A Lie Told Well

Lionel Richie is the Soundtrack to my Heart

2012-01-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

Shockingly, I immediately fell off the 'one blog post a week' wagon as soon as the semester started. I'll make sure to post something more characteristic of my usual long-winded gibberish this weekend, but in the meantime, I thought you might appreciate this video. Not only does it feature spliced together movie dialogue to reproduce the first verse and chorus of "Hello" by Lionel Richie, but it's also a gentle reminder that even at my most manically productive, I will never put my time to such good work as the saint who made this video.

Enjoy.

Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

New Years Resolutions, or A List of Things I'll Fail at this Year, as "Life" is Simply Too Broad

2012-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Like so many others, I enjoy creating a short list of resolutions at the cusp of the new year, just as the throbbing pain of 2011's parting nut-shot still radiates upward through one's torso and the piercing shriek of the infant 2012 ruptures your ear drum. It's a magical intersection of hope and the can-do spirit of self-improvement, long before reality (re)asserts itself and forcibly reminds us that our fundamental character is etched into our very soul and that we stand doomed to repeat the same sins, foibles, and lapses until the slow rotation of the Earth grinds the planet to dust.

Or, you know, not. Um...How's the new jogging regimen going?

Despite the rather grim turn of my introduction, I do think these resolutions have genuine merit, if only as a moment of self-reflection that considers the topography of our character and responds with a well-meaning mission statement for bettering ourselves that calendar year. And so, in that spirit, I humbly offer my resolutions--in no particular order--for a new year that, my Mayan friends tell me, will see the catastrophic termination of life as we know it.

Play More Golf. I include this not only because I enjoy it, but because it is becoming increasingly apparent with each passing year that my income and standard of living are not sufficiently projecting the aura of white privilege that is quite literally my genetic birthright. I don't know enough about economics to commit white collar crime, so it's this or tennis, and the latter has way too much staccato movement for my taste. Also, it's harder to get blind drunk playing tennis than golf.

Punch Clean through a Man's Chest. This is a standing resolution every year, and obviously needs no further explanation.

Outsource My Paper Grading to a Third World Country. The university is effectively a corporation in many respects (which has become particularly apparent now that I work at a private one), so I think I'll take a cue from many other American corporations and get the dirty manual labor of my profession taken care of by someone else. Bonus points if, like the manufacturers producing Apple's products overseas, this paper grading somehow manages to pollute China's water and air. They aren't going to let us remain the largest economy on the planet by asking nicely, people--most of them can't even understand English.

Accumulate More Obscure Knowledge about Punctuation and Typeface. Just this week I've learned the difference between the en dash and em dash (em dash is longer and is the standard punctuation mark), not to mention why they have those names (they are the length of the letters n and m respectively), as well as the distinction between a hair space and thin space. Because my priorities are irreparably warped, I found this genuinely interesting, and have vowed to learn even more arcane minutia of the printed word. Then I can become a copy editor and finally have a legitimate reason to kill myself. To my readers who are copy editors, I apologize. Yours is an exciting and life-affirming profession. Now get back to combing over the punctuation in the latest Harlequin romance novel. Who else will tell us whether "purple-headed warrior" really needs that hyphen or not?

High-Five More. Those are still cool, right?

Maintain my Luxurious Hairline. This is by no means a shot across the b(r)ow of anyone in particular; I just want to be mistaken for a seventeen year old boy for a few more years, okay?

Embrace my Terrible Taste in Music. I am currently listening to an acoustic cover of "The Freshmen," originally by The Verve Pipe (that's what you smoke meth in, right?), and I genuinely enjoy this rendition of "The Dragonborn Comes," which is itself from the video game Skyrim. I think those pretty well make my point for me.

I think that's enough for now. I'll keep you posted (get it? It's a blog, so...I post...blogs) as each one falls by the wayside. Feel free to add your own in the comment section. I reserve the right to shamelessly steal any that seem even potentially doable, particularly if I don't have to upset my daily routine in accomplishing them. Aim low, right? Ooh...that's another good resolution.

Leaving' a Hundred to Make You Feel Slutted

2011-12-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

Ryan from More Rants than Raves recently sent me GQ's latest guide to men's style, no doubt as a subtle reminder that I increasingly allow myself to look like a vagrant during any break from teaching. It answered such mysteries as whether brown shoes really are essential with a blue suit (so long as the brown is darker than the suit's blue), whether it's acceptable to forgo a belt with your suit (yes), and what the third button of a three button suit is for (decoration, or a hidden camera for the creepy demographic that finds long range crotch photography from the comfort of your own van too impersonal).

As much as I appreciated Ryan's gesture, both because I do care about the finer points of men's style and because someone needs to let me know I look like I warm myself at a barrel fire, I find these lists tend to miss the true quagmires that dandyism confronts us with: how do I wear an ascot without looking like a douchebag / Jeremy Piven at the Emmys (not being Jeremy Piven is a great start)? Must I wear my monocle at all times, and if so, how do I prevent my cheek and brow muscles from not seizing up (no--only wear your monocle when leveling additional contempt at your subject, as if unaided sight would fall short of fully appreciating their failure as a human being)? Why does my wife feel that every time a man walks by with an awesome mustache with upturned ends she must turn to me, make eye contact, and firmly say "No" as if chastising a miscreant dog (because she is a woman of refinement and class who made a mistake a decade ago and saddled herself with me, a man who aspires to lush mustachios but in reality can barely muster the thin, patchy mustache reminiscent of a convicted sex-offender).

What we must remember, however, is that style is also a matter of how we conduct ourselves in our daily lives, how we interact with our peers and the innumerable strangers whose lives intersect with our own for minutes or hours of the day. Or, in the case of Derek Jeter, the innumerable strangers whose genitals intersect with his own for minutes or hours (who knows? he's a professional athlete, after all) of the evening. Specifically, I refer to the recent revelation that Jeter has a penchant for gifting his sexual conquests with personalized Derek Jeter sports memorabilia when he kicks them out at the end of the night. No wonder this guy wears a pin striped uniform: he is all class. How better to remind a former fling of just how awesome you are than by signing something that they can then sell? There's a special kind of narcissism at work here that lesser men like myself can only admire. Indeed, I just stood up and did a slow, methodical clap by myself in a Starbucks. Sadly, no one else joined in.

And so, as you prepare for your holiday and New Years celebrations, save a few of the stocking stuffers that you were planning to give to your beloved and tuck them away with a Sharpie in a safe place. Then, a few nights from now, bust them own while the post-coital glow is still upon you both. What better way to say "You just had sex with someone awesome" than by rolling over and giving them a signed Unicorn calendar, Panda Express gift card, or Gold Toe sock three pack? No need to thank me, dear reader. This is my holiday gift to you.

Just pretend I signed it and kicked you out of my house immediately afterward.

Ewe Bris

2011-12-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Report last week warned that castrating lambs with your teeth may make you sick. I know. I'm as shocked by all this as you are.

I think it goes without saying that this convoluted and frankly surprising discovery needs to be parsed a bit. First of all, let's note that the operative word here is "may." Just because you use nothing more than a few incisors, an almost preternaturally strong jaw muscle, and a sturdy grip to forcibly remove the testicles of every sheep you can douse with ether and toss hoof-first into your van does not mean you will definitely get sick from a Campylobacter jejuni infection, symptoms of which include "diarrhea...abdominal cramps, fever, nausea and vomiting." On the other hand, the halitosis and the distinct impression that people are avoiding you, I would imagine, are pretty standard across the board, but you're castrating lambs with your teeth, so what the fuck do you care? Life's already a party.

I particularly appreciate how the article frames the situation as if it were some big mystery. The two workers who came down with C. jejuni insisted that they hadn't eaten the types of foods typically associated with the infection, it explains, nor had they shared food or drink. "Hm...what do we have in common?" they must have asked themselves. "My horoscope did say that...no, but you're a Scorpio and I'm a Capricorn." His coworker starts to raise his hand, then slowly lets it drop, brow furrowed in frustration. "No, no...we both know not to eat Shirley's egg salad sandwiches." The silence must have hung then between them, palpable and thick, as when Hannibal Lecter waits for young Clarice to put together the pieces for herself. "You don't think it had anything to do with using our teeth to castrate those lambs with diarrhea, do you? I mean, I flossed after and everything..."

You must forgive my weakness regarding the title. I realize just how inaccurate it is, both regarding the gender and religious denomination of the species in question (sheep traditionally trend toward Buddhism, I'm told), as well as the specific nature of the genital manipulation, so to speak. But come on. How am I supposed to resist that kind of word play?

Old Man Fight Prompts Ambivalence, Giggles

2011-12-02T11:11:00.001-08:00

As is not uncommon with a leisure class that has known no real suffering, I tend to derive significant pleasure from the misfortune of others. Not genuine misfortune of real people, mind you--I'm not a dick--but I will confess that such plights in the abstract, when distilled to the slithering miasma of their vile essence, do make me smile. As fellow connoisseurs of this debased form of pleasure (after all, dear reader, you continue to peruse my literary tripe despite its clear lack of a moral compass), you too are aware of that special mixture of the taboo, the unexpected, and the absurd that the best of these evince. Exempli gratia: What do you get when you put a baby in a blender? An erection.

I'll give you a moment to let that one sink in.

Particularly when one takes into consideration the nature of my previous post, one wonders whether your dear author has indeed "gone off the reservation," a figure of speech I'm not entirely comfortable using, both because I'm not entirely sure I'm using it correctly, and even if I am, my white guilt makes me feel like I should contribute to a Native American scholarship program or something each time it's deployed, like putting nickels in a swear jar. Clink. There's your five cents, kid.

My point (oh, I have one), is that my frame of reference may have been inevitably skewed over the course of many, many years immersed in this sort of inappropriate tom-foolery. I know what I find funny, but of late, the better angel on my shoulder seems to be absent. Sure, I'll still laugh, but should I also feel guilty for laughing? Case in point:

I'm leaning towards not, but it's so difficult to be sure. The life-long grudge element of this fight (the two were rivals in the Canadian Football League roughly half a century ago, a league devoted primarily to moose hunting and being polite, I'm told) warms the cockles of my cold, dead heart. I'm Irish, after all, and grudges are one thing we do very well; my father, for instance, never liked the British and held a personal grudge against Pope John Paul II for the better part of thirty years. Then there's the irony of the olive branch offering instigating violence, and most obviously, the fact that they both clearly have one foot in the grave already. No disrespect to either combatant, though--I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the first punch from Sir Olive Branch would have cleaned my clock (clink goes the nickel into the scholarship for watchmakers' children).

But, yeah, old men fighting on stage at public event, which then goes viral on the internet...I can see how maybe I should feel a twinge of guilt for giggling at their misfortune, at least in the abstract. But I'm tapping the glass of the instrument on my moral dashboard, and it's not responding. I think I bought a lemon.

As is so often the case in my life, I find myself torn and unable or unwilling to make a final decision. I turn to you, dear reader, to guide me from this maze. Should I find this funny or not? The suspense is killing me.

Perambulator Chaser

2011-11-27T12:34:00.001-08:00

The longer I cling to life, the more the distinct patterns and arcs of our existence come into focus, perhaps as some sort of poor remuneration for the shame and disappointment such lingering engenders. Having largely survived the wedding season (a season which, much like the Westeros of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, lasted years and years), our playground taunts prove prescient once more: first comes love, then comes marriage, and wouldn't you know it, then comes baby in a ridiculously expensive baby carriage designed to optimize cognitive development by, I imagine, not dropping them on their soft little heads.

In other words, my friends are having babies now, and as the phenomenon has spread from my fringe acquaintances ever inward toward and into my inner circle, I find that some of the myths surrounding parenthood bear some qualification. One very good friend nicely described it as genuinely falling in love with one's son or daughter, and I see as much in the way they describe their boys and girls, the iPhone quick-draw with the latest dozen photos of baby, the catalogue of the week's firsts. I confess, however, that is has been refreshing to also hear the ragged edge to which each parent has been pushed, be it the gruff admission that (x) "can be a little fucker" or (y) being held at arm's length and passed to mother to prevent daddy from burying baby in the backyard.

This isn't some new iteration of my affection for inappropriate humor, I assure you. Rather, it's the comfort in knowing that having and raising a child is as everything else: goods and bads, highs and lows. It makes it seem more possible, more attainable, which right now is something I need, I think.

I hadn't even held a baby until about six months ago. The experience was one fraught with self-consciousness, cradling the little man's head and body tentatively as I arched the rest of my body forward, so that should howling Dothraki on horseback burst through the back door, my torso would shield the child from the onslaught of arrows. Now I get it when I watch my friends hold their babies at a strange angle in the crook of their arm, sometimes askew or even upside down, and while I would never do so with someone else's kid, I'm already developing sketches of the obstacle course I'll construct around the house when my little one is strapped to Hurley's back and wearing a Batman / Batgirl outfit.

But I want the other stuff, too, of course. The iPhone quick-draw, the novelty t-shirts that fit for the majority of a single afternoon before outgrown, the garbled utterance that, if you think about it, must have been "you're right, Dad, the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship is a bunch of bullshit rooted ultimately in classism."

I joke regularly about the carnival of humiliations that emasculate me on a virtually daily basis, and I wonder if having another, utterly vulnerable human being to protect might be my last shot at the 'big time,' seeing as my glandular predispositions bar me from a luxurious pelt of chest hair or a Selleck-esque mustachio, those most recognizable and hallowed signs of masculinity. Then again, to even think so makes all too clear that I am not yet a parent. If there's one thing I've gleaned from my friends, it's that it isn't about you anymore. As an unrepentant narcissist, I find that a harrowing thought.

Still, I'd like to think I'm up to the challenge.

A Latin Lover

2011-03-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I don't even know why I try to keep up with this blog anymore. Maybe I'll be able to settle into a regular posting schedule once the school year is over. Maybe.

In the meantime, let's talk language, shall we? Do you find yourself watching Doc Holiday and Johnny Ringo antagonizing each other in Latin in Tombstone and say to yourself, "Golly, I wish I could do that." No? Um...well, then I got nothing. But I'll pretend you responded enthusiastically in the affirmative.

While my own abilities with Latin have atrophied to the point where anything beyond a preposition or the name of a logical fallacy is pretty well beyond my grasp, I did recently stumble upon a site that compiled a number of "Handy Latin Phrases," the most pertinent of which I humbly offer so that you too may speak in the language of Caesar, Livy, Cicero, and Horace.

Mihi ignosce. Cum homine de cane debeo congredi.
Excuse me. I've got to see a man about a dog.

Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?
Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just happy to see me?

Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant!
May barbarians invade your personal space!

and perhaps my personal favorite:

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
If Caesar were alive, you'd be chained to an oar.

Don't say I didn't ever do anything for you.

The Internet: Long, Hard, and now Full of Sea Men

2011-01-30T15:44:00.000-08:00

It's not easy finding someone to love. Or being green, but mainly the love thing. It certainly doesn't help that our culture perpetuates the idea of "the one," that wandering somewhere among the approximately 6.9 billion people on this planet is the single person with whom you are destined to bump uglies in perpetuity, not to mention the problematic assumption that they even occupied the planet at roughly the same time as us. What the hell are you supposed to do if your one true love was a thirteen year old French prostitute who died in 1843 after a brief engagement to a haberdasher? You cock your velvety chapeau at a jaunty angle, by god, and you soldier on.

In recent years, the interwebs have offered the would-be creepy uncles and cat-ladies of the world some succor in the form of dating sites. With a few clicks of a mouse, a scanned portrait of the pretty person whose picture came in the frame, and just the occasional descriptive liberty (like saying you're 'outgoing' as you prepare a website to do the "out" and "going" parts for you), you can make a love connection. Indeed, for every yin there is a yang (or so a cryptic and elderly Chinese gentleman told me, right after he refused to sell me a mogwai), and these sites promise to finally give you a win for your...even I'm better than that.

Ah, but what happens if you have a specific "type," one these cookie cutter dating sites just don't cater to? What if a man who wears Old Spice isn't enough, if instead you crave the hoary beard and seamanship of an old salt eye, a man whose rugged existence and long voyages from home breed certain, unspeakable predictions that dare only be indulged in the murkiest of international waters? Well, ladies, look no further: I give you Sea Captain Date.

Too good to be true, you say (no doubt between salty tears of joy)? Just watch this entirely authentic testimonial, and prepare to finally say "ahoy" to your heart:

Stay Classy, Laguna Beach

2011-01-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

I realize I've been neglecting my blog for the better part of six months, but in my defense, it would have been longer if not for the good behavior and the knife fight I lost in the prison laundry last week. But now that I'm a free man again I can happily return to sporadic blog postings scattered across multiple weeks of silence.

I'll keep this one short, as I'm still easing back into the vacuous and glib persona you know and tolerate so well--it involves a knock-off Insane Clown Posse mask and a handle of gin, but that's neither here nor there. What is both here and there, so long as you live in Laguna Beach, CA, is this somber and pointed invocation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy:
Now, I realize it may not seem like it at first blush, but there are actually a number of things wrong with this advertisement. First of all, who the hell surfs that close to a tree? I call shenanigans. Secondly, isn't the shameless misappropriation of a Civil Rights leader's memory on the very day named for him worth a little more than 20%? I mean, we're talking Laguna Beach here; they can afford to shave a little more off the top.

Perhaps most egregious, though: All Black Products? Can't we be a little more specific than that? Especially because, closet racist that I apparently am, "black product" and "Surf shop" aren't really inhabiting the same patch of real estate in my mind. But maybe this is just because of my advancing years that I'm still sensitive to the lingering presence of institutionalized racism and broader, even defiant pockets of discrimination that are sadly alive and well today. After all, "The shop's young employees and patrons, [the shop owner] Cocores said, come from a generation that is beyond historical racial tensions." Phew! *wipes brow in an exaggerated fashion* Thank God that problem's past us. Now we can all just float in the surf holding hands on our new boards. Isn't this what King's dream was all about? Wet suits, black products, and 20% off. The respect is just the icing on the cake. Or, you know, ironic.

Eponyms: Nothing to Do with My Little Pony

2010-07-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

I think it's safe to say that we children of the 80's were blessed with the best cartoon and action figure IPs of any generation. While Reaganomics was trickling down financial viscera upon the needy and John DeLorean (of the New Jersey DeLoreans) struggled to birth a cocaine empire to salvage his mondo-awesome car company, we were treated to Fred and Daphne repeatedly abandoning the serious business of investigating groovy mysteries for the immediate gratification of their gratuitous and frankly depraved sexual predilictions, leaving a plucky lesbian, a degenerate hippie with obvious learning disabilities, and a talking dog to do the yeoman's work. If drug culture and alternative lifestyles weren't your bag, there was always the communist utopia of the Smurfs, whose uniformity was broken only by the disparate skill-sets they had to offer up to their red, bearded Papa as the greedy capitalist Gargamel strove to distill from their minature corpses the ingredient essential to his alchemical formula for gold. And if communal living, alchemy, and political theory didn't do it for you, there was He-Man.

I embed this painting by, I believe, Matisse (though it may actually be a Renoir from his 1883 summer in Guernsey) not to emphasize the glistening musculature and overly modest loincloths of these unrepentantly heterosexual superheroes and villains, but rather to appreciate the subtle poetry of these characters' names. The eponymous protagonist needs little analysis: how better to immortalize the nuance of his unique motivations and the complex psychology of the hero mindset than by lashing together the masculine pronoun and the generic noun for the male gender? This is the equivalent of e.e. cummings's "l(a" or William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow," and like these works, are best appreciated in quiet contemplation.

But what of the myriad other names from this elaborate and rich universe? Shall I speak of the wind warrior Sy-Klone, the bee-like Buzz-Off, or perhaps he of many faces, Man-E-Faces? Might I dwell upon the inspirational tales of men overcoming conspicuous physical disability to triumph and thereby grasp at immortality: a man with a disproportionately large metal hand named Fisto; the crab man named Clawful; the conjoined evil twins, Two-Bad. Sure, the poet-philosophers who crafted this pantheon may have plumbed the depths of certain wells a few too many times: Skeletor, Spydor, Stinkor, Spikor, Panthor, and Grizzlor. Of course, those of a certain moral deformity might unscrupulously appropriate one or two of these names to dub acts of sexual licentiousness that would make Daphne and Fred blush a crimson worthy of that man's neckerchief. For instance, a "Thunder Punch" to the "Moss Man" below one's "Mantenna" might produce a "Dragon Blaster" on your "Man-at-Arms." I call it a "Prince Adam."

Looking back at this now, I confess I didn't appreciate how much the He-Man universe resembled the harrowing chronicles of two rival circuses sending their carnie abominations into gladiatorial contest. But honestly, if you were the ringleader of that menagerie, what else would you do? Apart from a lot of coke, of course.

Yo Soy En La Bibliotecha

2010-07-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take a clairvoyant to guess that I'm a big fan of Old Spice's ongoing absurdist ad campaign; indeed, I've even used one or two of the commercials as objects for analysis in class. Even less surprising, with the popularity of the campaign has come a number of parodies, but the following one, dovetailing off the Old Spice guy's own shout-out to libraries, warms the cockles of my cold, dead academic heart. For years, university libraries were getting a bad rap, what with the hobos / hippies sleeping in window alcoves and perverts stalking (and occasionally assaulting) students in the stacks. But in my defense, I was just making sure my students were performing proper research techniques for their papers; the bear mace was really unnecessary on their part.

First the original video by the Old Spice guy, then the parody from Bring-Them-Young University.

The moral of these stories: litereseas is goodest. No need to despair for the plight of American edukation. OMG. ROFL!!1!! :) BYOB C U LATR!

Irish Kung Fu: Apparently, We're not Great at Everything

2010-07-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

For weeks now I've been reveling in France's utterly pathetic showing at the World Cup. Their much publicized bickering, subsequent collapse, and international shame are so delicious that I could eat it with a spoon, calories be damned. If I weren't already wed, I'd marry that debacle and spend the rest of my life faithfully loving it. You see, the delicate sauce that flavored this travesty so perfectly was the sweet tang of justice: in their last qualifying match, France eliminated Ireland through an equalizing goal that was set up by a Thierry Henry hand ball that was not called by the ref. In short, Ireland was denied a place in the World Cup because of a blown call. And though both nations are predominantly Catholic, God clearly took sides on the issue and made a point of raining Old Testament calamity upon the French side. Amen.

Sadly, I have come to learn that said hand ball was actually divine retribution itself. Behold the one and only foray by the Celtic race into kung fu films and see if you too don't feel the righteous fury of the Almighty swell within your breast:

I honestly can't think of a better way to sell this movie than they already do: "A classic good versus evil action flick, mixed with kicks, guns, motorcycles and a hot babe!" Of course, this may be because I'm utterly enamored by the alliterative phrase "mixed with kicks." I think it should be attached to everything. "Penicillin - now mixed with kicks." "Quick dry cement - please mix with kicks." And of course, "Your Mom: Mixed with Kicks."

However, this glorious line of poetry says little about the film's true substance. Luke McKinney over at Cracked puts it best: "Fatal Deviation is an ancient curse on the Irish people ('ancient' being 1993), passed on by a few VHS tapes like cinematic herpes until DVD technology re-released it on the world in exactly the same way archaeological digs 're-release' angry mummies...Fatal Deviation is not a parody. It's an Irish martial arts movie about a secret kung fu tournament run in a barn by a group of hobo-monks in the scenic village of Trim."

Clearly, Jimmy Bennett, the star / writer / director / cinematographer / "Fight Action Choreographer" / great shame of the Irish people / producer of this "film," played Mortal Kombat and thought it had a pretty sweet premise. The "hobo-monks" who organize the tournament and apparently train young Jimmy clearly have nothing to do with the decades of sexual abuse scandal that have plagued the Catholic church here and abroad:

I guarantee that haunting image is the last thing a number of children saw before an ether rag was shoved over their mouth and they were thrown into the back of a windowless van. Of, if we're going by the background, the last thing a smiling couple on a romantic hike saw before a hobo, reeking of the Elmer's Glue he just had for lunch, stabs them with a filthy Taco Bell spork and drags them off to his den, where he leisurely eats them both over the course of the next few weeks. The fact that the robe evokes Ben Kenobi on Tatooine makes it even worse for me. Pederasty and cannibalism are not the Jedi code.

Where was I? Oh yeah, talking about how much this movie is an affront to God and the entire history of cinema. The list of why this "movie" is so terrible stretches off into the horizon like the scrawl of text at the opening of a Star Wars movie (see what I did there?), and thus is far too lengthy to innumerate in its entirety. Still, if you ordered a sampler of this delicacy at your local pub, it would go something like this: pathetic fight choreography, editing that could only have been done by a chimpanzee with severe head trauma, an unintentional car crash because the ass couldn't navigate a narrow country road, a cast list that includes a member of the one Irish boy band from the 90's (Boyzone, which, I'll admit, one of my cousins was obsessed with when she was 6)...God, I feel disgusted with myself. Just watch this trailer for the movie and see for yourself. Or, save yourself two and a half minutes and just gouge your eyes out now.

Also, I found this gem from the same distributor:

Honestly, it seems like you can't throw a fucking rock without hitting an underground fight tournament in these movies. They really need to come up with an original premise. Like how an awkward and unpopular girl gets made over to become the prom queen, or how a grizzled detective plays by his own rules to catch the bad guys. Or maybe a grizzled girl plays by her own rules to get the prom queen, who is a bad guy / trannie. I'd pay to see that.

A Little Bit of Upkeep

2010-07-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to point out I've finally corrected the link to Miss Carousel's Livejournal page on this page's sidebar. Where I rant about the absurd mainly to show off how clever I think I am and Ryan over at More Rants than Raves simply appreciates similar stories' absurdities for the sake of their own absurdities, Miss Carousel actually writes about her life and experiences with a candor I could only hope to fabricate during my best attempts at playing at being a full human being. It's a refreshing change in tone from my own inanity, and for those of you who knew her while she lived in the 'Side, I trust you'll enjoy catching up on her Livejournal page as much as I have.

Monoglots Need Not Apply

2010-07-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Unless you're blind, you've noticed the aesthetic revisions made to the blog's template. If you are blind, please stop pawing at the computer screen; you're getting fingerprints all over it and you look fucking ridiculous (you'll have to trust me on that last part).

Wow...even I feel a little ashamed about that last line. And it didn't even involve sex tangentially, which is the usual source of my ever-present Catholic shame. Dammit. I just know I'm going to be conned by gypsies in a few years for that one. Or I'm going to lose my own sight in a tragic amateur falconry accident. Ah, the bitter price we pay for our aristocratic pleasures. But I digress.

