Hillbilly Trailer Fire

I may be some time...

2010-03-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

I think that my ass has become as numb and lifeless as the stool at the counter of my local café that I’m sitting on. I’m not sure though; let me check.

Yep, not moving.

All sense of touch and potential gropings has been squeezed out of my backside, bled out through a brilliant combination of not-moving and lack of hydration. Well, not lack of hydration so much as only ingesting arrhythmia-inducing amounts of caffeine instead of actual water. Water, while free, does not justify my sitting in a café for 5 hours at a time to the all-seeing barista; that is coffee’s job.

My $1.85 plus repeated fifty-cent refills pays my rent here, not 8oz. glasses of water available free of charge next to the sugar packets and napkins over my right shoulder. I could drink both at the same time but I have a limit to the amount of things I will stack in front of me in a public place and my laptop, coffee and cel phone fill that quota. No water for me then.

So here I sit; jittery and bled of fluid via my coffee enema, numb legs braided around my bar stool like a poorly thought-out friendship bracelet.

I wonder if I can flag someone down –solicit some help in getting off of my perch with a minimum of embarrassment—before I topple ass-over-tea-kettle off of here with a lack of perambulation that would make a paraplegic blush?

Visions of skyward facing feet tumbling leftward in a slow-motion arc, shoes shooting of in different directions as I crash to the ground, are filling my head.

“Shiftless layabout flattens 12 toddlers and a Dominican friar –news at eleven!”

I may be overreacting. I could just reach down and untangle my legs from this not-so-overly-complex single-poled bar stool I’m sitting, couldn’t I? Maybe. That’s the problem when I drink too much coffee: I come up with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions to, say, reaching for a pencil that is two inches out of my reach.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

A Dead Horse: New Ways to Beat It... Wait... Never Mind...

2010-02-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods Funny as Balls(adj.) Mad-Libs

Good ______(noun) and thank you for _______(progressive verb) me. Many of you in this room are my ______(noun,plural). Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have _______(verb, past-tense) for me or you've worked with me or you've supported me.

Now every one of you has good reason to be ______(adjective) of me. I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply _______(adjective) for my _________(adj.) and _______(adj.) behavior I _______(verb, past-tense) in.

I know people want to find out how I could be so _______(adj.) and so ________(adj.). People want to know how I could have done these things to my _______(noun), ________(proper noun), and to my ________(noun). And while I have always _________(verb, past-tense) to be a _______(adj.) person, there are some things I want to _______(verb).

I have a lot to _____(verb) for, but there is one ______(noun) I really want to ______(verb). Some ______(pl.noun) have speculated that ______(proper noun#1) somehow hurt or ______(verb, past tense) me on Thanksgiving night. It ______(verb) me that people would ________(verb) a story like that. ______(proper noun#1) never ______(verb) me that ______(noun) or any other ______(noun). There has never been an episode of _______(noun) in our ________(noun), ever. _______(proper noun#1) has shown enormous ______(noun) and ______(noun) throughout this _______(noun). _______(proper noun#1) deserves praise, not ______(noun).

Parents used to point to me as a ______(noun) for their _______(noun, pl.). I owe all those ______(noun, pl.) a ______(adj.) apology. I want to say to them that I am truly _______(adj.).

Some _______(noun, pl.) have made up _______(noun, pl.) that never happened. They said I used ________(noun, pl.). This is completely and utterly ________(adj.). Some have _______(verb, past-tense) things about my ________(noun). Despite the _______(noun) I have done, I still believe it is right to _______(verb) my family from the public ________(noun). They did not do these things; I did.

I recognize I have brought this on myself, and I know above all I am the one who needs to _______(verb). I owe it to my _______(noun) to become a better _______(noun). I owe it to those _______(superlative adj.) to me to become a better _______(noun). That's where my focus will be.

I have a lot of ______(noun) to do, and I intend to ______(verb) myself to doing it. Part of following this ______(noun) for me is ________(philosophy/religion), which my ______(noun) taught me at a young age. People probably don't realize it, but I was _______(verb, past-tense) a __________(philosophical/religious follower), and I actively ________(verb, past-tense) my faith from childhood until I _______(verb, past-tense) away from it in recent years. _________(philosophy/religion) teaches that a _______(verb,progressive) for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and _______(adj.) search for ________(noun). It teaches me to stop _______(verb, progressive) every _______(noun) and to learn ______(noun). Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught.

As I move forward, I will continue to receive ______(noun) because I've ______(verb, past-tense) that's how people really do ______(verb). Starting tomorrow, I will leave for more ______(noun) and more ______(noun). I would like to thank my friends at _______(proper noun) and the _______(noun, pl.) in the field this week for understanding why I'm making these _______(noun, pl.) today.

That also means relying on ______(noun, pl.) for help. I've learned to seek _______(noun) from my peers in therapy, and I hope someday to return that _______(noun) to others who are seeking ________(noun). I do plan to return to _______(sport) one day, I just don't know when that day will be.

Finally, there are many _______(noun, pl.) in this room, and there are many _______(noun, pl.) at _______(noun) who believed in me. Today, I want to ask for your _________(noun). I ask you to find room in your _______(noun) to one day believe in _______(noun) again.

______(verb) you.

Demetri Martin is a Criminal Genius; OR 'How Palindromes Ruined My Day'

2010-02-02T11:20:00.001-08:00

Demetri Martin, for the uninitiated, is a standup comedian who features a wide array of props in his sets. He points out simple figures of speech that can be made hilarious with one small change, one misplaced vowel or by simply adding 'ladies' to the end of any sentence. Go ahead and try that last one out, I'll wait. See? Didn't adding that last little bit just make whatever you were saying infinitely creepier? No? Did you say 'ladies' like you were Mel 'The Velvet Fog' Torme? Go ahead, try it again...

'Mmmm, noodle soup... ladi-i-ies.'

But I digress --Demetri is a brilliant guy who has no problems shooting from the hip with surgical precision, lacing the air around a metaphor or homonym with verbal buckshot. I, on the other hand, get thrown out of places when shooting from the hip for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I take things too literally and firearms make people nervous.

"Shoot Me a Letter" - You're doing it wrong...

Despite my verbal handicaps and an inability to see beyond the most ham-handed of metaphors, at times I still fancy myself something of a wordsmith --not unlike Taco Bell fancies themselves a center for epicurean fantasy, I imagine. That there is what we in the industry call 'self deprecation'; I looked it up.

Now recently I have begun to have a tad more energy. This could be for a number of reasons, but the most likely culprit is the bionic looking C-PAP machine that now adorns my bedstand. For the uninitiated, C-PAP stands for... something about breathing and forcing air into my lungs. Wait, hold on --Continuous Positive Airway Pressure--that's it! Anyways, the crux of the situation is that I have, according to my Cardio-pulminologist Dr. O'Connor, 'severe obstructive Sleep Apnea'. Short version: I stop breathing a lot when I sleep. A lot, a lot. They've done studies --with doctors and scientists and everything-- and my level of Apnea registers an 892 on the 'Reggie White Chance of Dying in Your Sleep Scale of Abstract Numbers'.

"What, too soon?"

