: "Wow, isn't that cool that they got it wrong on purpose? I'm so amazed at this 'high-brow art' of deliberately getting dates and timelines wrong, you know, just to be 'artistic,' and get the drooling of the critics. That is sooooo genius. Like way totally cool." On second thought, that may be going too far. I'm sure there are many teenage girls out there who are far better writers than Debbie Schlussel.

Debbie Schlussel jumped on the chance to insult an incredibly popular movie with a large cult following to get herself noticed with about as much tact as a schizophrenic ripping her shirt open on a busy street corner and shouting "I SEE PENISES!!" She feigns outrage at the abundant graphic violence against convicted felons and child killers throughout the movie, despite commenting on the upcoming Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds that, "I'll never be disturbed by seeing Nazis hacked to death." She says nothing to condemn the brutal slaying of two lesbian lovers depicted in the movie, so long as no one has to explain to their child what a "lesbian" or a "whore" is. If one wanted to be so bold, one might conclude that, it's not the violence or gore that Debbie Schlussel has a problem with as long as it's directed toward those she deems worthy.

Her original review of the movie received a lot of attention from people who had major problems with it, the most glaring of which being that it was written by an idiot. (Ha ha! That is simply some good-natured ribbing from one humorist to another, and certainly in no way intended as a malicious comment!) This prompted Debbie to write an entire second article to address the apparent fact that her mind had snapped like a dry twig.

For her encore, she whips out her thesaurus leaving no synonym for "moron" untouched and enthusiastically calls for the mass genocide of everyone who enjoyed the movie: "The e-mails they send me and the comments they make … reminds me of the blind statements of followers of Jim Jones. And we all know what happened after they drank he purple Kool-Aid. If only this movie could achieve that result, it would be the most fantastic exercise in natural selection ever conducted in America."

This is where she states that if you enjoyed the movie Watchmen, "maybe your sister should be fed to dogs and your mother raped and your brother should have his arms sawed off."

Someone should remind her that it is just a movie, and as such, it doesn't pose nearly the same threat as the blind followers of her destructive hate speech.

Taunting Christians

2009-03-22T22:25:00.000-05:00

You know, for Christians, the guys over at Christian Forums are actually more open-minded than I'd expected on a lot of subjects like masturbation, homosexuality, mental illness, and evolutionism. That just means their Faith isn't strong enough, though, right? It's a good thing there's still plenty of stupidity, though, because I'm not here to make fun of reasonable arguments.

Maybe your unfortunate series of bad life decisions is God's Will.

Sorry, God has better things to do.

By your logic, God is also pleased with mass murderers, child rapists, and Satanists.

You're right. God probably has you confused with someone else. Silly God.

God likes to play hard to get.

In the case of rape, the Infallible Word of God is just dead wrong.

Great advice! Just don't think about sex while you masturbate and you're all right.

Mark my words: 2012 is going to be the biggest non-event in history. Remember, you read it here first.

I think the Incans just got up to December 2012 and said, "Fuck it; that's far enough."

Wait, I greeted my grandmother with a kiss the other day! Now I have to marry her! It's God's Will!

I think when your life started falling apart around the same time you started doing drugs, you might be jumping to the wrong conclusion that it's all God's fault.

I love my fellow humans, but I doubt God considers these people humans, so it's all cool.

If God don't like it, we'll take Him down too.

It was a ball of lint, but I'll take whatever I can get.

One time, I thought my friend was possessed but it turns out she was really just pregnant. Boy was that a messy exorcism!

Glad that's settled. I guess your friend's just insane.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster also came down to earth in the form of a plate of spaghetti, which I ate.

Voting Republican.

Sorry God, your opinion doesn't count.

No blatant homophobia going on here at all.

The Cultural Music Preservation Society

2009-03-18T05:31:00.001-05:00

We here at the Cultural Music Preservation Society, (or SHASTA, for short), have become alarmed at the number of really good songs from the past several decades that may not be preserved to drive future generations crazy.

First, let me explain the purpose of the Cultural Music Preservation Society. Our, (myself, and a whole slew of non-existent people), non-profit organization spends an annual 3.9 billion federal ("taxpayer") dollars researching which really good songs from the past few decades should be preserved for decades to come. (This is not true. The federal government, outside the IRS, has no idea that I even exist, and could not care less which songs get preserved.) (The federal government probably has no idea that these songs even exist.)

In short, we are a society dedicated to the preservation of cultural ("really good") music. This brings me to the point of today's column. I have found that if the public isn't informed by someone at least pretending to be associated with the federal government which songs are good or bad, the public will go about doing extremely public things like listening to really bad songs performed by artists like Michael Bolton or Nickelback. This may have been what happened to Iron Butterfly's classic Sixties hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," which was a good song, but unfortunately contained upwards of 14 minutes of drum solo. Even with the drum solo edited out, so the song was shortened down to less than three minutes, classic rock radio stations still wouldn't play it because, without the drum solo, the song makes absolutely no sense. If every single person in a particular city called up requesting "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" one day, the deejay would simply make up a request for a more "reasonable" song. ("And it looks like U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel has just called in with a request fooooooorrrrrr… uuuuuuuhhhhhh… 'The Monkees Theme,'" the deejay would say.)

I'm not saying that "The Monkees Theme" is a bad song. I'll even admit that I sometimes sing "The Monkees Theme" while sitting in front of my computer, waiting for my brain to make up important facts about members of Congress. ("We're the young generation, and we've got something to say," I'll sing, followed by, "I wonder if I could turn THAT into an important fact about U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel.") Anyway, after long, difficult, and pain-staking research, we here at the Cultural Music Preservation Society have come up with a list of songs that we believe should be preserved:

"Thriller" by Michael Jackson
"If You Go" by John Secada
"All She Wants to do is Dance" by Don Henley

I've decided that Michael Jackson's "Thriller" should be culturally preserved. After watching various groups of people do the "Thriller" dance on YouTube — including a U.S. Marine, about 500 different wedding parties, an entire Philippine prison camp, and Darth Vader and four Stormtroopers — I started wanting to learn the "Thriller" dance myself, all 14,794,932 moves of it. You never know when it might come in handy, such as a spontaneous diversion during a mugging or hostage situation.

Also while avoiding any productive work by watching YouTube videos for "research purposes," I came upon the video for the song "If You Go" by John Secada, whom I vaguely remember from the Nineties as having a name that sounds suspiciously like a type of insect. The video depicts an orange John Secada running down an orange highway to a yellow church where his golden girlfriend is getting married to a brown man, then it cuts to a yellow John Secada singing in front of a yellow car at an orange gas station. After a while, I found myself kind of cheering for John Secada, hoping that by the time he gets to the yellow church, the constipated look on his orange face goes away so she'll see that she really loves him, and they can have little goldenrod children together, if the people staring at them angrily on the bus don't eat them first.

Finally, the song "All She Wants to do is Dance" by Don Henley. It sounds sort of like what would happen if Skynet sent a group of cyborgs back to 1985 with a mission to terminate new wave music, so instead of trying to kill Sarah Connor, they formed Hewey Lewis and the News and released this song. It's about a woman who could easily dance straight through the Third World War. If Godzilla attacked the local disco lounge, all she'd want to do is dance, dance, dance. If Godzilla asked her on a date, all she'd want to do is dance, dance, dance, and make romance. I feel that this song should be preserved so future generations will look back on us and laugh at what horrible songwriters we were.

Wiki Nonsense

2009-03-15T22:09:00.000-05:00

I guess someone decided that there weren't nearly enough stupid questions asked and irrelevant information given on Yahoo!Answers and created a different database of stupid questions and irrelevant information that anyone could edit at any time. Whereas on Yahoo!Answers you run even the smallest percentage of someone being able to accurately answer your stupid question with a simple Google search that you're too lazy to conduct yourself, WikiAnswers apparently would rather inject the chaos theory into the process, so even if a thousand completely random events did ultimately result in the right answer, someone could just change the question so that an answer like "A ballpeen hammer works the best" could end up with the question "Who was the fifth President of the United States?"

Even on a website this accurate, as impossible as it may seem, there is still an amount of questions that no one can answer because they make absolutely no sense. Welcome to the "Harmless Nonsense" section of WikiAnswers. Sorry for the apparent lack of effort on the comments this week. It was difficult enough to find questions where an additional comment wouldn't just be redundant.

Should I go for the obvious Rush Limbaugh joke here, or something a little more current, like an obvious Glenn Beck joke?

Well? Do I?

This is neither harmless, nor nonsense!

Yeah! Fuck you, Canada!

No, you're just weird.

Dude you fail at hacking.

Because Obama says it should.

Insanity.

Mormons.

Other gay people?

Congratulations.

Who would want to name their apple?

One way I can think of involves a hatchet.

Well that answers that.

The History Of Music

2009-03-11T05:49:00.003-05:00

Music has existed for as long as I can remember, which easily dates back to at least 500,000,000 B.C., when the very first Neanderthals picked up their clubs and beat them rhythmically against the heads of other Neanderthals to produce the sixteen-minute psychedelic hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

Some time later, God created the universe and nothing musically happened for a while because God sent His Chosen People to wander around in the desert being persecuted, and no one felt like singing about it since angsty rock wouldn't be popular until the early 1990's. Later, David wrote the Book of Psalms, (a Hebrew word, meaning "more than one Psalm"), which recommended praising God with instruments such as the "psaltery" and the "lyre," which are, clearly, made-up words.

Not much is known about the development of ancient music directly following the Biblical period of recorded history, which spans from the Creation of the Universe through the End of the World. The Middle Ages were littered with wandering minstrels traveling the hillsides, singing ballads of brave knights and fair maidens until someone would throw a shoe at them and tell them to shut up. Eventually people decided to give various musical concepts names like the note, the tune, the tone, the chord, the powerchord, the bass, the treble, the flat, the sharp, the flarp, the scale, the rhythm, the timbre, the tenor, the baroke, the lute, the pitch, the whistle, and the electric slide.

Applying these terms and many more, classical composers spent the next four centuries composing music that, as near as anyone can tell, did not contain the slightest hint of a guitar solo. Instead, orchestral musicians would perform these songs using instruments with comical names like the "oboe" and the "bassoon." ("Look at that oboe player! What a bassoon!") Some of these pieces are still played to this day on that one station at the bottom of the dial that no one listens to because each song is over an hour long and followed by several more minutes of dead air while the deejay wakes up.

The classical period produced many composers with names like Fritzhanz Lupidus Van Halen II, and peaked when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Symphony No. Infinity" was bumped from its Number One spot on the Billboard Charts by Ludwig Kamikaze Beethoven's immortal masterpiece "Symphony No. Infinity Plus One." Toward the end of the 1800s, the pioneering spirit of the American West was captured with sweeping orchestral compositions that expressed such important aspects of frontier life as "Beef. It's what's for dinner."

Fresh off the heels of the classical period came the big band era of the 1920s because people decided they wanted to dance to their orchestral music without looking like some sort of twit. Big band possessed an incredibly upbeat sound created by a rhythm section and about 50,000 horn players, or "hornists" as they're called in the music world. Big band fell out of popularity with the onset of the Great Depression when nobody felt like dancing anymore.

Following the Great Depression, music split into two major categories: "jazz," a highly technical form that borrowed many elements from big band except that you couldn't dance to it, and "blues," which stripped music down to its basic components of one guitar and a four lines repeated over and over. Jazz and blues combined to give us the music we know and enjoy today, namely: rock, pop, classic rock, heavy metal, dance, R&B, rap, country, folk, bluegrass, ska, punk, new wave, funk, synthpop, bubblegum, alternative, ambient, golden oldies, Motown, world beat, techno, disco, grunge, opera, nu metal, progressive rock, and the electric slide, none of which anybody's parents ever liked.

Modern recording equipment, created in the early Twentieth Century by genius inventor Benjamin Franklin, who was already quite old when he discovered America and when he painted the "Mona Lisa," makes the creation and distribution of music easier than ever before. Beethoven, for instance, only wrote maybe ten songs in his entire lifetime, and you had to lug an entire symphony orchestra around with you if you wanted to hear one of his songs, say, while you were driving. Modern artists can easily double that output on each album, and you can listen to it anywhere, whether you want to or not. By the time Benjamin Franklin invented the Internet in 1996, people had grown tired of the recording industry gouging (literally, "poking with sharp sticks") prices and started "downloading" music for "free." This upset a great number of Metallica's Lars Ulrich and deregulated the music industry, forcing musicians to compete by creating music that no sane person would ever want to hear, a trend that still continues to this day.

Fun With OKCupid

2009-03-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

Who Watches The Watchmen?

2009-03-08T18:43:00.001-05:00

Between Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Ann Coulter, and some woman named Debbie Schlussel, it's apparent that a woman cannot earn respect as a Conservative commentor unless they look like a man in a blonde wig, and are as stupid as they are completely and utterly fuckshit insane. Megan Kelly, don't worry, your time as a Conservative pundit is coming as soon as you can no longer anchor the news because your face scares small children.

I never knew Debbie Schlussel existed, but a friend pointed me in the direction of a review she wrote of the movie Watchmen. It doesn't bother me that she didn't like the movie. That is her opinion, and I'm not going to derive the meaning behind the imagery by referencing the source material as so many fans have attempted because she obviously could not care less. What bothers me about her reviews is that her writing is atrocious, her thoughts are ill-formed, and her research is lazy.

In this age of instant information gathering, it's irresponsible to not research your facts. You need to be more diligent than ever to present factual information because your critics can have factual information delievered to them anyplace within seconds. Your well-reasoned argument can be easily disproven with a simple Google search if it is based on false information or, worse yet, your own opinion, and repeatedly shouting it at people won't make it any more true. Combine this with carelessly veiled bigoted subtext and present it with the literary comprehension of an elementary student's book report, and it's easy to see why the Republican Party is struggling for support if they continually act as if they honestly believe most Americans don't mind having their intelligence insulted by obnoxious morons.

I probably should have stopped reading when you opened with this line about a movie that you, yourself, watched. Way to premise.

But why make the effort when bitter, clueless pundits can form our opinions for us?

Wait, did you just actually reveal that part of the Conservative agenda is to condemn intellectualism? Wow. Just… wow.