The cartographical theme is, at least in part, inspired by recent events. A post I made shortly before my absence seems to have garnered no small bit of international response. Apparently, something of my doggerel poetry in anticipation of my annual Dungeons & Dragons vacation struck a cord in my fans from the Far East, for at last count, there are a full fifty two comments on the post. Now, I can draw sounds as well as the next guy, but the strange markings in each of these responses remain utterly impenetrable to me. American monoglot that I am, anything that isn't in English is ultimately gobbledygook to my stunning blue-green eyes, save for the occasional halting Spanish inquiries regarding the location of the library (which, if you were wondering, esta en la ciudad).

Still, the very opacity of their comments tantalizes me, not unlike how sometimes the most enticing accoutrement on a lovely woman obscures more than it reveals. And yes, I just compared language to a nubile female body and the act of translation to her disrobing; I am not the first to do so, and even if I were, I remain utterly unrepentant. My point is this, though: I want to know what these comments say, and thus if any of my readers could translate even a few of these remarks, I would be eternally grateful. Chances are they're advertising solutions to erectile dysfunction, or if I really struck a chord, threatening my life. Maybe both. Still, before I can appreciate these haiku and their poetic conceit of cherry blossoms in winter as flaccid genitalia / my life's expiration, I need your help in disrobing this exotic beauty. I promise we'll keep it between you and me.

Continuing to Insult Your Sensibilities

2010-07-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Despite your fervent wishes that I do something productive with my life, I resolutely - defiantly, even - continue my humble blog. I was going to make an extended metaphor (is there another kind?) about keeping it plugged into the wall a little longer, but I've had some experience with that sort of thing, so I will forbear. I know, I know: I was as surprised as you are that life support systems aren't that funny. I think it's the incessant beeping - well, at least one hopes it's incessant. Sort of the point, right?

Well, look at me. Four months absent and I take a decidedly macabre turn in under five lines, and a full seven before I interject an unnecessarily French word. And yes, that grammatical construction was intended: the use of the word is entirely essential, but the word itself is far more "French" than it should be. Try to tone it down a little, "macabre." Why not just French-Canadian? You'd make a killing in Hollywood and be almost obnoxiously grateful and modest about it the whole time.

Admittedly, I'm being a tad more self-indulgent than usual this time out, if only to remind you what you're getting yourself (back) into. Consider yourself warned. I now return you to our regularly scheduled programming: the good Colonel ponderously railing against the trivialities of life in a desperate gambit to avoid confronting the genuinely important matters that swirl around us all, like windstorms and the rampant corruption in professional midget tossing.

Great Travel Deals! Ask About Our Imperial Discount!

2010-03-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

Interested in wading through the swamps of Dagobah? Sledding on Hoth? Perhaps a picnic on Endor, followed by a romantic speeder chase and finished with some recreational Ewok clubbing? The galaxy is your space oyster, my friend. Glance through the exciting bevy of systems that await you. Leave your worries behind. Just bring your sense of adventure. And your credits.

These are the product of a graphic designer our of Chicago, Justin Van Genderen. If you're interested in tracking down a print of one of these Star Wars Tourism posters, you can browse here. I'm thinking of doing so myself. It can go next to my replica lightsaber and above the shelf with my dog-eared copies of How to Make Friends, Resignation: Accepting That You Will Die Alone, and Cat Fancy.

I Am Such a Nerd

2010-03-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, the lads from high school and I annually gather for one week during the summer to luxuriate in each others' company. This often entails binge drinking, video games, a disparate mixture of fast food and carefully crafted dinners by the various attendees, and binge drinking. On occasions there are also minor altercations, like last year, when one cultist playfully backhanded another gentleman's "swimsuit area" (like you do), to which the other responded by immediately standing...okay, wait. Every male reader knows you don't "immediately stand" after a shot to the mommy-daddy button, but let's just fast forward past the intervening moments of palpable agony this man endured. Ahem. So he stood, face jutting forward menacingly at his foe. Whenever confronted with such a threat, the animal portion of the brain makes its instinctive "fight or flight" decision, which I've always understood to be no decision at all. Apparently the victim's brain, wracked by agony as it was, misfired in some way and accidentally chose "fight." Thankfully nothing came of it. That shit will get you killed, yo.

What also has been known to merit the violent cessation of life is writing doggerel children's poetry for your Dungeon's and Dragon's group. You see, each year's ostensible purpose is not merely getting together again and acting like 15 year olds, but it's to get together and act like 15 year olds and play DnD. Each year a different member is in charge of crafting and running the campaign, and this year I have accepted that most holy of mantles. My first communique to my victims was simply this:

The knave, the seer,

The bastard weird,

Approached the ruin black;

The smith and squire,

Climbéd the spire,

To turn the trio back.

When whence they left,

The former cleft,

That split them was no more.

Their purpose knit,

Their skill and wit

Averted certain war.

Rejoice, dear friends,

Our violent end

Has missed us by a hair.

But trust you not

This peace they wrought;

Our doom comes through their heir.

—children’s rhyme used to begin a game of “Heroes’ Choice”

See you all this summer.

Honestly, can someone explain to me how I found a woman willing to marry me? I guarantee that the second I post this, every person who has even felt a twinge of affection for me will feel a deep and palpable shame settle over them, like a quilt woven of horrible realizations.

I'd explain myself further, but the other members of the gang read this blog, and I dare not unpack my doggerel's pregnant lines for fear I accidentally let slip the glittering clue with which they might avert their doom. And that just simply will not do. I mean to destroy them all.

Argh. Even I rolled my eyes at that last line.

There Is No Good Beer in the Philippines

2010-02-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

Dear God, it took me four tries to spell Philippines right. Honestly, they just give Ph.Ds in English out to anyone off the street nowadays.

Ahem. But I digress.

A very good friend of mine has started a blog about his various (mis)adventures and wry observations. At first blush, this may sound rather mundane. After all, A Lie Told Well began as something akin to this, but I had to drop the "various (mis)adventures" part because I'm pretty much a shut in. This has instead left you, dear reader, with only the "wry observations" part, which quickly degenerated into self-indulgent prose desperately seeking the crassest denominator for humor at others' expense. Not surprisingly, though, I remain obstinately unapologetic.

But what would happen if a blogger of similar vision actually lived a life of international intrigue, grandiose globe-trotting, and other alluring alliteratives? Could that excitement be encapsulated in the limited confines of human expression? Could lightning really be captured in a bottle (honestly, that's not rhetorical. I'm horrible at science)? By way of answering, let me simply make three observations: 1) this is the man who told me about The Hobbit Hole, a bar in Manila that is Lord of the Rings themed and staffed exclusively by little people; 2) his blog already contains a picture of a "Cat Feeding Station" and has a different post entitled "There Are No Pumpkins in Kenya;" 3) I actually don't have a third observation, but for whatever reason, I (like everyone else brought up in the American educational system) feel compelled to group things in threes.

In short, check out the Great Adventures of Stewart Pinecrest, which unless I'm mistaken, is the auteur's porn name. Well played, Monsieur Pinecrest. Well played.

New Moon Makes Girls Swoon, Unattractive

2010-01-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

Call it Karma or simply the machinations of a thoroughly vengeful Old Testament God, we reap what we sow in this life, and all the trite agrarian metaphors in the world won't change that. While I cannot recall precisely what grave sin I committed in the past that merited the punishment, it must have been dire; indeed, there may very well be the body of some innocent girl scout bricked up in the wall of my home, her boxes of thin mints and carmel delights moldering alongside her. Without a tell-tale heart or black cat to alert the authorities, I might have escaped scott-free, and so the universe has taken a more subtle hand, for I can see no other reason how I could deserve the harrowing ordeal I was given. Perhaps this is a generational concern, a reckoning visited upon the son for the father's crimes. After all, during his minority in Ireland, my father was known to drown kittens for money. Maybe I pay for that deed, like my friend who must forever bear the curse of horrible foot odor because his own father once spit on a gypsy. I cannot know for certain. But whatever the reason, I was made to watch New Moon.

Needless to say, death is sweet release compared to the 130 minutes of agony that is this movie, but like the "vampires" that populate the local high school, I must apparently suffer in perpetuity. I put the word in quotes, of course, because they're nothing of the sort. When a vampire is exposed to direct sunlight, they burn to ash. They don't fucking sparkle. Honestly, if I hadn't already seen Twilight (which I'm pretty sure was punishment for a joke I made in 1996 about a special needs individual), I would have burst out into laughter at the sight, as I actually did when I first saw that ridiculousness on DVD. While it's true I now understand the literal meaning of the "I love boys who sparkle" t-shirts I've seen around, the connotative meaning remains the same: "I will die alone, unmourned by even my dozens of cats, which will probably feast on my remains after an indecorously short period of time." Funny how five little words can say so much, huh?

I won't go into how much I hate that movie, for drudging up any specifics sears my very soul. What I can tell you is that every second in that theater corroded my already delicate masculinity, leaving a ruin that will take years of deliberate effort to reconstitute. Thankfully a friend passed along this picture, which is constituted by such raw virility that I no longer entirely despair for my own plight. If you, too, have been subjected to moody stares of Robert Pattinson, the "my acting repertoire consists of four alternating facial expressions" performance of Kristen Stewart, the inexplicable reasoning behind werewolves never wearing shirts but always wearing knee length jean shorts and running shoes, or God help you, a sparkling vampire, behold and be saved:

Col. Gentleman Turns Corner in Life, Bangs Knee

2010-01-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

I've been away for months now, but it has been a productive number of months. I'm now officially Col. Gentleman, Ph.D, or Doctor Colonel Gentleman, whichever you prefer. I've also enjoyed being jerked around by my gainful employer, which itself is a victim of California's budgetary woes and, if I'm to believe my union's rhetoric, the inhuman greed and ignorance of university administration. Rhetoric aside, if I have finally tasted the uncertainty common to most working Americans, unsure if I will keep my job or for how long, the fact remains that I am still teaching and thus have it a lot better than most. For this, as for so many other things, I remain thankful.

I also went through this year's round of applications for tenure track jobs in academia, which is apparently the thing you do after you graduate, this despite the fact that only a modest percentage of graduates ever land tenure track jobs even after years of trying. I won't go into details, but the process is the equivalent of asking every single girl in your high school to prom and being turned down by every single one. You don't expect the captain of the cheer squad or the junior beauty queen to give you the time of day, and there are plenty of others you've never heard of, only seen in the halls passing silently by with their biology textbooks clutched protectively to their sweatered chests, so again, no loss there. But when the girl with the strange skin affliction and a lazy eye, the one who weeps openly as she rereads the Twilight saga and gorges herself on baked meats, when that girl turns you down too...it stings a little. Thankfully, the process doesn't start again for another nine months, so I have time to nurse by bruised ego.

Things move forward on other, lighter fronts. I and the regular cast of villains have convened through the dark arts of the Internet to begin a regular Dungeons and Dragons campaign again, which provides a far more ready satiation of the urges that, had they no other outlet, would eventually compel me to don a purple bathrobe and pointy hat to stalk the freezer isle of my local supermarket and throw balls of tinfoil at passersby and shrilly cry, "Lightning Bolt!" Instead I may safely purge these emotions in the privacy of my own home, admittedly wearing a headset and brutalizing my peers with a poor imitation of Sean Connery. Still, it has produced other, glossier fruit:

In short, life moves on, and if not always in expected ways, it is not entirely unpleasant. And, without having to constantly devote my spare time to the dissertation (well, spare time not already devoted to video games and alcohol abuse - though in my defense, that bottle of whiskey had it coming) I may once again resume my duties as your humble blogger. It may very well take a few posts to get back to my usual form, so please bear with me. But for better or worse, I'm back, bitches.

What a Gyp

2009-09-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I was robbed by gypsies.

In my quiet moments, when I am not imagining how I might fare amidst a zombie Apocalypse or wondering what the color green tastes like, I like to think that I'm savvy enough to recognize and avoid the chicanery of the travelling people. However, through the benefit of hindsight and its corrective lenses, I recognize that my previous run-in with them in Paris years ago left me woefully unprepared for the reality of their low cunning. Then, they operated in feral packs of children, Dickensian in their purpose and numbers but with the added charm of physical deformity thrown in for good measure. My upper-middle class background needed little more than their poverty to make me instinctively recoil from their outstretched hands, but the real charm came from their utter lack of craft. Still new to the con, these children simply walked around, hands out, and went from surly to irate when their gestures were ignored. A darling child of nine stood in front of me disapprovingly, and when I shrugged at her, she shook her hand in exasperation and explained to the stupid American, and I quote, "You know: money!" The scamp.

I am not entirely unconvinced that this was a deliberate effort to lay the groundwork for their American kin this past year. In my defense (says the man who just described ignoring deformed Parisian orphans - in front of Notre Dame, no less!), they didn't exactly roll up in a garishly painted wagon and dance with swirling skirt and laughing mustache as a monkey, seemingly to the music of a merry organ grinder, nimbly picked my pocket. Still, I should have seen this coming; I say this less because of some abstract notion of my Perception skill, but rather that my wife immediately warned me that they were trouble. But I get ahead of myself.

Some time ago the doorbell to our apartment was frantically rung, as if the person on the other side were desperately seeking sanctuary. Two children greeted me as I opened the door, though, asking if we had any recycling they could have. As charming as their precocious smiles were, I only had beer cans to give, so I apologized and closed the door. After another five visits over the course of the next week, I gave them the beer cans. Rather than appeasing them, however, the young male started to return with greater frequency. His name was Sonny, almost certainly an alias I realize now, and he liked to arrive and ask for handouts. "Can I have the computer monitor in your garage? Will you let me wash this shirt at your house? Do you have an Xbox?" This last query caught me off guard, and I stupidly answered in the affirmative. From then on, he started asking to borrow games, and for reasons I may never fully comprehend, I finally lent him one I no longer play just to get rid of him. He literally lived fifty yards away, so I saw little harm in the gesture.

Long story short, my far more perceptive wife gradually started pointing out the unsettling signs that surrounded this family, as one gradually leads a former cultist of Creationist, I imagine, back into the harsh daylight of the real world. First, she insisted there was something insidious about the fact that the women of the family only ever wore skirts, but my fashion acumen is such that this made no impact. However there did seem to be about fifteen to twenty people living in their apartment at various times, which I think exceeded limits set by the management. Another afternoon, in broad daylight let me remind you, we saw the patriarch breaking into the electrical hub for our portion of the apartment and attach some sort of rig that ran its wires back into their home. Finally, they always seemed to be driving different cars, swapping them with a regularity that made their only constant vehicle, a dilapidated Cadillac that would almost definitely give you tetanus if you sat in the back seat, stand out all the more. Finally coming around to the idea that loaning this child my belongings, while a grand gesture of truly living the Gospel (John 15:27 - "And thou shalt lend thy games, And thou shalt play thy Rockband, And thou shalt please thy Lord"), was not wise. It was about that time they were evicted from the complex and disappeared forever.

So, all told, I'm down a game and a controller, but more importantly, I will never trust a child again. Sure, when he returned the first game and asked to borrow another instead, when I looked at the videogame case that appeared to have been vigorously mauled by a feral badger and, inquiring about its condition, was told "My little sister got it," I perhaps should have become suspicious. But sometimes you must touch the fire to truly learn it burns, so now, as I clutch my charred heart to my chest, I finally see the world without my rose-colored lenses. Now to go email that Nigerian lawyer back about his former client's estate.

I'm Not Dead Yet

2009-07-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

Long time no see, as my father used to say. I've been away for over a month now, but not really "away" so much as simply doing other things. Had my week with the lads, which rejuvenates me in all the ways that it doesn't exasperate or drain me. Enjoyed another week or so of playing catch-up on all the grading I was putting off as I was drinking from the kegerator in Pasadena and rolling my twenty sided so poorly that I'm convinced I must have insulted a voodoo priest sometime recently. Maybe it was that homeless guy I hit with my Jeep...but that was just sport, so it shouldn't count. Went to Vegas with Kelly to meet Debbie and Ryan, which was great fun, even if I didn't do well at the blackjack tables (I never do, but hope spring eternally, eh?).

Now things are settling in for a somewhat unpleasant few months. Nothing particularly bad is actually coming down the pipe - quite the contrary. I've been offered a full time lecturing position despite the abysmal economy, I'm teaching my first Shakespearean drama class starting next week, and the dissertation is winding to a gradual close. It's just that they're all hitting at nearly the same time, and that means I have to work on all of them, and that's just not something I'm convinced I can pull off. Couple that with deadlines and my inability to sit down and work hard for an entire day (as if I have an entire day to do so), and I fear for what slop I'll be writing for my dissertation's introduction or using to fill the three hour blocks of summer school Shakespeare (starting Tuesday, did I mention?).

I'm not popping on the blogosphere to bitch and moan, as I honestly recognize that I have no leg to stand on. Let's instead just say that my schedule seems to be preventing me from the whimsy and sardonic detachment I typically cultivate immediately before making a post, and so I may not be making any more for a little while more. I'll try. I just can't make any promises.

Get Your Swole On

2009-06-23T00:54:00.000-07:00

I was locked in my apartment complex's gym for about half an hour tonight with a nice Asian couple that was hesitant to use the building's second story window as an escape. Consequently, I stuck around with them and watched as an equally helpful neighbor attempted to open the deadbolt that stood between the sweaty gym air and our freedom with a hairpin and a flathead screwdriver. Ultimately we all took the window. I didn't make up a single syllable of that opening. That's just the kind of crap I find myself in from time to time.

As you might suspect yourself, there are a number of things wrong with this picture. For one, who the hell gets locked in the gym? The immediate culprit was a deadbolt whose key only staff has, so it clearly wasn't an ignorant resident. But why would a passing security guard or maintenance man assume no one was there? Well, because the three people doing cardio upstairs had the lights turned off. Sadly, I was one of them. You see, the couple was already up there, working away, with the lights off when I arrived, and I didn't feel comfortable just showing up and throwing the light switch. I mean, who the hell am I? I bring a Nintendo DS to the gym to keep my mind distracted from the burning sensation in my lungs when I ride the stationary bike, which I ride because the treadmill involves too much motion to actually play the DS. I don't really have a leg to stand on here. So I just hopped on a bike and pedalled (difficult without that leg), glancing between the ESPN on in front of the husband and the E channel before the wife, and as the three of us burned away dozens of calories to the blue light of flatpanel televisions, someone locked us in the gym.

I discovered almost immediately that a window on the second level would make for an easy escape, mainly because another resident climbed in through it and asked what was going on. And while the descent out the window was certainly possible, the wife in particular was having none of it, and for whatever reason I do the things I do, my brain decided it was poor form to leave them alone. Honestly, I'd be that douche on the Titanic politely allowing other people onto the lifeboats because of the poor Irish bastards drowning in coach. Anyway, that's what kept me there so long. That, and I was mildly curious to see if the new arrival actually had what it takes to pick a deadbolt with improvised tools. He did not. Still, he seemed a good guy. Sure he had a knife on his belt, and while the type of white guy who perpetually carries a knife on his hip is typically not the kind I want to toast a Natural Ice with, he seemed a good sort. He even said I should stop by his place to have a beer and play videogames some time. He probably plans to kill me and use my skin to make a dress, but with an invitation that charming, who knows?

Clearly, this absurd situation was a divine portent if ever I've seen one. The problem with any sign, as all you good semioticians know, is the ambiguity in interpreting them. I naturally assumed the Divine was suggesting I skip working out to stay home and invent new songs about my dog. My wife suggested I was supposed to stay in the gym longer to begin with. Touche. I'll be going back tomorrow, if only so that when the roof collapses on me I can tell my dearest "I told you so."

Drug Scandal Rocks NASCAR: Mullets to Fly at Half Mast

2009-06-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

NASCAR officially joined the auspicious ranks of Major League Baseball, the Olympic Games, and Midget Tossing on May 1st when Jeremy Mayfield, one of the "sport's" noted auto-coach pilots, failed a drug test. It was mainly short essay and multiple choice questions, and while he did alright through the geography and, surprisingly, Native American history sections, he really tripped up on #32: "Are you on drugs?" Rather than opting for "a) No" or "b) Of course not; in fact, even asking me not only affronts my sensibilities as a sportsman but tarnishes the game itself," good ol' Jeremy circled "c) Fuck, I don't know. I'm way too stoned. Better make me pee in a cup."

Well, today ESPN broke the story wide open. In brazen defiance of convention, NASCAR's first documented positive drug test was for - you guessed it - crystal meth. I, for one, am shocked; I really had my money on some combination of huffing paint and popping a murderous amount of Flintstones chewable vitamins. Just goes to show you, I guess: you can take the Redneck out of the trailer park, but not out of the "Redneck Roundy-Round." NASCAR fandom has been rocked by this latest news, and many aficionados are too distressed by the revelation to finish brewing the latest batch of moonshine in their bathtubs; indeed, even the sultry arms of a first-cousin cannot distract these gap-toothed, hillbilly degenerates from their inconsolable loss.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that the sluggish, cholesterol-ridden arteries of NASCAR have flowed with only pure red, white, and blue until this dark day. You see, this is the first year such drug testing has been instituted. In previous epochs, pit crews simply assumed the earthenware jug their driver was securely belting beside him was merely water to fight the dehydratin'. Clearly, they had no idea what was going on. One senior editor at ESPN even reports that a retired driver admits to having raced on heroin. Yeah, I'll repeat that: "he drove on heroin." Way to put the whole Barry Bonds thing in perspective for us, Cleatus McDrivesalot. In so many other sports, athletes discretely take drugs to enhance their performance; NASCAR drives apparently just want to get fucked up, and aren't about to let driving a car at speeds over 200 mph get in the way. Kinda puts a new spin on that famous line, "I feel the need - the need for speed." Just imagine the bloodbath if those NASCAR racers had ejector seats.

The Penis Mightier

2009-05-28T00:21:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought to yourself, "How am I supposed to take a drink when I'm using my hands to lather my shampoo / drive this snowmobile / fend off my traitorous attack panda"? Shortly after that, did another synapse accidentally fire and you thought, "Holy fuck, I'm drunk"? Of course you have -- you're one of my readers, aren't you? Hell, I was probably with you when this happened.

The problem, though, is that we're often in short supply of efficient means of capturing those pristine moments of spiritual clarity and liquid depravity. Forget memory (ironic word usage! 3 points!); there are entire weekends from college that neither I nor any of my friends can accurately piece back together. And sure, there is the ever-popular voice mail, but they do tend to drag on, and often the speaker sounds like Eliza Doolittle with a mouth full of marbles. But in this age of Twitter, where anything and everything of meaning can apparently be condensed to 14o characters or less (Milton just rolled over in his grave...onto Henry James), I'm actually thankful for the text message. Not because it prompts my students to essentially fiddle with themselves under their desk in a pitiful attempt at being clandestine, no -- because it gives us something as beautiful as my new favorite site, Texts From Last Night.

Texts From Last Night is exactly what the name promises: it's a compilation of hilarious text messages people have sent one another the night of or immediately following a bender. As one might imagine, a number of them are rather crude and rarely "politically correct," but there are some gems that carry a wisdom profound enough to make tears glisten on the hardest cheek. To make matters even better, they put the area code of the guilty party before every text. Enter yours, and see if you were the naked form splayed unconscious beside them, the one about whom they sent that somewhat unflattering report to their friend.

The gods are otherwise embroiled in family squabbles at their celestial table -- quick now, sample their divine ambrosia:

(815): I met the nicest Tranny last night. He/She loves Cheetos.

(408): I told him it was like a man's penis, but smaller.

(352): I just woke up and realized I puked in my boxers WTF.
(904): You stay classy.
(352): The worst part was I forgot until I tried to put them on.

(954): I just got hit by a car and apologized to the driver. I asked him if he was okay.

(404): I just bought the big bottle of Patron. It looks small. What have I done with my life?
(503): Succeeded.

And my personal favorites:

(703): I asked him if he wanted to go to my place, he said i could go but he was gonna stay

(407): I woke up this morning next to some guy. I was horrified, he woke up and said, "the white tiger strikes again!"

Social Darwinism

2009-05-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I'm not sure if they think I'm stupid, or if they're just that stupid themselves, but whatever the reason, there are always a few students who mistake my affable, good nature and think they can pull a fast one on me. Couple that with Spring Quarter sloth, and you have a charming cocktail that can, at times, result in them submitting absolute bullshit. It's time's like these, dear reader, when I can write emails like this:

Part of the reason I had asked for the electronic version of your paper was because I actually did have the first page of what you had turned in last week, but it didn't quite look like it was what the assignment was asking for, so I thought there may have been some mistake. This is indeed what you sent this time, but again, let me suggest you double check that this file was actually your second essay. If it were, I'd point out that the header of the essay suggests you originally wrote this for _________ in Fall Quarter, and remind you that submitting old work, even of your own, for a new assignment technically constitutes plagiarism. Additionally, as there is no mention made of _____________, the essay our papers were meant to respond to, this essay doesn't meet the basic requirements of the prompt. Either way, it would have gotten a 0.
Of course, none of that matters, because I'm sure this isn't the rough draft of your second essay. Do look around for it and get it in to me as soon as you can.

Before I address what's going on here, allow me to translate my previous, formal missive:

Hey, you fucking retard. I realize this is already weeks late, but please don't think I'm so goddamn stupid that I wouldn't notice the shit you sent me is barely on topic and clearly has another class named in the header. Let me remind you that I can now official nail your ass to the wall; I own you. However, as I loathe communicating with you in any fashion, I find it far more expedient to threaten you and then point your ignorant ass toward the back door than to actually follow it up. Cobble some shit together overnight, lie to me (like you would anyway), and I'll give you a D-. Chop, chop.

p.s. You put the date at November 2009 on your paper, dipshit. I suggest you get in that time machine and turn in a fucking paper on topic this time around.

Ah. I feel considerably better now. One or two of you may be aghast, or at least curious, why I'm not turning this person in to a disciplinary committee, but the short answer is his sloth is actually working in his favor. Having never turned in a hard copy of the paper, he can just claim that he accidentally sent the wrong file, and as my delicately worded translation suggested, I don't have the time or inclination to deal with it. Besides, as our final paper is on a famous novel, chances are he might try it again.

Honestly, if we were all on the Serengeti, this one would have been ostracized from the herd and pulled down by predators long ago. Alas for our more "civilized" age.