The long and the short of it is that of 330 minutes of measured sleep I stopped breathing over 450 times for an average of 20.5 seconds. Do the math on that --I'll wait. Did your TI-83 catch on fire? Mine crunched numbers for 30 seconds and then spit out an x/y axis graph that looked like an '82 Cutlass --I may have done something wrong, but the end result is the same: my apnea does not make for good math. Nor, apparently, does it make for restful sleep. Back to Dr. O'Connor, who's deadpan delivery borders on British, and the results of my sleep test: I spend 2/3 of my total 'sleep' volume in stage II sleep and never truly reach stage IV slow-wave/REM sleep. This means that I don't dream, I don't heal properly, and, most importantly, my brain never rests. Apparently my body hasn't gotten the amount of sleep that a normal person needs since the Carter administration.

"Though I am sad that I apparently sleep-walked through the era of this gem..."

But no more!! Now I have my trusty C-PAP machine propping my airways open with humidified air at the small price of looking like some half-naked fireman while I sleep --the footie pajamas only increase the 'Road Warrior meets Children of the Corn aspect of it'. With my ability to finally get to stage IV sleep came two things:
1) I now not only dream, I dream about really weird shit. Apparently my brain is cramming together all of the dreams that I was supposed to be having with all of my new dreams into some decade-spanning VH1 mashup of nonsense imagery. With clowns. It's f#$%*d up.
2) I have a ridiculous amount of clarity and energy now, which brings us back to my original point: Demtri Martin and his comedic ability. Was that segue jarring enough? I think I lost a tooth from the side-impact.

This morning I was putting my new found energy and rested brain to one of its most efficient uses: multi-tasking with extreme prejudice. Or, to at least not feeling bad about the primary action items that I was shoving to the side of my brain while Wiki-scaping and attacking someones vampire on facebook. Either way, I was getting more ~~useless/time-wasting/ebay purchasing/porn-scaping~~ stuff done. So while I was ~~staring at the ceiling wondering what the f#%& I was doing with my morning~~ answering email this morning I decided to cruise my favorite link-dump, reddit.com. It was whilst traipsing through reddit that my morning was brought to a screeching halt, my lunch break was accordioned by an 18-wheeler and much of my afternoon was carried off on an overly-used and poorly thought out metaphor all thanks to Demetri Martin.

"I write sentences good --and think them good too!"

What I found blew my ever-loving mind: it was a poem entitled "Dammit I'm Mad" is 224 words long and reads the same backwards as it does forwards; an insanely long palindrome, if you will. Ridiculously long in fact... la-a-a-dies.

Wow, that really does sound creepy

In dissecting one man's genius with my own dull-witted and imprecise brain pan I began to feel akin to an old buggy driver whipping a braying mule while getting dust shot in my face by a horde of passing Ferraris... Ferrari... Porsches. Or, because ~~I'm lazy~~ you're retarded and need visual cues, something like this:

Hint: I'm the one in the foreground --not the full-sized one--in this visual-metaphor.

In any case I was not about to take this challenging of my manhood --for it was a challenge-- laying down. Nay, I would construct my own Palindrome Poem that would shake the very foundations of literature, linguistics and, yes, facebook. "This would be easy", I thought. "I know what palindromes are and I know what letters are; I'll just sit here and construct one long stream-of-consciousness War and Peace-length palindrome out of known palindromes and other letters." Child's play, yes?

4 hours later -- "Poop, Radar!; Poop!" is all that I had... Things were not looking up.

"Um, Hawkeye? Can you not shout that at me?"

Well, this was going to be harder than I thought. As I began to shake my C-PAP machine like a magic 8-ball, screaming increasingly hostile questions at it, an idea came to me:

"Why not unleash the power of the internets, the all-knowing horde-of-hordes hive-mind, on my problem?" I screamed into the intake nozzle of my inanimate, unknowing breathing device.

So here's what I came up with:

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

(A Palindrome's Odyssey)

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Ma, I so resign. It's all a poet air. Ben is, I see, so Greek, (in?).

Was I a gateman? Eh? Spit a diaper. Mood's mode; Pallas, I won!

Diaper pane, sold entire - melt til ever!

Revel, little merit Ned? Lose, nap: repaid.

Now is all Apedom's doom -Repaid a tip, she; Name tag, a, I saw.

Nike ergo sees! Is inebriate opal lasting? Is Eros? I am!

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Ah, the sweet smell of success. Suck on that, Yalie! Wait, isn't this a Nickleback song? F&*$! DAMN YOU DEMITRI!!!!

Billy Mays: Death of a Pitchman; or 'Trust the guy with a heart condition who did blow'

2010-01-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

'As Seen on TV --Billy re-enacting 'Scarface', now with more blow.'

Early last week I felt somewhat put-upon when confronted with cooking dinner for myself --I had just spent the prior week moving from one side of Seattle to the other after doing the same thing in the opposite direction 3 months before. While this was a move up and infinitely better for me in the long-run, it has played havoc with my ability to cook a meal that didn't include the words 'instant', 'ramen' or misspelled versions of 'Cheese'. Instead of rummaging through my recently organized cupboards, chock full of an alphabet-soup of things unlikely to be found on any diet marketed as 'Healthy' or even 'Won't Turn your Bloodwork into Chemical-Gumbo', I decided to eat out. Not that this really changed the menu to something more healthy, it just allowed me to feel less directly responsible by adding a middleman, in this case 'Hamburger Harry's'.

This particular sports-bar in Ballard has opened the floodgates and possibly torn a hole into the 8th Dimension in regards to its ability to stuff foods into other foods. The one burger in particular that may be directly responsible for shit like this happening again:

"This picture ignores the 18th law of thermodynamics: 'The Fly, The Kurgen and Robocop cannot be in L.A. at one time'

is this:

The Jalapeno-popper burger --they stuff an already stuffed food into another piece of food!! But I digress...

After preparing my body to accept this caloric bounty (I ran across the street, thus elevating my heart-rate and, in my mind, justifying a 4200 calorie meal) I set to eating. It was while searching for a distraction from what I was putting into my body that my attention was drawn towards a commercial on one of the 482 flatscreen tv's flashing bright colors and lights at me. I'm simple like that -- 'What? Loud noises and flashy lights? This must be important!'

...And it was important. Why? Because Billy fucking Mays said so.

"What is the rhetorical definition for 'beating a dead horse'? This blog."

Not 6 months after dying from a cocktail of Heart Disease mixed with Co-Fucking-caine, the ghost of Billy is back hocking hands-free-super-cleany-sham-wowy crap on t.v.

Now I'm not one to dogpile on the recently deceased (unless they really, really deserve it, or I'm feeling uppity) but does this strike anyone else as odd? Billy Mays died just only six months ago (June 8th, 2009) and it already seems that everyone has forgotten just how exactly that came about. Apparently the public at large has the same ability to ignore the unpleasant realities of their heroes as I have in regarding my own health and the dipshittery that I inflict on it --I'm drawing strained parallels in order to justify my Junkfood/Buckaroo Banzai tangent. Shut your mouth.

Back to the task at hand: anyone else feel weird about trusting a guy to recommend products to them who blew his weakened heart apart by choosing cocaine over, say, Aspirin?

Maybe his longtime friend and the owner of 'As Seen on TV' can explain their choice to continue using Cokey-the-Bear to peddle their wares:

'Longtime friend and colleague AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of the "As Seen on TV" product company Telebrands, said Mays never exhibited any signs of drug use and was always prepared for his many commercial shoots. "I'm just shocked," Khubani said. "He was the model of a responsible citizen."'

...Or maybe not.