Those wacky Conservatives sure do love their mutually assured destruction!

Notice how she never does say that it's wrong to brutally murder people based solely on their sexual preference, as long as it doesn't result in having to explain to your kids what a "lesbian" or "whore" is. Congratulations.

Just because you can't wrap your brain around alternate timeline theory, it doesn't make the thing that you can't understand stupid.

She sure seems fixated on that giant, blue penis, doesn't she? Any problems at home you're not telling us about?

This review concludes that rape victims and their offspring are all sluts.

Stupid parents don't make the movie bad, unless the movie is Cheaper by the Dozen or Yours, Mine, and Ours.

I guess it's okay to assume these are bad parents, just like it's okay to assume all blacks are ignorant, all homosexuals are evil, and all single parents are sluts. Your Jewish grandparents would be turning over in their ovens if they could see the hate speech that spews from your brain.

I don't get why we're trying to save our kids from seeing stuff like this in movies only so we can ship them off to war when they turn eighteen so they can see stuff like this in real life.

I love how she responds to criticism in all caps because all caps makes things more true.

No, obviously having no idea what you're talking about is the perfect way to encourage people to take you seriously. "Facts" are just the lies that Liberals tell each other at night.

This isn't all. She loathed the movie so much she ejaculated a-whole-nother article about how much she loves herself and hates this movie.

Well-adjusted people don't revel in the thought of people killing themselves because of a movie you don't personally like. Your enthusiastic call for the mass-suicide of all the fans of a movie is as perverse as anything you outlined in the movie itself.

To use your own Hitler reference to wit, if he'd simply convinced all the Jews to kill themselves over a stupid movie, he'd have earned your most steadfast support, right?

Wait, did she…? Why, yes, yes I think she did. She just used a term originally coined by Karl Marx. It wasn't just Ancient Rome, it was the Soviet Republic of Ancient Rome.

She is apparently so desperate for approval that, despite the hundreds of negative responses she received, she had to create a second article about how stupid they all are and highlight a couple of ego-stroking positive responses in order to re-establish her self-worth.

You heard it here first, Debbie Schlussel thinks your mother should be raped if you enjoyed the Watchmen movie. Apparently, insecurity-based narcissism isn't the only deeply-rooted psychological problem plaguing this woman.

You know, Debbie Schlussel, it wasn't too long after Ann Coulter became a psychotically deranged embarrassment to the Republican Party that she was sent back to the kitchen with a shiny black eye. Maybe it's time to tone it down a notch or two before your "cutesy antics" suddenly become a voter liability as well.

Beating A Dead Infrastructure

2009-03-04T05:48:00.002-06:00

When you talk about the economy, you can't just throw around big words without knowing what they mean or pretty soon people will get wise to the fact that you don't know what you're talking about, and they will stop trusting you for investment advice. "Use the word 'infrastructure' in a sentence," they will challenge. You can't just make something up. You can't say something like, "Whenever I yawn I get a sharp pain right in my infrastructure" because your doctor will know you're faking. You need to come up with a professional sounding economic statement like: "We need buttloads of infrastructures."

This is exactly the message President Obama sent to the American people during his first State of the Union Address, aptly titled "Buttloads of Infrastructures." During his address, he promised to "stimulate" the economy by taking it out to a fancy dinner, followed by a nice romantic movie such as Wall Street starring Michael Douglas, and concluding the evening with Champaign and intimate conversation back at his place. Okay, not really. He really pledged to "stimulate" the economy by throwing tons more money and infrastructures at it until it retreats, satisfied, back into its bog for another eighty years.

This is basically the exact same thing the Republicans have been doing for the past thirty years, yet somehow the Republicans suddenly have a problem with it now that it's a Democrat doing it. No Republican was more concerned with Obama's economic plan than Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who was tasked with responding to the President's address. During his response, Governor Jindal hit upon many important points such as:

President Obama is not, as far as anyone can tell, a Republican.
We should Care Bear Stare the economy back to life.
What the hell is a "volcano," and why should we "monitor" one?
The Republican Party would like to earn back America's trust.

By way of emphasizing that last point about the Republican Party earning back America's trust, it turns out that the story Governor Jindal told, wherein he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jefferson Sheriff Harry Lee while evacuating Hurricane Katrina survivors — a cornerstone of his speech — was completely false. He was nowhere near Jefferson Parish at the time of the flooding, and he only heard about Sheriff Harry Lee's courageous story second-hand a few days after it had happened. Still, Jindal's response was not nearly as disastrous as a response Illinois Governor Rod "Milorad" Blagojevich once gave to a President Bush speech, wherein Blagojevich declared himself the Supreme Ruler of Awesome and tried for a good five minutes to fly out of the Illinois Capital Building, only to claim that he wasn't flying because he decided he didn't want to and skulk out of the room.

We are already beginning to see the Republican response to the economic stimulus package they voted for recently, now that they have a chance to actually start reading it. ("Roads? What is wrong with the roads we already have? What this economy needs to create jobs here at home is more lead-filled pharmaceuticals that are made in China!" "Forget that! Let's put salmonella in everything!") The Republicans are also highly critical of a plan to build a high-speed magnetic rail system because they fear it will lead directly to legalized abortion, which they believe is only justified in extreme cases where the baby runs a high risk of being born gay.

The only thing Republicans and Democrats can readily agree on is that stubbornly refusing to compromise on any position is the only possible thing that can fix the economy. For instance, the Republicans still somehow believe that the markets don't need regulation even though we've already seen that (a) greedy people are not all that trustworthy and (b) deregulation is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. By contrast, the Democrats firmly believe that what the economy needs is more infrastructures. That's why President Obama is handing them out like it's a year-end clearance blowout sale on infrastructures and everything must go.

It turns out that none of our politicians really know how to fix our economy because not even they really know how the economy works. No one knows how the economy works. Economic analysts don't even know how the economy works; all they do is describe what the economy is doing right at this exact moment, using big words like "infrastructure." ("It appears the Dow Jones is continuing to plunge so I would recommend moving all of your assets into heavily fortified infrastructures.") Myself, I am going to go find me some volcanoes and monitor the heck out of them.

What's The Use Of Even Making Threats?

2009-03-03T21:32:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I got a telemarketing call on my cell phone. It was for one of those extended warranty offers I'm sure people will recognize from looking at their junk mail as it makes its journey through the teeth of their paper shredder. I waited on the line to talk to a live customer service representative, and I informed him, "I don't know how you got this number, but it is illegal to telemarket to a cell phone."

He responded with a highly skeptical, "Reeeeeaaaaally..."

"Yes, it is," I confirmed.

"So you don't want to extend your vehicle's warranty?" he asked.

"NO! If you call this number again I'm going to report you to the authorities," I said, and he snipped "Okay!" and hung up.

I wanted to give them a chance in case it was a mistake because I read that many former landline numbers had been released for cell phone usage and some were being autodialed by accident. Meanwhile I looked it up just to make sure nothing had changed, and sure enough I was right — it's still illegal for autodialers to target cell phones. I know this was an autodialer because when I answered, a computer told me to wait for a customer service representative. Normally I'd have hung up at that point. Normally, I wouldn't have even answered, but I was totally unprepared to receive a telemarketing call on my cell phone because it's illegal.

Today I got another call from the same number, but I didn't answer because I was away from my phone at the time. So I did some digging online and found some information. The company is running an insurance scam. They are doing this from inside the United States, which means they're subject to United States laws. They ignore the National Do Not Call Registry. They ignore the laws against autodialing cell phones. They will. not. stop. Ever.

I really want to turn them over to the attourney general, which is what the FTC recommends for companies like this, but a) I'm lazy, and b) I doubt they'll care. I also read online that if you tell them that you drive a really crappy car like a '76 Chevette they'll tell you they can't offer you a warranty and leave you alone, so I may try that first. So I'm debating between telling them that I drive a '76 Dodge Dart, a '63 Hillman Minx, and a '59 Chevy truck that I won for $50 at an auction, but needs some serious body and engine work. Then if they call back after that, I'll tell them that I know they're running a scam, I know the name of their business, I know which state they're based in, I've turned the information over to my state's attorney general's office, and all they had to do to prevent it was not call me again.

I thought I could just threaten them and be done with it, but nooooo, they have to go and ignore my threats. What's the use of even making threats?

Holders Series, #11 Through #14

2009-03-01T20:00:00.000-06:00

I took a break from forums this week, so here are some more Holders Series to make up. I don't know what you all think of these, but I *love* them.

Holder of Life
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Life." The worker will try to suppress a groan and you will have to ask again. He will then lead you to an operating room that looks just like any other you might or might not have seen in your life. The worker will give you a scalpel and then leave you alone in the room, locking the door behind himself.

You will have to wait. Wait for almost an hour. Then the door will open and several people will enter the room, including a pregnant woman. The woman will lay down on the operating table. The other people, who will look like doctors, will prepare everything for the child's birth. While they do that, you will be able to ask the woman one question. Ask "How can they be reassembled?" Nothing else, or the doctors will begin to skin and disassemble you. You will be fully conscious while they do this.

If you have asked the right question, the woman will begin to scream; the child is about to be born. You will have to wait until it's over, and one of the doctors will give you the child, moving his mouth, but without sound coming from his lips. As soon as he finishes 'talking' and smiles, you will have to throw the child to the ground and ram the scalpel into its head, else it will smash your rib-cage and rip your heart out with inhuman strength.

If you have thrown the child to the ground in time, it will, despite the scalpel in its head, answer the question you have asked earlier. It will speak with a demonic voice that might drive you mad. While it is talking, the other people in the room will vanish without leaving a trace. After the child finishes talking, it will simply die and the door of the room will unlock. You are now free to go, if you have not been driven mad by the voice.

The dead baby is Object 11 of 538. Dare you not remove the scalpel.

Holder of Death
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Death." The worker's face will turn white as if he just saw a ghost. He will then guide you to a wooden door and leave you. You will have to knock thrice.

Should you hear an old man saying "Come," you may enter and will find yourself in a forest. If you hear a young man saying "No, thank you," run. Run and leave the city - the country - as fast as you can, for unspoken evil will haunt you should you stay.

Now that you are in a forest, look up to the sky. If it is day, follow the sun. If it is night, follow the moon. Follow them, and do not leave the path you have taken, no matter what kinds of beauty or horror you might see. Should you ever leave the path, your soul will be tormented for eternity after the body has died a horrible death. You will, after some time, notice that you are walking to a mansion. Ignore it and keep walking, for it is an illusion made to confuse you.

Finally, you will reach a small wooden hut. Enter the hut and immediately turn around, should you desire to overlive the sheer horror you will experience by looking at the man who now is behind you. Ask him a question: "What will end them?" He will begin to talk with a voice that is gentle and kind as well as brutal and deadly. Listen carefully to what he says, as you might soon be the only one knowing their destiny. As soon as the man finishes his small tale, he will ask you to turn around, as he wants to give you a gift.

Do not do this. Instead, walk backwards until you reach something hard, a desk. Close your eyes and partially turn your body so you can reach out to the man and take the gift. When it touches your hand, close it and walk back to the door you came from. As you open it, say the words "We will meet another day" and walk out. You will be back in the mental institution.

Now, open your hand and look at the gift. The bone-finger is Object 12 of 538.

Holder of Darkness
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask with no hesitation to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Darkness." The worker will mock you but you have to stay as calm as possible. Keep asking him until he stops denying and withdraws from his counter to guide you through the corridors. As his behavior changes radically, stay on guard, for if you start hearing one single tiny sinister hiss, you should turn around and flee as far as you can, covering your ears, because the time was bad. If you do not escape in time, the faint sound will turn into a dreadful growling that will soon merge into a continuous shriek of sheer pain, until madness floods you and leaves you to die in a deafening agony.

If the warden remains silent, he will lead you to a closed door with neither handles nor lock. As he pushes it open effortlessly, you will see an ascending, winding staircase which can’t possibly lead to any upper floor of the establishment. The door will close behind you and you will not be able to push it back. Climb and do not turn back, or you will fall into a bottomless pit waiting for living prey to chew upon. Do not count the steps, for knowing how much there is will drive you into insanity. One will then creak, and so you should stop. Another door should appear on your left. If it is on your right, then pray for a swift end.

Enter slowly into the room, and a total obscurity shall fall unto you. You will be required to walk straight forward, for slipping will only lead you to be devoured by the roaming and unknown creatures observing you with blinded purulent eyes. You will know you have arrived when coldness grips you. At that very moment, freeze, or you will die by the hands of the Holder who is standing right in front of you. In complete darkness, even closing your eyes will not prevent you from his horrid appearance. It will form in your mind as the most outrageous monster ever conceivable, and madness will try to creep into your brain as worms over a decayed corpse. His fulminating breath and constant mumblings would be enough to make you cry, but be advised not to utter anything louder than a weeping, for you might wake what must not be awakened. The only question you will be able to whisper without being torn apart should be “What do they fear?”

You will feel movements all around you, as shudders animate your opponents. You will hear what nameless and incurable diseases will strike the world if they were to be frightened, the countless terrors their own fright will unleash on those with a weaker mind. Amidst the atrocious enumeration of the endless sores the world will suffer, you might hear the simplest, almost ridiculous, yet, implacable and certain truth they all fear. Do not move again. When your head is about to implode, it will stop. If you are still able to move, you will find a door in front of you which leads you outside of the ward. There, in the open, in the grass, a broken hourglass will wait for you.

You are free to pick it up. It is Object 13 of 538. Your knowledge of their fears is up to you to share, but you might not want to use it as a weapon against them.

Holder of Dance
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask if you may visit someone who calls herself “The Holder of Dance.” The worker will shrug it off while telling you to go to the next theatre down the road. If you obey her, you’ll then discover she has sent you to see “The Lord of the Dance”, and that she hasn’t properly understood your question.

Ask again. Her face will at last light up as she gets it right. “Silly me,” she’ll mutter, and then “Fool of you, too,” when she starts walking toward a long hall. You’ll pass through the garden, onto a small, brick-built reserve, while the mental patients in the area gaze upon you you. Heavy chains will be running across the rusty metal door. The worker will hand you a key, and everyone will back up into the building, closing doors and windows and shutters. You will be left in the silence of your own demise. You can still leave, but from inside the reserve will rise an appealing sound. It will call for you, tempting you. Your mind must not flicker, or it will be lost, forever swallowed in a false sense of bliss while your physical form is left to be shredded alive.