A Gentleman's Bet

2009-05-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Shut down every tattoo parlor on the planet, because there's just no point anymore. The single best tattoo every produced has been created, and its very existence reveals how hollow and shameful all other body art really is. Virgin tears and the blood of Thor were used to create this ink, and as the needle first pierced this person's leg / beefy forearm, the angels wept for joy.

I challenge anyone to find and post a picture of a tattoo more awesome than this. It's alright if you fail; the deck is stacked against you. But as your eyes well up at the prospect, merely behold this, and you will be whole again. And if you're blind, just point the useless jelly that was your eyes in the direction of this image, and those sightless orbs will no longer be a mockery of your sad plight. Also, if I'm not mistaken, your sins will be forgiven...or maybe that's when you stare at a Florida license plate. I can never remember. But I'm pretty sure this tattoo can at least cure leprosy.

WWJD?

2009-05-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

I must confess, I'm still getting used to the "married" thing. After being told for the majority of my life that accidentally brushing against the corner of a sofa with my swimsuit area would consign me to the ceaseless agony of purging flames and the harsh trill of demonic laughter, I can't help but feel suspicious that sex is now suddenly okay. It's as if I could swear I saw the pitcher throw the ball, but when I'm frantically rounding second base, I see it drawn, almost lazily, from his voluminous glove as a shit-eating grin spreads slowly across his face. I fell for his trick, and now I'm trapped. And then I'm pulled screaming down to hell in that ridiculous baseball uniform...

It's only fair, then, that the Catholic Church is making an effort to correct the significant psychological damage inflicted upon me during my formative years - at least the part dealing with, well, one's "part":

Say hello to Sex As You Don't Know It: For Married Couples Who Love God, the seksy new book by Polish priest Ksawery Knotz. In it, Kfather Knotz assures his guilt-ridden readership that sex should be "saucy, surprising and fantasy packed," which is eerily prescient, as I know many a Catholic who secretly dreams about being suddenly ambushed by their spouse dressed as a high elf and dunked in sun-dried tomato Alfredo. The Cliffnotes version is that, surprise, you won't burst into flame during sex, though if you and your spouse didn't hit the clinic before your "I do," there may be some burning afterward.

Speaking of reasons to be horribly, horribly ashamed, Florida (the flaccid penis of the continental United States!) has recently made a real push to add a sense of gravitas and quiet respect to their license plates:

Now, I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say that this one isn't a Catholic thing; we're more into having members of an abstinent religious order give married couples sexual advice based off of a year's worth of counseling experience. But as a religious institution with a long history of iconographic, even idolatrous experience (if you ask a sixteenth-century Protestant), please allow a Catholic to give you a few points on your latest brain child. For starters, is our Lord and Savior languishing in front of a sun, a giant halo, or an orange? There's a chance this may affect the interpretation of the devout, or make people thirsty for juice. Get on that. Also, while it will make Christ-centered vanity plates much easier to accomplish, having a picture of Jesus in the middle may ruin the effect of my FKOSAMA or HIOFCER plate. I mean, the old design was perfect. What could go wrong with it?

Props to Doc and Digital Mercenary, who passed along the Seks book and license plate, respectively. I love how I have become the repository for all the absurd things my friends uncover on the interwebs.

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

A bit belated, I know, but I still wanted to share some admittedly saccharine, overly-sentimental takes on Mother's Day.

EMBED-Mothers Day Card 02 - Watch more free videos

And my personal favorite:

EMBED-Mothers Day Card 04 - Watch more free videos

My thanks to Oghrim for passing these along. I'm sure there's no deep seated, repressed justifications for why we find these so funny.

A Midnight Train to Anywhere

2009-04-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

My wife and I attended a wedding this weekend in San Diego, the highlight of which was a tray of miniature Kobe beef burgers that went largely unnoticed by the other guests. As they frolicked on the dance floor to the sweet siren song of Journey's Don't Stop Believing, I abandoned social decorum altogether and gorged myself as if tomorrow were the end of days, when such forbidden delights would be fodder for grandfather's firelight reminisces as the klaxons in the distance warn of our robot overlords' approach. Actually, I only ate three, but I felt as if I had drawn them from the very table of Zeus himself. And Zeus loved him some Kobe beef burgers. And impregnating virtually anything he could shower in gold or accost in the form of a swan. But he was married to his older sister Hera, goddess of women and marriage...

And we're back to the wedding, which was absolutely terrifying, seeing as how I forget people's names when I haven't seen them in a few months; imagine walking through a reception filled with people who you haven't spoken to in a decade, many of whom you didn't particularly go out of your way to speak to when you knew them in college. Be that as it may, I still wanted to stay at that reception for as long as I could. Why? Because I had this waiting for me in my hotel room:

What exactly is that, you might ask? Well unless you just suffered a stroke or some other significant medical event that would cause a largely unused portion of your brain to suddenly misfire a few million neurons, chances are you didn't just blurt out "That's a painting of a miniature doorway at the top of a tiny stairway to nowhere inside a hotel walk-in closet." But that's exactly what it is.

Upon first seeing this carnival horror, I immediately thought of Poe's "The Black Cat." Was there a dead woman bricked up behind that wall, one whom the murderer couldn't help but taunt in perpetuity by painting her means of escape on the other side? The fact that it was a full-fledged door, rather than a clumsily scrawled rectangle made in chalk, was some consolation, though. Had it been the latter, I would have been forced to conclude it was either a portal to some waiting room for the recently deceased or a sumptuous banquet, table laden with every imaginable delight as a pallid form with no eyes sits at the head of that feast (and by the by, if you are told by the creepy giant faun not to touch anything in some magical in-between locale, and when you get to that place, there's a fucking eyeless monster sitting at the table, you keep your emaciated fingers to yourself). Glancing out the window of our hotel room, I saw neither sand worms nor fascist Spain, so the door remained a mystery.

If anything came out of that door during the night, it made not a sound, but instead stood over our sleeping forms silently, perhaps pondering what to do with these interlopers, these intruders in its sacred domain. All I can tell you is that in the morning as we prepared to leave, I noticed the paint of the keyhole in that door was chipped.

Not really spooky, I know. But if you want to see something truly frightening, watch that Journey video I linked above. Tell me if lead singer Steve Perry's penis isn't looking stage right.

Victory in Defeat

2009-04-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

To quote the esteemed Danny Glover from the Citizen Cane of buddy cop action movies, Lethal Weapon: I'm getting too old for this shit.

The weekend started off with a bang, metaphorically speaking. In fact, any such sound whatsoever must have been confined to the Elysian fields of metaphor, because when I turned the key in my ignition on Friday, nothing happened at all. I may as well have had a zucchini plugged into wires where my engine was. Thankfully Debbie saved the day by picking me up and taking me to rent a car; I didn't have time to get it towed, you all know I'm fairly inept with repairing mechanical devices, and since Debbie offered me the use of a screwdriver from an eyeglass repair kit for my car, I thought it might be best to leave the Jeep where it was.

But you don't care about my car. You want to hear about the pub golf. Well, it was glorious. As the first place was a somewhat swanky wine bar, we got our first attack of giggles at the fact that Brock, who was dressed up in his dorkiest golf attire, actually fit in perfectly with the douches already there; we counted three different iterations of his exact outfit, in fact. From there we went to the Galley, where the owner asked to have a picture taken with Ray, the mastermind behind our round of alcoholic golf. At stop three, Finn McCools, we ran into Emerson and Nick, two good friends from college we haven't talked to in way too long, and they decided to join the round and stick with us for the rest of the night. Truly, truly delightful to see them.

I only wish I could remember more of it. I do know that we started gathering disciples in each bar we entered, and like the man from Galilee, soon we had our own devout congregation--only ours were worshiping at the altar of alcoholic self-flagellation. Our initial band of intrepid eleven hit somewhere around twenty five by the end of the night, I'm told. I say "I'm told" because I have no firm recollection of those later stages, but rather like a mere acquaintance who looks at the picture slide show on your laptop, I must construct the night from a few scattered moments, frozen in time. They are, in no particular order:

Being pretty gung-ho about demolishing a soft taco in one bite, choking on it, and having to settle for three.

Hating the Cadillac margarita, ordering a basket of chips to help wash it down--for every individual in the group--and then leaving the place just as our 10 baskets of chips arrived.

Delicious nut-brown Newcastle ale up my nose.

The rest has been pieced together by others, but apparently we had to attend a different bar for the 9th, one that didn't serve Irish Car Bombs, so some genius ordered Jager Bombs instead. I don't remember it at all, but my score card says I drank it, so I'll believe that.

Yes, you're reading that correctly: I shot a 19, a full twelve strokes under par. I decided to pull the trigger later that night (classic Colonel Gentleman, I know) and I was still a wreck the next day, but it was worth it. Of course, I didn't even come close to placing, as the organizer Ray won with an 11. He's a classy man, and thus I can't think of a better set of shoulders from which to hang this equally classy green jacket.

Oh yes, he made a jacket for the winner.

Speaking of winners, the crown for our own little contest has to go to Debbie. Not only did she guess the lowest score (amidst a truly staggering number of entries, I might add), but she also single-handedly ensured I was able to even make it to LA in the first place, so she could have guessed I'd score "Rhubarb" and she'd still have won this. Thanks to her, to everyone else who played along, and to my liver, for not quitting on me just yet.

A Game of Honor and Diplomacy

2009-04-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

No, not midget tossing. Not the choreographed dance that is a Bat Fight, either. I'm talking Pub Golf.

"But Colonel Gentleman, is it possible to merge the sophistication and white privilege of golf with the esteemed literary tradition of semi-functional alcoholism, topped off with a dash of 'Play Hard' to give its some balls?"

"Well, barring the racism and misogyny, Billy, you bet it is!"

You know, I think I'll revert back to a prose description, as my dramatic dialogue was already taking a turn that could only have ended with Billy choking on an ether rag and being hastily shoved into the cramped trunk of a modestly priced American sedan.

Anyway, if Scotland and Ireland had a baby, it would be Pub Golf [surprisingly, there is no documented instance of the Irish and Scots interbreeding, due chiefly to 1) the staggering "awesome" that would be said progeny, and 2), neither the Irish or Scots are good swimmers and have nonexistent navies, so they didn't really have opportunity until last century, and by then tradition had already sunk its roots too deeply to be ignored]. The rules look a little something like this:

If you had to describe those babies in one word, I bet I know what it would be: "small." Allow me to help. The general rules for this most sacred of games are as follows:
1. Girls are allowed a 4 stroke handicap
2. Everyone gets one Mulligan (a "do over," for the uninitiated), but you are penalized 2 strokes on that hole
3. Water hazard - no going to the bathroom while you're on the green (i.e. while mid-drink)
4. A stroke counts as every time you stop drinking; for food, a stroke counts as a bite
5. 1 stroke penalties: poor drinking form (to be voted on by a majority of the group); improper scoring; party fouls
6. at the 9th hole, each successive hole-in-one (i.e. each Irish car bomb) after the first drink will reduce your score by one stroke
7. lowest score wins (you are disqualified if you puke at any point during the round)

If you're anything like me, you wept for joy at the sight of this, as if hearing Maria Callas sing "La Mamma Morta" for the first time or seeing a dolphin leap out of the water as a unicorn hurtles over a rainbow. Sure, it may seem like I'm exaggerating there, but as I typically only associate with people who enjoy abusing their livers as much as I do...let's just say I know my audience.

The list on the left is the specific round for this Friday night. Eight bars and one eatery, eight drinks and one snack. In case you can't read that one either, I've reproduced it below:

Hole--------------------------Club----------------------------Par
Salute Wine Bar----------Glass of Wine-------------------------3
The Galley---------------Vodka Tonic--------------------------3
Finn McCool's-----------Pint of Guiness------------------------6
Lula's Cocina----------Cadillac Margarita-----------------------4
World Cafe------------------Mojito-----------------------------3
Holy Guacamole-----------1 soft taco---------------------------3
Rick's Tavern-----------Pint of B- or C- ------------------------3
Library Ale House--------Pint of Ale----------------------------4
O'Briens----------------Irish Car Bomb-------------------------1
Par for the Course: --------------------------------------------31

On behalf of the hard-hitting journalism I always bring to bear on this blog, I'll post a detailed account of as much as I can remember of the night, along with any apocrypha that may account for the lost time. In the meantime, dearest reader, I propose a gentleman's wager: How do you think I'll score at Pub Golf this weekend? As with any thesis statement, don't forget to support your general claim with justification to convince any potentially unsympathetic reader. Whoever guesses the right score, or comes closest, wins (ties go to the most accurate justification/reasoning).

If I die of alcohol poisoning this weekend...I guess that makes my wife the winner.

Damn You, Thermodynamics!

2009-04-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

To quote the caveman with the boom mic when Geico first explained just how easy their insurance is: NOT COOL!

Really? A second time? Because I swore this happened about two years ago, and you'd think the replacement hardware they send you wouldn't succumb to the identical malfunction of the aforementioned console/paperweight, but who am I to question their hardware engineers or their business model? After all, I didn't go to ITT Tech, nor am I mandated by state or federal law to wear a helmet when I ride in a car. I similarly lack the distinct, sloping brow or the trademark vacant stare as I gaze across the plains looking for predators only to realize it's my computer wallpaper. I have never attempted to impress anyone by smashing anything on my head, nor do I grope the air with my hairless paw while watching a 3D movie. In short, I'm not a fucking Microsoft engineer, so obviously I wouldn't know anything about putting out a product that's suffered from the same fundamental problem for going on four years now. No, those fellers are much, much too smart for the likes o' me. I just run Chrysler.

Stockholm Syndrome

2009-04-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

Please forgive my extended absence, dearest reader, but tonight I sat down to do some more work, saw this headline, and thought of you. Indeed, this short news post from MSNBC contains perhaps one of the strangest paragraphs I've read in some time:

"Police say a Japanese pop star dressed up as a pineapple has been robbed while shooting a music video in southern Sweden."

Is it Sweden's frigid northern clime that makes them detest tropical fruit so, or conversely, did the young men who committed the assault so love pineapples that their conscious minds disintegrated in a red wash of fury when they saw their beloved fruit impersonated by a Japanese pop idol? Either way, it involved a grown man in a foam suit getting punched in the face, and if you're a fan of major league mascot death-matches like I am, you know any man vs. costume violence is the good stuff, especially since bum fights are currently in the off season.

The truly sad part, though, is that the man wasn't actually "shooting a music video" at the moment. In truth, "the pineapple-clad artist had been left alone with the equipment while the camera crew went for a break." The poor guy was just sitting there, so small-time that when the camera crew needs to take a break, he's literally the only person around to watch their stuff. I bet the poor bastard was wearing a fanny-pack, too. Not sure why - I just get that feeling.

Come on, now. Who could want to attack this guy?

Happy St. Pat's

2009-03-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

I'll make a post tomorrow in honor of St. Patrick's Day, but in the meantime, I didn't want to let you go without a good laugh on this most holy of days. Trust me: there is nothing I could write that would be as funny as this clip of hard hitting journalism. Brace yourself.

Git-er-done

2009-03-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

Education is often the whipping boy of budgetary cutbacks at the state and federal levels, and not surprisingly, our standing worldwide has steadily ticked downward. Of course, you'd need the ability to connect cause and effect to see the correlation, so I suppose America's youth will remain blissfully unaware of the royal screwing they've been taking since they first put finger to paint, but that's beside the point.

We champions of education must be ever vigilant, for no perspective is wholly unassailable, and should we become too entrenched in the certitude that our cause is just and right, we may miss the reasonable objections of the other side. So allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment:

If we teach hillbillies math, they'll get better at science. Once they get better at math and science, they'll progress to engineering. And once that happens, they start making compact, transforming weaponry that, apparently, they plan to take on walks everywhere they go just in case they have to "get down to business." Behold the latest prototype from Magpul Industries. I can only imagine the man in the clip is sporting an Amish beard to cushion his jaw when he repeatedly thrusts that weapon against his face with such enthusiasm and vigor.

Honestly, I'd have been fine if that child was left behind.

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, or, Hell in a Handbasket

2009-03-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to
myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard a thing it is to say what that wood
was, so savage and harsh and strong that the
thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter that death is little more so! But to
treat of the good that I found there, I will tell of
the other things I saw.

Call it karma or Newton's third law (MacGyver's favorite, as it turns out) or whatever you like, but the universe has a way of balancing things out. And because of that, I should have seen this thing coming. I mean, I don't want to endorse any sort of overly rigid distinction between high and low culture, but I think it's fair to say Spider-man becoming a Broadway musical isn't necessarily a lateral movement for the intellectual property. But the moment something so thoroughly pop culture is being "elevated" to theater, I assure you somewhere someone is raping a cultural treasure. And usually I can keep a wry distance from it. But no one fucks with Dante Alighieri (or puts Baby in a corner).

But apparently that's exactly what Electronic Arts is doing. EA, shirt collar wide open so the ladies can appreciate its chest pelt and faux-gold necklaces, slithered up to the Divine Comedy at the bar and offered to buy it an appletini. And now, some indeterminate time later, Dante is shivering on the corner at 3:15 am offering to suck your dick for a fiver so his pimp doesn't cut him another nostril. For those of you less well versed in the arcane cryptography of my metaphors, allow me to spell it out: they're making a video game of Dante's Inferno.

As I watched this seven minute interview with one of the criminals responsible for this abomination, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Sure, maybe I was a little drawn in, but I also slow down to rubber-neck at freeway accidents. And like my molars, which were slowly grinding one another to dust (and plaque, and the gum disease gingivitis), the details I remember from Dante's epic poem and the plot of this game ground together. The pilgrim (Dante) wanders through Hell with Virgil as a guide, until the poet's beloved (Beatrice) must take over Virgil's duty when the pilgrim ascends to Paradise; Digital Dante returns from kicking ass and taking names in the Crusades to find his sweet-heart, Beatrice, has been murdered and her soul dragged to hell by Lucifer himself, so he goes to hell alone to get her. The pilgrim is alternately terrified, infuriated, and seduced by the stories told him by the damned; Digital Dante kicks ass and chews bubblegum, along with the help of his giant fucking scythe (which they'll hopefully name 'Florence' or 'La Vita Nuova' or something). The medieval poem showed me what literature can really do and made me fall in love with poetry; this video game makes me want to strap on a diaper, jump in my car (which is stalled out in parking lot right now, but that's another story), and drive to the developer's studio where I can "get medieval" on each and every one of their pasty asses. I'll show you a contrapasso, you sons of bitches.

Maybe I'm getting a little worked up here, so I'll cut this short - despite my plans of meticulously combing through all thirty three cantos and parodying what I imagine those bastards at EA might do to the text. Come to think of it, though, somebody better check Dante's tomb; I have a feeling his skull is upended somewhere in a game studio and serving double duty as an ashtray and urinal. If there's any justice, those responsible will have an eternity of purging flames to regret their trespass. If not, I'll remind them when I arrive fresh from the Crusades, shotgun in one hand, chainsaw strapped to the stump of my other. Groovy.

Dick and Jane: All Grown Up, or More Phun Wif Wordz

2009-02-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Honestly, does no one take a step back and read these things before actually putting them up? Perhaps the parties responsible for this little double entendre are simply so naive, so pure of heart, that alternate meanings do not present themselves when they proudly stand aside and gaze at their handiwork. Not so for the rest of us (sorry to drag you down to the gutter with me, dearest reader). Don't get me wrong; despite my alternate reading of this public declaration, it still amounts to the same message. Oh yes, the love is still in this relationship - we may just have a discrepancy over semantics.

Happy Anniversary, Dick and Lisa. To think you've come so far from those golden, childhood years when you two strolled through the neighborhood and, apparently, discovered perverts hiding in the bushes.

My, oh my. The grow up so very fast.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Harbinger of the Apocalpyse

2009-02-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

Oh crap! The world is about to end. There is no other way to explain this. None. I mean, I can read articles about atrocities committed in third world nations by militias and dictators, I can watch an administration systematically strip away constitutional rights and perpetuate their power on a platform of fear-mongering and misinformation, I can even wrap my head around the fact that our media culture seems determined to perpetuate Paris Hilton's celebrity instead of euthanizing her, and still believe that our world will somehow continue to limp along blithely. But then I read that they're making a Spider-man musical, directed by Julie Taymor with musical score by Bono and the Edge, and my brain just...

...where am I?

Dammit. I was hoping that I had suffered some sort of blunt-force-trauma to the head and was waking up in a hospital bed in a universe where this sort of absurdity wasn't increasingly common. No such luck. What's that? You don't believe me? You insist that I am actually sitting at my computer with a book of Mad Libs open on my lap, and I thought it would be delightful to combine a superhero comic, half of the Irish rock band U2, and the creative force behind such films as Titus and Across the Universe? But no, such is not the case. There isn't enough crack for me to smoke to come up with that one on my own, though apparently others are happily "hittin' the rock" and maintaining their positions of creative control on Broadway. And who the hell okayed this thing? If you came to me and pitched this idea, I'd stare at you like you had a penis growing out of your forehead.

And come on. Spider-man, Turn Off the Dark is the best they could come up with for a title? Good God! It's like one of my remedial students wrote this thing. Perhaps next we'll be treated to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aquaman: I Humped a Shark. Jeez, Bono, did you run out of starving people to help? Shouldn't you be busy wearing a dashiki at a press conference in the Sudan or something? I need to stop thinking about this - I'm giving myself an aneurysm. Honestly, I kinda want to kill myself a little bit now. I think I'll go watch Step Up 2: The Streets and remind myself what real art is all about.

Because Working at a Car Wash Isn't Bad Enough Already

2009-02-11T15:44:00.000-08:00

This little exposé details, in rather business-like fashion, a charming little "snafu" some local car wash owners have gotten themselves into. According to the author, these intrepid titans of industry have been treating their car wash employees like "indentured servants" because, you know, having to tell people you work at a car wash isn't quite shitty enough. Apparently this husband and wife duo "worked [their employees / indentured servants / butts of some cosmic joke] without overtime pay, rest or lunch breaks, drank water from a washing machine, received no proper medical treatment for cuts and burns, and were harassed if they tried to unionize." Most of these I can wrap my head around: while not exactly living the Gospel, I understand that virtually all of these infractions were the result of pushing their employees to be more productive. Fine. I get it. But making them drink water from a washing machine? I mean, it's not like we're talking about a laundromat here. Hell, at least let them drink from a hose or something. Of course, this is also the revelation that makes me giggle the hardest. "What? You want a drink? Well, I just started a load of whites ten minutes ago, so just wring out a pair of underwear and see how much water you can get from that. Oh, and I'm docking your pay while you're lapping up that charming cocktail of soap-and-crotch water. Cheers."

But what I really appreciate about this story is how it puts into sharp relief the simple reality that people bring different philosophies of management to the workplace. The owners / operators felt that denying these workers their legal rights an expedient shortcut to greater profit at, admittedly, their peons' expense. Meanwhile, their immediate subordinate (the site manager) used a different approach: he is "accused of using a machete and a baton to threaten workers and unionizers." No one's going to accuse this guy of being subtle, but hell, that washing machine is looking better and better, huh? Complain all you want, but you can't argue with results.

So, dear car wash owners and manager, I salute you. And rest assured that the law will evaluate your various infractions with the utmost diligence and scrutiny, resulting in the most equitable decision possible: that go-getter with the machete and baton (the latter, I pray, filled with water and glitter so it caught the light magically as he threatened to sever a hand if you didn't buff that hood like a genie was going to pop out of the exhaust pipe) "faces 2 1/2 years in jail if convicted," while the husband and wife duo (the family that oppresses the proletariat together stays together, right?) are staring down the barrel of "nearly 86 years each in jail if convicted." Bet they're wishing they stuck with the family business and opened a Nike factory right about now.

Texan Zombies Declare Nefarious Political Allegiance...Other Than Being Texan

2009-02-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

The liberal media is determined to let the zombies win. One of the fundamental tools we have to avoid - or at least survive - the coming zombie apocalypse is our ever-present vigilance, and thus to present a hero's attempt at warning his community of imminent attack as mere vandalism hurts us all. Of course, it hurts the people who get eaten more, but my ideological pain is nearly as acute, if not so bloody. And it doesn't involve me screaming desperately for mercy that will never come, either. Or rising some time later, an undead mockery of my former self, to maraud the streets for flesh. But they are still reminiscent of each other. On a certain, abstract level.

But I digress. Last Monday, a champion put himself or herself in the line of fire to reprogram two electronic detour signs in Austin, TX with such warnings as CAUTION! ZOMBIES AHEAD! and even more chilling, NAZI ZOMBIES! RUN!!! The "journalist" who reported this incident offered no details on whether the undead have begun dabbling in sinister political ideologies or if these zombies had simply persisted since 1942 Germany, though I imagine the presence or absence of helmets with pointy spikes on top would pretty much answer that one for us.

What did become clear, though, was that the reporter's ignorance of zombies was second only to her ignorance of how difficult it is to reprogram a sign. The author, who I'll call "Katie Petrosky of All Ablog Austin," reports that "the hacker could be a computer genius from UT." Now, I've become accustomed over the years to the imprecise uses to which people put the language, and sadly, I've become relatively resigned. I remain mute when a stranger says a hamburger is "fucking fantastic," when clearly it is neither "extravagantly fanciful" nor do they have their penis in their entree. I smile reassuringly when a student confesses a paper "sucks," knowing that it is less an evaluation of the composition's quality as how reading it drains the light from my life, nay, my very soul. But even the most resigned of men must draw the line somewhere, and so when some Luddite deems the reprogramming of an electronic road sign the work of a "computer genius," I must protest. Just because you think the spirits living inside your laptop are playing pranks when you accidentally erase the email from that Nigerian prince you've been meaning to help out doesn't mean the guy who broke open an orange lock box and entered a pass code is a "genius." It does mean you might be retarded, though.

If these warnings were genuine, though, we have little to worry about the reporter passing the idiot gene to what would have undoubtedly been a nigh-Biblical amount of offspring. You see, her parting quip was that "with any luck, Tuesday night’s cold front killed off any undead with ghoulish plans to invade the city." Okay. Calm down. Count to ten. Now: 1) zombies don't really have "plans," so much as an inescapable instinct to gorge themselves on human flesh; and 2) the cold won't do a good God damn thing to them, seeing as how they're already dead. Of course, their fingers may be a little more blackened and stiff as they drag you from your Starbucks laptop station, but I assure you, their jaws are still strong, and their teeth sharp. Would I could say the same about your intellect.