Oh-kay, so they're going to play the age-old modest praise/encomium gambit. This figure of speech, also known as a 'River Phoenix Eulogy', is implemented in the hopes that by meeting certain minimal character requirements (in this case, appearing to not be doing Cocaine) we will forget that the person actually was doing Cocaine. Well two can play at this game, 'As Seen on TV'.

...Wait, that sounds like a lot of work. How about I just cut and paste amusing photos in with ironic captions down below.

Now, with fewer calories burned per unit of output.

"WARNING: Irony Kills"

....Ahhh screw it --I'm tired. Must be all that not-doing-cocaine.

Bacon Lube - 'Applewood Smoked' Sounds like a Priapism-induced Sexual Mishap...

2009-11-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

I love bacon --bacon on my bacon; bacon-wrapped bacon and potato cheddar wedges; bacon floss; hell, I think that Nitrous Oxide needs to come in several bacony flavors so that I can pass out to the smell of crackling pig-fat while I'm going under for my first of many Bypass surgeries. Nothing says irony like getting your ribs cracked open in order to replace your bacon-damaged heart valve with one from a pig whilst being serenaded by the dulcet tones of Hickory-Smoked bacon cooking on a grill.

Wow --smells like a rendering plant in here...

What I won't stand for though is someone who takes things too far --ironic, I know. When someone puts my love of bacon in mortal danger; danger so palpable, so close at hand that I can feel it breathing over my shoulder and poisoning the one love that I thought, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, was 'un-put-downable', then I must act. Or at least write a strongly worded blog about it and then go back to my Sunday of pajamas and screaming at the television.

What danger, you ask? Bacon-lube, that's what.

But Finnian, what's so bad about Bacon-lube?

I'll tell you what, commie --take off your beret, put down your little red book and stop murdering those children for a second and listen to my words, America hater.

Raise your hand if you love bacon. You too, pinko; I know you *heart* bacon in all of its glorious iterations --don't be afraid.

'Che, the Bay of Pigs is just a place name --there are no pigs there for your bacon." "But I love the bacon..."

Here's where it gets complicated --follow me, if you can.

Bacon Tastes good. Bacon SMELLS even better.

Sex is generally good (barring late night mistakes at the Airport Lounge). Sex though, generally, does not smell even better.

In fact, the smells associated with sex are a general road-map as to how your night is going and how much worse it may possibly get. Add in to this already volatile mix the confusing aroma of roasting pig-flesh and you can see where I'm going. The smell and taste of cured meat is something that, during sex, elicits in me a Pavlovian response somewhat akin to a Chinese Firedrill.

Like this, but with more cowbell and less chubbiness.

If I am in the midst of having inadvisable sex with someone after too many tall cans of Steinlager then I am going to need to rely on all of my beer-dulled senses to keep the night from swerving from 'just plain depressing' to the land of 'holy-hell, how in the monkey f#$k did I end up here??!?!'. One of those senses, sadly, is my sense of smell.

Far be it for me to poo-poo anything bacon-scented/flavored/otherwise, but this particular product seems to blur several lines that I would prefer stayed unblurrable. Bacon in the kitchen; uncomfortable crying, groping and sadness in the bedroom --and never the two shall meet.

Carl Sagan - Erudite enough to almost make me care...

2009-08-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

This makes me want to re-read 'Broca's Brain' and 'Dragons in the Garden of Eden', maybe even 'Cosmos'. 'Want' then fades in to 'thought about' which loses it's v-hold and rapidly devolves in to 'Someone attacked my Vampire on Facebook?' How can erudite exposition and insightful narrative ever compete with the ability to coast through life passively, spoon fed pocket-book wisdom and bite-sized half-truths from cradle to grave? I have an idea about that; two words: Michael Fucking Bay.

I shit you not, this is what came up as the 14th image when I googled 'Michael Bay'

Michael Bay needs to remake 'Cosmos' right the fuck now. Can you imagine what that book would be like in movie form with Nicholas Cage and a sassy, wise-cracking asteroid for a sidekick?

Michael 'Movie-plot-line-rapist' Bay: "I just, you think, this needs, I mean, ya know? Bigger explosion-ness-iveness-osity. I mean, MAN, grrrrrrrrr, just, ya know?"

Nicholas Cage: "I can see where you want me to go with this. I'll kick it up a notch -Bangkok Dangerous-like. Guaranteed millions. Where's my bear costume?"

Asteroid (Played by Michael Clarke Duncan): "I... Are you two fucking high, or just retarded?"

Mike Bay: "Aaannn-n-nd... CUT! Print it!! I'll be in my airstream, bathing in the blood and tears of a 12 year-old blind Inuit."

Wow, that took a left turn somewhere. Probably sometime right after I slugged those two 5-Hour Energy shots in a row. I think I can hear the future now. No, wait, that's my heart screaming.

"All the sugar, Twice the AWESOME!!!"

Moyer to Bullpen - Entrance to "Thunderstruck" unlikely

2009-08-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Jamie Moyer, ever the epitome of the 'crafty lefty', is headed to the bullpen. Along with his bag of Shuttlecock pitches, metronome delivery and Speedy Autoglass commercials with blacked-out Mariners logos Moyer brings one more intangible bit of excitement to the Phillies bullpen: perhaps the most heralded chance at ironic intro music since Daryl Strawberry retired. While the Straw may have been able to bring the house down once or twice to "Cocaine" or "That Smell", he was a one-trick-pony, emphasis added on the 'trick'. Moyer, on the other hand, offers years and years worth of material when it comes to choosing the music that he will walk, not run, out of the bullpen to.

In honor of the slowest fastball to be featured in a bullpen since the advent of batting helmets and electricity I offer you my Top 10 list for Moyer's intro music:

10. 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay' by Otis Redding. Can you imagine? No one would stop laughing until well after Moyer sat down the side with consecutive 28kph strikeouts. He could take a solid 20 minutes to wander out to the mound, even pretending to get lost on his way, and batters still wouldn't be able to pull it together for long enough to even hold the bat up. Nothing lowers ones defences like Otis, MY MAN! I mean, can you imagine a boxer or UFC fighter entering the ring to that?

9. 'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel. As soon as "Hello darkness, my old friend.." came out of the PA system people would lose their shit. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets the crowd pumped like Paul Simon and that other guy with the Afro. You know, whatsisname from The Greatest American Hero.

Art Garfunkel: the John Oates of the 1960's

8. 'A Sailor Looks at Forty' by Jimmy Buffet. Nothing better than entering to music about feeling old that has an age reference 6 years younger than you in its title.

7. 'Forever Young' by Alphaville. While the nod to aging in the title is very appropriate the song itself would also produce an unexpected side-benefit: that of causing all batters born in the 70's to daydream about their junior prom. While they are standing in the batters box, reflecting on this and other neon-soaked memories they will be distracted for at least a pitch or two, completely oblivious to the turtle-paced baseball looping towards them and the strike zone.

6. 'Against the Wind' by Bob Seger. This is a dual-purpose song, giving a nod to Moyer's workmanlike struggles throughout his career as well as the literal effect that wind has on a ball when it is moving at the reduced speeds that he underhands it at.

5. 'Touch of Grey' by the Grateful Dead. Probably the only time that the Dead will be used to stir up the crowd outside of a medical marijuana rally or Bill Walton's celebrity golf tourney.

"Really; I was high the whole time I was in Boston... Portland? I was in Portland?"