As you control yourself and enter the place, a wide, descending flight of stairs awaits. Echoes of commotions reach your ears in troubled moans, where you cannot tell if they are from pains or pleasures. You will come to an underground level, with fluttering or broken neon lights. It will look like a corridor, with multiple doorless rooms. Then they will come out. Shadows and diaphanous figures, slouching aimlessly will emerge. They will be ghosts of different shapes and different ages and different sexes and in different states of decay. On the other side of the room, far away – but it won’t be far enough, you’ll think in panic – stands a shape with a point of light. It will be your only chance to ask, “What makes them dance?”

You will then see the dead all around you shaking nervously, and the silhouette afar coming near. The naked body of a female will be walking for you. She is half beheaded, her throat pumping and gurgling blood, with her head hanging on the side speaking in an empty voice of the mayhems she has witnessed and accomplished. You will see slaughter and rotting battlefields full of corpses, as a rhythm grows in you. You’ll want to dance with the dead all around, but you must not give in to the urge. You will have to suppress the beating of your foot and not let your heart go in cadence, for when the dance stops, so will it.

The bare, bloody lady will tell you more as she approaches you: tales of carnage and torture that were their joys when they were one. In her left hand she will be stroking her turgescent manhood at you, while in her right flagging hand will hang an old squared lantern shining a pale blue.

The lantern is Object 14 of 538. Its Holder will not let it go easily.

The Rocket Bike Of Manliness

2009-02-25T05:45:00.000-06:00

The other day, I spoke with a woman who was very upset with one of her male friends. Apparently, her friend picked a fight with another guy in a bar by punching him straight in the face. Someone else illustrated the point that her friend needed to calm down by breaking a pool cue over his head. This left a deep gash in her friend's skull, and this was, naturally, the main thing concerning her.

This was not, however, the main thing concerning her male friend. He was more concerned with finding the guy who bashed his head in so he could beat up that guy. If at this point you're wondering why her male friend was not at the hospital getting his head stitched up, then you are obviously a woman. If you were a man, you'd be wondering if anyone has uploaded the video footage of this to YouTube yet, and if not, then what's taking them?

The woman I spoke with was upset with her male friend because she, being a woman, felt that the most important thing for him to do was get his head stitched up before his brain fell completely out. She couldn't understand why beating up the guys who attacked him was more important than seeking immediate medical attention. This is because she is a woman. Women are rational creatures, which is a good thing because men are basically ten-year-olds in giant, hairy bodies.

A woman wouldn't be more worried about finding the people who caved her skull in with a pool cue than getting her head stitched up. Chances are slim that most women would ever find themselves in a position to get their skull caved in with a pool cue unless Jason Voorhes runs out of machetes and has to make do. Women don't fight for the same reasons as men. If a woman's going to resort to violence, it's going to be over something fundamentally important, such as drama. The primary reason men resort to violence, on the other hand, is alcohol.

Men are full of a chemical called "testosterone." This is a hormone responsible all sorts of immature behavior in men, but leads to particularly extreme examples of stupidity when combined with beer. For instance, testosterone might make a man decide to strap a small rocket to his bicycle, but only testosterone combined with alcohol would make him stupid enough to ride that rocket bike off the roof of his garage. Women have a similar chemical called "estrogen," only it just makes them roll their eyes in resignation and call the ambulance.

When a man sees an attractive woman sitting at a bar, his testosterone will assure him that she is probably too drunk to realize she's far too attractive for him. He will then initiate his instinctive mating call, ("Heeeeey, baby, hey! Hey, baby, baby, baby, hey! Hey, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. . ."), until she throws her exotic drink in his face. This means she accepts his offer of "Hey, baby, hey." However, when the man's testosterone is combined with alcohol, it will make him try to get the attention of the attractive woman sitting at the bar by starting a fight with another drunk guy, and the attractive woman will roll her eyes in resignation and call the ambulance.

The guy who bashed her friend's skull in gave him a clear message: "My testosterone is bigger than yours." According to the male code of ethics, the most important thing for her friend to do is reassert his dominance, lest he be reduced to the pecking order position of "Wussy Boy." You're probably wondering how effectively a guy with a head injury could possibly fight the same people who gave him the head injury, but such concerns are unimportant to guys. The only thing the guy is concerned with is getting his masculinity back, and since he lost his rocket bike after flying it into a lake, beating up the guys who attacked him is the only sensible alternative.

I never did find out how the rematch went. I'm sure nothing is more intimidating to a group of drunken guys radiating testosterone levels strong enough to grow chest hair on women from across the room than a woozy guy stumbling around with blood running down his face from the very head injury they gave him earlier, but in reality, this is an incredibly long sentence. I also never found out if he ever did end up getting his head stitched up, but it's a safe assumption. After all, he does have a woman looking after him.

Advance Review Of No Line

2009-02-23T22:58:00.003-06:00

So I was able to get my hands on an advance copy of U2's upcoming No Line on the Horizon by being part of an exclusive and select group of people who download shit from the Internet. (Relax, RIAA, I'm still going to buy it.)

U2 is one of those bands I used to like when I was younger but have since grown out of, or maybe grown tired of, but still have a certain nostalgic respect for, so I still keep tabs on them out of morbid curiosity. Two other bands that fit into this category would be Dream Theater and Metallica.

After having a few days to process it, I honestly have to say it's better than I expected it to be. It tries desperately to be a cross between The Josha Tree and Achtung, Baby, and although it's not nearly as iconic as eitehr of those, it's not nearly as forgettable as All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb really were.

Five songs stand out to me: the title track, "Magnificent," "Fez - Being Born," "Breathe," and lamentably, "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight." I really didn't want to like that last selection because the title is asstarded like nothing else, but despite Bono's wincingly bad attempts at recapturing his falsetto, it's still a damn catchy song.

The other tracks that don't stand out aren't necessarily bad, either, far better than the filler on the previous two albums. "Moment of Surrender," "Unknown Caller," and "White As Snow," are more mellow but carry their own unique weight, and "Get On Your Boots" may be the least tiresome of the trilogy that began with "Elevation" and continued through "Vertigo," but only time will tell for sure on that. The only real complete waste of a track is "Cedars of Lebanon," which is unfortunate because it was one that I was most looking forward to. "Breathe" would have been an ideal closer for the album, but Bono and Company always like to close their albums on a somber note.

The biggest weaknesses include the album not being nearly the "dramatic departure" that had been indicated by those involved, Bono's voice is noticably weaker than I've heard it for a while, "Cedars of Lebanon," and the artistic pretention that weighs down what could otherwise be some harmlessly uplifting pop tunes.

Overall, it's not a bad album, nor will it find its way amongst the best U2 albums. All-in-all, it will serve as a capable diversion until the new Simple Minds is released in a couple months and the new Killing Joke comes out later this year.

EDIT: I've thought it over. "Elevation" is probably the least tiring of the three, "Vertigo" would be by far the most, and "Boots" would fall somewhere in between.

Limp Bizkit Returns To Destroy Any Credibility They Had Left

2009-02-22T15:11:00.001-06:00

At least Bloodhound Gang have the common decency to understand that their juvenile stpid lyrics are a joke. The same cannot be said for rap-metal cockrockers Limp Bizkit, whose Fred Durst may be one of the few people to top both Bono and Paul McCartney as the the biggest egomaniacal douche in the music industry. Still, despite their veritible shortcomings, the monstrosity known as Limp Bizkit is going to try to reunite to once again suck all hope out of popular rock music before inevitably imploding halfway through the first leg of their tour.

Believe it or not, it was difficult to track down fan comments about this news story because the only two Limp Bizkit discussion forums I could find were blocked to people who not only were registered, but had created enough posts in other discussion forums to prove they were not going to TROLL THE SHIT out of the Limp Bizkit forum. I don't have the time to pretend to like one of the most hated rock bands since ever just to TROLL THE SHIT out of their forum, so instead I took comments from various news articles about the reunion. The reaction was notably mixed, but I managed to find a few morons still clinging desperately to white music's greatest failures.

That's because by 2005, all of Limp Bizkit's original fans either hit puberty or died in moronic alcohol-induced accidents.

The loudest voice may not always be the rightest, but it is guaranteed to be the dumbest.

I guess Limp Bizkit is better compared to popular acts in their teens than popular acts their own age.

Angel, hit us with some more crazy!

We've only been waiting for this for less than three years.

What are you, a Chihuahua?

Limp Bizkit's gonna choke on its own stupidity like never before! Limp Bizkit's gonna be hated and ignored like never before! Limp Bizkit's gonna whine over butt-rock rhythms like never before!

A true fan would wear his ballcap proud, no matter how many times he got beat up.

Buckcherry is like Limp Bizkit's illegitimate love child from a syphilitic groupie.

Limp Bizkit: garbage music's superheroes.

Oh no, sebastian, you're not an idiot AT ALL.

Why do all of Fred Durst's fans pretend that he didn't turn The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" into a whiny, self-indulgent crybaby emo rant and completely cut out the best part of the song?

But if a band is bad, it does mean that I don't have to like them.

No Wonder Obama's Pissed At Health Care

2009-02-21T09:17:00.006-06:00

People wonder why I avoid the hospital like the fucking plague. Just to make an appointment, I'm given the wrong information by three different people on three separate occasions. For instance, they gave me the wrong clinic hours. The clinic hours are posted on their door! How can they be wrong about that? Then they want to screen me to see if I'm even worthy of being seen. It shouldn't be so difficult just to schedule an appointment. Surely this is some sort of anomaly and health care hasn't really gotten this bad across the board in the past fifteen years or so. If it has, then we don't need to just reform health care, we need to tear it all down and start completely over so that being sick isn't some sort of exclusive club. This place had better be more on the ball than their receptionist staff, or I might be looking for a different clinic that accepts my insurance.

Misery Or Prosperity

2009-02-19T21:42:00.001-06:00

Human beings have the capacity for unspeakable evil and unfathomable kindness. Both misery and prosperity are well within our grasp. All we have to do is choose the type of life we want for ourselves, the type of world we want to live in. God doesn't prevent bad things from happening to us because He doesn't cause bad things to happen to us. He gives us the freedom to choose our own paths, and lets us live with the consequences.

My Bloody Valentine In 800 Words Or Less

2009-02-18T05:55:00.000-06:00

You know how they say certain people, such as George W. Bush, should never be handed a job just because their father is important? Ten years ago, a coal mine collapsed because the owner's son, Tom Hanniger, forgot to do his job and bleed the methane lines. This trapped several miners. All were found murdered by pickaxe except Harry Warden who was in a coma. Exactly one year later, Harry Warden awakened and killed everyone in the hospital. The two oldest cops in the world investigate.

HINCH: I think I waited too long to retire.
BURKE: You and me both, Hinch. Who did this?
HINCH: Harry Warden.
BURKE: Harry Warden's in a coma.
HINCH: Oh, I'm sorry, do you see him somewhere? Is he one of the dismembered corpses? Maybe he's the butchered woman lying on his bed. You're right; the homicidal maniac who is currently missing couldn't have done all this because he's still in a coma. 900 years of being a cop, and this is the best theory you can come up with.

IRENE: We're a bunch of stupid teenagers! Let's go into this coal mine where a bunch of people were murdered and get drunk and have sex!
AXEL: Great! That doesn't sound like a horror movie cliché at all!
SARAH: Tom, are you sure you're okay having drunken sex in the very coal mine where you killed several of your coworkers?
TOM: No, I'm fine with it, I swear. In fact, I'm so fine with it I'm going to hang out in my truck, alone, while you party with your drunken friends.

Harry Warden starts killing all the drunken teenagers in the coal mine. Tom runs to Sarah's rescue, but discovers that he fights like an imbecile. The town's crack crimefighting duo of Strom Thurmond and Methuselah charge in and save Tom, then chase Harry Warden deeper into the mine.

TEN YEARS LATER.

Axel becomes a sheriff. Sarah becomes Axel's wife. Megan becomes pregnant with Axel's kid. The guy who played Big Love on House becomes the only black person in the town. Hinch and Burke somehow become even older. Irene becomes a murder victim.

TOM: Hi. I've come back to sell my father's coal mine.
SARAH: You've been gone for ten years. I married Axel. We had a kid together. What have you been up to?
TOM: Certainly not acting lessons.
SARAH: Don't sell the coal mine. This town is supported by that coal mine, and the other company will just move it someplace else.
TOM: Then it's agreed. I won't sell the coal mine.

AXEL: More people are being murdered! Some of them aren't even essential to the plot! All signs point to Harry Warden, so it's obviously Tom Hanniger because his return is threatening the marriage I'm neglecting!
TOM: I saw Harry Warden kill a guy in the mine. No one else saw him, but you believe me, right?
AXEL: Harry Warden is dead, and by the way, I married your old girlfriend. We had a kid together. Also, I don't like you.

MEGAN: I am so totally not sleeping with your husband.
SARAH: That's cool. We need to close the store and go home early before Harry Warden kills us.
MEGAN: Oh no! It's Harry Warden! He pulled me out the window! Now I'm dead, so I'll shut up now!

AXEL: Harry Warden has killed the other ten people living in this town besides us! That only leaves Tom Hanniger as the prime suspect.
SARAH: I'm headed out to an abandoned cabin in the woods with Tom right now!
AXEL: Whatever you do, don't go to that cabin!
SARAH: Okay, I'll run away to the abandoned mine shaft instead! Harry Warden will never find me where he lives!
AXEL: Good plan; I'll meet you there!

AXEL: Sarah, Tom is Harry Warden! Shoot him!
TOM: Sarah, Axel is a stupid name. Shoot him.
AXEL: Shoot us both, just to be sure!
TOM: The writing on the wall above Megan's body was the same message in the Valentine's card Axel got from Megan. He's Harry Warden.
SARAH: Wait, you weren't there when Megan was killed. How do you know what was written above her body? Don't worry; I won't take the clear shot at your head until you answer the question.
AXEL: Oh no! Instead of answering your question, Tom gutted me with a pickaxe! I don't understand why you won't just shoot him! He's standing three feet away from you!
SARAH: I'll shoot at him five times while he's running away and miss!