My thanks to Tina for passing this little gem along to me, and to Ryan for giving me dibs at venting my spleen at this poor reporter. I feel considerably better now. Not, you know, about myself, but at least about this whole thing.

A Fuzzy Yin to the Pederast's Yang

2009-02-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'll admit that the last post wasn't in the best taste, and while one might observe that I had nothing to do with creating that unfortunate design, I suppose one could distort logic in such a way that, in a certain time and place, passing along such images might not be considered "awesome." To that I would simply point out that, strictly speaking, the word means "to inspire awe," and the magnitude of the oversight involved in actually putting that logo on your building most definitely does fill one with awe.

That said, the universe likes balance, and so to even things out, I've decided to post a picture of a koala bear taking a bath. I hope you have a good dentist because this little guy is so sweet he'll give you a cavity. Also, because koala meat is a little tough, so there will be some chewing involved. And while not nearly so delicious as panda, the koala is well worth the effort.

Ha, ha. Stupid photographer. He has his camera set to the 30th month, and everyone knows 2009 isn't a leap year.

Great Moments in Design

2009-02-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

This is...unfortunate.

Did You Ever Get Busted For Boppin?

2009-01-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

One of the responsibilities of a high school teacher is to chaperone school dances. One of the responsibilities of a high school teacher's spouse is to be annually dragged to a high school dance in a four hour marathon of revulsion that resembles being exiled to a leper colony, except instead of laying around and dying like a decent human being, all the lepers were dry humping each other off tempo to a Britney Spears song.

I mean, I think we're being a little disingenuous here to be calling this pagan ritual "a dance," because nothing of the sort takes place. For instance, I can't dance at all, but I can slowly rotate in a circle while holding a girl at roughly arm's length. Room was left for the Holy Ghost, and as a result I was able to hold onto God's approval and my virginity well into college. My point is it that whatever else it was, it wasn't dancing. And while I'm happy to see this most sacred of traditions persevere amidst "the youth," one wonders if the little rascals actually think what they're doing is somehow breaking the mold. Hymens and parental illusions, perhaps, if one judges by the proximity with which they writhe, but these kids certainly aren't dancing. All they do is bend their knees slightly and shift their weight from heel to heel with varying degrees of velocity and success. Then they just stack on each other like legos: a few of this, a few more of that, click that last piece in, and you have a perfect model of the herpes simplex virus. Isn't that wonderful? And filthy. Don't forget filthy.

But I doubt you need me to remind you of these things. So let's instead, dearest reader, talk about the particulars of this latest bacchanalia. It was held in a car museum, and....no, that pretty much says it all. Hundreds of teens congregated in a stew of ProActiv, Axe Body spray, and flop sweat, surrounded by millions of dollars of pristine classic and luxury automobiles. Security was on hand, of course, but I'm unsure if the revelers appreciated that additional bodies were hired to see to the cars' safety while they themselves merited no such expenditure. After all, that's what we were there for. But apart from the ass-beating Kelly and I handed out on the Rock Band set up on the premises, at no other time were students in any significant danger.

I could go on and on, so I'll keep it to my top five favorite aspects of the dance, in no particular order:

1) A pack of five freshman boys who wandered around looking like Brendan Frasier in Blast From the Past: utterly fascinated by their surroundings and having no fucking idea how to proceed from there. Among them was a kid my height wearing a purple suit and a bowler hat, and another kid half as tall with feathered hair and a pure white tuxedo. Tre, tre magnifique.

2) The delicious irony that a significant fraction of the attendees were probably conceived in ill-considered bouts of fleeting passion on similar back-seats, hoods, perhaps even trunks, not two decades ago. And that a subsequent generation would be coming along in predictably similar fashion that very night.

3) A group of 43 students showed up in a chartered party bus. Because, you know, sometimes a Hummer limo just isn't ostentatious enough.

4) Amidst the many limos, a minivan drove up with a bemused father at the wheel. As he cued up behind a limo to drop off his young passengers, his head whipped around to the back seat, as if a shrill voice was asking him at that very moment why he was so determined to commit social suicide on his son / daughter's behalf. Looking mildly abashed, he quickly began to reverse in an attempt to leave the queue, and in so doing nearly hit a young couple walking behind him. The remainder of his time in my field of view was spent grimly staring ahead, knuckles white at the wheel, conducting an impromptu investigation into if a man might actually will himself from existence entirely through sheer force of determination. Much to his chagrin, he survived.

5) The venue also contained a horse made from melted down bumpers and proudly stood, its metallic hide glowing golden in the dim light, conspicuously between the boys' and girls' bathrooms. If any intrepid students had taken a page from their classical literature and stowed away inside the beast to avoid paying the price for admission, their desperate, muffled screams for release were obscured by the DJ's "dope-ass mix."

Kelly and I always take a picture together at these things, both because they're free for the chaperones, and because I have to do what she tells me, especially on her turf (and the earf is her turf). This time, however, despite her best efforts to maintain the tradition, we weren't able to do so. As a compensation, I have instead scanned and posted pictures of others at their high school dances. Yes, I still have these. No, I don't know exactly why. Yes, it is a good thing others of you didn't know me thirteen years ago. A damn good thing.

I wish I knew who started the rumor that any high school dance was a magical night. If you want a magical night, go see a Harry Potter movie or huff some paint. And if you want a terrifyingly magical night, do both.

DY - NO - MYTE ! ! !

2009-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

I've actually been sitting on this one for a while, what with the survey results laying bare my inherent disdain for anyone who doesn't have to coat themselves in SPF 30 before walking through the dappled sunlight in their own living room. But thanks to this movie trailer, I've realized I'm just being a jive honkey.

Yes, you read that right: I've reached an existential turning point. No more will I and my white brothers (probably not the right noun in this context, come to think of it) destroy urban communities by selling drugs to, what appears to be, a nine year old boy. No more will I use my insidious contacts to hire egregious stereotypes of Chinese kung fu masters and, confusingly, ninja to assassinate the glorious, play-by-his-own-rules-with-an-afro-that-won't-quit protagonist who seeks to thwart my dastardly Caucasian plans. No more will I....

I'm going to practice a shred of self restraint and stop right there, but trust me when I say I could have gone on a lot longer than that (not something I'm able to say in other areas of my social life). Besides, nothing I say could speak nearly so eloquently as the blacksploitation satire Black Dynamite, or at least, the red-band trailer for said opus. Be warned, there are boobies and egregious racial stereotypes in here, but as it's all conspicuously self-aware, I'm told that makes it okay. Did I mention I was self-aware when I failed that racism test?

This post is dedicated to Anthony "Pudding" Alvarez, who, if boiled down to his liquid essence and then injected into the tear duct of a talented filmmaker, would invariably create a movie exactly like this one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see his name in the credits somewhere. Okay, actually, I would; he's a mattress salesman and spends all his time with degenerates, so yes, I would be surprised if he somehow was involved in a major motion picture.

Kickin' It Like It's 1399

2009-01-17T14:18:00.000-08:00

So it seems a go-getter in central California made international news this week when he, according to the headlines, sold his 14 year old daughter for $16,000, over a hundred cases of beer, and an undisclosed amount of meat. If you're anything like me, two things flashed through your brain in quick succession upon hearing this: 1) That's awesome! and 2) Wait a minute....what kind of beer are we talking about here? While I applaud the quantity, I won't pretend that there were any surprises in the list: 100 cases of Corona, 50 cases of Negro Modelo, and six bottles of wine. I know, I know: why so much wine?

Of course, anyone with a high school education should recognize this as the dowry that it is, barring the minor detail that dowries typically come from the bride's family to the groom's, but the fact remains that marriage arrangements have historically involved far more than the transfer of children. Secondly, the meat and drink was clearly for the wedding reception. And the $16,000....well, yeah, now you're selling your kid.

As ever, though, the devil's in the details. The groom who was expected to pay all this is only 18 years old, and when, not surprisingly, he didn't deliver in full, the father complained to the police and that's how he got himself arrested. And maybe it's just me, but I particularly enjoy the article's fumbling grasp at political correctness. The father, they write, "is a member of an indigenous Mexican Trique community. Greenfield police Chief Joe Grebmeier said the case highlights an issue confronting local authorities in that arranged marriages with girls as young as 12 are not uncommon among the Trique." Actually, asshole, it's not uncommon for any culture on the face of the planet; this isn't just something that brown people do. Sure, it was far more explicit in centuries past, but where do you think our little tradition about the bride's family paying for the wedding comes from?

But despite all this - even the obscene quantities of wine at play, not seen by mortal man since the vomitoriums of ancient Rome - this story spoke to me because it hits so close to home. Greenfield, CA, ground zero for this hilarity, is a mere 12.6 miles from King City, CA, the hometown of a dear friend's bride. We all see now that this friend - we'll call him Schmeg Schmallagher - really dodged a bullet on this one. He could have very well been stuck paying off his father-in-law for years to come, pulling off the road during family vacations to see if the local butcher has anything on sale. Come to think of it, they have recently gotten into home-brewing beer...a lot. Oh no. Dearest Schmeg, do you suffer under the oppressive yoke of a delicious "meat and mead" debt? Do you spend long nights staring blankly at the receipt creeping from an old-timey calculator, wondering how you'll hit next month's quota? Must you buy the largest Christmas goose in the shop window, not because you are filled with holiday spirit like a rejuvenated Scrooge, but because you hear the ghostly chains of debt rattling in the distance?

Persevere, you Prince of Harlem, you king of New York. Persevere.

Phun Wif Wordz!!!

2009-01-15T19:28:00.000-08:00

Any teacher who comes into contact with student writing is routinely treated to new and exciting ways to brutalize our poor language. I realize that the academy offers merely one style of communication and that my job is, in no small part, rather an exercise in helping these neophytes code switch. That said, a number of these students have the English language cast down in a well, filthy and scared, and are threatening it with the hose if it doesn't put the lotion in the basket. Which, come to think of it, kinda makes me Clarice in this little metaphor, which in turns ends with me being stalked by students wearing night vision goggles in a pitch-black meth den...and then I shoot them? With....knowledge?

While I stare aghast at the tattered remnants of my unraveled metaphor encircling my feet, console yourself with the fact that this post isn't about freshman composition. Rather, it's about adventures in reading, or to be more precise, adventures in reading others' mistakes.

Exhibit A:

And to think the man from Galilee would take the time to ensure my dinner was served delicious, hot, and in a timely manner. I've been told all my life that Jesus loves me (well, all of us, actually - except Spencer of Hills fame, loathed of God, who is clearly an emissary of Satan), but I didn't know it was in a "Mom making sure you've had a good meal" sort of way. Of course, his last act with all his disciples together was a supper, so I suppose I shouldn't have let that one sneak up on me. Of course, in retrospect, I maybe should have become a little more suspicious when the delivery guy told me that visiting that one internet site was most definitely a sin. You know...the one Greg's on.

That, however, was merely the appetizer, my friends. Allow me to pull back my (faux) silver tray cover in a dramatic fashion to reveal your main course:

I had this little gem waiting for me on the wall outside my office when I got to campus Tuesday morning. My eyes lit up as they did when I charged into the living room on Christmas morning so many years ago, and just like that beloved holiday ritual, I wasn't quite sure I'd been a good enough boy all year to deserve this. In their defense, there's no false advertising at play here; ever since we determined keeping an attack monkey in the Writing Center was a violation of virtually every University health statute (even after we took back the knife and gave that vicious simian a week to let the Wild Turkey leech out of its system), there have been only human breasts in and around the University Writing Program. Of course, I can't speak for the Creative Writing department.

If I were compelled to glean some sort of lesson from all this, I suppose it would be this: if you're going to commit something to print, make sure it says what the hell you want it to say. Otherwise you're going to look like a jackoff, and nobody wants that.

Wait...who the hell is Hannibal Lector then?

Buy Me a Double-Wide and Hand Me a Pabst

2009-01-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

Shortly before the holiday break, a friend of mine in the department took a moment to say how glad he was that I came to our school and how much he appreciates our friendship. I was rather taken aback, as the culture I come from is built upon the idea that such sentiment, or any such expression of emotion, is never voiced aloud. I've always felt this works in my favor in matters of psychological duress, when I simply push things deep down and idly wonder how it'll manage to work it's way out (lately, it's been swearing in my sleep, if you're curious), but genuine affection or appreciation for anyone must be communicated solely through the gaze...which, unfortunately, usually earns me the adjective "squinty." Like an amorous pirate, I like to think, but the point remains I don't communicate affection well.

Perhaps the reason is because, it turns out, I am utterly without it. Yes, according to the flyspeck institutions of Harvard, Yale, and the National Institute of Mental Health, I am a seething cauldron of hate waiting to attack my African American brothers and sisters. You see, they have created an online test on racism you can take, and my end result was that I "strongly prefer people of European descent." "Strongly" isn't all that bad, you might (insincerely) say, but let me give you the scale: No preference, Minor Preference; Moderate Preference; Strong Preference. Yup. And to think I've always been such a good test taker otherwise.

I don't mean to make light of this result, but I just don't think it's all that accurate. I mean, I genuinely fear or dislike every creature on God's green earth; no one demographic really has a lock on my special attentions. More to the point, I've always found such tests a novelty more than anything else. Still, the majority of you are probably sagely nodding your heads, having expected nothing less, and I'm sure a choir of Irish ancestors are smiling apologetically in Purgatory for having pushed me down this dark path. I wish I had the good grace to feel more embarrassed about the results, but I really don't have time for that amidst my frantic campaign to prove Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake. In the meantime, pop over to More Rants than Raves to find the link and take this test yourself. I solemnly pray you'll all do better than I did.

The Perfect Gift for the Homophobe on Your List: Musical Theater

2008-12-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

By now, the vast majority of you have heard me grumble about how empty I found the sentiment when the pundits were lauding America's election of Barack Obama as the embodiment of our nation's commitment to equality for all, while here in the "liberal" state of California the masses succumbed to a campaign of ignorance and fear-mongering to vote yes on Prop 8. I was so frustrated and disappointed by this that I actually participated in a protest a week after the election. Yes, you read that correctly: I participated in a protest, and not the fake kind where you turn the lights off in your house for an hour on a random Tuesday. No, I actually marched around and chanted things for the better part of an afternoon. Just so you don't think it's an outright lie, I'll readily admit I was with friends the entire time, never actually held a sign, and rarely raised my voice even to the level at which I lecture my students. Nevertheless, for those of you who know me well, this is still clearly a sign of the pending apocalypse. Yea, and the wry observer would participate in political action, and the seas would boil, the skys raineth blood, and as hell frozeth over, many a date that was sarcastically promised in youth cameth to be.

My goal here is not to praise my first tentative step into political activism, 'cause let's face it, this will most likely be my only one. No, I bring the matter up as segue into a charming little video from our friends at Funny or Die, who have given us such hilarious yet offputting gems as The Landlord and Green Team. This artistic triumph, however, has anything anyone could ever want: Jesus with a shrimp cocktail, musical theater, Neil Patrick Harris (aka NPH, aka Dr. Horrible), and a political message that isn't (too) heavy handed. And it's set in a Sacramento community college, albeit one that doesn't actually exist. Enjoy.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

A Bridge Between the Holidays

2008-11-28T13:19:00.000-08:00

After watching High Fidelity last night, I was inspired to make a top five list of my own. As we've just waddled out of the Thanksgiving holiday (bloated, satisfied, and proudly displaying gravy stains in the most embarrassing of places) and find ourselves on Black Friday (which, for a considerable period of my youth, I mistakenly thought had something to do with Irish people being slaughtered by British colonials, but now fully appreciate how much more grim the day really is), I ask myself what better kind of list to make than of the top five creepy corporate mascots selling food products? Indeed, how better to bridge Thanksgiving and Christmas than to combine morbid obesity, corporate whoredom, and feelings of unease and vulnerability? Don't worry - the question was rhetorical.

(Dis)Honorable Mention: Ronald McDonald. While a clown selling children deep fried portions of chicken that cannot reliably be placed on any anatomical diagram of the beast is absolutely terrifying, this famous spokesman for pederasts the world over is disqualified because it's just too damn obvious. No, we must blaze a new, slightly less obvious trail of our own, dear friends.

#5: Arby's Oven Mitt. To be honest, this guy isn't all that creepy. But he could very easily smother the life out of you with his quilted folds, and to be honest, I find his expression a little condescending. Hey Oven Mitt: I've almost got a Ph.d and you're selling fast food; get that fucking look off your face before I set you on fire. So why even let this comfy bastard slip into my top five? I absolutely despise Arby's.

#4: Quiznos Rat-Hamster-Beast. Clearly, this thing is an abomination in the sight of God and Man. Using a rodent that appears to be an amorphous lump of fur isn't the best bet for advertising food in the first place, but to then put crazy eyes on it just sends the message that not only will your food fail even Eastern European standards of prison meat quality, but you'll also get rabies from an animal bite. The only conceivable link I can see between this thing and a Quiznos Sub is that, like their tasty sandwiches, their mascot is best consigned to purging flames.

#3: Swiss Dairy Man. I really don't know if I feel comfortable having this thing delivering me my milk. First of all, how did he lose his other eye? For one reason or another, "prison shower fight" comes to mind. And if that's the case, what the hell does he have to smile about? Probably because he's deliberately holding his quart of milk in such a way as to simultaneously hide and suggest his raging erection. With a giant container of milk. Real subtle, crazy maimed ex-con milkman. Real subtle.

#2: Pillsbury Dough Boy. Sure, he seems harmless, and the whole family seems to love him in the commercials, but one musn't overlook the simple fact that this pale, dead-eyed chef seems to spend his every waking hour breaking into people's homes and demanding to be touched. And when they do, it's not a gentle caress. No, they jab their finger way the hell into his torso, and while by all rights he should be suffering massive internal organ damage, all he does is giggle and beg for more. He's unstoppable. Mark my words: when Zu'ul arrives and we choose the form of our own destroyer, it will be this little guy. And when the M1 tanks fire their 105mm cannon rounds into his doughy gut, his staccato laughter will be the song that ends the world.

#1: The Burger King. As the top of any list should, this winner holds many characteristics of his fellows further down the list: dead eyes, perpetual mirth, and a job shilling absolutely atrocious food. That said, he isn't really all that bad, I suppose, even if I put aside my heartfelt belief that it's a ripoff of Jack from Jack N' the Box. But when I saw the commercial where a guy wakes up in bed and the King was right there, waiting, staring with those enameled eyes as this poor bastard tried to figure out why he wasn't already chained to a wall in a Burger King themed sex dungeon, the King immediately took his place of honor atop the throne of this list. I have no doubt his reign will be merciless and terrible.

He's Like a Lawyer the Way He Gets You Off

2008-11-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

Last week my brother Brian found out he passed the New York bar exam, which means he passed both of the bar exams he took. Congrats, Brian, on a job well done. I don't really have anything funny to add. I'm just really proud of you.

Kitten Hanging from Tree Branch = Cute + Emotionally Uplifting

2008-11-12T19:31:00.001-08:00

Both quarter and semester have resolutely passed their midpoints, and I for one am starting to show signs of wear and tear. I increasingly leave my classes frustrated, especially at the junior college where I get to watch my students routinely sabotage their chances of passing the course. Progress on my dissertation can best be described as glacial, less in the sense that should my dissertation melt it will raise global sea levels and wreck havoc on marine ecosystems, as it's just moving really fucking slowly. And it occasionally sloughs off ice flows into the ocean. But mainly the slow thing. Clearly, I need a "pick me up,"and while I always have my alcohol abuse to desperately cling to, for those of you who respect your bodies enough not to actively try to kill it by repeatedly ingesting delicious poison, I humbly offer some inspirational posters for your consumption. Enjoy.

Cast Your Vote Today!

2008-11-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

I was awoken at 4:48am this morning by a text message from a friend in New York who apparently forgot that if it's pretty early where he lives, I'd most likely still be asleep on the other side of the country. This might be forgivable if it was something particularly important, but in reality he was threatening to punch me in the crotch if I didn't vote. I'm curious whether this was a general threat he sent to many people on his contacts list, or if I have somehow earned his ire in particular. Nevertheless, I can get behind the general sentiment, if not the particular threat to my reproductive capabilities, and consequently I have decided to make a quick post to ensure this anonymous New Yorkian that I am indeed aware of the grave decision due to be made this very evening:

I really can't decide if this is funny or sad, though I'm leaning toward the latter, seeing as whichever idiot wrote it got their timeline completely wrong, having Lando claim he's against a war that was already nearly twenty years in the past. That, and poor Billy Dee gets that confused, "where am I?" look characteristic of the elderly at the very end. If that's not sad, I don't know what is. Hopefully there will be some other news tonight to cheer me up.

Best.....Birthday.....Ever!

2008-10-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

Those of you who frequent Ryan's blog More Rants than Raves no doubt saw his recent post about the crackhead who was stealing spark plugs in order to make crack pipes, courtesy of The Best of Craig's List. If you don't frequent his blog, it's funnier than mine, so check it out. Unlike me, who depends on his ponderous vocabulary and sardonic, downright mean observational humor, Ryan simply finds all the strange and funny things going on, and as they say, truth is funnier than fiction.

Anyway, he passed this little gem along to me last weekend, and I must say, it was like he had kicked aside some innocuous gravel to reveal a perfectly resplendent diamond in (appropriately) the rough. Indeed, I think they made a movie about something like that; I forget the title, but Leonardo DiCaprio dies in the end of it. Something about blood and diamonds. I think it was Titanic.

Despite my rambling, the point is not the subtle differences between his blog and mine, but rather this splendid post on Craig's List. I'd say something funny about it, but I don't want to detract from it's sheer genius:

We need an Adult Drunk Clown who is good at getting drunk and stupid. No need to do any clown tricks, just hang out and drink a shit load. We will be hopping around to different bars and want a clown to tag a long and drink heavely. He doesn't even need to socialize with anyone, just drink.
The birthday is on Friday, Sept. 5th in Bucktown. Oh, did I mention that the clown needs to get shitfaced. Don't worry, we will purchase all the drinks.

I have two words for these intrepid young men: Fucking and Awesome. These are the types of lads you see with their left legs cocked at an uncomfortable angle on Captain Morgan commercials. Drunk and clearly inspired frat boys, I salute you (if not your skills with spelling and punctuation)! Take a moment if you will, dear reader, and breathe in the sweet hilarity of this concept.

Now take a second to think about how this request gets exponentially creepier for each year you subtract from the birthday boy's age. Bon appetit.

JAPAN: Where Taking Real Life Too Seriously Just Isn't Enough

2008-10-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this by saying that I completely realize that the line between digital worlds and real life can sometimes, under certain circumstances, become hazy--typically when I have a few beers in me and a nine year old is walloping the sweet shit out of me on Halo 3. That's bad enough, but when said grade schooler then starts lobbing slurs at you that he, by all rights, shouldn't even know, then it's time for Colonel Gentleman to remind the kid his mom doesn't love him and his dad has a whole other family in another state. Or that his teacher told me she thinks he's stupid and finger paints like a special-needs chimpanzee. One of the two usually does the trick. But I digress.

Believe it or not, this post isn't necessarily just about people being bat-shit insane within the safe anonymity of cyberspace, but rather when said craziness bleeds into the real world. Case in point: last week, a Japanese woman found herself suddenly divorced from her virtual husband on Maple Story without notification of any kind. No doubt she believed the split was without provocation either, but who among us can say that, after being dumped, we confessed, "Hell, I really fucking deserved that." Anyway, she decided to murder the son of a bitch in response. Why is this really all that newsworthy, you may ask? Because she had the good sense to keep it in the digital realm from which this all-too real anguish sprang. In other words, she logged on her "husband's" account and deleted the character. If only this lesson could be applied to us men in the real world: if we feared actually ceasing to be the moment we spurn another, there would be a whole lot less douchebaggery...and a lot less men period, until the human race could no longer sustain itself as the only survivor would be Jared from Subway, who seems like a nice enough guy, but not quite the genetic stock you want to repopulate a planet with.

Anyway, the 33 years young man who had his Maple Story avatar deleted by the 43 years young piano teacher who lives 650 miles away is apparently a little upset over the altercation. And rather than contact the company that maintains Maple Story to see if his character can be retrieved or some other sort of compensatory gesture can be made, they've arrested the lady responsible. If charges are pressed and she is convicted, "she faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000." Come on, lady. At least have the class to strap on an adult diaper and drive the 650 miles (in her undoubtedly adorable and fuel efficient car) to confront the man in person like we would here in the States. Simply deleting his character is far too passive aggressive, and thus plays right into the misogynistic stereotypes we misogynists hold. Next time just stab the fucker and cover your tracks. That I can get behind.

Local GOP Group Reaches New Heights of Hillbilly Ignorance

2008-10-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, my wife brought home a newsletter she received from someone at school, not to sway me to its extreme right political leanings, of course, but to rather show me another reason why Norco is bat-shit insane. I assumed the woman who printed the rag was the usual crazy shouting in the wilderness, publishing her libel happily from her double-wide trailer and only occasionally taking breaks from her propaganda machine to visit the well out back and remind the children trapped inside that "They put the lotion in the basket, or they get the hose."

Sadly, we Inland Empire residents need not suffer alone any longer. What I assume is the same newsletter has reached a new level of offensive recently by publishing a story that is quickly gaining national attention, complete with an image that even I feel too disgusted to post, of Obama's face on a donkey in the center of a food stamp, flanked by a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, ribs, koolaid, and....wait for it....watermelon. Apparently the harpy was musing one day about what denomination of currency Obama's face would one day grace should he be elected President, and the answer, apparently, was "food stamp." When confronted with the obviously racist overtones of the image, the shrew responded, "I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else." No need to plead ignorance, lady: we already know you're a fucking idiot.

I'd suggest perhaps turning a high powered hose on her instead of the kids in the well, but I don't think she'd see the connection. Here's the article in the Press Enterprise, complete with picture of "Obama Bucks," for anyone who needs reminding that some of us out here are clearly floating in a warm spot in the gene pool.

Why I Won't Teach Elementary

2008-10-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

After making a joke in my last post about huffing paint and cruising...er....drag racing in front of a preschool, I took a moment for Colonel Gentleman, looked inside my heart, and asked, "If I got out of that car and engaged all those children at once in vicious, no-holds-barred combat, would I ultimately stand triumphant upon an unmoving pile of vanquished foes?" The thing was, I didn't honestly know if I could take all the little bastards. But as I started to fashion a crude set of "battle-mitts" out of woolen gloves, shards of broken glass, and duct tape in order to test that very hypothesis, I discovered a digital quiz that would answer this very question for me, and as I don't know where a local preschool even is, my sloth won out over my desire for righteous battle. And the result?