4. 'Changes' by David Bowie. Any song about the disconnect between youth and the preceding generation is even more awesome when applied to Moyer. He is the quintessential old grandad on the mound today, as he probably will continue to be for the next odd decade and a half, spouting off such grandpa-isms as "in MY day" or "turn down that hippity-hop music!!!".

3. 'Songbird' by Kenny G. This would be simply awesome and its anesthetic quality would probably put everyone to sleep. Either that or it would start a riot on the level of Detroit's 'Disco Demolition' night. No one polarizes people like the saccharine king of the alto sax.

2. 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult. Because thunder stix lick my taint and Jamie Moyer shirts with 'More Cowbell' on the back would lead to their replacement. Plus, its a song about death and he's really, really old. Get it? It's like the fart joke of the ironic-intro-music genre, if there ever was one, which there is because I just started it.

1. 'Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll, Too Young to Die' by Jethro Tull. Why? Because flute-solos and songs about death are what baseball is all about. Where the fuck have you been?

A Portrait of Irony - Enough of this Monarchy Nonsense!!

2009-07-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is hot today - hotter than hell. 'Hell', in my mind, is anywhere above 95F. While some of you may shout something to the effect of "that encompasses more than 30% of the Earth at any given moment" my witty riposte would go something like this: "Blow me - 95F is hot, fuckwit! Unless you're a goddamned Iguana, which you might be you lizard-brained reactionary reptile fuck, you should be sweating your sack off and complaining like hell. Fucktard."

The heat makes me irritable - could you tell? Today my irritability has combined, Voltron-like, with a vast chasm of unfilled time to push me deep in to the internets, uncovering nuggets of truth and justice amidst the piles of demotivational posters and lolcat posts. Not really - I just spent a few hours cascade-reading on Wikipedia and found something that made me giggle. Reference the above painting.

It is a painting of Napoleon Bonaparte by Ingres upon his ascendancy to the "throne" of France in 1805. Right after the conclusion of The French Revolution. The revolution that overthrew France's reigning dynasty and its Absolute Monarchy. I like over-using periods.

I know this is a re-tread, given that anyone who has read a history book other than "Where's Waldo Through History" is acquainted the French Revolution and its subsequent elevation of irony to new, fantastic levels. I know all of this yet I don't care - this painting is fantastic on so many levels even outside of its historical significance.

For starters, here is who Napoleon replaced:

Really? This is what France fought the revolution over? Was Louis the XVI not wearing ENOUGH polar-bear fur for them?

(Effecting fake, Pepe LePew accent)

"We are taiyered of 'zis Monarchy and all of itz, how you sa'y, meddling in ze people's affayers? We would laike for a'veryone to have a sa'y in ze governing of ze pe'ple... Or we could have 'zis Napoleon, how you sa'y, cow fucker-- rule us in ze exact same way. Yes, letz try 'zat."

Really, that's what happened, except in a much less jingoistic, French bashing sort of way. It's like the differences in governing between the Bourbons and Napoleon came down to a contest to see who could wear more gold-brocade and endangered species in their respective outfits.

I know, I know - these paintings are meant to elevate the respective leaders above the populace; they were the propaganda posters of their day, conveying an impossible and unattainable ideal.

But you would think that, after having so recently nearly torn the country apart, the people would be a tad more sensitive to their new leader effecting the same posture as the one that they so recently deposed...

...Or not.

Well, Obama's wearing a Blue tie... That's gotta count for something.

Crap.

Korean Parliament Drop-Kickery raises questions about U.S. Term Limits

2009-07-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday the South Korean Parliament again descended in to chaos with capital fucking 'C', once again blurring the lines between their legislative body and wrasslin'.

Snap in to a Slim-Jim, brother-r-r-r-r-r-r!!!!

While this may not be exactly how we would like our representatives to behave, it does raise some serious issues regarding our own legislative branch: could they win in a steel-cage match versus any other legislative assembly in the world? At this point, I think not. You know what this means: term-limits, fuckers!

Can you imagine if this happened in the US House or Senate? While there would hopefully be far less slap-boxing, there would DEFINITELY be far more Geritol-taking and complaining about prostate issues. Yeah, I said it - our public servants are old as fuck. In this line of reasoning 'fuck' = 35yrs cubed. One more reason for term-limits: can you imagine any of our senators gathering together and lifting a piano to block a door or commandeering a fire-hose to pry the opposition out of a barricaded chamber? I think not. The most that our reps could hope to achieve would be nudging a coffee table across the waiting area with their posse of Rascals.

Sadly, the annual Kennedy vs. Stevens rascal-off is no more.

Seriously, if we are ever going to be taken seriously as a country we need to start getting some youth and athleticism into our legislative bodies. If I were to create a video montage, interspersing metaphoric scenery from the Korean parliament with scenery from the US Senate/House of Representatives, it would go something like this:

Korea (to the opening chords of "Thunderstruck"):

United States (crickets chirping):

Korea (accompanied by Carmina Burana):

United States (to the tune of "Sittin on the dock of the bay")

My case: it is rested.

UPDATE: This could also go a long way in solving our budget deficit - can you imagine the pay-per-view revenues that would be created by a Korean Parliament style showdown over Universal Health care? People would be jumping off of the gallery, swinging from chandeliers - instead of filibusters there would be steel cage matches.

"Civil Unions!" "Marriage!" "Civil Unions!"

Mickey Rourke channels Captain Haddock - Hilarity & Obscure Comic-book References Ensue

2009-07-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

There is nothing that I can write about Mickey Rourke that has not already been written - the man is a certified genius. If he were born in the 1920's he and Hemingway would have leg-fucked Europe back into the dark ages and then killed some Nazis.

Below is a much more elegant recounting of Mickey Rourke doing an interview about Ironman 2 and how he thought that he would liven the party up via injecting a Cockatoo into the mix. That last sentence sounded dirtier than I meant it to - then again, I still think like a 13 year-old boy and can't say the word 'nipple' without giggling for 20 minutes.

Courtesy of Filmdrunk.com (props for the future cease and desist order for shamelessly ripping you off):

"Mickey Rourke is the most hilariously candid person in Hollywood, the awesome uncle you never had. You can just see him bellying up to the bar and being like, “Make ya a deal, son, you buy us a drink and I’ll tell ya aaall about the trouble with the Orientals.” He recently talked Iron Man 2 and was awesome as usual:

Rourke, for his part, wanted to instill some lightness into the role. “I told Favreau, ‘I don’t want to just play him as a one-dimensional p—-,’” he says. “He let me have a cockatoo, who I talk to and get drunk with while I’m making my suit.” [EW via Cinematical]

I like to picture Mickey Rourke doing his lines, and then in the middle of a scene throwing down his script in disgust. “Aw hell, this crap’s too one dimensional! But I know how to fix it: Fetch me a fifth of bourbon, and a parrot!“ And they’ll do it. Because it’s Mickey Rourke. He can bring a tear to your eye, because you know you’ll be seeing not just a drunk Russian yelling at his parrot, but his humanity."

See? Wasn't reading that worth being an accessory after-the-fact? That website is certified gold, people! Now, I am off to play with my action-figure collection - It's been nigh-on a week since He-Man has had his way with the purple My Little Pony... I mean Barbie... No, wait. Fuck.