The mine blows up in a series of revealing flashbacks.

They never explain why Tom Hanniger became Harry Warden.

Maybe in the sequel.

The End.

Delusions Of Persecution And Grandeur

2009-02-15T22:25:00.001-06:00

If you want to talk about music fans who take their music way too seriously, I don't think you could find many music fans more needlessly elitist than progressive music fans. So I'm going to wreck their shit, just for the fun of it.

I think it should be illegal to clone Jon Anderson.

It's definitely true of Cypress Hill's "Rock Superstar."

If there's one thing that says "dead air for radio," it's Van Der Graaf Generator.

When the next word after "without exception" is "except," you've invalidated your argument in 100% of all cases ever without exception.

You must launch into a homicidal tirade whenever anyone so much as mentions Trent Reznor. No exceptions, or you're not a "true" prog fan.

Genesis will go down in history as the band that made "Invisible Touch," and Peter Gabriel will always be remembered for that "Sledgehammer" video. No one gives a shit about Wind and Wurthering.

Hitler knew deep down that his taste in genetics was superior, and we all know how well that worked out for everyone involved.

I find it terrifying that you wouldn't just know if monkeys were flying out of your butt.

Music's elitists strike again.

Schizophrenia, most likely.

I have to explain what it is and then they tell me how big a moron I am.

"Sexify My Minimalist Neoclassical Revisionist Fugue in 9/8"

I just found a frog in my back yard. Is this prog?

You've just begun to notice this? What are you in, 1975?

Pretentious noodling or a shrieking eunuch, to name a couple.

Way To Go, Cheetos

2009-02-12T20:11:00.000-06:00

I had an odd craving and picked up a 99 cent bag of Cheetos. On the back of the bag, it reads:

"What's a serving? With Cheetos brand crunchy snacks, eat 21 — that's just the right amount for crazy, cheesy fun!"

How many servings are in the bag? Two and a half. So you have two fun servings and one that's just sort of melancholy?

All The Practical Dating Advice You Need

2009-02-11T05:56:00.000-06:00

Most people who know me will tell you that I am not the 96% Lean Ground Beef of the Dating World. I'm not the most physically fit or attractive guy out there, I'm old enough to remember when Dinobots first roamed the Earth, and most forms of social interaction frighten me. To that end, I'm glad I have a girlfriend now; someone who loves me for who I am, even though I cannot remotely fathom why. To answer the two most obvious questions: No, I am not just making this person up, and No, it's not Laura Fraser. Although, if Laura Fraser is reading this right now, I would just like to say that I'm available.

I re-entered the dating world several years ago full of optimistic enthusiasm. I figured that, if nothing else, my various exploits would make excellent fodder for humorous anecdotes. This was before I discovered that dating is stupid and I suck at it.

For instance, I am immune to "signals." "Signals" are those little subtle hints that people give off to show that they are attracted to one another, such as smiling, winking, flirting, or if the they are particularly intoxicated, heavy petting. I have no idea how to interpret these signals. If a girl is flirting with me, I have no idea if she is flirting with me because she likes me unless she comes out and tells me that she likes me. I could always just ask if she likes me, but I find it's far safer to assume that if I like a girl, there will probably be some reason why it would never work out between us, such as she's already married.

Many magazines promise to deliver practical dating advice. These are all women's magazines. You don't find much in the way of dating advice in men's magazines because men are more concerned with automotive repair and fishing tips than understanding their relationships, which is exactly the reason women feel they need to turn to magazines for dating advice.

These magazines are always full of such helpful articles as: "Top 10 Ways to Impress Your Lover in Bed," "What He Says and What He Really Means," "Take Our Completely Random Compatibility Quiz," "Dr. Phil Thinks You're an Idiot," "How Many Days Should You Wait for Him to Call?" "How Many Dates Should You Go On Before Expecting a Proposal?" "Is Two Years too Long to Wait? You're Not Getting Any Younger You Know," "What Is This Guy's Problem Anyway?" and "Bat Boy Saves Pope from Bigfoot Rampage." The truth is, ladies, that if you want to get closer to your man, it would be far more effective to just develop an interest in fishing.

Men and women are not really that different when it comes to relationships. We both want what everybody wants: comfort, safety, appreciation, and affection. Yet these magazines assume men and women are only capable of relating to each other in the same sense that a sea slug is capable of relating to a banjo. After reading all this practical dating advice, women modify their behavior to fit what they're told men want, and the men are more confused than ever because none of it has any basis in automotive repair or fishing.

I do have some ideas that could make dating far less stupid. For example, I think single people could find each other much easier if they wore buttons to signify that they are single and ready to date, sort of like how married people wear rings to signify that they are not single and ready to date. It would save everyone a lot of hassle, except women, who would feel the need to coordinate their outfits to include the button.

The less time you spend with your partner, the more successful your relationship will be. I realized this by watching people who have been married for at least ten years. Between work and sleep, taking care of the kids, and enjoying their various hobbies, happily married people only get to spend about an hour of quality time together per day, and it's usually at the end of the day when they're both tired. Since nothing really exciting happens to most people during the average day, this actually saves both partners from having to hear about, in explicit detail, stuff they care nothing about, such as a synopsis of the entire Beast Wars Transformers series.

Finally, I think all relationships should begin with sex. Even business relationships, as long as both partners are willing, or as it's known in the business world, "mutual." Too many power plays and mind games and roadblocks are tied up with this, and it would be much easier to focus on actually building a relationship once it's out of the way.

Southern Rock Extravaganza!

2009-02-08T14:25:00.001-06:00

With minor exception, I don't care for Southern rock bands whose music fits into the category of Southern Rock. The music is bland and uninspired and the fans fuel the stereotypes that make the rest of the world hate America. My original intent was to just ridicule Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I decided to broaden the perspective to include any Southern Rock found on the Skynyrd forum since it's essentially all the exact same thing and it all sucks.

That's because just about the only noteworthy contribution the South has made to rock and roll is the inclusion of drunken rednecks.

Damn liberal media with their black president and their homosexuals.

The only real tragedy was that Skynyrd carried on after God saw fit to smack their plane out of the sky.

Stick to that formula and fame will come, just as it had for "downsouthrocker."

That's when the South became primarily associated with unwashed, inbred, backwoods racists.

No stereotypes here AT ALL.

Much more valuable than, say, the original Constitution or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Wow. This thread started out tragic then detoured straight into a bad redneck cliché.

Is the concept of a metaphor completely lost on you people?

Wordfilter can really change the context of a statement.

It's a state of mind to "grow up without any shame," not geography.

Take Your Groundhog Seriously

2009-02-04T05:49:00.000-06:00

Groundhog Day is an important holiday where people gather in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to get a weather report from a frightened rodent. Actually, I can't be 100 percent certain that the groundhog is, in fact, a rodent. It might belong to some other animal classification such as "marsupial" or "woodchuck." I'm pretty sure, however, that it isn't part of the Meteorological Kingdom.

The way I understand this happens is that thousands of people gather around some sort of hole in the ground, or possibly a tree stump as I'm not really sure what groundhogs actually live in, and wait in hushed suspense for the groundhog to emerge before hundreds of news cameras. As tradition dictates, if the groundhog is frightened by its shadow, Bill Murray will blow up a golf course. (I am already aware that was actually a gopher, but according to biologists, who cares?)

Every year, I find myself fascinated by the Groundhog Day celebration because I've always been skeptical of the entire premise. For one thing, I'm not exactly sure how a groundhog naturally knows to come out of its burrow at 7:25 AM on February 2nd. In order to answer this question, I turned to the informative documentary film Groundhog Day featuring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Watching this, I learned that what really happens is Bill Murray kidnaps the groundhog and drives it off a cliff.

So that question is settled, but many more remain, such as: Wouldn't the groundhog be more frightened of all the people gathered around it than of its own shadow? I know I would, and that's why I ultimately decided against becoming a weatherman. To address this concern, I went to the Official Groundhog Day Website, (www.groundhog.org), where I discovered a number of things seriously wrong with these people. For example:

"After Phil emerges from his burrow on February 2, he speaks to the Groundhog Club president in 'Groundhogese' (a language only understood by the current president of the Inner Circle). His proclamation is then translated for the world."

"There has only been one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years!"

"Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking the 'elixir of life,' a secret recipe. Phil takes one sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic and it magically gives him seven more years of life."

The groundhog's borrow is called "Gobbler's Knob," which is just all sorts of not right.

I know what you're thinking at this point, and no, I don't know why they don't bottle and sell the "elixir of life" in Wal-Marts across the country. I imagine it would be a tremendously successful product. I'd drink it like it was Pepsi.

According to the Official Groundhog Day Website, the tradition began sometime in the Middle Ages, when European Christians would interpret the Bible in all sorts of wildly absurd ways because they were illiterate. (Many of these interpretations still hold to this day.) Some of these Biblical interpretations led to the observance of Candlemass, a gothic heavy metal band. The tradition of Groundhog Day is said to be based on these lyrics to an old Candlemass song:

Hear the cry
The cry of tormented pain
A voice darker than Evil
The deadly moaning of hell

At one point, the tradition was brought to the Germans, who naturally decided to get drunk and try to take over the world. Apparently Pennsylvania's earliest settlers were Germans and they found groundhogs in "profusion," which I'm not entirely convinced is a real word. They determined that without a specific holiday dedicated to it, the groundhog would surely die out from uselessness. Thus the tradition was born in America of relying on a small mammal to tell us whether winter will last until the end of winter.

Some of Punxsutawney Phil's more notable historic appearances include:

During Prohibition Phil threatened to impose 60 weeks of winter on the community if he wasn't allowed a drink. Lawmakers at the time gave the threat all the attention they felt it deserved.

In 1958 Phil announced that it was a "United States Chucknik," rather than a Soviet Sputnik or Muttnik that became the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, because apparently the groundhog is sort of an idiot.

Phil traveled to Washington DC in 1986 to meet with President Reagan. God only knows why.

Phil appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1995. Oprah saw her shadow and the weather hasn't been normal since.

The Eagles Are As Boring As Their Fans Are Insane

2009-02-01T22:01:00.002-06:00

The Eagles is a lame band. Each member is all right — perhaps even listenable — in their solo work, but when they come together as a band they command all the raw energy of a Thorazine drip. Largely considered to be the groundbreakers of the modern contemporary rock-hybrid style that has contaminated country music with unimaginative homogeny and puked it all over the airwaves, it's amazing that they can still find people who are willing to pay upwards of $200 a ticket to watch them perform live what you hear every four songs on the radio. These are those people, and this is their fervent insanity.

When is it morally objectionable to terminate an Eagles song?

Last night, I had a dream that I went to the future and humanity had done away with violence and replaced it with compulsive shopping, but then the bad guys followed me and started shooting everyone, and I had to grab a gun and start shooting up a mall, so I can totally relate to everything you said.

Glenn Frey: International Superspy

I think they mean you're all crazy.

When Don Henley gets angry, Don Henley will... uh...

And then you realize you're already late, so you say fuck it and keep on posting.

You're like that really, really old lady who lives alone and tries to lure the neighborhood children into her house with hard candies, and the last thing the children ever hear is a tinny "Hotel California" crackling from the speakers of an old record player.

You know that Don Henley doesn't give a FUCK about you, right?

When you resent that there's a type of bird called the eagles.

The Eagles, with special guest Brian May!

Gee, which one do you think is the extra wheel?

The post was going so well. Logical, sane, then bam! mental image of Joe Walsh's wrinkly old man-teat. Fuck you.

Let's look at it in terms of exposure, though. Super Bowl: 97.5 million viewers. Grand Ole Opry: 2.

Nothing gets by you, does it?

Something like that approached me once in an incredibly disturbing nightmare. It kept telling me to vote Republican, over and over again.

Whoever Dreamed Of A White Christmas Should Be Shot

2009-01-28T05:50:00.001-06:00

Yesterday morning I caught myself muttering, "I can't wait for winter to be over." This statement took me by surprise. Winter used to be one of my favorite months. Oh wait, that doesn't look right. Wintember used to be one of my favorite months. That's better.

I must be growing up. One more tiny piece of my childhood died as I turned my back on winter. My inner child would have wept over this, but its tear ducts had frozen shut. Winter was far more exciting to us when we were children. We would peer through the windows late at night, watching the snow come down with wide-eyed wonder at the awesome power of nature to cancel school. Of course, they always reminded us we'd have to make up any snow days at the end of the year, but no one ever cared because the entire last week of school was a blow-off anyway.

As an adult, winter weather becomes less of a useful diversion and more of an irritating inconvenience. They don't close down most businesses just because it would be unreasonably unsafe to expect their employees to drive to work. This means that adults still need to brave the elements to drive to work while their children get to stay home and entertain themselves with such fun games as "set G.I. Joe on fire." (Of course, I'm only kidding. These days, kids just download grotesque porn from the Internet instead of actually doing anything constructive with their free time.)

Every morning during the winter, I have to wake up earlier than normal so I can warm up my car. Apparently automobile engineers are more interested in making cars that can be voice activated to play Barenaked Ladies while calling our lawyers than making cars that can function reasonably well in temperature ranges that commonly exist on planet Earth. This is the main reason I can't wait for winter to be over. I have a great deal of trouble waking up at all, let alone early, because I find sleep to be a very enjoyable alternative to being awake. When you're asleep, no one is around to pressure you into doing things you don't want to do, like contribute to society in any meaningful way.

I also have to adjust my travel time to account for "safe winter driving." Cold winter air creates ice, a vicious substance determined to destroy humanity by transforming our roads into violent, careening deathtraps. "Safe winter driving" is a critical process combining two major elements: 1) driving as slowly as possible, and 2) being perpetually terrified while you do so. Everybody practices "safe winter driving" from approximately October 1st through May 31st, regardless of whether or not there is actually any ice on the road. Regardless of whether or not conditions even exist for there to be any ice on the road. Unless they're idiots. The idiots are the ones who believe that owning a four-wheel drive vehicle makes it perfectly safe to drive 50 MPH on a sheet of pure ice.