16
At first glance, this may appear to be a respectable number. Remember, however, that with the state of the American educational system what it is, classroom crowding at all but the most elite private preschools would ensure I was taking thirty to forty of these drooling, sticky hellions on at once. And am I satisfied with only a 50% casualty rate? I don't know.

I suspect my inexperience with avoiding swarm-tactic combat attributed to the relatively low number, as well as my inexperience with combat of any kind. That, and the stale milk breath I imagine most of those little kids have would be a deal breaker. I mean, how can you concentrate on dropping an atomic elbow on Betty Sue when little Tommy Miller smells like a month old quart of Clover Stornetta?

I have my suspicions which of my regular readers will score highest on this quiz, one of whom is appropriately enough planning on teaching young children. Do please take a moment to take the test and share your results in the comments section. When the inevitable zombie apocalypse comes, I want to know who's on point when the gaggle of toddlers break through the door and shamble our way.

Congratulations All Around

2008-10-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

My younger brother passed the Connecticut bar exam on Friday, which means that, statistically speaking, there is one state in the Union I am now much more likely to commit a crime in. Of course, I should first pinpoint where exactly Connecticut is. No sense huffing paint and drag racing in front of a preschool in the Carolinas, now is there? That Maker's Mark Ambassador card of mine isn't a get out of jail free card, and even if it were, I'd save it for something big like hunting the homeless for sport.

In completely unrelated news, save for their relatively close proximity, hat's off to Greg's wife Melissa for getting a theater gig recently that will ensure her acquisition of her equity card. I'd say something else, but I don't know what an equity card is. I imagine it involves her being equal to something, or perhaps how much a house is worth. Ah well. I'll let the egg-heads in Washington figure that one out...which means the Gallaghers are either due for a 700 billion dollar bailout, or we'll be declaring war on them. Rest assured, though--neither will be effective anyway.

A very sincere congratulations to my kid brother Brian and Melissa for their recent accomplishments: thank you for ensuring your friends and family have at least one person to count on financially.

Florida Man Becomes Front-Runner for Badass of the Year Award

2008-09-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you were taking your pet for a swim and a shark suddenly grabbed the poor little furball and took him beneath the murky surface of the waves? We all probably have a few romantic notions of our potential, illusory heroism, but I wager a fair percentage of us might just squander those few precious seconds immediately after the abduction staring at the water stupidly, trying to wrap our heads around what the fuck just happened.

Greg LeNoir (aka "The Black," unless my French is even worse that I believe) begs to differ. When his rat terrier Jake was encompassed almost completely by the jaws of a shark and taken underwater, Greg dove straight in and punched the five-foot shark until it gave his dog back. The dive probably wasn't pretty, as his giant balls undoubtedly distort his center of gravity, but it's the results that matter--and the results are 100% undiluted "Awesome."

Greg LeNoir, I salute you. As, no doubt, does little Jake. Next time do us all a favor and don't take the little bastard swimming in shark infested waters. Moving out of Florida might be a nice start.

Sally Forth to an Age of Gilded Birthday Wonder

2008-09-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Last week was my birthday, and so my friends grudgingly decided to sally forth and celebrate fate's twenty ninth consecutive annual failure at wiping me from the face of the planet. Vegas had me, admittedly on a long shot, succumbing to syphilis-induced dementia and wandering into the desert to die this year, and while it's about as likely as winning the lottery, some couldn't resist the odds given. Hell, even I dropped a fiver on it. I suppose my widow would have received the winnings...and, if I really had syphilis, hopefully a shot or something.

...speaking of syphilis, we went to Medieval Times to celebrate. If you've never been, it's a magical place where grown adults wear paper crowns, eat their food with their hands, and shout at failed actors struggling for a paycheck. I adored it. Of course, getting mildly drunk and shouting at people is ingrained deep in my DNA, but the others made a point of putting on a brave face:

Obviously I'm having a blast, as I have a new crunk chalice in my right hand and a miniature flag in my left, and Kelly's good, as she's standing next to a prettier man. Nick looks mildly irritated, but only John on the right seems desperate for a quick death, and his fiance Megan appears all too happy to oblige. I can only imagine how long a blunt, plastic, light-up sword would take to sever a human neck. Of course, that may be like asking how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop. Either way, as John is still alive and well at the time of this writing, it apparently takes at least a week.

The crowns' color tells you what section and what knight you will be supporting, and as anyone can imagine, the Yellow Knight was a fucking embarrassment. Honestly, he should have had a lame gazelle surrounded by lions on his shield, but I suppose that sort of heraldry is too large for anyone's blazon. Here's a shot, not of our man, but of the MC, who sounded a lot like he was announcing a boxing match.

I mean, come on. The light is shining directly from the front, but his shadow still darts blackly forward. Clearly the laws of physics do not apply in this magical, liminal space, and so I thought there was a chance the Yellow Knight, despite over a thousand years of literary precedent, might win. Alas, it was not to be.

Afterward we went back to our place, and in traditional fashion, got blasted drunk. Indeed, our faculties became so impaired that we started letting any piece of gutter trash come in and hang out with us, which is what led to the arrival of a second, far more terrifying Yellow Knight:

Indeed, the only vaguely redeeming feature of this hobo was his enduring affection for his mother, proudly displayed on a pale, completely un-muscled shoulder. That, and those glorious flaxen strands.

Thanks for a great time, folks. And for all those of you who called, thanks very much; you were there in spirit. As, apparently, was a hillbilly.

The Collar Pops from Within

2008-09-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Over the years, my wife has struggled to break me of certain lingual habits, not the least of which is using the phrase "lingual habits." I'm told it smacks of pretension, but as a friend recently told me, pretension is the new modesty. And in the spirit of both those sentiments, today I want to talk about the douche bag, kids. I'm not talking about that mysterious feminine product that seems doomed to be forever linked to meadow or spring metaphors in advertising, but rather that special brand of gentleman who makes me what to drive a railroad spike through my temple.

I bring this esteemed topic to the fore in honor of a man who I met last weekend at a wedding. Let's call him Andy, or as we soon started calling him: DB; the Douche, that guy, and Andouche. "But Colonel Gentleman," you might say, "you're a complete narcissist and your default opinion of any newcomer is disdain." Touche. Nevertheless, I still maintain I'm in the right on this one, and despite the rapid and unanimous consensus of those in attendance at the blessed nuptials (congrats again, Brock and Natalie!), allow me to furnish you with proof.

Item 1) Insisted on going on separate trip for his special, elite tequila (Don Julio, as it turned out) during a family barbecue furnished with enough booze to bring down a rhino because "I only drink margaritas."

Item the Second) The following morning, he insisted on taking the remainder of his tequila with him, rather than leaving it at the host's house.

Item Two and a Half) The same morning, he also refused to leave the room he slept in, or for that matter, even get out of bed, until his girlfriend went to the store and bought his special french vanilla creamer for his coffee, because he can't get up without his coffee, and he can't have his coffee without his special creamer. I opined that a steak knife to the trachea might due, but after some consideration, we decided it wasn't worth staining the furniture with arterial spray. Barely.

Item the Third) He's 39 and dresses like he's 22.

Item Fo') Here's a sample interjection of his into an otherwise innocuous conversation. See if you can detect the pattern developing before the train utterly derails:
"Hey Jim, I saw this shirt you'd like. It read: 'Shakespeare hates your emo poems.'"
"That's hilarious, Darren. You know about the one Kelly got me that has a picture of the Bard and says, 'Prose before hoes,' right?"
Enter Douche. "I saw this shirt that was two lines of gibberish on it, but if you fold them together right, it reads FUCK YOU."

Awesome, right? Anyway, here's a website that utterly captures the spirit of this man, and since the gentleman is actually a web guy, hell, maybe he made the site himself. It's called A Shirt for a Stud, and I'm genuinely sad to say I don't think it's meant to be funny. ....sorry about that. I just looked at the page again, and I started weeping blood. I don't think that's supposed to happen. Of course, it could be worse. They actually showed the page to someone's pet, and look what happened to it:

I'm not sure what the hell that thing was to begin with, but it's clearly been abused. And in Andouche's defense, so was he; his girlfriend was a real gem. Still, that's no excuse. Of course, it's not entirely classy of me to take pot shots at him from the dim corners of the internet, but I figure it's okay. I'm kinda a big deal.

The Robot Apocalypse Inches Ever Closer, A Gelfling Astride Its Back

2008-08-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, not long ago I was raving about the inevitabilities of the pending zombie apocalypse, and now here I am preparing to rave about the robot apocalypse creeping up behind us with its cold, glowing red eye staring at us unblinkingly. So what? I'm covering my bases. It's like the man who bets on both red and black on the same roll at the roulette wheel, except he always breaks even and looks like a jackass, while in this scenario we die or are enslaved. ...Okay, so maybe it's not the most accurate metaphor. Perhaps my abject terror is clouding my judgement.

It's not that there's yet another futuristic prototype finding corporate backing that threatens to bond man to machine in blasphemous parodies of coupling that make the soul blush and, like Adam and Eve, suddenly recognize its own nakedness. Though that's part of it. My larger concern is that our budding robot overlords are beginning to cull from my childhood in the least likely of places, and that I will not stand. Behold, if you dare: the Deux Ex Machina Motorcycle Exeskeleton, first runner-up for most pretentious invention name ever (it just lost out to the "Jesus Excelsior Christ" Crock pot). You really need to watch this thing in (simulated) action to get the full picture.

When it's completely extended, I suppose I can see the Tron reference, though to be honest you're never really gonna sell me on the comparison until the subject is glowing in some hideous shade of neon and is followed by a stream of solid, two dimensional energy. Call me a purist. But honestly, am I the only one who thinks this thing looks like a Landstrider from The Dark Crystal?

Do you know why the driver in the picture is covered head to toe, his reflective visor pulled down to obscure even his eyes? Because it's a Gelfling, thrust unceremoniously into the 21st century and determined to compensate for his weak, puppet physique by augmenting it cybernetically. This is not a pretty picture, my friends. These little bastards could already communicate feelings, thoughts, and impressions telepathically via their dreamfasting ability, and to make matters worse, they can communicate with savage, amorophous beasts like this:
Imagine what will happen when they replace those skewed, felt teeth with razor sharp fangs, or, God help us all, they actually attached a body to this thing. It'd be like having Chewbacca devour you whole, and I'm sorry, but if I'm going to be killed by a wookie, I'll have my arms ripped off for beating him at space chess, thank you very much.

Joss Whedon Strikes Again: This Time, My Heart

2008-08-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

So I sometimes have a habit of coming to the party late, so to speak, as I don't know the proper channels on which to scour the interwebs for the latest "buzz." Thus I hope you'll forgive me when I come to you bearing expired gifts you undoubtedly already own, but in case even one of you haven't seen this yet, allow me to brighten your day.

You see, there's this little gem called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a delightful three-act musical comedy about an up-and-coming supervillian who's trying to gain membership in an evil fraternity and win the heart of a girl he semi-stalks at the laundromat. Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) plays the good doctor, Felicia Day is his love-to-be, and Nathan Fillion (aka Captain Mal Reynolds, aka Han Solo before Lucas went back and made Greedo shoot first) is Horrible's nemesis, Captain Hammer. As the last member of that trifecta might suggest, Joss Whedon--and from the credits, most of his extended family, too--is behind this. It is, in a word, delightful.

Still, I feel a bit like the guy running into church on Easter morning shouting "Hey, have you guys heard about this dude Jesus? He's awesome!" so I won't go on much longer. The link above will let you watch the whole thing in its entirety, fo' free, so that's not a bad thing. If you're dubious, though, and too lazy to click the link, I've posted perhaps my favorite song from the piece below. Bon appetit.

For the Elderly Cosmonaut

2008-08-14T12:52:00.000-07:00

With Christmas just around the corner, are you worried about finding the perfect gift for the octogenarian NASA enthusiast in your household? You know, the foreign national whose tenuous grasp on the English language may horribly mutilate his speech, but never his fiery enthusiasm? Well, look no further, my dear reader. Your prayers, and my own, have clearly been answered:

Alternate Endings Cannot Save Season 2's Mediocrity

2008-08-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

So it's no surprise that I'm a fairly big fan of the show Heroes, and for those of you who watch it, it's also no surprise that the second season wasn't necessarily their best yet, though the addition of Kristen Bell (aka Veronica Mars) to anything is always a good idea. I'm willing to bet that if they dropped her onto Beijing from 10,000 feet she would cleanse the very air of China as she plummeted to her doom, but as our nation is unwilling to squander such a valuable natural resource, we have remained content to let the world's Olympians blacken their lungs. But I digress.

Since some of you may not have watched this show up to its current point yet--or at all--I won't go into any details, save to say that Season 2 contains the worst fake Irish accents in the history of sound. While that kind of stuff is a deal-breaker for me, it passes under sane people's radar, so I'll let it be. Anyway, said season is out on DVD now, and already some of its extras are popping up on the Interwebs. I've linked a page here that has three such tidbits: 1) an alternate ending where what they were trying to stop wasn't stopped and got out (you know, when I write it like that, it sounds pretty damn cliche, doesn't it?); 2) the revelation of Kaito Nakamura's (Hiro's father, aka Mr. Sulu) ability/power; and 3) a scene with Nathan yelling at his wife and kids, which I think is a lovely segue from my last post. None of these are particularly earth-shattering, but of course if they were, they probably wouldn't have been cut. Still, enjoy.

Everybody Poops...On Their Kids' Self Esteem

2008-07-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

As a staunch Irish Catholic and someone who likes to think of himself as "Old Skool," I obviously approve whole-heartedly of the aggressive, even draconian physical, psychological, and emotional chastisement of children. As I have none of my own yet --barring the pug who rules my apartment with a chubby, iron paw--I freely substitute my students, and on rare occasion, random children in the supermarket. There are few things so satisfying in this world as slapping the wrist of a strange child with a wooden ruler (like you don't carry them on you at all times, too) as he reaches on tippy toe to snatch a bag of Double Stuff Oreo cookies from the shelf. Finding that perfect mix of utter disgust and disappointment on my face is difficult, I'll admit, but my acerbic "God hates fat children, Oreo-lover" usually overrides any facial nuance the lad may have missed.

Imagine my shame, then, to have found that I am behind the times in this necessary, revered pastime. Simpleton that I am, I always assumed to only berate children for their own shortcomings, but truer prophets than myself have thankfully seen the primrose path of abusing kids for their parents' flaws. Take, for instance, My Beautiful Mommy, a book ostensibly in the same spirit as Everyone Poops and The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts. But unlike these insightful tomes, which are designed to help explain the foul realities of the body to kids, My Beautiful Mommy is intended to explain the vile realities of their mothers' narcissism.
Now, the issue isn't about cosmetic surgery per se, nor about the fact that it has become prevalent enough in our culture that there are now books explaining it to children. The true beauty of this little gem is that the primary symptom needing surgical remedy is stretch marks--specifically, stretch marks resultant from pregnancy. In other words, it's essentially Junior's fault that Mommy needs to go under the knife. And here I thought accusing them of stealing the best years of your life was enough!

And there is absolutely no evidence of bias, no lingering stench of opportunistic "tweaks" on reality. For instance, the cosmetic surgeon himself looks like Superman in scrubs, and when we are privileged with a glimpse into Mommy dearest's mind, we see this very Hercules--this time in a suit--planting a tiara upon a newly "did up" Mommy. I'd be concerned that this Adonis was invading the fantasies of America's housewives, but he isn't really the most articulate chap, according to page 1: "Blah, Blah, Blah, Tummy, Blah, Blah, Blah, Nose." So the bastard may be staggeringly good looking, physically statuesque, obscenely rich, and enchanting to the fairer sense, but I've got my pointy verbal barbs. Oh, how I hope they sting.

"But I can't even read, Colonel Gentleman," you might say. "Is there any way to psychologically abuse my child from the comfort of my own double-wide trailer?" Have no fear, disembodied hillbilly voice! Like some sort of twisted perpetual motion machine of despair, you can plant a seed at birth that will cripple your child emotionally from the moment it can comprehend human speech. Or at least, you could until Johnny Law got involved. Apparently, some leftist nut job of a judge stepped in and made a Hawaiian child a ward of the court so that they could change her name. And what was it? Talula Does the Hula. I shit you not. Hell, just calling the kid "Talula" by itself is skating on thin, rotted ice, but to then blatantly reveal her favorite pastime in the same stroke? She may as well be that guy from the fraud protection commercials who has a truck with his Social Security number drive around downtown Manhattan. The poor kid was so damaged by the name that even her best friend didn't know her true identity, and instead was asked to simply call her "K." Apart from strategically positioning her little friend to tacitly agree with anything she says ("Do I want to suffer through Don't Mess With the Zohan....K"), why the hell would she choose that letter? If you're going to lie, why not use a full name? Clearly, the child has been damaged already by the moniker...so why bother changing it now?

My favorite part of the whole story, though, is the list of other names that have been banned, and on occasion, allowed: "Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy, and Sex Fruit...But others were allowed, including Number 16 Bus Shelter [always nice to be named after the place you were conceived, eh?] and tragically, Violence."

So it seems my dreams of simply smacking my children and occasionally locking them in the basement are merely average, even pedestrian. Thankfully, my wife has no intention of letting our DNA mingle anytime in the foreseeable future, so I have time to plan. And now that my brother has taken the BAR exam, he's officially a lawyer and can warn me about the most obvious legal pitfalls that might prevent me from constructing a truly magnificent warren of psychological torment for my progeny. Sure, my kids will be all kinds of fucked up, but I guarantee that if you give them a birthday present, you'll be getting a thank you card within the week. Of course, it'll be covered with their desperate pleas for liberation, but oh, what stunning penmanship.

Mantastic! ~Fin~

2008-07-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

While the use of tildes on either side of the word "Fin" might suggest some sort of ominous dorsal ridge skimming the water, my intention here was the unnecessarily inclusion of a foreign word in a pretentious grasp at sophistication, one so very commonplace that its dependence on cliche only screams to the world that I'm a hack. Clearly I'm trying to get into character here in the hopes of better understanding dear Prof. Chiarella, an effect I mean to heighten through the donning of a turtleneck and the quick application of Crisco to my face to enhance my already pallid glow to downright sickly, vampirish levels:

That done, let us breach the even more hideous depths of the man's affected prose. I'm less concerned here with stumbling upon the Holy Grail of masculinity as I am an end to this hellish pit into which I've cast us. To borrow from the urban youth, "my bad, yo," but I promise I'll finish my grisly business this time. I fear some of us may already be suffering from a sort of frostbite of the soul, and the longer we dwell amidst the barren, arctic wastes of this man's intellect, the more we'll have to amputate later. So, let us proceed.

41) Speak to a waiter so he will hear, curiously, appears immediately adjoining 42) Talk to a dog so it will hear, clearly betraying the rosy impression our host has of those in the service industry.

45) Break another man's grip on his wrist. Why am I not surprised that Prof. Chiarella sees masculinity as predicated upon enacting his favorite scenes from an episode of Walker Texas Ranger or any of Steven Segal's exquisite canon of work? Personally, I have found squealing in pain and bawling like a hungry infant to be the best bet, for inevitably the man's man clutching you wil turn away in disgust, at which point you kick him in the small of the back or break your bottle of Bartles & Jaymes "Body Shot Lime" over his head.

46) Tell a woman's dress size. Never out loud. Not if you want to live.

52) Step into a job one one wants to do. Like reading your work, sir?

55) Point to the north at any time. Thanks, Daniel Boone. How very rustic of you, defying our savage, contemporary days of GPS phones and sedentary, indoor existence. I hope that little skill comes in handy at the tenure meeting when your department chair tells your sorry ass your scholarly acumen is no longer required.

59) Write a thank you note. Fair enough. And what sort of note does our sage recommend?
Thanks for having me over to watch game six. Even though they won, it's clear the Red Sox are a soulless, overmarketed contrivance of Fox TV. Still, I'm awfully happy you have that huge high-definition television. Next time, I really will bring beer. Yours,
Wow, not only did he come off as his usual pretentious self, but he also made himself seem a cheap, ungrateful prick. Of course, it would definitely ensure a second invite from me, if only to ambush him in my living room and hold a dry-cleaning bag over his head until he stopped fighting.

61) Cook bacon. Yes. A hundred times YES. Put it on anything and everything: burgers, sandwiches, salads, even your children will be better human beings with a few strips of bacon judiciously hidden amidst their flaxen curls.

62) Hold a baby. ...nestled in bacon. Obviously. Get them used to the heady aroma of grilled pork early on, and if you're really lucky and they end up smelling vaguely of bacon for the rest of their lives, then that's just all the more reason to hug your delicious progeny every single day.

64) Know that Christopher Columbus was a son of a bitch. You mean we're not supposed to desperately cling to the oversimplified lessons of our second grade history class? Okay. "I loved the very idea of Christopher Columbus. I loved the fact that Irish kids worshipped some gnome who drove all the rats out of Ireland or whatever, whereas my hero was an explorer." Wait a second...what the fuck was that? A gnome? Rats? No wonder the Irish kids on your block beat the sweet shit out of your chubby ass at every opportunity. I'm tempted to track you down next week myself and tell you Saint Patrick sends his regards, courtesy of Lefty McUppercut and Righty Fitzsuckerpunch.

That's it. I'm done with this guy, lest my paroxysms of rage give me a stroke. I think I'll instead turn to some student papers now; at least they have something intelligent to say.

Mantastic! Part deux

2008-06-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

It appears I have betrayed you once more, dear reader, fleeing from my responsibilities as a blogger for other duties, and in so doing leaving you hanging in the wind. Sure, I can promise I'll never do it again, but we all know that's a lie, if not a particularly convincing one. But allow me to say that I won't let virtually another month lapse between posts again. I promise.

At least part of my absence is explainable, though. You see, I was in the Sierras playing Dungeons & Dragons for a week straight. Yes, nestled in the trees and rock, in passages where no cellular reception dare stray and where savage men with long beards and no hygiene rein supreme, there I was feverishly rolling my twenty-sided die (poorly, more often than not) and seeing my paladin spread righteous justice throughout a corrupt and evil land. Oh, if only the rest of my life were as simple as that week, where virtually every decision can be made through the fortuitous roll of a die. I sit now at my desk on campus, trying to make myself work on my dissertation, but clearly I have failed my Will save. Somewhere in the world a twenty-sided die has skittered across a tabletop, coming to rest with a 1 staring skyward like the fiery eye of Sauron.

So if I can be of no service to myself, allow me to be of service to you and continue our journey through the trite and staggeringly inane world of Tom Chiarella's "The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master." And let me warn you: these ones are worse than the last batch.

21) Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer. Reminding them that we bailed their ass out of World War II (or stomped their ass, if you're talking to a former Axis power) is completely fair game, though. I recommend telling them they'd be speaking German now if it wasn't for us. If it's a German, compliment him on his lederhosen.

22) Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn't have to ask after it. Forgiving the pronoun confusion and all the deliciously Freudian things it suggests, as a Catholic, I can't endorse this whole communicating during sex thing. I'm even on the fence about eye contact. Instead, may I humbly suggest a gong placed on the nightstand, which upon orgasm, your partner hits with a mallet. Should one find oneself in flagrante delicto without your gong present, simply shouting "Yahtzee!" should suffice.

25) Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it. Thanks for "sexing up" this one, as "hit nail into wood" might threaten to undermine the man who considered this an essential aspect of his identity.

27) Play gin with an old guy. While I would prefer drinking gin with an old guy--and recommend not calling hiim "old guy"--this item only becomes truly hilarious when you take it in stride with the subsequent tip.

28) Play go fish with a kid. Fair enough. His first bit of elaboration recommends "You talk their ear off," which is great when you glance above and see he warns that the "old guy" will "drown you in meaningless chatter, tell stories about when they were kids this or in Korea that." Oh I see. This older gentleman's story about serving in a war or living through the Great Depression is 'meaningless chatter,' but the author's stories about "when you were a kid this or in Vegas that" are utterly apropros: "So after we dumped the hooker's body in the laundry shoot we went downstairs, did some blow, and took a piss on the roulette wheel. Do you have any 8's? How old is your mom, kid?"

30) Feign interest. Preach on, Dr. Chiarella! Your take on masculinity is refreshing and fascinating! It's doesn't make me want to drive an eightpenny nail into my eye socket at all!

33) Hit a jump shot in pool. By now, we should not be surprised that this superflous and largely impractical shot is just the type of thing to catch Sir Douche's attention. A new revelation, however, is that our gracious author seems to have difficulty describing fundamental spatial relations. Observe: "Make the angle of your cue steeper, aim for the bottommost fraction of the ball, and drive the cue smoothly six inches past the contact point, making steady, downward contact with the felt." Actually, if you drive the cue six inches past the "bottomost fraction of the ball" in a steady downward motion, you'll put your cue through the felt and into the slate underneath. Bloody hell, is there anything this asshat knows how to do well?

40) Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear. This, of course, bears upon the Go Fish fiasco from above, so allow me to help our befuddled author with how to accomplish this feat: call the kid "Child," regardless of age or gender, or perhaps "Hey you, tax deduction"; shout at them, reaching spasmodically for your belt as if about to wrench it off and brandish it menacingly in the air; confide that you're actually their father, but don't let daddy know, then wink at their mother over their little shoulder, pat them on the back, and tell them to get lost.

More to come, sooner rather than later this time. I left a significant number out this time around, as I was literally choked by contempt and couldn't will my fingers to type; feel free to comment with your own response to those others, assuming you can stifle your gag reflex.

Mantastic! Part 1

2008-05-28T01:26:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to admit it, but when I saw a link to an article entitled "The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master" my cursor flew toward its blue text like a bee to the expectant, be-dewed flower, a metaphor which makes all too obvious my desperate need to find out what makes a 'real man.' As far as I know, self-indulgent floral imagery was scratched off the "dude roster" about the time opium went out of style.

As is my way, I was almost immediately filled with righteous contempt upon the reading of this man's list, so much so that snarling and/or rabid dog imagery is entirely appropriate. And it wasn't simply because some cock-knocker took it upon himself to itemize masculinity--shit, I'll take all the help I can get. It was the absurd crap he was peddling as significant, undermined all the more by the asinine elaborations following most points. But like the Incredible Hulk, my best work is fueled by pure rage, and as I read on, I couldn't stem the flood of bitter rejoinders to this man's commentary on the male sex. And so, because I clearly had a good kindergarten teacher, I've decided to share. As a courtesy (read: humanitarian gesture), I'll spare you the whole 75 and will furthermore deliver my thoughts on the rest only in fits and starts over the course of multiple posts.