Holy Hell: DARPA is Building a Predator Harry Potter Hybrid

2009-03-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

Water cools, wind blows, fire burns and, apparently, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) finances the creation of nightmarish technology that makes a battle-hardened cyber-ninja like myself want to spend the rest of his life barricaded indoors watching the history channel. Some people may view this as an overreaction, others (my girlfriend) might say things like "how is that different than how you behave now, except that you forgot to include 'while eating Con Queso dip with a spoon and avoiding responsibility'?" To them I say this: you'd better go ahead and buy the value pack of adult sized Depends because you are going to lose any serious control you had over your bowels when you see what DARPA has planned.

Apparently Xiang Zhang and several other physicists that needed to be beaten up more in high school have gotten their heads together and decided to extend a very nerdy middle-finger to the laws of physics.

Step one in our bat-shit flight into ripping a hole in time and an assured path to a dystopic alternate reality where Charlton Heston kisses an ape?

"The proposals included crafting what amounts to an array of billions of tiny relays; in essence, the relays would capture light and send it back out. Depending on the specific design of the array, the light would be bent, reflected, or skewed in different ways... ...to render objects invisible. "

Yeah, and I have an idea for an affordable Lamborghini powered by hopes and dreams. This is what happens when you get a bunch of PhD candidates together and remove the crushing taunts of their peers and the constant threat of wedgies: they get all uppity and try to show everyone that the fantasies of us mere mortals are nothing compared to the nonsense that they can dream up.

“The ability to fly and see through women’s clothes? Poppycock! I foresee a time when man will simply blink and he will not only travel from point a) to b) but he will have absorbed a life-time’s worth of porn and fast-food along the way. With no weight gain. And a tan!"

Or something along those lines.

Either way, these gang of Tri-Lams are attempting to take step one on the pathway to building some sort of Defense Department-funded Predator suit. I seem to recall an entire industry (read: half of Arnold Schwarzenegger's filmography) of movies being devoted to the government creating these types of weapons and then these same weapons falling in to the hands of 12 different cocaine cartels and a Jamaican Voodoo posse. Super. Generally, those movies also only involved some new kind of rocket launcher or a super-smart chimp, not some super suit that turned the wearer frickin' invisible. Are you ready for a turf-war involving a bunch of coked out invisible Colombians vs. a bunch of stoned, invisible Jamaicans...?
"Now featuring Invisibility... Funny hat sold separately."

Hold on. Wait a minute. Breathe deep. Maybe I'm just overreacting: while creating something that renders the wearer invisible would have plenty of beneficial applications (pantie-raids) the likelihood of any group having the techno-knowhow to make this stuff work if they managed to steal it would be close to nil. Deeeeeep breath. I guess this isn't so bad after all. Now how can I get rid of all of these adult diapers?

"It's a good thing I'm invisible; I look like Lewis Skolnic. Wait..."

But hold your horses: Zhang wasn't done yet. Apparently short-circuiting one fundamental law of physics wasn't enough for our intrepid overachiever:

"He [Zhang] wondered: Could he take a material that wasn’t intrinsically magnetic and magnetize it by altering its physical structure alone?"

So, what you're saying is that it isn't enough that you're creating an invisibility suit but now you want to give it the ability to magnetize heretofore un-magnetic materials? Great, now we've got invisible coked-up Colombians that can climb walls and screw up the reception on my T.V. Wonderful.

But I digress.

The answer to Zhang's above question regarding the ability to make things magnetic, frighteningly, turns out to be ‘yes’. I won’t bore you with the details – it involves plenty of chicken wire and more than a few 80’s montages before the final result is realized.

"Man, who knew you could do so much with a 1.5 MB hard-drive?"

Needless to say, captain dipshit here just figured out a way to magnetize materials that lack magnetic properties. Fantastic. I spend years building a non-magnetic stealth Vespa and you tell me that now that it’s worthless because some ass-hat found a loophole in fundamental physics? Well, at least I still have my claim to “1987 Cub-Scout Pinewood Derby district semi-finalist”.

So now what we have here is someone creating the technology to a) be invisible in any spectrum and b) climb walls and levitate anything. Great. Now all we have to do is make it able to see through walls and we've got an invisible Iron Man. Hopefully no one's working on that technology right now...

*sigh*

"Tiny objects are difficult to observe because they have almost no reflection to focus on. But [they] realized that when light hits a small object, the impacting radiation triggers a subtle effect that manifests itself as a pattern of local waves. The waves vanish without a trace almost immediately after being generated. [He] thought that if meta materials were built and positioned just right, they could pick up, preserve, and process these evanescent waves, converting them into a form that could be resolved into useful images."

I need to learn when to shut my mouth. Thanks Zhang, now you’re going to allow the hybrid invisible-magnetic killer robot that you just built to break me down on a molecular level in real time and find my weak points (note: it's Harry Potter books and chicken wings) Why don’t you just give him the password to my twitter account and tell him about my comic collection so he can embarrass me via the interweb while he invisibly guts me and makes inside jokes regarding my chromosome pairs. Ass.

“Fundamental physics sets no limits,” [Zhang] says.

Fantastic. Wonderful. (Insert 3rd synonym for "Amazing" here). The last time anyone sounded that cocky Kiefer Sutherland ended up getting his face rearranged by some mutant dead kid that he knocked out of a tree as a teenager in Flatliners. Let’s throw some more DARPA money at this – I’ve got shit to do and massive amounts of terrorizing nightmares that I would like to see made real.

"Well, at least we all went on to promising movie careers... Oh, sorry, I didn't see you there Billy Baldwin. Backdraft was awesome."

And how did he get funding for his reality warping pet-projects you ask? By jokingly referencing a children’s book and having some half-wit from the Defense Department take him seriously. I shit you not – you can’t make this crap up.

"[Zhang's] work on meta materials is notoriously complicated and serious, so it is ironic that the most famous implication of his research—the invisibility cloak—began as a joke. Heeding the suggestion of a colleague, he decided to have some fun with a lecture he was delivering at a 2004 DARPA meeting. He knew meta materials could theoretically hide objects from sight, so he made a Harry Potter reference—but not the one you might expect. He brought up Platform 9¾, the invisible departure point for Harry’s trip to Hogwarts, drawing some laughs from the crowd. “And then the DARPA woman started taking things seriously,” [Zhang] says. 'She offered me half a million dollars to work on it.' "

Really? Is this what it takes to get government funding for projects – making sly, chuckling references to children’s fiction? I see several problems with this, not the least of which is the simple fact that pretty much all PhD physicists and anyone else making proposals to DARPA are likely to be about as well socialized as your average comic store owner but with one small difference: the intelligence to make their nerd-dreams a reality, given some choice government funding and a lack of oversight that only the U.S. is capable of. Mark my words, 10 years from now when we’ve got a race of building-sized stripper robots ripped off of some Robotech cartoon towering over us you’ll wish you’d listened to me and taken a baseball bat to that future PhD candidate that blew the bell-curve in your physics 120 class.

"How Jimmy remained a virgin was a mystery to all..."

Had I known that it would be this easy to vacuum money out of dimwitted government bureaucrats I would’ve studied a lot harder in high school. Not in physics or math or anything like that though – in graphic design. That way I could forge me up some business cards and diplomas with fancy acronyms on them and avoid all of that book learnin’. I’d just sidle up to a lectern at some government symposium, babble about “sonic-karaoke” and “mutant rainbow diesel-powered Manga cheerleaders” and wait for the government grants to roll in. And I don't even have to make this crap work - that's the brilliant part about working with emerging technologies: 99% of them never pan out. I can spend all day in the desert test-firing anti-tank weapons at pyramids of televisions for "research" and not have to produce anything other than graphs that I draw in crayon.