In addition to the ice, we sometimes also have to deal with the nuisance of snow. Nature never dumps snow any place that might be convenient for people, such as in scenic landscape photographs. It's always on sidewalks and busy streets where it can cause accidents, and we're constantly having to move it someplace else. Of course, this is nature's signal that we are ready for even more snow, which clearly, by definition, belongs on the sidewalks and streets. When we were children, we would delight in building snowmen, creating snow angels, and sliding uncontrollably down snow-crested hills atop flimsy sheets of plastic. That was before we grew up and realized that whoever dreamed of a white Christmas should be drug out and shot.

If I remember my high school science classes correctly, we learned that it gets extremely cold in winter because the sun hates us. This causes car windshields to develop frost that is impossible to remove because windshield scrapers were designed by cackling sadists. The temperature is always a stimulating topic of conversation during the winter. People never get tired of asking if it's "still cold out there," as if it's suddenly going to turn June. Sometimes, someone might ask you if you're responsible for "all this bad weather," which is a stupid question because everyone knows that, as with anything else that nobody likes, it's all George W. Bush's fault.

440 Hall & Oates Fans Can't Fill An Arena

2009-01-25T09:56:00.000-06:00

I never intended to include Hall & Oates in this series of mediocre bands whose fans take way too seriously, mainly because I didn't give a shit about Hall & Oates and I figured no one else did either. However, when Hall & Oates were mocked on a friend's LiveJournal, 440 Hall & Oates fans came to their rescue, armed with highly personal attacks. One of them made the mistake of posting the link to their forum, and as all of you know after several years of doing this, if stupid people take stupid shit way too seriously on the Internet, I will be there to ridicule them because the Internet is a stupid place. If they complain too much, I'll do it again, because I'm a bad person and 440 Hall & Oates fans can't fill an arena.

Truthfully, I don't really know anything about Hall & Oates other than they ejoyed success for about a week in the Eighties and went on to become gay male stereotypes. Now, I realize that there are a lot of great bands that fade into obscurity following a brief period of success, but none of them ever created "Maneater." When the greatest thing you can say about your favorite band is that one half of it worked with Robert Fripp in the Seventies, it says far more about Robert Fripp being a badass than it does about your band not sucking.

I don't think "Daryl would hit it off with this guy!" sends the message you were intending.

Congratulations, you've brainwashed your daughter into liking crap.

You don't get strange reactions for liking Hall & Oates because you're young. You get strange reactions for liking Hall & Oates because your name is Troy.

With all due respect, a dog raping a cat can make music better than most of the artists on MTV now.

Oh god.

Straight from the Eighties, right into your anus, here comes the Hall & Oates collage!

Never before has an emoticon been more appropriate.

Oh no, you're not insane AT ALL.

If I started spelling it "Darrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryl Hall" and "Jon Ots," how much closer to a homicidal break would it push you?

This sort of thing is exactly the reason Barack Obama is shutting down Guantanamo Bay.

Now I have to quit before I start feeling sorry for these people.

Filled With Hope, Or Change, Or Something

2009-01-21T05:47:00.000-06:00

In November of 2008, America recognized a historic milestone when, after struggling through decades of adversity and strife, Axl Rose finally released a new Guns 'N' Roses album. The general consensus was that it could have been better.

This event was narrowly overshadowed by a major breakthrough in civil rights when Americans realized that a black man can be every bit as capable of ruining our country as stodgy, old white men have proven to be for the past two centuries. Yesterday, the day after we honored one of our most important civil rights leaders, Barack Obama officially became the 44th President of the United States.

This triumph comes not without its fair share of controversy, however. A small number of disillusioned citizens are working diligently to prove that Barack Obama is not actually a naturally born American citizen since most people don't technically consider Hawaii a state. I don't think these people fully understand the dire social ramifications of their accusation. I mean, Oprah Winfrey cried when Barack Obama was elected, and every single time Oprah Winfrey discovers that she has cried in vain, someone awakens the next morning with an unexplained growth the size of a small dog. Besides, it's not like this would be the first time we've had a president with questionable credentials. It's rumored that Jimmy Carter is most likely some sort of space alien, and it's widely acknowledged that William Harrison was, in fact, a grizzly bear.

Some people just cannot accept the fact that, despite the best efforts of FoxNews, a president was elected who was not a Republican. This is because after nearly 900 years of being in charge, the Republicans got too confident and careless. Rather than working to gain the public's trust after an overall dissatisfying eight years, the Republican National Convention instead decided to base their entire platform on the assumption that voters are really, really, incredibly, stupid.

Granted this had worked well for them in the past, like when we elected George W. Bush for a second term even though he had a lower approval rating than ovarian cysts. This time, the Republicans reached deep into their talent pool and nominated John McCain, who battled the natural charisma of Barack Obama with all the charm of a confused grandfather in constant discovery of his own senility. John McCain's campaign was run with all the grace and dignity of a three-ring circus crashing into an insane asylum.

John McCain's candidacy peaked at the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. For the first few days, voters everywhere were keenly interested in downloading pictures of Sarah Palin in a bikini, but their interest quickly began to fade as soon as they realized that "VPILF" was not really funny. Many people directly blame Sarah Palin for John McCain's loss, but I think it's more that when John McCain wasn't trying to connect with the people, he sounded like a cranky, old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, and when did try to connect with the people, he talked like he was describing what they were wearing over the phone as he peered through their bedroom windows.

Probably anybody who has appeared in the news over the past eight or twenty years with an (R) and a state next to their name would have lost the election last year. The Democrats managed to capitalize on the general disapproval of Bush's leadership by constructing a platform that consisted of more than not being a joke. The Republicans wisely chose to distance themselves from the unpopular Bush Administration by running their campaign the exact same way and promising to extend most of its policies.

Conversely, most people felt that Barack Obama ran an overall positive campaign because he smiled a lot. Unlike the Republicans, Barack Obama pledged that he would fix everything wrong with the world using Hope®©™, Change®©™, and Unity®©™. John McCain, on the other hand, was shocked to find out there even was anything wrong with the world, and had, in fact, chosen as his campaign slogan, "McCain / Palin: There is nothing wrong with the world, you fools!"

Barack Obama has a difficult road ahead of him. His approval ratings started to slip before he even took office, as the novelty of having elected America's first partially minority president began to wear off. The rumors are still circulating that he's secretly a Muslim, or a terrorist, or a Socialist, and that he'll paint the White House black, enslave all white people, and prohibit embryonic stem cells from owning hunting rifles, but I'm sure he'll overcome these rumors because they're all stupid. The truth is Barack Obama won't do any worse than any other president before him, or at least we Hope®©™.

Obama's Address

2009-01-20T16:39:00.001-06:00

I like how Obama thanked President Bush for his service, and then spent the next nineteen minutes describing how everything President Bush did was wrong.

No Line On The Internet

2009-01-18T10:30:00.001-06:00

After revisiting the Metallica forums last week, I thought to check out some other forums of bands that fans take too seriously. Naturally, my first inclincation was U2, and I decided that I hated this U2 message board on the sole grounds that it is a gaudy shade of blue.

He'd just play the same chord over and over until the band changes direction.

U2 already did this in 1988. It was called "Rattle And Hum." The similarities between Metallica and U2 become more glaring every year.

No, he's right. Musicals suck. I'd rather listen to OUR national icon. It's a giant screeching bird.

It doesn't exist. I'd dare you all to prove me wrong, but I don't want to hear that fucking song over and over again.

That fact was NOT fun! I demand a refund!

You mean, like food?

Ew. I'd hate to be under that sky.

Funny thing is, numbers 1 through 9 are all Axl Rose.

Yeah, that Bono, what a selfish prick!

The other day I farted and it made me wonder if beans give Bono indigestion.

What the hell? It's just the green button over and over again!

What is the obsession with punching people?

Well, that mystery's been solved — we found the one ego in the world bigger than Bono's.

Three Lines On The Horizon

2009-01-16T21:23:00.000-06:00

This is the cover to the upcoming U2 album, No Line On The Horizon:

Is this some kind of joke? There IS a line on the horizon. In fact, if you count the two lines they added, there are actually three lines on the horizon. People were already making fun of Bono for not being able to count after "Vertigo."

The Greatest President In History

2009-01-15T20:31:00.000-06:00

Following Bush's farewell address, C-Span took phone calls from idiots around the country. I wish I was set up to record this! The best one was a guy from South Carolina who said, in all sincerity, that he believed George W. Bush was the greatest president in history and that Bush was "sent from Heaven and annointed by God Himself."

If George W. Bush is the best that God could offer, I think we're worshipping the wrong god.

The United States Of China

2009-01-14T05:40:00.001-06:00

It has come to my attention, by way of people having more free time to panic in the streets during normal business hours, that the economy is coming to an end. This is being conveyed to us by grim-faced news anchors delivering important reports about politicians deeply concerned over business owners freaking out. Apparently people making $7.50 an hour are supposed to somehow care when people whose annual income starts at $300,000 suddenly start losing millions of dollars, instead of asking the obvious questions, like: "Where do these people get millions of dollars to lose?" "Are we supposed to be concerned that they can suddenly no longer afford the fourth mansion they were going to buy for their wife's chihuahua?" and "Have fun eating generic Macaroni & Cheese every night! Ha ha!"

The middle class has never really understood how the economy works; we just always assumed the economy existed, somewhere up in the sky, where it looked down upon us and answered our prayers. We would go to work every day to earn money, and we would deposit that money into a bank, and we would withdraw that money when we wanted to buy something. The value of the dollar was determined by the amount of gold the government kept stockpiled. That is all we needed to know.

Of course, this was unacceptable after banks realized there weren't nearly enough abstract concepts involved to keep the middle class thoroughly confused, so banks invented credit. Now, if you want to buy something expensive like a car or a house or gasoline, instead of waiting for a family member to die and pass theirs on to you, you can buy it with money you don't actually have based on how interesting the bank finds you. The government still has gold stockpiled, but now our economy is based on how confident people are that our country has more money than any other country.

Despite the fact that nobody understood anything anybody said about the economy, we were assured that everything would be fine as long as no one pays any attention to it. This idea worked great for several decades until the Liberal News Media started dedicating entire cable channels to scaring the middle class with reports on things like the stock market and investment bankers and all of our jobs going overseas. All of a sudden, people started hearing about the economy, and this frightened them because they had cut economics class in high school to smoke weed behind the auto shop building.

Back in the mid-Nineties, or maybe the mid-Eighties, or the upper-Thirties, or the Cretaceous Period, the stock market was deregulated. No one is really sure whose fault this was, but everybody can agree that it was definitely not them. Somewhere along the line, one of our politicians decided that rich people would be responsible with our money if there were no laws governing them, and that politician managed to convince others that rich people are in no way greedy. This directly led to the criminal indictments of many rich people for being irresponsible with our money because they were greedy.

As a result of the deregulation, banks started approving mortgages for anybody who applied, regardless of whether they had collateral, money, jobs, social security numbers, or were in fact dogs. These were called "adjustable rate mortgages," which literally meant that the bank could adjust the rate of the mortgage to any amount they wanted. Suddenly the borrowers found themselves owing upwards of $137 million per month, which they couldn't seem to pay. Totally unprepared for such an unexpected event, many of the banks collapsed. In a controversial move, the government gave the banks $700 billion dollars to pay their CEOs' yearly bonuses.

Then the auto industry failed because their business strategy hinged on making cars that no one wanted to buy, and they requested a massive government bailout package on the grounds that the banks got one for being financially inept, and so should they. So the auto industry got their bailout package, and so will every other corporation in America until we officially become the United States of China. However, individual consumers are not eligible to receive a bailout package because we are expected to be responsible with our money.

We need to be concerned about the plight of the rich, though, because they have vowed that, if they go down, they're taking everyone else with them. So when Sally Struthers asks you to open your heart and your wallet against a backdrop of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)," please donate whatever you can. Remember, you can feed a starving Wall Street investor for only the price of a midsize sedan a day.

Revisiting The Metallica Forums

2009-01-11T19:50:00.000-06:00

Metallica recently released a new album that looks like a gaping vagina. Although it was vastly superior to that repetative succession of toilet noises that was St. Anger, it still only inspired me to listen to other metal bands who have taken what Metallica used to do so well and improved drastically upon it. Still, as an excuse to put that barb to print, I decided to revisit the Metallica forums to gauge the fan reaction to the new album. Actually, I'm not even sure if this is the same forum I visited last time because there's about a billion of them, and they are all black. This is a Metallica forum at any rate, and they're all probably roughly the same.

Five years.

Whoops! Your brilliant plan backfired!

You don't even deserve to call yourself a Metallica fan! Get out of here, maggot; you disgust me!

It's because the last time they had anything to do with the Internet, they tried to shut it down.

Of course we've heard of Latvia. That's the place Doctor Doom is from.

Hahaha! . . . Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!

The guy in the lower left corner just starts freaking the fuck out after the first minute.

Pump up the Volume (M/A/R/R/S)

You're not a big fan of Lars, but poor Kirk didn't even get honorable mention.

It just kind of falls out of James' cock when you need it.

I just had a frightening vision of the next Beyoncé album.

"My name is Lars; let's form a band!"

Dear Metallica: Stop.

Hey Rod Blagojevich: No One Likes You!

2009-01-07T05:52:00.000-06:00

When Illinois Governor Rod ~~Blajo~~ ~~Blagoi~~ ~~Blagoveji~~ Blagodude was arrested in December under charges of corruption, criminal conspiracy, bribery, and faud, shocked and appalled residents responded with a resounding "It's about time!"

I was beginning to wonder just how criminal the guy would have to get before someone would finally do something about it. Seriously, if he got caught selling kidnapped Illinois schoolchildren to pharmaceutical companies for dangerous chemical testing, it seemed like policing agencies would just shrug and say, "That's our Rod!" and everyone would just enjoy a hearty laugh into fade-out.

I'm sure those of you not living in Illinois are wondering how we could have voted for such an inept governor, not once, but twice. On behalf of the entire state of Illinois, I offer this elaborate defense: I have no idea! I wasn't living in Illinois while all of this was going on, and my entire knowledge of state politics was basically reduced to: Abraham Lincoln came from Illinois, didn't he? For ten years, the only Illinois politician I knew of was Jesse White, who gained my emphatic support by approving me to both drive and vote.