But enough of my pre(r)amble. I feel like the host who delivers an unnecessarily long prayer before a sumptuous banquet, forcing my beloved guests to suffer needlessly while satisfaction sits mere inches away. Consider my supplication to a silent deity complete. Let us feast:

1) Give advice that matters in one sentence. Yes, God forbid you construct an idea so complex that grunts or gesturing with the femur in your hairy palm won't suffice.

2) Tell if someone is lying. Good call, pal. I should hope "You're a clever writer" raises a warning flag.

3) Take a photo. Whoa there, Ansel Adams. Don't set the bar too high for the rest of us.

5) Name a book that matters. "Catcher in the Rye does not matter," he usefully opines. Really? Tell that to John Lennon.

8) Not monopolize the conversation says the douche who wrote a four page document listing 75 things he feels a true man knows how to do.

9) Write a letter. I can get behind that. Hell, I sealed a photocopy of a seventeenth-century letter with red wax. I'm down. Let's see what else he has to say. "So easy. So easily forgotten." Okay. Trite but whatever. Anything else? "A five-paragraph structure works pretty well." Oh you son of a bitch.

12) Show respect without being a suck-up. Man, no one appreciates obsequious groveling like they used to.

13) Throw a punch and 14) Cut down a tree, in my humble opinion, should only count if you punch down a tree. Also, you are automatically disqualified if, upon successfully felling the mighty trunk, a lush beard does not immediately sprout from your face.

16) Tie a bow tie. I actually agree completely. No joke. Looking like a tool afterward is just gravy if you ask me.

17) Make a drink, in large batches, very well. I would recommend using a bathtub. If the air isn't dangerously combustible like a meth lab, you're not making it strong enough. In fact, why not just make your moonshine in your meth lab? Two birds, one stone, baby.

and today's final entry...

19) Approach a woman out of his league. Now, let me start by saying I whole-heartedly support this, mainly because I think every true man must know how to court failure, and experiencing the sweet sting of bear mace in your tear ducts is a thrill everyone should savor at least once. But what makes this entry so delicious to me is the writer's non sequitor of an explanation afterwards, which I have quoted in its entirety:

"Ever have a shoeshine from a guy you really admire? He works hard enough that he doesn't have to tell stupid jokes; he doesn't stare at your legs; he knows things you don't, but he doesn't talk about them every minute; he doesn't scrape or apologize for his status or his job or the way he is dressed; he does his job confidently and with a quiet relish. That stuff is wildly inviting. Act like that guy."

I wish I could make stuff like that up. I really do. Its profundity is thick, almost overwhelmingly so, the sort of potent morsel that you cannot immediately swallow, but must chew leisurely amidst your back teeth as you assimilate its constituent ingredients. That first line alone... There are men sitting in monasteries who don't have enough time to figure that one out. Just imagine, then, what bounty the next few items have in store for us. I, for one, cannot wait.

Long Time No See

2008-05-20T23:44:00.000-07:00

So it seems I've been lagging on the whole 'blog' thing again. My apologies. Allow me to catch you up on the exciting events of my life from the past three weeks: 1) I still haven't started writing the second chapter of my dissertation; 2) grading student papers still corrodes my soul, and more importantly, keeps me from working on my dissertation more; 3) my brother graduated from law school this weekend.

This final point merits more discussion. My brother, two years my junior, has just recently graduated from Hofstra law school. Finally, one of my father's sons will make an adequate wage. My family flew out to see him walk, which ended up working well this time, since he had arrived late to his own graduation when he received his B.A., prompting my father to fly into a fit of such intense Irish rage that Saint Patrick granted the souls of Purgatory a momentary respite from their cleansing flames in appreciation. Everyone was on time this year, though, and to make the pot even sweeter, Kelly and I got to spend the weekend in New York and visit some very good friends we don't get to see nearly enough.

On a related note, I don't sleep on planes. Ever. I must have traded away the ability to do so for never getting cavities, or some other inane deal with Satan. Anyway, I actually used some of that time this weekend to draw, something that I haven't done for well over a year, which is saying something, considering how often I used to sketch when I was younger. I thought I'd post the results now that I've finished the piece.

Happy Birthday, O' Upstart Crow

2008-04-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

Last week, at least as far as we know, was Shakespeare's birthday (April 23rd, or at least we suspect so, since he was baptised on the 26th and typically it was a three day delay). If he were a vampire, he'd be 444 years old now, which would be weird on a number of levels. Putting aside for the moment any images of Shakespeare roaming the streets at night, marauding for flesh, I thought I might put my expertise in the English Renaissance to use and offer a number of things you might do over the next few days to help celebrate the bard's birthday, things that will help you relive those glorious days of Elizabethan and Jacobean London in which Shakespeare thrived:

1) Blame all venereal disease on the French, specifically syphilis, which you should simply call "The French Disease."

2) Use a silken handkerchief for a prophylactic. You might be historically rigorous and use some sort of silken bow or tie to cinch your "little gentleman's cloak," or acknowledge the unbridgeable divide between then and now by slapping a couple of rubber bands on for good measure.

3) Relieve yourself into a bucket or bedpan for as long as you can stand the stench, and then casually toss your "night soil" out a second-story window into the street below. Bonus points if at least some of your filth lands on a passerby.

4) Draw your sword on a stranger for an imagined slight. Here's a good one: "taking the wall" of someone meant walking alongside the wall when coming against someone walking the opposite direction, thereby forcing the stranger to take the far side and thereby inevitably walk closer to, or in, the gutter and all the delicious filth that entailed (see #3). So, the next time someone coming against you politely cheats towards a building/wall, quickly stab him or her in the stomach with your shank.

5) Accuse a neighborhood woman of witchcraft. One sure-fire way of identifying a witch, according to common practice, was to burn a piece of thatch from her roof. If she came running, that meant she was a witch. And honestly, and poor son of a bitch still living under a thatch roof nowadays needs that kind of excitement in their poverty-stricken life anyway. Ha. Poor people.

6) Torture and execute Jesuit priests for sneaking into your country and covertly saying Mass. Alternately, if you want to play at being from the continent, declare the Queen of England the Antichrist and try to assassinate her. So long as your religious fervor burns bright, either choice is alright!

7) Die by 35.

8) Make jokes at the expense of the Irish and the Scots. Excellent options include jabs about their barbarity, quips about their ignorance, or simply oppressing them as a people ruthlessly for hundreds of years. To Hell or Connaught, right, you limey pricks?

9) Attend an execution during your free time. While hangings and beheadings are, obviously, your best bet, a close second would be pelting people in the stocks with rotten produce, rocks, or any leftover night soil from #3. Either way, make sure to shout and gesture wildly as if you were hammered drunk at a baseball game.

10) Become a candy-striper at your local hospital. Should you, in your expert opinion, decide the patient has 'bad blood,' simply apply leeches or just cut them open at the inside of the elbow--you know, where your heroin goes. If you find an amputee immediately post op, help close the wound by shoving a red-hot poker against it, or if you've got a small cauldron handy, pour boiling oil over it. The tingles, and the screams of inhuman agony, let you know it's working!

Isn't being a modern boring? If only we could be Early Modern all the time. Now that's how I want to live...at least until I hit 35.

Still Waiting on Those Diplomatic Plates

2008-04-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

This April marks my two year anniversary as a Marker's Mark Ambassador. Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, Maker's Mark, as in the whiskey. Don't pretend that you're surprised; I like to think that I'm on everyone's short list for likely candidates to represent the political interests of smooth, fine, and delicious Kentucky bourbon whiskey. Did I forget to mention it is also hand crafted? They actually make the whiskey out of human hands. Yeah, I couldn't believe that shit, either. Does it still count if said severed hands are clutching barley and wheat as they're hucked in the vat? I'll have to take this up with my dark masters in Kentucky.

The funny thing--apart from the fact that I'm an ambassador for an alcoholic beverage--is that I have no idea how I came to receive this auspicious post. None whatsoever. About a year and a half ago when I mysteriously received a box of plastic cocktail straws and napkins from Marker's Mark, I just assumed it was some randomized promotion. Perhaps my regimen of persistent liver abuse had caught the eye of some Uncle Jesse-esque (Dukes of Hazzard Jesse, not that delicious manwich from Full House) hick in the moonshine business. But as the gifts got increasingly noteworthy, I realized I had somehow been inducted into a secret cabal, one whose firm grasp on power I could manipulate for my own ends. And while the term "secret cabal" isn't always seen in the most favorable of lights, let me assure you that we're dealing with some classy gentlemen here. First of all, they make Maker's Mark bourbon whiskey, which is easily the finest bourbon whiskey to be made on this planet or any planet for all time. And did I mention it was hand crafted? And smooth? Yeah, that too. More importantly, though, said cabal started sending me devices so clearly anachronistic that my fingers twitched spasmodically at the thought of implementing them in this, our age of futuristic plastic polymers and interwebs. For instance, some months back I was sent a stick of sealing wax and a Maker's Mark seal, so that I can seal envelopes closed with my new lords' mark as kings of yore did:

Clearly, the ascot-wearing sophisticates at the Maker's Mark compound know their ambassadors' twisted predilections intimately, as I understood the seal and wax as not a gimmick but an actual tool to be implemented immediately. So fervent was this belief that I used a photocopy of a 1608 letter to Nathaniel Bacon, folded in the fashion of Renaissance correspondence, upon which to test this gift (I'm not kidding; that's a photocopy from the Huntington of a 400 year old manuscript). Behold the glorious results, and in so doing transport yourself to a gilded age of chivalry and savage venereal disease:

Much like a foreign prince lavishes gifts upon his heart's desire, so too did Maker's Mark continue to heap bounty upon me. The final nail in my bourbon-soaked (and thus even more flammable) coffin was the delivery of official Maker's Mark business cards, complete with my name, Ambassador number, and the serial number of my own cask.

Yes, my own cask. Squirreled away under the bluegrass hills of Kentucky, much like the hobbit holes of the Shire, squats a white oak barrel filled with delicious, smooth Maker's Mark bourbon whiskey with my name on it. Literally. Indeed, I almost like to think of it as my child, if you could split open your baby and fine whiskey would pour out. Of course, were that the case, we Irish probably would have died out a long time ago in feats of Swiftian barbarism. Ah, but we'd have died pissed out of our tree and happy.

And in the end, that's why I'm so proud to be a Maker's Mark ambassador, despite the fact that, in all honesty, I have no idea how I came to be one. I've polled the usual suspects and have been met with only confused, blank stares, as if a penis had started to grow from my forehead and staring at it was the only way to uncover the sacred mystery of its beginnings. Ironically, I've come to believe I was hammered drunk one night on the internet and signed myself up for it. I can't be sure, as the brain cells responsible perished in a chemical fire of sorts that very night. Nevertheless, I feel this sordid truth actually makes me qualified for the position. So while I continue to spread the good word about the smooth, sophisticated, almost white-oaky taste of Maker's Mark bourbon whiskey, sit back and enjoy a glass of delicious, fine, brownish Maker's Mark Kentucky bourbon whiskey. I'll be out killing a hobo to see if this office comes with diplomatic immunity.

If You Wanna Topple an Intergalactic Empire, You've Gotta Break a Few Eggs

2008-03-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

Combing the web (i.e. the series of tubes) for a suitable picture of the Death Star (II) to convince you all that we're doomed, I stumbled upon a grim reality regarding Star Wars continuity, one that has never occurred to me despite my fondness for following trains of thought until they barrel past their blockades and plunge off the rails and into the abyss. Anyway, when I read this, I laughed out loud, and continued to do so for quite a while, so I thought I'd share it with you:

"When a moon-sized metallic object in low orbit injects its debris and fallout into the atmosphere below, the result is an immensely potent "nuclear winter" effect which will last for years. Darkness enshrouds the ewoks' homeworld, killing plant life. Herbivore and carnivores starve in succession. A handful of ewoks seem to have been evacuated by the rebels, escaping the biocide, since they are seen briefly on Coruscant in Dark Empire. Nevertheless, there cannot be enough survivors to constitute a genetically healthy breeding population. "

Yup, that's right: the Rebels' successful destruction of the second Death Star effectively killed everything on Endor, including the cutest little savage bear race of pigmies that ever tried to cook and eat Harrison Ford (there's more out there than you'd think--the Care Bears really despise him). And doesn't that just add a delicious new layer of irony to the celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi? To be fair, I can't imagine those furry little bastards had any idea what was going on in the first place. We like to think they were inspired by all creatures' desire to be free and the "can do!" spirit of every primative race, but chances are they were just looking for something to crush with a rock. Sure, there is a sad moment when an explosion knocks down two fleeing Ewoks and only one gets back up, but all we get to see is the survivor mourn his friend. I'm sure afterwards he dragged the carcass back up to the tree village and then brutalized it in front of the deceased's mate and offspring so as to assert dominance and claim that family as his own.

My point is that it's probably a mistake to impart too much of ourselves upon those little furballs, but doesn't it make the irony so much more palpable anyway? One moment, they're hosting their new friends from the stars and celebrating the seemingly impossible victory they have only just recently achieved, no doubt emptying their winter stores of food to show an appropriately impressive amount of largesse on their part, and the next moment ash is reigning from a sky that has been dark for three days straight and your "friends" are making one last check of their ship to ensure none of your tribe is hiding on board (save for the ones thrust into cages to be taken as souveniers to rebel children across the galaxy). Clearly, it ain't easy being an adorable species casually included by George Lucas to garner the kiddie audience. But one thing's for damn sure: C3-PO is a cruel, merciless god.

New Contender for World-Ending Apocalypse! Vegas Oddsmakers Scramble to React

2008-03-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

If I were you, I'd do a little research on the interwebs and then call your bookie, because yet another avenue to Armageddon has reared its ugly head, and once again, it wears a thick pair of spectacles and sports a pocket protector. Indeed, it looks like science still might find a way to kill us all and bring an abrupt end to God's creation, skewing the odds on my personal favorites: robot apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, and Menudo reunion tour. Behold the awesome majesty of the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC:

Apparently, a pair of concerned citizens are filing suit against the parties responsible for this particle collision machine to put the project on hold, granting additional time for what they claim are much needed safety considerations. What sort of considerations, you ask? The fear-monger responsible for giving me insomnia lists the following gems: creating a series of microscopic black holes that could combine together to form a much larger gravity well and, I imagine, collapse the whole planet in on itself; magnetic monopoles, which I surmise have something to do with magnets and possessing only one pole (like a fire station?); and my personal favorite, strangelets. Now if you're anything like me, you'll assume strangelets are a new breath freshener designed to lodge themselves in your throat, or perhaps a sexy bevy of background singers and dancers who promise to choke the life out of you. As it turns out, "strangelets" are subatomic particles that could theoretically transform anything they touch into similar kinds of matter in a kind of Midas affect that I can only assume would gradually turn our entire planet into a big grapefruit or something. Rest easy, though, because an expert retorts, "We see no evidence of this bizarre theory." Helpfully, he continues: "Once in a while we trot it out to scare the pants off people. But it's not serious." Thanks, asshole.

Now, normally I'm not one to help spread paranoia, but is it me, or does that HLC thing look a whole helluva lot like the inside of the Death Star?

No? Maybe if you close an eye or huff some paint? I don't know. I've had a long week. But if one moment you're sitting at home screaming at Tyra on America's Next Top Model (as one does) and the next you're in line at the pearly gates, be secure in your knowledge that it's the fault of some scientists working on particle collision deep underneath the French-Swiss border who have accidentally done the equivalent of crossing the streams. And if this doesn't obliterate us all in a flash but rather tears a hole in space time and allows Zuul to finally reach our plane, remember: If someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'yes.'

I Welcome Our New Canine Overlords

2008-03-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

As every single one of you probably already knows, the role of supreme overlord in my household is one of the many prizes at stake in an ongoing, savagely fought contest between my wife and our dog. While my wife is a fierce combatant and prone to vicious sucker punching without warning, there are times when it seems the plucky contender without his testicles and a habit of licking the carpet until lather coats his chin (not me, in case you're wondering) seems to grasp the upperhand. I keep up on these things because I will be directly affected by the outcome, but my agency in the matter is limited to merely praying that my new dictator will be a relatively gentle one.

Or so I thought. Apparently my dog is part of a larger conspiracy to overthrow human government as we know it, one bent on raising a master race of canine autocrats to the highest seats of power in the land. Should we try to resume our place in those lofty seats, we will undoubtedly be firmly told we're not allowed on the furniture, hit in the head with a rolled up newspaper, and perhaps menaced with a squirt bottle.

My thanks to Oghrim for the tip regarding ObeythePureBreed, a site which is desperately attempting to uncover this budding coup d'etat before it's too late. The brave souls there have smuggled certain sensitive drafts of insidious doggy propaganda to prove their point, propaganda I feel compelled to share with you in a desperate gesture of resistance. May God have mercy on us all, for our canine overlords shall not.

And most sinister of all:

Spread the Good News: Catholic Church Declares All New Ways to Commit Sin!

2008-03-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share with you some information all good Irish Catholics should already know, namely that the Vatican has announced brand new ways for you to ensure your soul languishes in the unquenchable flames of Hell for all eternity. If you ask me, this is long overdue. As an Irishman myself, I find that I have far too few avenues through which to channel my innate self-destructive tendencies. Sure, I'm slowly drinking myself to death, and I remain an emotional cripple, but on the spiritual front my near-pathological sense of Catholic guilt keeps me from enjoying the truly heinous sins that are every independent soul's right, the kind of stuff that makes God level your entire city or flood the planet. Old Testament wrath, angels of death, flaming swords, pillars of salt--you know, the kinds of stuff that, when shared with your children at an appropriately impressionable age, can effectively keep them from masturbating for at least two to three years after discovering what touching their no no spot can produce.

With this new announcement, though, certain everyday behaviors of mine are suddenly steeped in delicious new layers of depravity, finally granting me that spiritual bad boy image I've craved for so long. For instance, cloning is now officially a sin, as is drug abuse and destroying the environment. While I've always suspected that smoking crack was tacitly frowned upon by my parish priest, the other two have completely caught me by surprise. Now, when I routinely fly down to South America with an army of clones, order them all to ingest suicidal amounts of PCP, and then see how much tropical rain forest they can chop down before their hearts explode in their soulless chests, I'm suddenly committing a sin. Eternity of gruesome yet ironic torment, here I come!

Other additions seem somewhat beside the point. Sure, when you clone yourself or your neighbor's super hot teenage daughter, you're playing God and thus I can see the sin angle. Ironically, actually donning a flowing robe and a fake white beard to indeed play God is somewhat hazy ground, at least according to the Church Fathers. Less hazy ground is donning said outfit and then standing on the side of the road and swirling around every time someone honks their horn at you, like a nice gentleman habitually does on my drive home. That goofy bastard is gonna burn. But I digress. Ignoring social injustice when one has the financial means to do otherwise (that seductively easy sin of inaction) is apparently a sin now, which I'm fine with. The funny thing, though, is that one article I read interpreted this sin as "being filthy rich." I think this writer is missing the point, though, because if I have obscene amounts of money, it'll be a sin because I'm snorting coke off the back of prostitutes and hunting homeless people on my own private island, not simply because I have a large amount of money in my offshore accounts from the clone logging operation I have running out of Brazil.

In the end, though, I tend to look at sin like cancer: pretty much anything you do causes cancer one way or another, and pretty much anything you do could be construed as a sin, if only from a certain perspective. Well, at least everything I do, though I still maintain telling strangers "That was a stupid thing to say and you're a stupid person for saying it" is neutral ground. And while this point may be overly macabre, I'd still like to think this has a little something to do with why the Irish have such a good sense of humor: when you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, you might as well have a pint and a laugh in the process. And if you're lucky, maybe you can convince St. Peter that it's the guy behind you in line (who happens to look exactly like you) who tinkered with the human genome, clubbed a seal, and did all that meth. Hell, it's worth a shot, isn't it?

Slainte.

Simian Alcohol Abuse, or, Why I Now Hate Ryan Condal

2008-03-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Recently cheered by the prospect of elected officials and prostitution rings, I decided to see what the industries actually designed to provide entertainment had in store, seeing as how state government was doing such a bang-up job all its own. And that's when I found this gem over at Aint' It Cool News (be sure to note the writer's gift for understatement with "tweaks and bends"):

An indie production entity called The Film Department has acquired the rights to GALAHAD, Ryan Condal's spec script which tweaks and bends the King Arthur legend. "Galahad" retells the classic story by portraying King Arthur as an aging coward whose young, ambitious Queen Guinevere murders him, then blames the crime on Sir Galahad. Galahad must escape near-certain death, vanquish the forces of evil and return Camelot to its rightful glory.

Oh dear God no. You can't see me right now, but I assure you that my head is in my hands. What is it with revisionist takes on Arthurian legend? Why do people insist on brutalizing this one mythos so egregiously while leaving everything else relatively intact? Well, come to think of it, Troy was about as much like The Illiad and The Odyssey as a kick to the teeth is like a ham sandwich. Maybe there's some sort of implicit cutoff where if your subject matter is set before, say, 1500, historical or literary accuracy becomes utterly unnecessary. It's not like you'll see Hollywood producing a film about Hitler during the height of Nazi Germany, except that Hitler is a gay florist with a live-in partner, and together the two plan to free the Jews using an army of Persian kittens.

So now King Arthur is an aging coward murdered by his treacherous wife Guinevere. And who gets blamed for it? Galahad, the knight renowned for his purity who ultimately realizes the Grail quest. Yeah, good choice. I've actually got a script about Mother Theresa murdering orphans in Calcutta, so it's good to see there's a studio that'll pick my work up, too. Honestly, who the fuck is this Ryan Condal son of a bitch and why hasn't someone shoved a rusted butter knife up his urethra yet to keep this kind of shit from happening?

Have you ever heard that meditation on probability that says an infinite number of chimps at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually crank out the complete works of William Shakespeare? Well I give "Galahad" three chimps (that's including Mr. Condal), a bottle of Jack, and fifty two minutes. And I'm willing to bet you the other two chimps, drunk on whiskey though they might be, would at least have the common fucking decency to feel dirty after writing that script.

Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain*

2008-03-03T20:32:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it: technology frightens me. I'm a bit of a luddite. Though to clarify, it only really scares me because it's so expensive. Should I shamble past a 50" flat screen plasma TV at your local electronic store, I look in the dull reflection of its black screen and see my penury. I see myself huddled in rags, accidentally kicking a new window/doggie door in the west wing of my cardboard mansion as I feverishly clutch my huge television to myself, promising it that we will one day find a tolerant people who will not scoff at our glorious love. Sadly, I'm at a stage in my life where, economically speaking, I could probably afford a refrigerator magnet if I saved up for a few months. That said, I'm no Mr. Wizard, but I'm pretty sure this thing is a smidge beyond magnetism and liquid crystal displays:

This product...it just plain scares me. Not because I'm convinced it'll fry my brain when I don it triumphantly (it will) or because I'm concerned it'll tell me to do strange things like lather the light fixtures in strawberry preserves (it will) should I find myself alone in a room with it. Rather, it's simply unsettling to learn that they actually have technology that can essentially read your brainwaves, and more disturbing still, that this technology is commonplace enough that they're about to mass market it to the troglodytes who routinely set their toaster beside the bath since, golly, sometimes you just want a hot buttered English muffin while neck deep in Mr. Bubble.

As it turns out, this little dish--the EPOC Neuroheadset--will come with (among other things) a game "styled in ancient Chinese mythos," which I can only imagine means Chow Yun Fat will be jumping on tree tops in it. The sky/environment will change appearance depending on the wearer's mood and focus, and will contain such challenges as manipulating objects within the game solely through concentration. The reveiwer actually wrote "The process felt similar to what we might imagine The Force might be like. Simply willing the stone to rise didn't work, nor did focusing too heavily on the object. Rather, it was more a singular thought of envisioning movement, that, when sustained, exacted change in the game." Finally! A definitive way to prove to friends and family that I am a Force sensitive. Cause I'm telling you, wearing a brown bathrobe and reminding my wife that "The Force is strong with this one" just hasn't been cutting it these past few years.

I know. It's a mystery to me, too. Chicks dig Jedi.

*A bright shiney quarter goes to whomever can tell me what I took the title of this post from.

Fight with the Dance, and not Your Overwhelming Socio-economic Advantages

2008-02-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

So I capped off Valentine's Day last night by taking my wife to see Step Up 2: The Streets. I did so because she was a dancer and very much wanted to see the film, and not because I think it's the most romantic movie of all time. Obviously The Goonies holds that honor. Oh Sloth...will your forbidden love with Chunk ever again walk boldly in the sun, as it did that fateful day One-Eyed Willie's hidden pirate ship pierced the swells of the might Pacific once more?

I have now had the pleasure of watching both Step Up movies, and it seems that some fundamental details undergird this universe. The female protagonist of this latest iteration, Andie West, is another orphaned white kid who is rebelling through that dangerous, sinister medium known as contemporary dance, going so far as to actually stage choreographed dances on subway cars with her "crew," a heinous act that rightfully receives the media's full ire during the opening minutes of the film. Remember, kids: when you hip-hop dance in public, the terrorists win. Anyway, since the main character of the first movie, Tyler Gage, was also an orphaned white kid in foster care, I finally realized what these films are trying to say: having parents and even a moderately happy childhood denies you the passion to truly dance. No wonder I'm so inept on the dance floor, despite how much "Humpty Dance" might pull my heart strings. Indeed, as everyone knows, Fred Astaire was locked in the basement of an orphange and fed fish heads until he was 27, and let's just say Mikhail Baryshnikov's childhood makes the Saw movies looks like a paternal reprimand on Leave it to Beaver. Poor bastards.