"Soon afterward, Smith approached [Zhang] to tell him that he would like to build a cloak for real. “I told Smith he must be crazy, and then he did it,” [Zhang] says, chuckling."

Showoff. Well, shit, I guess I’ll just have to be content with being a sex-god malcontent shining a light on government misdeeds (read: sex-starved malcontent whining about being outworked by people more dedicated and smarter than him). Now where are my sweatpants and Thor helmet?

If this wasn't bad enough, these emerging technologies and meta materials are not just limited to the Nerd wet-dreams of invisibility, magnetism and X-Ray vision. Nay, Zhang believes that there are many other applications, including "universal fabricators, counter top food factories, intracellular longevity boosters, even telepathy implants". Thankfully though, the funding and overall time investment in this field is sorely lacking, so we shouldn't have to worry about these walking nightmare suits for quite some time.

Or not.

Apparently Zhang has created a laboratory specifically for the study and creation of the materials necessary for these technologies

Well fuuuuck me. George Jetson over here is going to make me a counter top telepathic food factory and a universal fabricator straight out of Star Trek. This all leads me to one paranoid-schizophrenic conclusion: the government is funding the overachiever from your local high school to build them a Predator robot that is infinitely scarier than the original – complete with telepathy, immortality, magnetic powers, the ability to create anything out of thin air and, in all likelihood, the ability to not be out thought by Austrian ex-pat future Governors of California using a snare lamer than the board game Mouse-Trap.

"Don't look behind you... Kill me!! Do it! Do it now!"

If Jesse Ventura with a mini gun and Billy ended up on the original version of the Predator’s trophy rack then the new and improved DARPA Predator is going to be nothing short of the 7th sign of the apocalypse. We.. are... screwed.

"there will still be one big limitation: Anyone inside the invisibility cloak would not be able to see out, for the same reason that an outside observer could not see in. “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. It would be like being inside a silvery bubble,” explains [Zhang]. Would-be invisible men will have to figure out a way to cut out a visor, or perhaps decloak before accidentally walking into a wall."

So what you’re saying is, now that you’ve spent all of this taxpayer money, what we have left over is a very large, telepathic, semi-magnetic, immortal, invisible killing machine that is, what, blind? Awesome. When you guys are done dry-docking this thing next to the Spruce Goose, how about you give me a call? I would like to talk to you about the military applications for my above mentioned mutant rainbow diesel-powered Manga cheerleaders. I’m sure I can get you an unworkable prototype by this summer if we throw enough money at it – I’ve got tons of spare time and a nigh inexhaustible supply of duct-tape and toilet paper tubes for the scale model, plus I need something better to do with my time than watching more reruns of Ax-Men on cable.

Sperm Powered Car or Disturbing Date Metaphor?

2009-02-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of spare time. Well, not exactly spare time; I just tend to focus on the opposite of whatever it is that my job entails at that exact moment. If my job, say, involves earning an income or showing some sort of fiscal responsibility then you can be damned sure that, 18 hours a day, I can be found a) somewhere that serves chicken wings, b)purchasing leg-warmers and novelty t-shirts in bulk on the internet or c)reading science articles from magazines that are 6 months old while sitting on the toilet in a $5.99 teriyaki joint in the U-district. Seriously, if someone came up to me and offered me the job of Grand wizard of strip club regulation, fried foods and the internets I would then 1)accept my dream job with it's associated $200million annual salary and then 2)ignore it and get fired for trying to earn my MBA online while working. I'm good like that.

"Those red marks aren't from the tattoos being recent, I just got drunk and tried to eat them off of her back."

Last week it was during one of my aforementioned toilet reading sprees that I made a frightening discovery that frightened me in its frightening frightenency (fuck you, spellcheck!) It seems that some erstwhile genius/70's horror film adherent has decided that the best way to push forward the field of nanotechnology is to make them sperm-powered. I'll let that sink in for a bit while you consult this picture of another wonder of hybrid technology thought up by someone that both never read any Philip K. Dick and only submits doctoral theses ideas that he comes up with while playing mad-libs with a bunch of stoned 14 year-olds.

"so cute, even as it flies away with your face"

"Dude, you can't keep choosing 'toke' as a verb."

"Who are you?"

"I'm your doctoral adviser."

"You said 'oral'."

And so forth...

Needless to say, this jackass is trying to bring about the apocalypse. We all know what happens when you try to tamper with mother nature, especially when trying to "solve a problem" with using something from nature that we all know creates more problems than it solves. Just ask these two.

"No, you tell us right now who's the prettiest! We'll wait..."

Go ahead, ask them. I'm sure after they get done raping your car and whipping each other with baby giraffes they'll come right out and tell you that they would rather their father never gotten that lobster lady in the carnival all drunk and sexyfied.

While Mr. Alex Travis' intent is to create a power system for nanobots that would allow them to travel throughout the body's circulatory system for extended periods of time to make repairs, remove arterial blockages, we can all see where this is going to end up: flocks of winged sperm blotting out the sun and turning people into zombies. Have you ever seen the movie Piranha?

It's like that, except for with sperm, zombies and better one-liners. If this ass-clown ever succeeds, be prepared: get your 70's shorts on, locate Roy Scheider and buy an antiquated fishing boat with which to hunt the Flesh Eating Sperm Queen from.

And remember, in Piranha 2 they had wings.

Cognition via Digestion

2008-12-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone, leaving in its wake a path of destruction wreaked on my health and digestion. My clothes have mysteriously all shrunk in the dryer, my knees ache when I climb the stairs and my dog has taken to yelling "lard-ass!!" at me instead of his usual "woof". My blood type has turned to scalloped potatoes and my liver is paying the price of my family's craziness.

So imagine my surprise on logging on to reddit.com yesterday morning only to discover that these holiday indulgences are not only warding off my eventual demise into Requiem For A Dream-like dementia, they are actually improving my cognitive abilities. According to an article on Science Daily, the Oxford department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics teamed with a team from Norway to study the relationship between cognition and the intake of three common foodstuffs containing flavonoids, namely Chocolate, Wine and Tea.

I do admit that I have misgivings regarding Brits researching cuisine when they are responsible for such culinary delights as Christmas Pudding and Mincemeat. You would think that instead of researching chemical effects of Flavonoids on cognition that they might attack a more rudimentary problem first, say, the effects of eating sausage, beans, and blood-pudding for breakfast on ones health and flatulence or, perhaps, toothbrushes: how to pick and where to find one. This, combined with my distaste for Lutefisk and Slatur (don't even ask), both regional "cuisines" of Norway makes me completely distrust any and all information included in this study. How both ABBA and Ace of Base remained so upbeat and happy subsisting on a diet composed of this crap is a question I will never be able to answer. Yes, I know, those are both Swedish bands, but their cuisine is fairly similar and the only bands I know of to come out of Norway are Mayhem and Royskopp... Yeah, that's what I thought; no one wants me to go on a lengthy exposition on bands that eat their own lead singer and make necklaces from his skull, do they? But I digress...

After contemplating how I would go about researching and back-checking all of the facts and findings of their study I came up with a much simpler solution: a one-day field test involving one test subject and a limited budget. What? This is a perfectly legitimate short-cut. It should work nearly as well as the time that I forgot to put the turkey into the oven until 20 minutes before everyone arrived for dinner. Just divide the amount of time required by the recipe by how much time you have until everyone shows up and multiply the temperature by the quotient, right? I know, I was surprised that my stove went up to 4200° too. I never did get to see how that one turned out... Some jackass decided to light my kitchen on fire and the fire department showed up before I could taste it.