As near as I can tell, Rod Blagojevich became the governor because people in Illinois are stupid. Before Rod Blagojevich became the governor, Illinois had a different governor named George Ryan who figured that no harm could come of giving people licenses to drive semi trucks regardless of whether they were qualified to drive semi trucks, as long as they didn't use the licenses to actually drive semi trucks. Naturally, no one could have predicted that these people would, in fact, use their licenses to drive semi trucks, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of six schoolchildren. The people of Illinois were appropriately outraged, and George Ryan appropriately resigned in shame, was indicted, and incarcerated.

This was probably not the best time to be a gubernatorial candidate named Jim Ryan. This confused the people of Illinois because Jim Ryan was obviously George Ryan with a very poor alias. Rod Blagojevich capitalized on this opportunity by pointing out that, unlike George Ryan and Jim Ryan, his last name is unpronounceable. Fed up with stodgy, old Republicans named Ryan, people of Illinois voted for the guy who looked like a Muppet with his hair escaping down the front of his face. This was, in fact, George Ryan in disguise.

Rod Blagojevich immediately set forth his agenda to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he is the most idiotic, most corrupt, and most downright insane politician to hold a public office since the town of Jenkinsburg, GA was momentarily commandeered by a man calling himself Jorgo the Wonked. With the conviction of George Ryan fresh on people's minds, Blagojevich easily defeated George Ryan's Treasury Secretary, Judy Baar Topinka. She was, in fact, el chupacabra in disguise.

Fewer people in Illinois like Rod Blagojevich than people in the country like George W. Bush. His approval rating is sitting at a very firm 1. Not 1%, mind you, but actually 1, as in the only person who doesn't think Rod Blagojevich is a complete nutcase is Rod Blagojevich. At this point, I'm willing to bet even his wife is contemplating what her life would have been like with someone a little more balanced, like Axl Rose or Charles Manson.

Rod Blagojevich allowed the phone lines in his office to be wiretapped claiming that he has nothing to hide. He then openly discussed his illicit activities over the phone lines that he knew to be tapped. He responded to the overwhelming evidence against him by declaring that he has done nothing wrong, and that he will fight, fight, fight. The people of Illinois responded by telling him, in no uncertain terms, "Hey Rod Blagojevich: No one likes you!"

Rod Blagojevich counters by sticking his fingers in his ears and declaring: "La-la-la, I can't heeeaaarrr yooouuu!!"

His argument is that he was elected to serve the will of the people of Illinois. The people of Illinois have elected him to do a job and he will continue to do that job, even if the people of Illinois don't want him to do it anymore. At one point, I heard one news anchor pose the question, "What's next for the people of Illinois?"

That's simple. We'll find the next most insane politician in the state and make that person the governor! Isn't that pretty much a given at this point? Who knows; we might even give Jorgo a shot at it.

Extremely Minor Change

2009-01-06T22:50:00.000-06:00

I was never fully sold on the title of the new blog, and tonight I came up with something that fits the theme I'm going for far better. So I'm calling it "Rampant Amusement," and I've changed the addresses accordingly. They are now:

Rampant Amusement at Blogspot
Rampant Amusement at Wordpress

Not that it matters too much, because I will be crossposting the entries here as well. I just thought I'd point out the change in case anyone bothered to go checking the links.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

2009-01-05T21:42:00.004-06:00

The Civility Webpage II has spent the past year in its death throes. Although I'm not quite ready to pull the plug yet, I have decided to shift gears, and shift my attention away from it.

I've decided to change formats for this year. I'm going to be publishing one weekly humor colunn every Wednesday, given I can keep it up for 52 consecutive weeks. Some old material may be retread and presented in a fresh way.

My old entries would oftentimes vary from a couple of sentences to several thousand words, and range from decent to genius to utterly stupid. My goal here is to deliver something consistent, both in format and in quality. Also, I think the weekly schedule will give me time to enjoy life as well as time to edit and revise the entries. I have the first two written so far, and I can they have definitely benefitted from having more time to revise them instead of having to rush to publish something before the end of the day.

This format is also going to be more reader-friendly. It is going to be far less harsh and scathing, and more light-spirited and good-natured. I want to publish something that you might expect to find in your average magazine or newspaper. If this experiment gets any attention at all, I'd like it to be something that someone wouldn't be afraid to buy and publish, unlike many of my previous blog entries.

That being said, I am starting a third blog to showcase this new format. If anyone comes across it, I'd like for it to be removed from my more ascerbic, former writings, where I say "fuck" a lot. This new blog will appear on the Blogger and WordPress services. For the convenience of my LiveJournal friends, I'm not going to create a new LiveJournal. Everything will be pubished on the same LiveJournal I have been using, including this new format.

The Civility Webpage II will still exist, but in a diminished capacity. I'm still planning on making fun of some web forum every Sunday, and I feel that this is the best mechanism for that. I may occasionally post a random gripe or observation that doesn't fit into the format of the other blog.

The new blog is called "Lucid Absurdity." That title narrowly beat out "The Angry, Red Penis of Injustice." As of right now, both the Blogger and the WordPress sites are nothing more than framework. I'll format them more as time goes on. LiveJournal friends, I invite you all to check your FriendsLists on Wednesday if you can, and let me know what you think. It'll probably be in the early evening.

Thank you for your kindness and support.

Here are the links to the new sites, if anyone is interested:
Blogger Mirror
WordPress Mirror

Time To Tackle Some Sexual Issues!

2009-01-04T21:28:00.000-06:00

I decided to go to WebMD to tackle some health-related problems today, but for some reason I always default to the sexual issues sections on these types of forums. It's probably because I know they contain the greatest amount of guaranteed idiots.

Expect an IMPORTANT UPDATE in the next couple of days.

This is a medically relevant question!

Posts titled things like "Odd Discharge" are like hitting the jackpot every single time.

Have you tried bathing?

An even better question is: Who goes around smelling condoms? I wouldn't even be able to tell what a condom smells like you put one on my nose!

So to keep him from having sex with another woman, your only choice is to watch him having sex with another woman. Sounds perfectly reasonable!

Don't worry, the dirty old men he's sending pictures of his penis to weren't planning on showing up anyway.

"I tested positive for gonorrhea. I'm too cool for school!"

The good news is that there is one guarantee. The bad news is that it involves her finger and your pooper.

Use your fist.

Whoops! Turns out the whole time I was sniffing the wrong hole! Ha-ha!

Julie, this is your mother. Go to your room.

A Buick Skylark.

When her daddy shows up with his shotgun.

New Year's Resolutions For The Disenfranchised

2008-12-31T13:21:00.001-06:00

We're headed into 2009 facing economic turmoil and environmental annihilation. What better time to resolve to do some of those things you've been putting off, such as eating your weight in body fat. (That one was an Obama election year bonus.)

— Teach yourself to draw manga.
— Become a grizzly cub.
— Try to sell Obama's senate seat to the highest bidder.
— Convince Justin Timberlake to bring sexy back, because we miss her.
— Father Bristol Palin's next baby.
— Change.
— Get a life-size topographical map of Ohio tattooed on your body.
— Hack Sarah Palin's email account and have it blamed on eBay.
— Read a book.
— Step into the Quantum Leap Accelerator… And vanish.
— Punch a cop in the dick.
— Hope.
— Invent 152 new Pokémon.
— Buy the entire economy.
— Disgust Bill O'Reilly.
— Hold up! Wait a minute! Put a little love in it!
— Make yourself ejaculate ants and use this power to fight crime.
— Believe.
— Remain completely celibate until the year 2010. If you already are completely celibate, don't stop fucking until 2010.
— Punch George W. in the Bush.
— The following is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. It is only a test. If it were a real emergency, instructions would follow after the tone.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
— Stop watching crap written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
— Make a fist. From scratch.
— Achieve.
— If you love someone, set them free. If they come back with AIDS, enjoy your death, idiot.
— Accidentally a Coca-Cola bottle.
— Put a resolution in your resolution so you can resolve while you resolve.
— Raid the factory that poops out those Vague Genre Movies and Beethoven movies and destroy everyone involved. See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. Take no prisoners.
— Apply for a personal $30 billion government bailout package.
— Pray that you really didn't just vote for the wrong candidate.

Practical New Year's Advice From Yahoo!Answers

2008-12-28T21:44:00.000-06:00

I decided to go to Yahoo!Answers for some practical New Year's advice. I also threw in a couple leftover Christmas questions out of sheer laziness. Tis the season!

The disillusion of Santa will make it easier for them when they grow up and decide God doesn't exist.

It looks like someone didn't get invited to any New Year's parties.

Get drunk and spawn another cretin.

I'd think January would be one of the main things.

Beer.

Best answer, chosen by users.

Say "hi" to your ugly friend for me.

The war on Christmas just found its General Petraeus.

Something about killing your grandfather and having a baby, as I recall.

To murder people who say "yee-haw."

Kidnap the president.

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Red Nose"

2008-12-24T12:41:00.004-06:00

Two years ago, I experimented with what might happen if gothic horror scribe H.P. Lovecraft had written "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." This year, I bring to you a follow-up of sorts, "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" as told by Edgar Allen Poe.

A FRAIL and unassuming creature, the newcomer gave no insult or injury. Always cordial and congenial, with a pleasant demeanor. Given his own devices I am convinced he would like nothing more than to frolic and play from morning's light well into the veil of night. I fancy it unthinkable that one might wish harm upon this light and innocent soul. Though, be warned, for he carried with him a horror most foul that I shall recount in this narrative.

When something is amiss, once perceived it cannot be unseen! Many profess the anomaly to not exist -- and some may even force it into the confines of normalcy -- but the discomfort never abates. Perhaps my senses might be more honed to the abnormal, but he possessed an irregularity I could never forgive. It consumed my thoughts until waking nightmares plagued my slumber! Whether a slight of birth or a curse of the most egregious order, it mattered not. This otherwise friendly and innocent boy had been marked with an abomination upon his delicate face – a demon red nose that would glow as angry as the eye of the devil!

Perhaps from the start I knew what had to be done to rid myself of my tormentor, but being of sound mind, I at first worked feverishly to avoid such madness. In carrying out my daily routines, I would examine any intended path for his absence before proceeding. On the rare occasions that he did, indeed, find me, I would return his pleasantries with cold indifference, refusing to acknowledge the devil's eye. When compared to the transgressions suffered to him at the hands of my contemporaries, my emotional neglect might seem almost a blessing. Perhaps it was this which endeared the boy to me. Though I never included him, it may be a greater injustice to intentionally exclude him. I am certain that my callous disregard only strengthened his desire for friendship. An aberration craves nothing more than acceptance, though he regrettably did not comprehend the nature of my avoidance.

Gradually, my simple mistrust of the bedeviled abnormality grew into an obsession. No matter my insistence to ignore it, occasionally my eye would be drawn to the fiery glow of the red nose, contrasting the arctic backdrop of virginal white. With great consternation I would watch it glide along the horizon as if a disembodied phantasm. I found myself considering the nose as its own entity, separate from the boy. The boy was innocent and good, and this thing -- this damned nose -- was possessed of an evil most vile! As I watched it, so would it watch me! In the light of day, it would follow me about my business. At night, it would sit upon its tainted perch and regard me as I slept, fitfully, tormented by nightmares of its inevitable assault.

One night, an aggressive envelope of fog had overtaken us. This sooty haze obscured all that could be seen past the edge of the nose. On the advent of our most important task, it seemed we would be deterred by the unpredictable whims of nature. Oh, woe of woes! But how utterly appropriate is it that, of all things rendered invisible by the brume, the one beacon that could be seen, in the distance, would be the glowing ember of the Red Nose? The foul thing that had once earned my enmity might now be our very salvation!

How quickly notoriety can transform animosity into distinction! The hypocritical sycophants now praised him for the aberrance they, only the night before, reprehended. Not I! I would not be fooled by his sudden call to favor! The demon eye, not satisfied merely with my vexation, now thought to mock me! It was then that I made up my mind to rid myself of the vile nose forever!

A plan of such consequence must surely not be made in haste. Hours ran into days ran into weeks and months while I devised a perfect system. I wished the boy no harm, only the demon entity which chose to rest upon his face. Alas, I fear it would cause the boy grave injury to complete this task. So be it that, to carve the cancer from my conscious, he would have to parish alongside it. Just one more injustice added to the litany against the wretched thing!

I understood that I must maneuver cautiously so as not to draw suspicion, neither among my colleagues, nor from the devilish nose. As the evil nose openly taunted me, so did I mock it with my brazen openness! For I knew that a thing of such diabolical influence could see into my bitter soul. Day and night, I joined with my friends when they frolicked with the boy. For weeks I laughed and joked and yelped alongside them, careful not to raise even the most cynical eyebrow that my folly was but an act.

Despite a performance worthy of the most distinguished stage, the evil nose would still follow me about my daily tasks and keep sharp watch over me at night. It must have suspected my intention of malice! Weeks carried into months as I prayed to the most merciful of gods that another fog might envelop us as it had previously. In this frozen wasteland, I was certain the murky haze would be the solitary cover allowing me to approach the baleful thing undetected. Meanwhile, never was I kinder to the young one and his freakish anomaly, reminding myself constantly that it was a mere charade -- that the sinful thing must be purged!

I awoke once in the depth of the darkest of nights to a feeling of something amiss which had somehow seeped into my slumber. As I cast my eyes about the room I realized the sickening glow of the red nose had been extinguished! The demon eye, which had kept such diligent watch over me through the night hours, had suddenly, and without preamble, vanished! I found its absence strangely alarming -- for the first moment since its arrival had the damned thing not been available to monitor my repose. At first, I thought perhaps the boy had carried the evil thing away from the premises, but I soon realized that the demon nose had not, in fact, departed. No -- it was obscured! Blessing of blessings! The fog for which I prayed had once again returned, stronger and thicker than before!