The movie centers around these dancing "crews," who go to work on the dance floor and leave their inhibitions at the...you get the idea. And since the movie is all about choreographed teams of dancers, the actual dancing is much more entertaining this time around. Indeed, I would go so far as to classify this movie as "dance porn," because, much like that more traditional variety of porn we all know and love, this movie has just enough plot and dialogue to limp to the next performance setpiece. And I'm fine with that. If I want snappy dialogue, I'll watch something by Joss Whedon. I'd show you the trailer, but it doesn't do justice to the movie's dancing, mainly because it focuses so much on the film's protagonist. As my wife observed, young Andie is probably the best actress of the bunch and certainly the worst dancer. However, I have attached a mash up of sorts, one focusing (almost) entirely on the dancing alone and not paying undue attention to the film's young punky brewster:

The important thing to remember here, of course, is the movie's message. Follow your heart, give it your all, and even a ragtag crew of extremely priveleged misfits from one of the nation's most prestigious arts schools can take "it" back to the streets and soundly defeat (and embarrass!) the non-white, economically disadvantaged hoods who thought this kind of dancing was their purview alone. Hey, don't hate the choreographer, yo, hate the game. That's just what the Streets is all about.

Miticlorians be Damned!

2008-02-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

I believe I may have, in some sort of poetic rapture from the recent past, described the more recent Star Wars trilogy of prequels as something akin to watching a parent savagely beat their child with, say, a tire iron. Lucas's treatment of his own rich Star Wars mythology was so brutally inept that extensive reconstructive surgery would be needed to return it to even a fraction of its former self. Ironically, come to think of it, that's not unlike what happened to Mark Hamill's face after his car accident between Episodes IV and V, and thus the 11th hour addition of the snow beast clawing his face on Hoth. Point being, apart from the fact that knowing this bit of trivia exposes me as a super big nerd, one can't help but wonder why any parent would brutalize their own creation like that.

Nevertheless, I remain attached to the mythology in general, warts and all. That's why I'm always so optimistic when anyone other than Lucas gets their hands on the material. After all, Empire and Jedi were both helmed by directors other than the silver bearded owner of Marin County, and when people debate which is the best Star Wars movie, only those who have to wear helmets in the back of the bus even consider Episode IV. For instance, there was an animated series of sorts--more like two shortened seasons--set between the second and third prequels, airing on Cartoon Network and detailing the opening and middle years of the Clone Wars. It was quite well done, and appropriately well received by critics and fans alike. Georgie boy had nothing to do with it.

As it turns out, there is more forthcoming from the Star Wars universe, blessedly devoid of Lucas's pudgy touch, save for the green light anything from his mythos needs before it sees the light of day. The project is named The Clone Wars, and while I think they could have allowed themselves a dash more creative latitude with the name, if they want to name their pet rock "Rock," so be it. The piece is entirely computer animated, though not in the same sense the actors' performances from the prequels were. I'd make a joke that a CG character would at least have a shot at delivering Lucas's lines with a straight face, but even a soulless collection of digital pixels can't say "Anakin, you're breaking my heart!" without dying inside. Self awareness would blossom just in time to be ruthlessly snuffed out. But I digress; Lucas isn't penning a single goddamn word of this one, so the concern is purely academic.

Aesthetically, it seems to be a combination of Pixar and the animated clone wars series. This is a good thing, I believe. I can't exactly tell you why, much like I can't actually put into words why babies are cute or why panda meat is so delicious. But why take my word for it (about the CG movie...leave the pandas alone)? Glance below, and if the light burns, know that it makes your tears of joy glisten all the more.

Haggis: It's What's for Dinner

2008-01-28T19:35:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was Burns night (January 25th), the birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. It is traditional to have on or around that night a Burns Supper, a gathering designed to celebrate the life and works of the Scot who gave us "Auld Lang Syne," also known as "that song everyone sings on New Years Eve but I always could only mumble along." It is also my annual opportunity to eat haggis.

The reason I bring this up is because the last two years I have had the privilege of being invited to one such Supper, arranged annually by the department's resident Scotsman and possessor of, unquestionably, the most awesome name ever: Gordon Dangerfield. Gordon and I shared an office for a year, and thus he was subjected to my broken sense of humor and penchant for opening my mouth well before thinking. Out of what could only be a sadistic desire to see me fail, Gordon asked me to give the Toast to the Lassies, a tongue-in-cheek (but good spirited) address that simultaneously roasts the fairer sex but, in the end, expresses our genuine affection for them. I delivered said speech that first year, and after the butter knife was removed from my torso and the worst of the bleeding stopped, I was elected to the position again. Last year's supper went off with similar success.

But in the interim since then, Gordon has been called back to the old country for personal reasons. He was one of those people who helped me learn how to navigate our department, someone who always kept his priorities straight. With Gordon and his wife Liz gone, there are no more Burn Suppers here, but in honor of the occasion, I've decided to post last year's speech. Slainte.

Another Toast to the Lassies

The Toast to the Lassies was originally designed as a thank you to the women who prepared that evening’s Burns Supper. While I was raised in an Irish Catholic household, I’ve been told that less civilized corners of the globe allow men to prepare meals and events alongside women, albeit often to the chagrin of all who would partake. Luckily, tonight is quite the exception, and so let me steal a quick moment of your time to first thank, by way of a quick toast, our gracious organizers Gordon and Liz, and our hosts Carolyn and Deckard. Your generosity and hospitality are warmly appreciated.

I had the pleasure of delivering the Toast to the Lassies last year, and apart from a few minor beatings in the parking lot afterwards and some extensive vandalism upon my vehicle, I escaped the joyous event unscathed. So sitting down to write a new Toast this year, I naively assumed I would have a leg up. Not so. I once again found myself unsure of how to proceed. And to my great shame, I could come up with nothing other than the trite evasions I give my freshman writing students on a daily basis:

Well, one can always open with a quote, and George Bernard Shaw, that great Irish man of letters, was on occasion known to quote himself, if only to liven things up a bit. Regrettably, I have yet in my scant twenty seven years of life to have said anything of worth, and while I have been assured by anonymous third parties that my lovely fiancé Kelly is utterly replete with pearls of wisdom, I bear that curse of the masculine sex in which I never entirely listen to the women in my life. No doubt this toast will suffer all the more for it.

There’s statistical evidence, which has a certain charm. For instance, women outlive men, on average, by about 15 years, which means once we croak you get all our stuff and then at your leisure may go through our computer files and find out just how sick we really were.

Strange facts can also be an attention getter at the start. In medieval France, you may not know, one punishment for an adulterous wife was to make her chase a chicken through town naked. Unfortunately, my research was unable to unearth what the chicken was being punished for.

But what I sometimes remember to tell my students on my better teaching days, and what they invariably remind me of anyway in their writing, is that these introductory tactics can also be gimmicky and trite. And I would never want to be either of those in a matter of as grave seriousness and honor as this toast. So let me speak from a more genuine place of perplexed but heartfelt masculine adoration.

The lassies are utterly selfless, for instance. They will readily give us the opportunity to investigate any suspicious sounds in the house, wearing nothing but our boxer shorts and an ill-fitted Lionel Richie t-shirt, waving a lampstand before us threateningly as we pray the intruder doesn’t fancy academics. She can immediately roll over and go back to sleep, secure in her knowledge that we will triumph over this more experienced and certainly better armed adversary, and will claim no share of credit when the local papers run their story on the savage beating we gave the entertainment center.

They, of course, have a greater threshold for pain than we do. We all know they trump any claim we can make (kidney stones is a favorite) with the unpleasantness of childbirth—with or without the rather obligatory fruit or sporting-good metaphors sometimes used to give us men a visual; any man who has not been reminded of this numerous times by the women is life is obviously and blissfully stone deaf. But I believe their psychological fortitude goes unsung far too often. I have, entirely by accidents that I rue even to this very day, stumbled upon shows such as America's Next Top Model, Platinum Weddings, or Gilmore Girls, and even a bare minute of airtime has threatened to burn the very eyes from my skull, as if I dared look into the face of God. The fact that women can not only endure one unholy sitting of this torture, but can return to it again and again, evinces the sort of deliberate and repeated masochism any man can admire.

And despite many of our vocations in the humanities, regardless of formal training, women have a far keener appreciation of the nuance of language. While we men of course realize that different words must have different meanings (even if we don’t always know what they are), we are sometimes unable to adeptly deploy them. For a period of time after our engagement, for example, I continued to call my fiancé “my girlfriend.” She in turn asked me, “Are you trying to piss me off?” (Which, let me assure you, is best treated as a rhetorical question, men! This is a trap!). Anyway, once I properly schooled my tongue, I then happened upon the idea that by occasionally calling her “wife” I would average out the previous oversight. The tactical deployment of this clever little stratagem, however, garnered only strange looks from Kelly, as if I had a horn growing out of my forehead. I was no longer even meriting a verbal response on her part.

Part of the problem, if I may call it that, is that for all their glorious qualities, we simply do not understand them. For example, if you compliment a woman on her thin figure, even not in earnest, you will receive a smile, perhaps a modest blush across her cheeks. If you compliment an older picture of said woman on how thin she was then, you will reap the kind of punishment pharaoh enjoyed for refusing to release the Jews.

They simply see things differently than we do. When Kelly and I decided to get a dog, I stupidly assumed we were getting a dog. As it turns out, we were getting a practice baby—I still have not received the memo. But what I have received is repeated reminders that I will apparently make an uninvolved, distant and borderline abusive parent, which I again lay at the feet of the Irish Catholic upbringing.

Now only a grad student would even consider making this claim, but regardless—something I once learned about theory may help me resolve this issue with the lassies here tonight, and that is this: some of those particularly opaque theorists out there (we all know who they are) write the way they do because the moment you think you’ve got something under wraps, you can stop thinking about it. And maybe that’s then why it works out so well that we don’t understand women: so we can keep on thinking about them. About their strength, and about their intellect, about their curious toleration of the menfolk who bustle around through their lives and scuff and break all the nice things they own and can only offer to open the occasional mason jar or crush a spider in exchange. So let’s think a bit on the lassies tonight, and when that smile inevitably dances on your lips, remember she’s the one who put it there. And in this world, that’s always something to be thankful for.

If you will, please raise your glasses with me for a Toast to the Lassies! Sláinte!

Viva Pinata...while you still can

2008-01-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this post by stating from the beginning that Viva Pinata is an extremely charming game, possibly enough to cause minor tooth decay and an almost irresistible desire to plaster a shit-eating grin all over your face as you play. There. It's done. But, you see, there is a deliberate rationale behind this upwelling of good feeling generated by the game. Not unlike the narcotics mandated by the totalitarian state in Equilibrium, ones designed to numb the populace and thereby encourage them to miss the sinister underworkings of the hegemony, this charm and goodwill masks a dark--dare I say, nefarious?--system operating just beneath the surface.

Allow me a brief moment to give you the game's fundamental premise. On Pinata Island, where you apparently dwell/are banished, pinata live and roam in edenic bliss. You, as a novice gardener, must cultivate your patch of land to attract various pinata to visit, and ultimately, set up permanent residence. Once there, you can get them to "romance" and thereby bring in another generation of pinata; can cultivate various fruits, flowers, and vegetables; and landscape your garden to match your own peculiar aesthetic, and more (!). Sounds great.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. The pinata are seemingly immortal, or at least, immune to the ravages of old age. Thus so long as they are not destroyed by stronger, more predatory pinata, they will persist indefinitely, like styrofoam in a landfill. What this amounts to, though, is the same progenitors used again and again to propagate the family in a horrible parody of those values Republicans love clinging to. In less flowery language: the same parent can repeatedly "romance" his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ensuring an increasingly isolated and stagnant gene pool. It's a kid's game, so the subsequent generations don't suddenly emerge with two heads or a dead fetus protruding from a rib, but one can't help but hear the soft twang of a banjo playing the theme from Deliverance. Indeed, those pinatas do have a perty mouth.

Incest, however, is only the tip of the mutated iceberg. "Sour" pinata roam into your garden from time to time, and certain varieties of even tame pinata are also known to cause trouble. One can, at times, bring these ruffians in line with merely a dousing from your water can. But should these recalcitrant beasties prove too stubborn, one's sole recourse is to...savor it....beat them to death with your shovel. And this isn't like killing your rich grandmother, either. One shot won't do it. After a few blows, the target of your righteous fury will crumple to the ground, moaning, while you continue to bludgeon it until candy comes out. And come out it does. The pinata explodes, leaving behind delicious candy innards for your other pinata to feast upon as a celestial light descends from above, drawing the shredded, paper-mache remains of your pinata's flesh and, I imagine, skeletal structure into the sky in a gentle spiral, not unlike the caress of God. Oh, and as the pinata explodes, a chorus of children scream in delight from seemingly everywhere at once.

As any gardener with an acute God-complex would expect, one is free to "engineer" your pinata as well. Often this simply involves feeding them certain food to evoke a change in color or form. However, a few counter-intuitive instances stand out. For instance, if you want your "tadfly" to change from blue to red, you must buy a tiki torch and then consign him to the flames. He will emerge, like a phoenix, rejuvenated and newly crimson. The point I want to make, though, is that if you don't have the strategy guide or read the forums, to discover this you must be of that special temperament that feels randomly incinerating your pets is a good idea. In other words, at least for select moments, the game seems designed for people like Nero as he trussed up Christians and set them afire to light his dinner parties.

Commerce, as everywhere, is generated through the development of a product and its eventual sale. In Viva Pinata, you sell anything you want. Including your pinata. That's right: breed them recklessly with no concern for the retardation such rampant incest is likely to create, beat them into submission or simply burn them alive, and then sell the manicured survivors off to be beaten to death by children, who too will gorge upon the pinata's candied innards. No wonder these poor bastards long for the sweet embrace of death and can dream only of finally making it to a child's party (or WWE inspired quinceanera, I suppose) so that their misery might end. Viva pinata, indeed.

Bibliophilic Voyeurism: Take Off Your Dust Jacket

2008-01-13T18:18:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine (we'll call him Oghrim, since that's the name he's using on this website) pointed out a website named Librarything to me months ago. As is my way, I replied with a cursory "Looks interesting" and then went back to whatever it is I do. However, since I promised a former student I'd write her a letter of recommendation this weekend, as it's now Sunday night I need something else to do other than fulfill my promise. And so I returned to Librarything to give it another look.

As it turns out, it's a pretty interesting site, so long as you (like me) feel that the quality, content, and quantity of the book spines you have facing out of your (hopefully plentiful) shelves is somehow a measure of your intelligence and all around cultural sophistication. It's basically a virtual library, one that you can construct to mirror your actual collection and then, if you're feeling particularly bold, share with like-minded people. By like-minded, I refer to those other anonymous souls who have identical, or at least similar, books on their virtual shelves. While I'm sure their hearts were in the right place, I shudder to think what kind of socially-inept, obsessive compulsives I'd be matched with. Why do I assume this? Because as I was entering the hundred books (literally) that I could come up with off the top of my head, I was getting frustrated that I wasn't actually in front of my books, because I didn't want the wrong editions of the right books in my virtual library. So, keeping in mind that this sort of minutiae bothers me during what should be a purely diversionary moment, why the hell would I want to get in contact with another person like moi?

I've added a widget (a delicious word all it's own, I might add, though I can't help but describe it as "short" or "gnomish") that randomly shows the covers of any twelve books in my collection. Quaint, yes, though I wonder how good a decision it was. First of all, some of the more obscure scholarly books I have don't seem to have covers in the system, so they're ruled out of the widget, thereby losing any chance of impressing my friends who are better read and more intelligent than I am (almost all of my friends, as it turns out). Secondly, I'll eventually get all of my books in there, which could potentially result in such jarring spectacles as Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice sitting alongside Everyone Poops. Alas, such is the cross we truly eclectic individuals must bear, we who are equally fascinated by the sociological implications of supposedly objectivist practice and the ubiquity of shitting.

Anyway, if you have a moment to kill, check it out here. If you make a library, and the site has friend lists (I didn't take the time to check), add me. I'm under Colonel_Gentleman. "Super awesome, dashingly handsome, staggeringly well read, humanitarian, nobel laureate, and all around humble guy" was already taken, surprisingly enough.

Two Fisted Birthday Wishes

2008-01-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I hope you all had a pleasant holiday season, and that Santa brought you everything you wanted. I wish I could say I've been negligent in my posting (again) because of the furious work I've been performing on my dissertation, but I respect you too much to lie to you like that.

However, I do return to you bearing gifts. The first I had actually forgotten I'd seen, but was recently reminded by visiting Media Sheep. Upon reflection, I probably had a minor stroke when I saw this movie poster for the first time, and thus as a sort of knee-jerk reaction my short term memory wiped the image from my recollection utterly. Such is the price one must pay when being slapped in the face by visuals of such potency, as crisp droplets of raw masculinity and distilled awesome slowly glitter in the air. Since I used the adverb "slowly," I suppose this metaphor is happening in slow motion, so let's throw some doves flying in the background, a la John Woo. Not that this poster needs any verbal augmentation:

Delicious.

The second gift brings us to the title of today's post. Come to think of it, it dovetails nicely with the whole "see something and have a stroke" point, which in turn uses a figure of speech that touches upon the John Woo reference. I tell you, I don't plan this stuff. The language just...does it for me. And by "it," I mean "twist itself into a horrific parody of itself." Gotta love pronouns, eh?

Anyway, the WWE is teaming up with Mun2 (which I can only assume is short for Telemundo 2, in some sort of bizarre echo of MTV2) to provide one lucky girl with a wrestling themed quinceanera, complete with "WWE Wrestling Superstars Carlito and Melina to join the party." No, I'm not making this up; I'm not nearly that creative. For instance, I never would have thought that the perfect way to celebrate a 15 year old girl's coming of age is to watch someone pretend to punch someone else in the face a few dozen times, while her uncle gets too drunk and tries to body-slam his brother-in-law off the roof of the house, demolishing a folding table in the process and ensuring he's never invited anywhere socially ever again. But then I read that "Only girls age 15 (or turning 15 in 2008) to age 21 are eligible," and I blacked out. So, just to clarify, WWE Raw and Mun2 are teaming up to potentially give a 21 year old woman the 15th birthday party she always dreamed about, and apparently has been obsessing over for nearly six years since. Don't believe me? Enjoy the commercial below, and be sure to savor what is apparently the polarized ends of the teenage girl spectrum: a blond cheerleader and some sort of squarish, Ugly Betty sort of girl in boy's clothes:

I hear that the new American Gladiators will give a lucky octogenarian with serious bone density problems a vicious ass beating for his next birthday. Neil Patrick Harris will host the festivities, and personally grill the unicorn shanks...and for a nominal fee, Lindsey Lohan will snort the powdered unicorn horn in the bathroom.

Babies: 'Cause Sometimes Raising a Pet is Just Too Complicated

2007-12-19T19:04:00.000-08:00

For whatever reasons the synapses in my brain continue to misfire, I've been thinking about children and raising them lately. Rest assured, it's been in a bemused, ironic sort of way. No biological egg timer has gone off inside me, and if it had, I'd wonder how an egg timer found its way into my torso--wound, I might add--when I've never even gotten black-out drunk in Mexico before. On top of that, my wife constantly reminds me that, at least for the foreseeable future, not even a shred of my genetic code is going to find its way into her fallopian tubes. But that's alright. I'm a patient man. And cunning.

I suppose the event that triggered these uncharacteristic thoughts was the USA Cheer competition I attended last Saturday. You see, my wife is the assistant coach for a high school varsity cheer squad, so I drove out to Anaheim to support her, and thus was allowed to watch the routines from the stands like a normal person, rather than from the front seat of my van and through a telescopic lens, as some of you were no doubt imagining. Indeed, that's my very point. At some time in the past (no doubt while I was sleeping, unawares) I passed the line where cheerleaders were an admittedly cliche fetish and instead became just kids. As I was watching their routines, hoping none of them fell in such a way that bones would protrude from their flesh, I couldn't help thinking that their skirts should have been a little longer. I wondered if my daughter, one day in the future, would still be allowed to compete in a similar event when she arrived in a set of mechanic's coveralls, her school letters amaturely sewn to the back by her father, and all her sleeves and pant legs securely duct taped closed. Sure, there might be a minor deduction, but that should just inspire the girls to perform all that much better.

Also, I realized that being the sole male cheerleader during a high school cheer competition presents an interesting paradox. On one side, you inevitably draw bemused smirks from a crowd who, at best, will applaud you like they do the kid who finally managed to find the finish line in the Special Olympics 100m dash. On the other hand, any man even partially honest with himself must admire the cahones necessary to get out there by yourself amidst a gaggle of teenage girls who you are either 1)hopelessly in love with or 2)convinced are bitches because they look so much better in the skirts than you do, and pretend to cheer your non-present school teams to victory.

What compounds matters so much is that a mere day or two later I read that Britney Spears's little sister, at the ripe old age of 16 (much like those damn cheerleaders from above), is pregnant with her first child. Excuse me, but what the fuck? I already realize I'm a bit old fashioned, but this is a first world country and it's the 21st century. It's not like she's finally siring an heir for the 12th century French earl who her parents wed her to for estates in Burgundy. But I digress. I realize my incredulity is symptomatic of my naivete, but I bring this gem to the fore, rather, to circle back to the question of parentage. I want to send some sort of trophy to Lynne Spears for the bang-up job she's done, but I can't find a gold statuette of a mother pounding a 40oz while holding an upturned baby by the ankle. You'd think those would be in more demand. Yes, there's the nature v. nurture debate, and Britney's train-wreck could always be attributed to the corrosive influence of celebrity, but there are still signs to the contrary. I mean, there are photos of her walking in and out of a truck stop bathroom with bare feet. I wouldn't let my dog walk in such a place, and his paws smell funny all the time.

Honestly, at what point did this family so offend the gods, because the needle on the celebrity barometer is slowly creeping toward "Greek Tragedy." If I follow their ancestry back far enough, will I find that at some point a father sacrificed his daughter to ensure fair winds at sea, or was some great-great-great-grandmother raped by a swan? So who does 16 year old Jaime-Lynn's baby have to turn to? In many teen pregnancy situations I relax a bit because there is a strong matriarch there to oversee the child. And who would that be in the Spears clan? They'd better put an add on Craig's List for a competent necromancer, because if the kid's great-grandmother can't be called up from the soil, I can only imagine what kind of disaster will result. Then again, I won't have to imagine at all; she'll be on the cover of every magazine in the supermarket any-damn-way.

An Obscure Star Trek Reference*

2007-12-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

I apologize for being negligent again, but the final weeks of the quarter/semester have finally arrived, which means even the most oblivious and self-absorbed students have raised their heads from the trough, eyes glazed, still senselessly chewing their dining commons cud as the reptilian portion of their brain struggles to buy its host another day. Finally they hear the distant, tolling bell as it peals across the campus, not realizing that it marks their own funeral. When exactly is that hallowed ceremony to begin? On that glorious last day of instruction, when they ask how their constant absences and missing essays will affect their grade. "How?" you ask. "Not unlike how a bullet tearing through a human skull affects brain activity."

There are, of course, the dedicated students, who despite even personal tragedy will still turn papers in on time and attend every lecture. Yet I cannot help but marvel at their polar opposites, their alternate dimension counterparts who emerge on the starship College Education, identical to their antitheses save for the curious goatee perched on each of their chins.* These are the guilty parties most likely to wander into class after being gone for a week, as if having accidentally stumbled into the wrong room on their way to buy a churro, and genuinely ask, "Did we do anything while I was gone?" What do you say to that? "No, we did nothing important. The class spent the hour deciding whether a rabid giraffe would beat a unicorn in a fight. We settled on a tentative 'no,' but only so long as it was a fair fight." Was it too blunt to just ask me if I did my job while you were away? Bloody twits.

I suppose I have simply become tired (as one does every term at about this point) with repeatedly encouraging the students to show up to class and turn in their assignments. You'd think this was obvious, but you'd also think they'd realize that them being absent the day a paper is due doesn't adequately justify its late submission. I wish I were making that up, but even hearing that transpire (it did) made something no doubt delicate and essential to the system quietly snap inside me. And thus, until I find a Swiss watchmaker who dabbles in repairing the human soul, I will be forced to shuffle along with that something rattling impotently inside me. Should it ever be fixed, I may finally decide to tell a class what they should really hear. I don't know precisely what that is, but I have an idea:

"Don't say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else -- word one -- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming -- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

Perhaps this is too much. I never know, but I imagine my point will be made. Also, not to dip into the stagnant waters of plagiarism, of which I warn my unheeding students routinely, let me point out that the quoted text above is yet another gem from the writer of Penny Arcade. Can you see he's a bit of an influence? Honestly, if I could write like that at will, I would seriously consider scrapping the Ph.d program and actually making some money in this world.

Then again, if I did dare to tread outside the barren and paper-strewn halls of academia, I fear one of my former students would inevitably be my boss. And then...hating your ignorant boss with every fiber of your being...well, who honestly wants to become a cliche?

The Killing Joke

2007-11-28T00:35:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to share with you this cover shot of Heath Ledger as the Joker. I'd probably prefer to have him giving a full-on grin, or at least a smile, but the smirk is appropriate for the somewhat "darker" tone the movie is shooting for. Then again, anyone who thinks the Joker isn't a dark character to begin with hasn't read the comics, so maybe it's more accurate to say The Dark Knight is aiming for a truer representation of the Joker, rather than the absurd or the camp versions we are typically subjected to. We shall see, but until then, feast your eyes on this.

Why can't I think of catchy names like that?

2007-11-26T20:44:00.001-08:00

Ryan over at More Rants than Raves has once again birthed a charmingly unique and fascinating idea. While it's not nearly as funny as the DMV picture project, this one has considerably more potential. Sorry unibrow Ryan from the last license. Anyway, he's christened it "The Invisiblog," and since the glass from the broken champagne bottle is still strewn across the docks, you might yet catch the project's maiden voyage as it slips gleefully out to sea.

The premise behind the project is a blog where the host posts only titles, leaving the remainder of the post blank. The post is then (re)constructed through visitor's comments on whatever title they choose. Essentially, it's a sort of group, found-text piece, where subsequent visitors can elaborate and redirect the shape of the original "post," thereby making the blog visitors the actual "bloggers." For instance, today's title (he posts them almost daily) was simply "Aliens," so I left a somewhat incredulous comment where I insist I still believe him, but since he was driving home from a winery at the time, he may have imagined the whole thing. I didn't consult Ryan at all, of course; that's not the nature of the project. But now someone can begin, from reading my comment, to reconstruct what the original post might have been, and should they in turn leave a remark, the invisible post grows from there. So check it out here--if you have even a shred of creativity in your body, you can help write an invisible blog post today.

P.S. For those of you who might recognize the nature of my invisipost, it's based on an actual story. My high school geometry teacher, the vampire Lezot (or so we called him), insisted that he was buzzed by a low flying UFO one night while, you guessed it, driving home from wine tasting. Why he would open himself up to such potential ridicule is beyond me, but the man was a high school math teacher, so I suppose it goes with the territory.