My next step was to set about organizing my scientific study. While a scientific person would go about getting someone else to observe their behavior during a study like this I decided upon a different tack. I have proven time and time again that not only am I patently un-scientific when it comes to attacking problems but I am, in fact, chaotic, disorganized and completely irrational. If someone were to make a flow-chart of my typical efforts at problem solving it would resemble several feedback loops that never progress beyond step one: identify problem area. There would also, in all probability, be several pirate ships attacking a flaming tank drawn on the side of the flow-chart by me when I got confused by its colors and mistook it for a children's place mat from IHOP. Needless to say, my processes for this study were going to differ slightly from those used by Oxford and the Norwegians, and not just in the size of the sample group: this test was going to take place all in one day...

Hmmmm, in order to be able to ingest the amount of quantities necessary to get a viable sample of their effects I was going to have to fudge a bit on the ingredients here. Considering my height and body-weight I was going to have to knock back about 4 bottles of wine alone, not to mention the Chocolate and Tea, in order to get enough Flavonoids into my system in one day. That was likely going to end in a hyperactive booze-rant in a bubble-tea hut on University Ave when I would invariably be refused service for shouting my order at a wall and sleeping on the counter. Actually, that might pass for normal behavior in the U-District but I still wasn't going to risk it.

What Foods did I decide on for my single-day test, you ask? Well, here's where that part about me being chaotic and completely irrational comes in to play. I decided on the following 3 substitutes: Malt Liquor, Twinkies and Red Bull. While they contain no Flavonoids whatsoever, the alcohol content of the booze is markedly lower while the caffeine and sugar content of the Twinkie/Red Bull far outpaces that of Chocolate and Tea. I figure that the metabolic effects of the sugar and caffeine will perfectly counteract the depressant effects of the Mickeys Green Hornet, or whatever happens to be on sale. This is, after all, as much about saving money as it is about taking drastic short-cuts. Lets just hope that there isn't a special on any malt liquor with "Ice" in the title. The last time I ingested anything like that my evening resembled the Prodigy video for "Smack My Bitch Up", except replace the strip club with a retirement home and quintuple the amount of vomiting and property damage... Just watch the video, it'll all make sense.

Get it? That's what I was trying to avoid...

So, where to go for all three of these precious American commodities, you ask? Right across the street from the house I grew up in, as a matter of fact.

Yes, this explains why my study habits in High School closely resembled sleeping: the Korean store owners at the Wicker Basket Grocery apparently thought that I was 21 when I was 16 despite my awesome complexion and braces. This might be attributed to the fact that I was already 6'5" at the time but they should have been suspicious of any "21" year-old who actually chose to a) dress like a reject from a Cypress Hill video and b) only bought Malt Liquor or Fortified Wine. Sadly though, the Wicker Basket was closed for remodeling when I stopped by. Either that or they finally got busted for selling booze and cigarettes to anyone over five-foot one.

After a few minutes of deliberation I finally decided to head down the street to the aptly named "Choice Deli".

The only change that this store has undergone in the last 15 years is getting rid of the Street Fighter II video game and the Addams Family pinball machine. They even have the same guy working at the front counter, all 6'6" of him replete with waist-length hair, Sepultura T-shirt and black jeans. This place was like a time-warp. I half expected to find cans of New Coke sporting Max Headroom on the back when I opened the cooler.

It took me a few minutes but I finally decided on four 40oz. bottles of St. Ides for my beer. In order to counteract the alcoholic effects I figured I was going to need the same amounts of sugar and caffeine in my system as alcohol. The alcohol by volume is 6% in St. Ides which came out to about 9.6oz of hooch in those 4 bottles, if my kindergarten arithmetic was correct, so I was going to need enough servings of Twinkies and Red Bull to get an equivalent amount of sugar and caffeine into my blood stream, right? Here's where I decided on another short-cut: since the fluid ounce is a measure of volume that weighs only slightly more than the dry ounce (when water is used) I decided to fudge the difference between the two for my calculations. After all, it's not like metric to imperial conversion has ever caused any drastic problems, right?

There are approximately 28.35g to the ounce. After breaking out my set of Crayola crayons and working with a slide-rule for a few minutes I calculated that I would need 272.16g of both Sugar and Caffeine. A quick look at the back label of Red Bull forced me to make another quick change: in order to get that amount of caffeine into my body I would need to ingest approximately 35 cans of Red Bull. Judging by the effects that half of a can typically has on me I decided to shoot for 272 milligrams of Caffeine instead of 272 grams, which amounted to just under 4 cans. With 27g of sugar per serving to go along with it, that meant that I had to get another 164g of Sugar via Twinkies. Things were looking up: that only came to 12 packs of Twinkies! I had conquered my conversion tables and on top of that I wasn't going to have to drink or eat all that much. I figured I could knock this out in 3 or 4 hours.

When I woke up the next morning I was proven to have been drastically mistaken. Not only did I not remember the previous 12 hours but my home resembled a cross between a scene from Fear and Loathing and the Delta fraternity from Animal house, complete with a motorcycle in the hallway and the stolen mascot of some local High School (does anyone know who has a badger for a mascot, because this thing has almost destroyed my bathroom and is only momentarily trapped in my washing machine). Needless to say I, like so many stripe-shirted frat-boys do every weekend, completely misjudged the restorative effects of caffeine and sugar vs. alcohol. On the upside, I did get some good data out of this little exercise. I feel like complete hammered shit, like there are 10,000 monkeys with broken-glass wrapped hands fist fighting in my frontal lobe, not to mention the damage that my G.I. tract has wreaked on the bathroom and, by proximity, on that stolen mascot. This all points to the simple conclusion that Norway and Oxford are full of crap. My Beer, Twinkie and Red Bull diet not only failed to make me any healthier but in the tallying was also responsible for about $1000 worth of property damage per ounce of intake. Suck on that math Oxford!

Super Karate Monkey Death Car, Pt. 2

2008-12-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

I know these videos are a few years old, but... damn, a fish-headed hero from the planet soy? It makes my brain hurt and my eyes beg for a Pokemon-induced seizure.
I might be a tad jaded, but I think that I may have to pull up stakes and move to the pearl of the orient. If this is what passes for a major advertising campaign over there then I am a couple hundred bucks shy of making a fortune.

How to make myself into a Japanese advertising powerhouse:

Let me see, what would I need in order to compete from the years of research and competitive advantage that their ad-agency possesses? Well, my limited Internet research (i.e. googling Kikkoman and giving up after searching two pages) tells me that one of the companies responsible for Kikkoman's stranglehold on the soy-sauce market is Scholz & Friends, a Berlin based company. Now, the piece of advertising that Scholz was responsible was this:

A diarrhetic version of Hosukai's wave painting? Mmmm let me go and douse my sushi with some of that japanese scroll painted poo-water which has infiltrated my consciousness via a benign yet brilliant piece of advertising. Though they have been successful in changing my associations of soy sauce from pan-asian condiment to Tsunami from the bowels, it does not necessarily mean that they are the company that developed the retina-warping video extravaganza that I posted above. While that is true, I am lazy and therefore I am going to take a few liberties and shortcuts and assume that they were. Rome may not have been built in a day but I have bills to pay and I need to wrap this up.