I rose to my feet and walked deftly to where the boy would sleep, careful not to wake my neighbors. Not only had I made a show to convince all but myself of my noblest intentions, not only had I prayed for the misty veil to obscure my deed, but I had also plotted every detail of its execution with the greatest care and caution.

I nudged the boy and spoke with the faintest whisper for only he to hear -- "Come with me. Another brume has befallen us, and I cannot see."

Of course, my farce of camaraderie had been so convincing that the boy had no reason to doubt my honest intention. He brought himself up and followed closely behind me.

"The fog is too thick; I fear the reach of my beacon will be too greatly diminished," he worried as we stepped outside into the crisp arctic air.

With the foresight of a witch, I had practiced our path months ahead, until I could literally reach the intended destination without the aid of my eyes! I had chosen a spot with all of the necessary equipment and far enough for sound not to make its way to suspicious ears. On the way, I assuaged the boy's fears as I mentally counted our steps. Finally the moment was upon us! I told him to wait on his mark so the glow of his red nose would beckon me safely back to him.

Though, after I disappeared from his sight, I merely circled back, focused on blighting the blood-red beacon from his face once and for all! Lo, I could see it, but for the first time it could not see me! It had no forewarning as I came upon the boy and shoved him forcefully onto the wire fence. Clenching the wire in my teeth, I wrapped it around the boy's neck and garroted him until his body gave slack.

As if enraged, the demon nose glowed brighter and stronger as the life drained from its companion. The angrier the demon nose grew, the more intense my hatred for it grew until it caused me to lop it off with a nearby hatchet! Only then, as the crimson blood drained onto the powder-white snow, did its anger seem to ebb.

My deed had been done! So long had this devil's eye tortured me! No longer would it keep watch over me! To conceal the body I knew I mustn't act in haste. Oh no, I had planned this as studiously as the heinous deed itself!

I dragged the corpse through the snow for longer than an hour until I reached the center of a deep valley a great distance from any living thing. In this valley I would dispose of the body, packing it under layers of snow and ice in a deep crevice where the blowing wind would not uncover it. I made absolutely certain that no detail could be detected underneath the artificial snowdrift that would be its tomb. Not even the angry glow of the wicked nose could be seen. You might think me paranoid, but such a stark contrast of crimson red on virgin white would surely draw attention. No, I must be certain not even the most trivial detail could be discovered.

Satisfied with the concealment of the corpse within its icy tomb, I made my way back to our encampment. So frigid was it that the blood from the mutilation had frozen on contact with the night air, and not even a single drop had spilled as I removed the body. The only stain demanding my attention was that which resulted from the removal of the accursed nose, and it required no more than a packing of snow. The air never warmed this far north, thus the snow never melted. Anything, once buried in the snow, would forevermore remain buried. Finally finished with my gruesome, but necessary, task, I returned to my bed and settled in for the first peaceful rest since the demon nose had entered my life.

The following morn, I awoke abruptly by the ensuing commotion upon the discovery of our absent celebrity. I feigned my horror as expertly as I feigned my friendship with the poor boy. Not one among us had cause to suspect that it was I who had rid the world of that infernal blight upon his face! I alarmed as they alarmed. I fretted as they fretted. I searched alongside numerous search parties. So confident was I in my execution that I led one search party directly through the very gully where I had only days before buried the corpse! I had no reason to fear; the grave remained undisturbed and blended inconspicuously with the landscape. Once the conclusion had been drawn that the boy was not to return, I mourned as they mourned.

In the weeks following, my sleep was the deepest and most refreshing I could remember. The burden of guilt did not weigh upon my soul! I had expelled from our company a considerable evil -- the death of the innocent boy was a necessary sacrifice! Even it could be blamed on the demon nose, for, had the nose not chosen the gentle youth as its vessel, such a tragedy would not have befallen him! So you see -- I carried no consequence for my actions, and I slept undisturbed by conscience.

Many weeks following the resolution of my secret crime, I awoke one night with a terrible start! I felt as if some evil thing were staring into the depths of my soul. Yet, glancing about the room, I saw not a thing save the blackness of night. Thinking myself a nervous fool, I chuckled and lay my head back down, only to feel the invasion once again. I sat up in my bed this time, more suspicious -- my eyes attuned to scan every miniscule detail of the room to determine the cause of my vexation.

I noticed it, then -- a pale crimson shadow cast over the adumbrated nighttime entities. It seemed to be emanating from the very room I inhabited! Then, out from a pitch-dark crevice crept the very demon eye which I knew to be expelled!

I shrieked in utter horror, waking my companions, who rushed to my aid. "Do you see it?" I asked with an utmost urgency.

The others assured me they could not see anything amiss. The demon eye had returned to collect its vengeance from me alone! I rambled. I backed away from its steady advancement. I cried -- "It has returned, that foul Red Nose! It has come for me!"

The others misunderstood my ranting, mistaking my horror for lament! How truly beautiful a performance I had made if they believe I recalled fondly that which I most despised! It was of no consequence now, for the red nose drew closer, its intensity threatening to bathe the entire room with the sickening color of its hateful blood!

"Devil haunt me no more!" I screamed. "I know you to be dead for it is I who dispatched your evil presence!"

All Things Christmas Is All Things Insane

2008-12-21T20:05:00.000-06:00

I don't trust people who are this obsessive over anything, let alone Christmas.

Racist.

I use mine to protest Christmas.

"By the way, I banged your sister."

We let the kids throw whatever they want on the thing and then we just set it on fire.

Have you considered buying a tree?

Wait. The Princess Bride was a Christmas movie?

Move over Casablanca, here comes Will Ferrell in tights!

This is how mass murderers are made.

I go blind trying to read your post, you idiot.

Wasting time on a stupid forum about people who take Christmas way too seriously.

One night each year, Bono visits every home in Ireland and leaves a potato for every good little boy and girl. (Sorry Ireland, I couldn't resist.)

This insanity has just entered a whole new level of scary.

I haven't liked snow since it stopped being fun and started wrecking cars.

Optimus Prime.

There Should Be An Age Limit On Self-Checkout

2008-12-17T19:47:00.000-06:00

If you're old enough to remember having to trade a beaver pelt for a dozen chicken eggs, you shouldn't use the self-checkout.

If you're old enough to remember a time when technology didn't exist, you shouldn't use the self-checkout.

If you still actually write checks in public places in 2008, you shouldn't use the self-checkout.

If you can't handle running a bar code across a scanner bed and placing an item in a bag, have it done by a trained professional.

Politics As Usual On The Internet

2008-12-14T21:47:00.001-06:00

After many years of the people of Illinois wishing upon a star, little Jiminy Cricket finally floated down with his tiny umbrella and arrested our corrupt governor, Rod Blagojevich. As the unapologetic mental defective that he is, I figured he'd be an easy target for ridicule, but the only thing people are talking about on all the news forums about him is Obama. So I guess I'll make fun of bigots today instead.

Those are the same thing.

Can we at least wait for the guy to actually do something corrupt before we start pointing fingers all over the place?

You know, I could have sworn it was Blagojevich who got arrested. I mean, I know how much the words "Blagojevich" and "Obama" sound alike, but I'd think it would at least be apparent in writing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Blagojevich is the one who's going to be President. Who did I vote for again?

You spelled "Hussein" wrong.

I'll see your "global warming is true" and raise you a "dogs don't exist."

Tell your mother that I'm rubber and you're glue.

You're an idiot, aren't you?

What the fuck do the feds know? Are they racists? I'm starting to think they're not!

I'm sure the Republicans are proud to have an apparent child molester rallying for their cause.

Fuck the needy! They should get jobs like everyone else!

Why should Obama care about the welfare of the United States? He's about to become President!

If requesting Palpetine porn isn't a bannable offense, it should be.

Everyone knows your dick was in your hand as you typed that out.

Online Dating Guide, Part 16: I Am A Coward

2008-12-07T18:01:00.000-06:00

Online dating can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's more practical than actually going out in public to try to pick up a date because you never know what you're going to be getting with the random woman at the club or supermarket. Chances are better than not that there will be some wedge that will eventually tear the entire relationship apart.

Using an online profile, you can filter out a great many undesirable character traits before you even make contact with the alluring creature beckoning you from beyond her profile pictures. Unfortunately, the problem with this method is that you can find yourself determining that any relationship with the person automatically won't work based on any number of petty disqualifiers that would otherwise be overlooked if you already knew the person in real life.

Since this series has become popular for finding bad dating site profiles and pictures to ridicule, I thought this time I'd post the pictures of people whom I've actaully liked for one reason or another during the time I've spent on various dating sites. Unfortuantely, a lot of them have either found someone to live happily with, gave up trying, or died in a fire. Either way they're not around anymore, but I did manage to find a few profiles still in various states of active. So here is a small offering of girls I've actually found attractive during my searches over the years, and what petty, fickle excuse I came up with to justify never contacting them because I am a coward.

I couldn't find anything wrong with this girl except that she lives in Wisconsin, and I really didn't want to get into another long-distance relationship.

She looked too good to be interested in someone like me.

"Drugs: Sometimes"

All I remember is that while I was busy not messaging her, she changed her status to "seeing someone" and eventually deleted her profile.

She's looking for someone who lives in her area.

She describes herself as "spontaneous." That in itself wouldn't be enough to disqualify her, but I also think she's too attractive to be interested in me.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with her. I'm just that much of a pussy.

I was enthralled with this girl for an entire weekend. The age range she was looking for ended one year younger than I am, but I thought she might be able to overlook that. She was looking for someone only 15 miles from her town, but I live only double that, so it might still be able to work. However, when I read that her list of body styles didn't match what I'd consider myself, I decided that two strikes against me might be overlooked, but three is definitely too many.

I've saved my favorite for last. I've actually gone as far as leaving some random comments in her journal, but overall I know I'm not what she is looking for and ultimately she lives too far away to pursue anything anyway.

That is the story of my online dating experience. If the woman isn't totally ugly or a complete idiot, I'm still far too insecure to actually contact her.

What Do We Have To Be Thankful For?

2008-11-30T14:10:00.000-06:00

To do something for Thanksgiving, I wanted to look at the most wholesome message board I could think of, and if one wants to go someplace diluted to the point of homogeny one has only to look not much further than the AOL forums. Today's Thanksgiving forum mock is going to be served in three heaping helpings to satisfy your appetite for stupidity.

PART 1) WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO BE THANKFUL FOR?

Of course you can't have a Thanksgiving discussion without the random Bible nuts jumping in.

You forgot the part about tolerance, loving thy neighbor, not condemning the sinners, and leading by example. I guess the Gospel of Christ is more about what he did, not what he taught.

Your sig pic has more irreverent concepts mashed together than a Vague Genre Movie. If I cared enough to try to figure out what it was trying to say, it would break my brain.

Oh God. AOL is releasing their idiots back out into the wild. They won't understand how to survive in the real Internet.

By your own logic, profanity, nudity, heavy metal, violence, and atheism must be the truest things in the world.

God is a staunch Republican.

I'm thankful for the mindless conformity of the AOL Message Boards, where my beliefs are never challenged.

PART 2) HOW WAS YOUR THANKSGIVING?

The only thing worse than their crème-filled turkey doughnut is their gravy coffee.

At 45, it's time to grow some damn wings.

I had never felt so alone.

Hi, I'm feeding the entire National Football League. Do you think one turkey will be enough, or should I cook two?

Never underestimate the importance of salt-flavored artificial cheese product!

I heard a stupid comment. "I put the stuffing in the backseat and drove off. By the time I got on the highway, I was thinking 'Gee, my car smells good.' Then I remembered the stuffing. I felt like pulling over and eating some." Everyone had a good laugh and no one secretly wanted to stab out my eyeballs with a fork.

PART 3) MISCELLANEOUS RELATED TOPICS

That's the stench of failure. You can buy it at their make-up counter.

I got up early to hunt some bargains and all I got was trampled to death and shot.

Hahaha, inbreeding.

Way to go, AOL.

Presidential Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T22:05:00.000-06:00

George W. Bush spent his final Thanksgiving as President of the United States at Camp David today with a small group of the only people in America who still like him.

Vampiregeddon!

2008-11-23T19:43:00.000-06:00

The Twilight movie opened this weekend to good box office numbers due to the fact that nearly the entire fanbase of the series are teen-aged girls who have to drag their parents or teen-aged boyfriends hoping for teen-aged sex to see the movie with them. In celebration of the success of this poorly-written, possibly Christian blight on vampire lore I found a forum to ridicule as best I can considering that I refuse to read or watch anything that has to do with Twilight other than the movie trailer and various critical reviews.

I'm sure they all felt just as awkward as you did once they found out that Twilight wasn't really a two-hour, all-out battle between Vin Diesel and The Rock.

Yes. By all accounts, the final movie is going to be nothing but hardcore porn.

Three more things they inexplicably left out that made me angry were Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo. In fact, I refuse to watch it until they see the error of their ways.

…Because it's Twilight?

People are wusses. People had the exact same reaction to the Transformers preview as soon as Michael Bay's name popped up, only that time it was far more justified.

Climax Entertainment Announces Twilight Porn - Twatlight.

This is what your country gets for killing the Jews back in the Forties. The Twlight movie is an integral part of the conspiracy.

No, it's not weird to think drinking blood is sexy. In fact, that is how babby is formed.

A supermassive black hole would fit well with this entire movie.

Man, fuckin' sparkly guys get all the chicks. Us guys with hairy chests and beer guts can only score scary lookin' gay dudes.

This is why I don't like to see movies in the theater, because other people don't know when to shut the fuck up. Chuck bricks at them.

The Triumphant Return Of Stupid Town Names

2008-11-21T21:00:00.002-06:00

Low Point, IL
Well look on the bright side. It's only going to get better from there.

Beverly Hills, MI
Hahaha, FAIL!

Mound, MN
Ever since I found out that "mound" is slang for "vagina," all I can think is, "Haha, you live in Mound."

Swartz Creek, MI
May the creek be with you.

Butte City, CA
I don't care if you pronounce it "boot" or "beut" or "byoot," it will never change the fact that you live in a butt.

Knob Noster, MO
Nothing with the word "knob" in it fails to sound like an inappropriate euphamism.

Novelty, OH
I'm going to buy this town at a gas station and use it as a paperweight on my desk.