I Rolled a 4 on my Concentration Check

2007-11-26T00:45:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I've always been somewhat ambivalent about the whole mainstream appropriation of geek culture. I'm not too concerned, since certain things like role-playing (particularly D&D) remain rather taboo, which allows me the luxury of believing I still know something they don't. To be more specific, I know the sweet joy of rolling a natural twenty when you're just about to be killed by the evil ninja Jubei, and in turn running him through with your own sword; I know the satisfaction of talking your way past a guard by bluffing him into thinking you have even an speck of clout with the local duke; and, of course, there's the mixed feelings about not knowing the touch of a woman for probably too long because of all-night gaming sessions fueled by Dr. Pepper and crippling social anxiety. But I digress...

Of late, World of Warcraft has been running commercials featuring celebrities (a term I bandy about rather loosely, as you'll see) talking about their WoW characters. I realize that they probably have absolutely no idea what the hell they're actually saying, and yes, I do find the idea that you can pay someone enough money to say things in front of a camera that, to them, sound like gibberish to be utterly delicious. So delicious that I could eat it with a spoon. I can only hope that one day I will be in a position where I can decide what these trained chimps/parrots (perhaps a chimparrot? a colorfully plumed but flightless simian?) will say for their camera. I have no doubt that when this day arrives, I will be sitting in a lair, lazily stroking a pug that is sleeping lazily on my lap. Oh, and the pug will be wearing a Yoda costume. But I continue to digress...

I've posted a clip from youtube that splices the two commercials together. Both are fun in their own way, though the second does have William Shatner dressed essentially like a Jedi. You'll see what I mean.

Really? Again!?

2007-11-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't bring myself to post for over two weeks, and now I make three posts in the course of an hour (or so). Although, I don't know if these last two even count as posts, since I'm basically just poaching "the funny" (the judges would also have accepted 'bogarting the funny,' 'Winona Rydering the funny' or 'Juno, Alaska' as acceptable alternatives) from another site. Ah well. I never pretended to originality. Anyway, here are my top five favorite bad ice-breakers, once again shamelessly taken from our friends at RADAR online.

"You might recognize me from your window."

"Do you come to this hospital chapel often?"

"Want to hear a joke? Okay, first I have to know if anyone here is Jewish, gay, or a raccoon that's recently been drugged or sodomized."

"Well, well, well. If it isn't the guy who took the last Zima."

"The Muppets are bullshit, and let me tell you why."

Speaking of Self-Help

2007-11-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

As the tail end of my previous post seemed to dip into the well of self-help (advertising, at least), I thought I'd pass along some of the more obscure self-help titles out there. You probably won't find them on the shelf at your local Borders, but that's probably a good thing. Here are my top ten favorites, but you can read the other ninety by following this link.

1. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Opposite Sex but were Tasered for Asking Previously

2. Shut Up About your Dead Wife! Dating after 60

3. Controlling Your Rage with Arson

4. Anal Only: Raising your Christian Teen as a Technical Virgin

5. Suck it Up: No one in the Sudan has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

6. The Child of your Field Hockey Coach has Two Mommies

7. YOU: Grimly Eating Lunch Alone in your Car

8. Some Women are Also from Mars: Learning to Love a She-Male

9. I Think Def Leppard is Pretty Rad, Too: Communicating with Today's Teenager

10. So You're Attracted to Grandma

Errata

2007-11-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

I've been away from the helm for nearly two weeks now. If you were a dog left in a station wagon on a hot summer afternoon, you'd be attracting vultures by this point. If you were my child (God help you), I imagine you'd be industrious enough to scrounge out sustenance for the duration, but by now child protective services would have unburdened me of the responsibility of fatherhood. I imagine I'd be thrown in prison too, and once it got around that I was in there for neglecting a kid for weeks....well....I just better hope I shiv a guy that first night, or I will emerge, years later, a deeply changed man. And of course, I mean "deeply" in the most anatomical of senses.

Truth be told, of late I have been hit with a deluge of work. Regrettably this work entails grading papers and writing a prospectus for my dissertation, rather than the myriad other labors that stand as considerably more preferable--including, but not limited to: inspections at the tickle factory; finding out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop; fighting, beating, and tagging a hobo for future scientific inquiry; or naming the condiments in your fridge (i.e. Gertie, Duchess of Mustardia). As such, things have been rather tame, but per my obligation to keep this leaky vessel of digital text afloat, I've decided to make a short list of the dire omens that remind us the cosmos is askew and the grand clock of the universe is flashing 12:00.

My fantasy football team remains undefeated. Yeah, I'm just as shocked by this as you are. And no, we're not talking the kind of "fantasy football" where you can have a 12th level half-orc barbarian on your defensive line, though I readily confess that would be sweet. Of course, you'd lose every match, as you would be hit with so many penalties for unnecessary roughness (read: physically tearing limbs from the opponent) that it wouldn't be worth watching unless you are the kind of person that really enjoyed the Rambo trailer. No, I'm referring to an actual fantasy football team. Things have gotten so strange that last week, when I went up against the guy with the next best record in the league, his otherwise superstar quarterback (Payton Manning) and kicker (some guy on the Colts whose last name starts with a V--yes, that's how much I know/care about football) both essentially threw crap at a wall for the duration of their game and allowed me to slip by with another victory. However, we're getting close to the playoffs, so if my center fielder can just continue getting the wicket during the scrum, and my caddie doens't hand me a damn three iron for the penalty kick attempt, I should be okay.

Hollywood has greenlit and already begun casting a live action movie version of Dragonball Z.
I think this one pretty much speaks for itself. If you have no idea what Dragonball Z is, well, you probably also don't know what the hell I was talking about with the whole 12th level half-orc barbarian thing. You've also probably never seen a twenty sided die before in your life; of course, on the other side of the spectrum, I have friends who still carry theirs with them at all times...just in case. Anyway, Dragonball Z is a popular anime show from the 90's that basically involves martial artists from space who can shoot fireballs from their hands, fly, have their otherwise black hair turn platinum blond in a powerup known as going "Super-saiyan," and other such things that will translate splendidly into live action film. This one may very well come to rival Dungeons & Dragons (ironic, I know) and Pop Star as the worst movie I have ever seen in my life.

Computer programs that try to guess your interests from the content of your email. While this fits under the "errata" category simply because these programs are always wrong, it's also a happy mistake I look forward to every time I check my email. As many of you have no doubt noticed, Gmail in particular has a column to the right of any email's text that offers services based on the words you or your friend chose in that latest missive. For example, in a recent email Nicholas sent about the whole Golden Compass daemon thing, gmail proffered these two ads, among others: "Uh oh...I'm Emo! Are you Emo? Take the Emo quiz!" and "What's your purpose? A seven step program to find your purpose and change your life." So, when the Don sent me a series of "motivational posters" like this one

Gmail was nice enough to put forth these advertisements: "Life-coach for Mid-life" and "Positive thinking--Get into a Great State of Mind and Make the Most of your Life!" I can't help but love a program that essentially does nothing but provide non sequitors unknowingly. Indeed, that's the very same reason why I like my students so much.

Rambo 47,373,958, Burma 0

2007-11-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

Any rational human being should glean little to no sense from the title of my latest blog post. If you know me at all, you will realize that trivialities like that barely give me pause anymore. However, unpacking its rich symbology (thank you, Dr. Robert Langdon of fake Harvard University for bringing this illustrious field to such prominence) is simply too delicious a prospect for me to pass up.

You see, dear friends (he says, leaning closer, as if to impart the dark heart of a conspiracy), there is a final Rambo movie in the making. And I'm not talking about Sly drinking too much rubbing alcohol, having a minor stroke in the middle of the night, banging his head on the headboard and deciding that maybe, in the future, he'll make another. Perhaps after the whole Planet Hollywood thing pans out. No, this movie is due out in May, and already has two scrumptious trailers out, the better (gloriouser? awesomester?) of which I'll link below.

But first, let me set the stage: Rambo has apparently retired to southeast Asia and taken up (what else?) the contemplative life of a blacksmith. This is essential, because it keeps John (Rambo's first name, noob) in touch with the primal elements of male machismo: fire, metal, hitting stuff, and fire. But we need a plot, and so in walks Rita from Dexter and some other do-gooders who want to stop the genocide going on in Burma. Now, I'm no cartographer, but I've heard nastily persistent rumors that "Burma" is now going by "the Union of Myanmar." But as you'll soon hear for yourself, Rambo calls it Burma, so that's good enough for me. Hell, he could call it fucking Candyland or Lumpy Place Estates for all I care. The details are inconsequential here. What matters is that--surprise--the savages that Rita et al went to save people from end up capturing them instead, and so Rambo steps in and, from the look of the trailer, kills every single man, woman, and child in the entire country--which, I might add, has a population of 47,373,958. I'm told this number is as low as it is because the nation is being ravaged by an AIDS epidemic. Tastefully, Sly has decided to set another one upon them in his film, only this one has greasy black hair, a dapper headband, and some as-yet unburned body fat.

I won't go into further details, less because of a desire to leave some surprise as that I've pretty much run out of details. Nevertheless, let me just warn you that this trailer is absurdly violent, but if the Don is indeed correct (my only friend to have served in Iraq), a Jeep mounted .50 cal will indeed make a man explode into hamburger from close range, so maybe it's all legit. Not that John Rambo needs such heavy armament. If this trailer is any indication, he could have done it all with his bare hands. But I'll admit, Burma is a relatively small country. If the Chinese act up, we can give Rambo a spork and team him up with an armored polar bear, and that'll be the end of that. Of course, then we'll have to find someone else to apply lead-based paint to our toys, but I digress.

Be warned, men: as you watch this trailer your Y chromosome will burn hot and bright, like a bar of fired steel, and as the visceral brutality of these scenes hammer that metal again and again, know that Rambo is molding you into the ladle of awesome that he believes you can be. Or perhaps a spice rack of kickass. I bet even Rambo needs one of those.

Mastery of Language for the win!

2007-10-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

The comic below, gleaned from Wednesday's post on Penny Arcade, is so very far up my alley that sunlight no longer penetrates its shadowy narrows. Were one to wander this far themselves, they would undoubtedly be accosted by nare-do-wells, and at knife point, would be forced to participate in tom-foolery, shenanigans, and if truly unlucky, ballyhoo. Enjoy.

Def Whyte Man's Burden

2007-10-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

Guitar Hero III will be hitting stores tomorrow, or at least that's what the fine purveyors of electronic entertainment tell me; I remain rather skeptical, mainly because video games tend to be released on Tuesdays, not unlike DVDs and many CDs. Isn't it amazing what one's youth in customer service will learn' ya? Anyway, what spurs me on to write this post, apart from the simple fact that it's been over a week since my last one, is rather the harsh self-realizations that playing the GH III demo on Xbox Live has made brutally apparent: I have horrible taste in music.

Anyone who knows me even a little soon realizes that my musical tastes cull from the most stagnant and vile corners of the barrel. The most acceptable layers are those that fifteen year old girls swoon over (read: Fall Out Boy) on Total Request Live (or TRL, if you're into abbreviations, and who isn't?), and while I whole-heartedly cling to that tired, cliche answer that their last album before their 'discovery' is my favorite and that I'm less of a fan of the mainstream stuff, I won't go so far as to call anyone a 'sell-out.' I believe that phrase is one among many that I, as a white, middle-class male, am not allowed to use, unless ironically. Same thing goes for any complaints about me being oppressed or not being paid as much as someone else for the same job.

I would be a far happier man if a guilty affection for the "Sugar We're Going Down" guys was all I had in my musical closet. Instead, we're talking the kind of shit that keeps you from getting elected Senator or ever holding a job where you're around kids. For instance, out of the five songs put forth on the GH III demo, the one that really sent shivers up my spine was "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Yes, the one by the Scorpions. First of all, any person should be wary of liking a band with an animal in the name or band logo; if the word "white" is added into the mix as an adjective (Whitesnake, White Lion) or any part of the name is deliberately misspelled, then you might just need to go put a pistol in your mouth and rock yourself like a bullet to the brain pan. The only possible exception to the animal rule is Modest Mouse, and that's because they got the name from a Virginia Woolf quote.

Believe it or not, though, the 80's aren't my true weakness. Sure, I may have a fondness for singing "I Just Died in your Arms Tonight" while playing Halo 3 online, mainly to annoy/amuse my friends, and Patrick Swayze's "She's Like the Wind" may have somehow found a way onto my iPod, but my real kryptonite is 90's music. Oh yes. I'm talking songs so bad that hearing them has a scientifically documented chance, however slight, of inducing coma, as a sort of bodily defense mechanism, not unlike how a computer crashes. Dare I confess my affection for the Gin Blossoms, or even worse, the fact that I have yet to erase Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" from my iPod, and because of that delinquency, now refuse to take it off out of sheer stubborn obstinacy? No. This horrid truth would rend the very fabric of the mind, and with what tattered shreds remain, my friends would one by one bid me a hasty adieu.

Of course, they don't seem like they're that bad to me. However, I must confess I am not completely oblivious to how the outside world might see me. Like the portly bachelor in his fifties who has an extensive porcelain doll collection with which he enacts his favorite scenes from Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters' collected works, I realize others would look at me askance, and thus indulge my aberrant whims in the secrecy of long drives home and stolen moments of solitude in my study/lair/Batcave. Still, there is a pull to these songs that I cannot ignore, and if that makes me a pariah, then I suppose the sweet siren song of Eddie Murphy's "My Girl Likes to Party all the Time" will rock me into a fitful sleep, one that, I pray, is without dream.

My Soul May Carry Rabies

2007-10-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

While I would hesitate to call myself an online quiz aficionado, I do take them from time to time. I typically steer away from the IQ rating ones and have long since given up on the purity tests, mainly because the results for both are so dismally low that they suggest I spent my first twenty or so years of life caged in the basement of some dilapidated Victorian home, fed fish-heads from a slop bucket twice a day but denied even the barest education or social contact for fear that my mongoloid form would diminish whatever cultural capital the family had up to that point managed to accrue. Should the comparison have crossed your mind, I would readily grant that Boo Radley metaphors are also appropriate.

So anyway (the lingual calling card, I might observe, of the serial meanderer and long-story-teller), the other day I took the "Meet Your Daemon" quiz on the spiffily interactive website for New Line Cinema's forthcoming The Golden Compass. Why was I there in the first place, you ask? Perhaps it was my affection for fantasy literature and Hollywood's oft unrealized potential to visually bring off that literature spectacularly. Perhaps because when you glance at only the final eleven letters of the URL, one finds themselves staring into the face of "assmovie.com." Most likely, it's because I had already seen the new international movie trailer. I mean, for God's sake, there's fucking armor-clad polar bears fighting in this thing! These "gentle giants" have once and for all cast aside their Coke bottles and Christmas cheer and returned once more to what the Creator intended them to be: hulking bastions of savage ass-kickery.

The idea behind the Daemon in general, at least within the book/movie's mythology (as far as I can tell), is that every person's soul is manifested in an animal companion of the opposite gender, and while children's (because of their open potential) Daemons may often change shape during these early, formative years, as people progress toward adulthood this avatar gradually settles into a fixed shape. Thus the type of animal companion you have is a representative of your personal characteristics. This handy quiz allows you, after answering a mere twenty questions, to find out what your Daemon would be.

Diligently, I completed the quiz and waited with bated breath to see what totem my soul would greet me as. I am not an entirely arrogant man, and thus felt no compulsion to see a great lion, a majestic eagle, or even a damn marmoset saunter across my screen. But what did I get? A mouse named Aurora. Yes, the very core of my being can best be summed up as a tiny rodent that lives behind your appliances and, centuries past, may have helped spread plague throughout Europe. Indeed, mine is an animal almost universally put forth as a sign of helplessness and timidity, and should sufficient numbers of my soul congregate in one locale, words like "infestation" are bandied about. This, dear reader, is the type of man whose blog you read. Furthermore, if I did have the utter misfortune of residing in this fantastic universe, what the hell use would I get out of dear little Aurora? Send her out to scare housewives, or harvest me modest amounts of expired cheese? Perhaps I could throw her at the eyes of an attacker, hoping those disturbing little pink paws of hers might find purchase on a retina. I, of course, would never know, as I would be frantically sprinting the other way. Hurumph. Mouse indeed.

My wife's daemon simply puzzles me. Hers is a honey bee named Borealis. Now, I of course appreciate the synchronicity of our two daemons obviously suiting each other so well (if you don't get why they are suited yet, then congratulations on failing fifth grade science), but apart from that, what traits does one associate with the honey bee? Hard working, I suppose, though the word "drone" can too easily be bandied about. Colorful? Okay, if yellow and black are your thing. There is, of course, the vast array of material associated with "honey," but even I will only go so far, dear reader, to sate your boredom; allow me to politely decline.

So should you find yourself bored anytime in the near future, pop over to the website mentioned above and see what your Daemon might be. As is ever the case in these things, it's best to answer truthfully and not in the hopes of getting a specific beastie, since the character traits these deranged people associate with certain animals can, at times, boggle the mind. For instance, when I retook the test (I was still hoping for something a little higher up the mammalia food chain), I got a snow leopard named Elpis (the majestic symbol of, I shit you not, the Girl Scout Association of Kyrgyzstan). First on the list of descriptors was "spontaneous." How exactly is a snow leopard spontaneous? Does he suddenly decide, mid attack, that rather than biting the throat of his prey as usual, he'll instead try mauling its genitals just for the hell of it? Is it merely a ploy used by this cunning feline on its Match.com application? Needless to say, I'm not all that spontaneous, and disturbingly, the snow leopard's diet tends to subsist off of rodents. Poor Aurora has her work cut out for her, it seems.

Not fat, but "Prosperous"

2007-10-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I've been worried lately that I was already experiencing a drought of sorts. Apart from the olfactory incidents in my junior college classroom, I didn't have a whole lot I felt compelled to write about. Sure, I could force it, but like so many other things in life, forcing it results in a poor product, or in other contexts, jail time--where a whole lot more "forcing it" tends to take place, I hear.

Then I checked my email on Wednesday, and to my delight, found one of my dearest friends had been kind enough to send me a link to photos taken at my recent, 10 year high school reunion. New worlds of possibility suddenly laid themselves bare before my eyes. I felt like a cheetah on the Serengeti who had accidentally stumbled upon the wounded, retarded, and elderly section of the gazelle herd; yes, my friends, there was bounty to be had here. So much, in fact, that my frail mortal mind could not adequately process the brutal stimuli strewn before me as I clicked through picture after picture of this delightful little get-together. Indeed, I slipped into a comatose state, and only now, days later, have I regained enough consciousness to share my thoughts.

First impression? Overwhelming relief that I did not go. Now I know how passengers who missed a flight must feel when, driving home from the airport in irritation, they hear that their plane detonated over the Pacific; or how the promiscuous Lothario feels when learning that a former conquest has gonorrhea but he, despite his utter and persistent disregard for protection, escaped with his junk (Mr. Peeps) untarnished. Such was the feeling of serene calm that swept over me, so much so that I immediately slaughtered a fatted calf and burned fragrant herbs in praise of my merciful God.

Interestingly, the other sensation that most forcibly warred with my relief as I perused these crime-scene snapshots was a deep-seated, almost bewildering confusion. The title on the web page claimed that this was my high school and my graduating class, and every six to ten pictures did contain someone I vaguely remembered, but the vast majority of these pictures were inhabited by souls I, as far as I could tell, had never seen before in my entire life. For many of you, this may seem unremarkable, but bear in mind that my graduating class clocked in at somewhere around 200 people. At one time, I knew the names of every single one of these kids, but whatever the years had done to them, it had erased the once rigid contours of their profile to leave a fleshy, dead-eyed caricature in its place. Let me pause a moment to emphasize that first adjective a bit: indeed, were there a machine bolted to the gymnasium floor that night that could pare away the excess pounds that had accumulated over the past decade, they could have molded themselves at least another fifteen people to enjoy the festivities.

I could go on for quite some time, so I'll cut this short. Despite what my previous paragraphs might suggest, I hold no persistent distaste for my high school or my former peers; indeed, there were a number of people I saw in the pictures who I really did wish I was still in contact with, and another few who are still close to me. I don't mean to malign these people, or the rest of the gang in attendance. I suppose it's just that I don't have a whole lot to say to them, nor they to me, I imagine. Come on--I don't even remember their names. Showing up that night would be tantamount to saying, "I never cared enough to remember you after graduation, but I do care enough now to squint at your name tag and feign enthusiasm about your life for as short a period of time as possible." I respect them enough to save them the implied condescension. Though, I suppose, not enough to simply not condescend in the first place. God, I'm a prick. Maybe I did them a favor not showing up.

Update: Still Silent, Still Deadly

2007-10-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

So it's been a week since my students approached me after class complaining about the anonymous flatulence of their peer, and the only good news to report is that they haven't approached me a second time, despite the lack of any impotently vague announcement in-class on my part. This silent killer continues to bombard the innocents around him/her with such unflinching persistence that WWII artillery metaphors spring unbidden to mind. The original plaintiffs who brought the matter to my attention have taken one of two courses: some suffer stoically, their jaw muscles taut as their breath hisses in and out between clenched teeth; others simply persevere until their all-too human willpower inevitably crumbles, and at this point, rise abruptly mid-lecture to re-seat themselves in a marginally better--and certainly further removed--location.

Charmingly enough, as of Wednesday another student has taken a slightly different approach. Stopping me as I was passing out their latest batch of quizzes, he opined that there must be something wrong with the ventilation system above the room, because an unfamiliar stench had been seeping down onto him from above. My first impression? That be it for reasons of delayed guilt or (if this young person is truly the virtuoso of biological warfare that I suspect he is) for reasons of barely restrained pride, the culprit himself had broached the subject with me, thereby elevating the game of cat, mouse, and expired brie to the next level. He was giving me a way out, an avenue to discuss the subject in class without attaching the onus (don't transplant vowels now, dear reader) to any particular individual. The fact that this may very well have been provided by the guilty party only underscores the point that he has no intention of stopping. The ritual has merely evolved, to a point now where the prodigy demands public acknowledgement, albeit obliquely so.

The only gesture to be made on my part, at least for the moment, will remain a passive one. By incrementally increasing the complexity (and thus the difficulty) of the grammar lessons, one by one my students should become so fixated on the gibberish on the board--and more importantly, on their woeful inability to adequately master those grammatical skills--that their concern over their course grade will snap them into an attention rapt enough, I would hope, to block out the more visceral stimuli surrounding them--namely the fact that they are forced, twice a week, to attend class in a Dutch oven.

The sinster limits of good pedagogy

2007-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

I've been teaching at the college level for about five years now. Let me clarify that a little by explaining I've been teaching at junior colleges and universities for that long, and not giving a college-level lecture to a kindergarten finger-painting class. And while I'll be the first one to admit that this isn't an overly substantial period of time, and that therefore I have not seen everything in "the book" (whatever that malevolent volume might actually be), I like to think I've at least experienced the basics of the profession, along with the more common curve balls that are thrown--inevitably at the skull--of whoever happens to stand before a classroom and speak 2-3 days a week.

So when three of my students waited to speak to me after class the other day, I assumed they had a question about the lecture, or perhaps were unclear about some procedural issue from the syllabus. I am delighted (read: appalled) to reveal that this was, indeed, not the case. Rather, these students felt obliged to inform me that another member of the class, seemingly without scruple, had been mercilessly and quite continuously farting during lecture--enough so that the heady aroma of this person's gastrointestinal tract had become distracting to these unfortunate neighbors/victims. They corralled me after class to complain and beg me to "do something about it."

I was so taken aback by the situation, that I rattled off a placating sentence or two and sent them on their way, unwisely promising I'd try to remedy the situation. But what, I ask, can I do? My purview as instructor reaches no further than teaching the subject matter to my students, evaluating their performance in class, and maintaining some semblance of decorum during our time together so that the majority of students who want (and choose) to learn can. Personal hygiene is not something I should have to deal with, nor can I imagine broaching the subject with the suspect to be anything other than leaving yourself wide open for complaints to the administration, or at the very least, an extremely embarrassing conversation for everyone involved.

So what am I going to do? Pretend to forget about it on Monday, and should the issue come back, explain to these students that they may need to take the bull by the horns themselves and find a moment to talk to this kid. Or simply move seats. I, for one, will continue to pray that the ventilation in that classroom will continue to keep my nostrils free of that most oppressive aroma, or that should it not, I will have one of my dry-erase markers handy to shove up my nose. The minor brain damage should be well worth the trouble.

Drawring Is the Funzorz!

2007-10-04T12:19:00.001-07:00

I used to draw quite a lot, but regrettably, I simply don't have the time anymore. I have the time to dabble every now and then, but the thing about drawing (at least for me) is that if you don't keep your skills up through constant practice, you won't get results you're entirely thrilled with. So if and when I do "dabble," I get crap, which only frustrates me and thus I put the pencil and pad aside for another month or so. Thank God I have a good metabolism, because I fear I would rather easily fall prey to a shame spiral that would eventually involve me eating my weight in roast beef covered in chocolate sauce. For those of you playing along at home, the roast beef would be the thing covered in chocolate sauce, not me. That would be just weird, and the kind of mental image I would only wish upon sworn blood enemies.

Nevertheless, there are times when things just click, regardless of how long away I've been from the medium. Case in point: the picture heading this post. I drew it last year sometime, but despite how rusty I was, everything came out crisply and fell right into place. I imagine this is what athletes mean when they talk about being "in the zone," though for someone of my meager athletic ability to attempt approximating even an understanding of that trope may smack of hubris. Still, I think it gets the point across.

Anyway, I'm only writing this post because I want that picture to be in my profile, but apparently, the system demands the arcane sacrifice of the pic included in a genuine blog post, from which the profile can then steal away. It makes no sense to me whatsoever, but then again, I can't understand how an entire electronic language can be composed solely of 1's and 0's, and of course, my persistent belief that the world is indeed flat and that ships routinely sail off the edge of the sea into the great abyss. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.

Then again, I have been thinking I need more grist for my diseased mind to mill over (wow...I fit both "grist" and "mill" into the same sentence without literally talking about an actual mill) in these blog posts, so perhaps I'll start including brief (at the mere mention of that word, I can hear my loyal reader--yes, singular--breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief) posts with any promising sketches that happen to have bled from my pencil that week. Of course, that would entail me drawing every week. Still, should anything worth sharing come up, I'll let you know.