Centralia, IL
You'd think if it were really Centralia, it'd be located more toward the middle of the state.

Sims, NC
I forgot to turn on their free will and the entire town died because they couldn't go to the bathroom.

Crossville, TN
Where everybody is really angry, all the time.

Stow, OH
I would say "In case we need it later," but we probably won't. It's Ohio, after all.

Manly, IA
I think they're compensating for something.

Kokomo, IN
No wonder everyone thought that Beach Boys song sucked if they were singing about Indiana the whole time.

Not, MO
Well fuck.

Gas City, IA
Yay, you're named after a convenience store.

Paw Paw, IL
This town's name sounds like what a hillbilly would call her boyfriend.

Obamania!

2008-11-16T15:12:00.000-06:00

Instead of reporting on important news stories such as another reason the rich don't deserve more tax cuts, most news sources have dedicated large amounts of time postulating over key cabinet positions that President-elect Barack Obama hasn't chosen yet. Of course this has led to concerned citizens reacting as if these possibilities were the actual selections. Remember how every news organization was certain that Obama would choose Hillary Clinton as his Vice Presidential running mate all the way up to and a little bit after he chose Joe Biden? Yeah, sort of like that. Like everyone else on the Internet, several avid FoxNews viewers and FoxNews haters dedicated their time to arguing about something that doesn't really matter because it isn't real, and I dedicated a little bit of my time to making fun of them for being idiots.

You can start by not talking like an illegal immigrant trying to pass herself off as an actual citizen.

I got some change at Wendy's the other day. You can have it if you promise not to spend it on booze.

When Obama appoints Gore to the newly added Secretary of the Internet position, you'll be among the first to go.

I don't think O'Reilly knows he looks like a cross between an angry baby and an owl.

Of all the possible ways Dick Cheney strikes me, I don't count "spineless sycophant" among them.

The coloring books might give some college students an unfair advantage.

Given God's past record of destructive violence, He'd probably be considered a terrorist and sent to Guantanimo Bay to be tortured once He set foot on American soil. Looks like you're just doomed then.

I suppose you will play the slut card.

Because no one is going to laugh at the moron who has McCain / Palin '08 signs on their lawn in 2010.

LOL at Republican groupies responding to FoxNews' fantasy football picks for Obama's cabinet as if they were anything more than speculation.

np: Porcupine Tree - "Sleep Of No Dreaming"

Sheep Compatability

2008-11-14T17:43:00.002-06:00

Congratulations, you're a Sheep. You are generous, empathetic and timid by nature. You are often coveted for your hair and known for your herd mentality. You enjoy eating grass, frolicking, and being barked at by dogs. You're sometimes referred to as the Goat, but there's nothing notable about them except being stubborn and having the eyeballs of some Lovecraftian horror. Here is how you rate in compatability with the various other signs.

Sheep and Rat:
Will not relate well. Small animosities and misunderstandings. Sort of like voters and politicians.

Sheep and Ox:
Nothing good will come out of a relationship based on competing for cud.

Sheep and Tiger:
Perhaps someday the Sheep will lay with the Tiger, but until then the Sheep is considered lunch.

Sheep and Rabbit:
Some people count Sheep. Rabbits multiply them.

Sheep and Dragon:
The Dragon's blind ambition can give the wandering Sheep direction.

Sheep and Snake:
Sort of like the Dragon, only less annoying.

Sheep and Horse:
Many areas of common interest. Running through green pastures. Eating green pastures. Highly compatable.

Sheep and Sheep:
Will follow each other anywhere, even off a cliff.

Sheep and Monkey:
Primarily a jungle animal, the Monkey would have no real idea what to do with the pastoral Sheep and would probably just end up frightening it.

Sheep and Rooster:
When the Rooster clucks, the Sheep will bleat. Then the pecking will begin.

Sheep and Dog:
The Sheep just wants to eat its grass in peace but the noisy Dog is always telling it to go somewhere else. The Sheep will resent being constantly startled by the Dog, and the Dog will resent the Sheep never being in the right place.

Sheep and Pig:
The Pig and Sheep have many common interests, such as eating, standing around, being relatively quiet unless spooked, and trusting those who intend to kill them. Will live happily together as long as they avoid farmers carrying sharp objects.

Holders Series, #8 Through #10

2008-11-09T23:05:00.001-06:00

So with all the excitement of Obama winning the election, coupled with my being drowsy all week for no particular reason and being out of town over the weekend, I totally neglected to find any good forums to ridicule this week. Instead, I'll continue one more week making up for my lack of Halloween themed posts in lieu of the elections which were far more interesting and important this year. It's been about half a year since the last time I posted any excerpts from the Holders series. There's no way I'll end up posting all 150 of them written so far, but they make interesting filler when I decide to be lazy for a week.

Holder of Wealth
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Wealth". The worker will raise one eyebrow. Ask a second time, and the worker will shrug and take you across the street, where an opulent mansion awaits. The mansion was not there before, but do not preoccupy yourself with the mansion's origin. Its owner would rather not scare you away.

Inside the front door, there is a grand staircase spiraling up across the foyer. The walls are covered with fine paintings, and a large marble statue rests on a pedestal by the base of the stairs. The statue's eldritch features evoke an image of a truly horrific beast, a creature at once both alien and evil. Admire it all you want, but don't touch it. Touching it will wake it, and it hasn't eaten in a while.

Ascend the staircase. As long as you touch nothing, you are in no danger. Don't panic. At the top of the stairs is a small, unassuming wooden door. It will open for you, if you are not afraid.

Standing there, behind a large desk of what appears to be mahogany, there stands a man with a pointed goatee and short, cropped, gelled hair. He wears a suit that at once appears to be made of human flesh and Italian silk. He may speak, and at great length. He will talk about his amazingly beautiful house, and the lovely statue of his concubine resting downstairs. Do not interrupt him, and do not answer any questions he may ask. When he is finished, steel yourself, and confidently ask, "May I have my salary?"

He will proceed to explain to you, in great detail, the value of life. He will talk of things worse than death, and he will tell you exactly what he expects you to do. The fabulous interior of the room will rot away, and the floor will turn from French weave to feces. His own appearance will become unimaginably cyclopean and ungodly. He will then fish out a small banknote from the inside of his human suit and hand it to you.

That banknote is Object 8 of 538. Its Holder is counting on you to spend it.

Holder of Wisdom
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Wisdom". The worker will chuckle and you will be guided to an empty room. The worker will hand you a key and tell you to wait some time in the room until you hear a bell ring. Then you have to lock the door. Wait until a second ring and unlock it.

It will open all by itself and reveal a long hallway, with all colors you may or may not know painted onto the walls, ceiling, and floor. Follow the hallway until you hear a little girl singing. Stop, close your eyes and stay where you are until the girl finishes the song, even if you think that it will drive you mad. If you do move, run. Run back to the door where you came from, as fast as you can. Jump through the window of the room where you waited before and you might live. Should you be unable to reach the window in time, a horrible creature will drag you back into the hallway where you will die a death that is as horrible as the creature that caught you.

If you do not move and the song ceases, you are free to turn around and leave forever, or walk deeper into the hallway, until you reach a door in the shape of a human. Open this door with the same key that was given to you earlier, walk inside and close it behind you. In the middle of the room you will see a desk with a bright candle. Behind the desk will sit a man, his face hidden by the shine of the candle. Walk closer, but always keep the flame between you and the man's face, for you will surely feel the urge to empty your stomach should you witness his visage.

Stop when you are five steps away from the desk. The man will raise his hand and gesture you to come closer, but do not step any further than this. Close your eyes and ask him one question, nothing else: "Who will bring them back together?" You will hear the man rising from his chair and he will begin to pray. It will be a language you will not understand at first, but after two minutes, you will hear a name. Should you hear "Anubis", then pray that your death will come quickly. If it is "Thor" you hear, you may open your eyes. The man's head will be on the desk, cut off of the body but still talking. After another three minutes, he will stop and begin to tell you how you will die. He will describe every tiny detail of your horrible death, and you will be unable to move. He will also describe who kills you and why he does it.

Finally, the man will stop talking. His head is Object 9 of 538. It is up to you what you do with the knowledge of your death, for it now is inevitable.

Holder of Forbidden Tongues
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of Forbidden Tongues". The worker should bow before you, then give you an urn. Now walk into an empty place inside the institute, preferably an unused supply closet. There, where nobody is watching you, open the urn and look into it.

Raise your head again. You should find yourself on a wooden stairway that leads downwards into a corridor. Go down the stairs, as there is no turning back now. After a while, you will hear something that sounds like a chorus, sung by monks, speaking an foreign language. Immediately cover your ears with your hands. If you hear too many words, a hideous creature will haunt you for the rest of your mortal existence. As soon as you reach a door, the chorus should stop. If it doesn't, quickly turn around and shout "TACITE!" — this is the Latin word for "silence". Now the chorus should stop at last; if it doesn't, pray to every god you have ever heard of for a quick death, and hope they listen, for if they don't, the singing will grow louder and louder until it drives your soul insane.

Step through the door. Inside a person is waiting for you; a masked monk in a red
cloak. He will greet you in Latin with "Salve!" Do not say anything and wait a few seconds until he puts on the light. There will be inscriptions on the walls, on the floor and on the furniture. The Monk will stand at the wall on the other end of the room and wait for your question. Don't try to read the words on the walls. If you do, you will, within seconds, go insane. Walk to him and ask him only one question. "In which language were they talking?" That and nothing else. He will then hand you an object, indistinguishable under a blood-red cloth, and disappear. Do not remove the cloth. If you do, you will release horrible demons that will torture you for an eternity. Instead, turn around and there should be two urns on the table. One will take you back to the place you call home. The other one will drag your soul into pitch darkness. It's up to you to pick the right one or not.

If you select the right one, set the object on the nearest table and go to bed. When you wake up, go back and remove the cloth.

The thin, yellow book you now see is Object 10 of 538. By reading it, you lose all hope you ever had of abandoning your quest, but now no Earthly language presents a barrier to you.

Beware: Change Is Coming

2008-11-06T23:03:00.000-06:00

Ever since Barack Obama beat both the Clinton and the Republican propoganda machines and defied all odds by actually being elected President, Americans have been eager to experience the monumental change he has promised. Here are just a few examples of the concerns that have been raised to the propsective leader so far.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

You promised change. It's been two full days now, and so far I don't feel any change. Or are we still in the change gestation period of hope? Please let me know when to expect my change coming.

Thanks

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

A lot of people where I work are still responding to the Republican fear machine and it's really annoying. What can you do to assure them that you're not planning to take away their right to bear arms, dissolve the military, give one hundred percent of their income to "less deserving" families, enact a fully universal healthcare program, and collapse our economy?

Thanks

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

There's a girl I'm interested in who seems interested in me, but says she can't date at the moment. Could you find a way to change this situation for me please?

Thanks

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

You never did outline what you intended to do about the weather. Sometimes it's too hot, sometimes it's too cold, and when it's not trying to drown us, it's trying to blow us off the map. Could you use some of your legendary change powers to divert next year's rainfall to California to put out their wildfires, and away from the Midwest so we can grow crops again?

Thanks

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

I find it hard to believe that medical science has developed a pill that can give a person a four-hour erection and has an exercise pill and cybernetic technologies on the horizon, yet we still have not found anywhere near an effective cure for baldness. Could you please work that into your universal health care plan?

Thanks

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
President Obama,

I've waited a year and a half for a determination on my veterans' disability status, and the day after you were elected, I found out that I was approved. I waited a year and a half under Bush for my disability entitlements, and one day under you. I have to say that change has come and it feels good. Thank you for all your help.

Thanks

Sorry, Democracy Is Changing

2008-11-05T00:27:00.001-06:00

America actually managed to pull their heads from their asses and vote for the right candidate for President. I'm actually a bit shocked. History has indicated that stuff like this isn't supposed to happen in this decade.

We cannot acknowledge this staggering victory without accepting that the Republican Party helped out a lot by apparently not even caring anymore. They managed to nominate one of their more promising candidates and then make him look like a senile old coot by running his campaign like circus bears juggling on unicycles.

I can't comprehend how the Republican party can't see just how cocky they've become when their incumbent President is disliked by nearly three-quarters of the country and they remake their next Presidential nominee in practically the same image. I wouldn't say it was necessarily difficult for Barack Obama to win this election. All he had to do was not be John Kerry.

I don't mean to detract from the significance of this occasion. The Republicans did manage to convince a good amount of rural America that anybody possessing brown skin is automatically an A-rab terrorist, so for Obama to overcome that sort of irrational fear in a majority of voters is no trivial feat. For Obama to overcome the countless stereotypes and lies that have been spread through the media and sweep an overwhelming victory out from under the feet of a previously-thought unstoppable campaign juggernaut is certainly worthy of admiration. Particularly since he opted to combat the negative campaigning with a moderately positive campaign. I guess sometimes you can win by taking the high road, and I guess Americans aren't quite as gullible as I might have suspected.

I do feel just a little sorry for McCain. I never did really dislike the man. I disliked his campaigning, and I didn't believe he was the right choice to lead our country, but he seems like a nice guy. I never did think he hated Obama. There were candid moments all through the campaign where he seemed to show a great deal of respect and admiration for the man. I think his irritability stemmed from knowing his last chance for the Presidency was slipping from his grasp, not from Obama himself. They say it is better to be disliked for who you are than liked for who you're not. In 2000, McCain was disliked for who he was, and eight years later, he was disliked for who he wasn't. I know on some level it has to hurt, and I feel for him because I'm too empathetic.

I'd long suspected Obama would win, but most of the polls were close enough that it made me nervous. I can't say I'm not glad to be right. I just hope the same thing I hope for every President, that he doesn't doom us all.

np: Killing Joke - "Madness"

Halloween Creepy Thread Go!

2008-11-02T14:40:00.000-06:00

Just because the elections taking place just after Halloween were a more urgent matter this year than Halloween when it came to things to make fun of, it doesn't mean I forgot about Halloween. It's just a couple of days late. Here are creepy posts from a certified creepy thread. Click on the samples to read the full short stories or collections of instructions for plenty of Halloween fun, proving that the scariest things are the things you can only see with your mind.