Using my ironclad grasp of logic I will now inflict/apply the same line of reasoning on this problem that got me through Garfield High School in 6 short years. I remember one of my teachers discussing logic, but I was too busy napping and growing my hair long to give him my full attention.

Here's what I remember:

a) All fish swim
b) Turtles swim
therefore: all turtles are fish.

Maybe my teacher said that was a logical fallacy. Fallacy means "super-strong", right? Sounds good to me! Lets see if this holds true in other cases:

a) All neo-nazis have bald heads
b) people with Alopecia have bald heads
therefore: all people with Alopecia are neo-nazis. Wow... Who knew? Well, there's no escaping that logical premise; facts are facts, and I rechecked the logic on that one at least 1.5 times. Ironclad!

It follow then that: a)Scholz is responsible for a piece of advertising for Kikkoman, and b) the above "video" is a piece of advertising for Kikkoman, therefore Scholz is responsible for the above advertising. Check AND mate! Take that, Socrates!

So my competition for the hearts and minds of Japan's soy-based commodities consumers is Scholz & Friends, eh? I shall prepare myself. Lets look up their website. Hmmmmm, they have a managing director from the London School of Economics? Well then, so shall I. Except replace "London, School & Economics" with "Tallahassee Technical College dropout". T-Pain has street knowledge and knows how to use a synthesizer. That trumps Econometrics classes and understanding elasticity any day of the week my friends. Sing it, T-Pain!

We'll make up ground in our Creative Director anyways. Let me see now, who does Scholz have heading up their creative team? It appears that they have a guy named Matthias Spaetgens who looks like this:

No matter that he has won several advertising awards, including something called the "Lion of Cannes". I have no idea what that is but I'm going to assume that it is unimportant. If I am going to win this battle then I am going to focus on finding someone who is similar in appearance yet projects a different, edgier image. Maybe not so stuffy either (read: educated). Who can I use? Well, lets see. Who is going to take my company to the stratospheric heights that the "Fight, Kikkoman!" video attained and how shall I find him? ...Google "Matthias", that should do it.

...Got him!

His name is Matthias (spelled Mattias, but who can be choosy?) and he looks like a creative bad ass!!!! Watch out Scholz & Friends, your ass is mine!!!! Two cases of beer and 10 hours locked in a studio and we're going to have advertising gold, people.

Now, we need a prime advertising venue or event to make the biggest splash possible for our advertising dollar. Taking my lead from Scholz, lets see what events they've been involved with recently:

"10/24/2008, Berlin - he new seasonal campaign from Scholz & Friends Berlin for Saturn, the electronic goods retailer... An action-packed 60-second TV and cinema commercial will dramatise Saturn’s technical expertise, kicking off the season in highly vocal style with the line “Die stärkste Technik aller Zeiten! Gnadenlos günstig!” (“The strongest technology of all time! Pitilessly low prices!”). Conceived by Scholz & Friends Berlin, the commercial tells the history of the evolution of technology, using as an analogy the merciless Darwinian selection found in the animal kingdom."

Wow, "The strongest technology of all time! Pitilessly low prices!" Is it just me or can you imagine the video playing behind this using Rammstein as its soundtrack and the narration read in an unemotional monotone by Peter Stormare, the nihilist from The Big Lebowski?

The fact that this is the ad campaign that these jackasses actually came up with when I did my pseudo-background check is astounding. 52 graduate degrees and a bondage-room full of Golden Celtic Walrus awards and this is what you come up with? I might as well start looking at villas on Lake Cuomo now.

But what shall I call my soon-to-be-conglomerate? ....Hmmmmm. Wait, this might actually take some time. I'll get back to you when I've got something better than what I came up with via my first stab at creativity: combining my name from the internet Wu-Name generator with my name from the Outlaw Biker name generator and slapping "LLC" on the end of it. I just don't think Ol' Mucky Terrahawk & Cowboy of the Death-Cats LLC is going to make us cash-positive...

But I'm still trademarking it.

http://www.recordstore.com/wuname/wuname.pl

http://www.ratbike.org/motorcycho/outlawname.php

Super Karate Monkey Death Car

2008-12-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

Some things just don't translate from culture to culture or language to language. Like if I were to try to explain, I don't know, 'je ne sais quoi' to a French person they would probably think I was talking about pastries, head-butting or surrenduring large swaths of countryside after undertaking an enormous yet antiquated feat of engineering in order to secure their borders.

Examples like this can be taken from many other cultures as well. None, however, differ as greatly from intended meaning to perceived meaning quite so much as when trying to understand Japan. We can probably assume that some of this comes from the simple fact that we are attempting to translate a language based on pictograms into a language, in the case of English, based on Syphillis, inbreeding and the need to shoot any animal who's name contains a consonant.

Apparently Japanese people judge which bank to put their money in based on commercials like this one:

Hmmmm... I don't know about you, but a guy who looks like he should be wearing jodhpurs and solving crimes on trains is not who I want as a mascot for my lending institution. Especially not when he gets distracted as easily as this jackass.

"Wait, my satchel is on your... Look, boy scouts!"

A better investment strategy might be to get involved in a long-distance calling-card ponzi scheme or better yet, try to parlay your fortune through pull-tabs. However, maybe canary yellow slacks and Burt Reynolds mustaches are a sign of virility and market know-how in Japan. They are the country that gave us Most Extreme Elimination Challenge and Super-Cute Red Panda Attack (clip at the bottom), a show where a girl lives 24 hours a day with two baby red pandas and the results are aired on T.V., so you never quite know which advertising strategies are going to pay off. In fact, the best idea might be to just pick ad concepts based on mad-libs.

"Blue... lightning... communist... monkey... parade. Blue lightning communist monkey parade? Sounds like a winner. Get Adrian Brody on the horn! We'll sell a million units by Tuesday. Huzzah!!!"

Back to my original point: does anyone remember the episode of News Radio where Jimmy James has his biography, "Jimmy James: Capitalist Lion Tamer", translated into Japanese and then when it's a huge hit over there he has it translated back and the title becomes "'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler"? No? Well, screw you, fascist! Phil Hartman was a saint!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2MPEYU1XkI

Belltown Family Fun

2008-12-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

Here is what my barely literate self does on Friday mornings:
a) Take stock of my surroundings. Having grown up in Seattle I am in constant fear of being asked to sign a petition or approve a new measure to fund an extension of the monorail as I get out of bed. ( http://www.imeem.com/groups/e360YjV0,no_homers//music/4RUrHfo5/the_simpsons_the_monorail_song_from_the_episode_marge_vs_t/ )
b) Remove my clown makeup.
c) Go to practice, and proceed to try and recapture my former/never attained collegiate glory and waistline since I have the metabolism of a hibernating polar bear.
d) Make child-like stabs at completing the NY Times crossword puzzle, until someone snatches the paper away from me because I giggle whenever a clue contains the word "pianist", "breasts", or "electoral college".

This morning, my ritualistic approach to putting off work was thwarted by a simple, yet elegant turn of phrase in the Seattle P.I., the lesser-known idiot step-child to the Seattle Times. What was this show-stopping couplet, you ask? Far be it from me to keep you on the edge of your seat/physio-ball/high-chair.

Stabbing in *gasp* Belltown!!????!

What? Nay! Belltown? You must be mistaken. Surely it was just a group of youngsters out for some wholesome fun exchanging barbs with a local shop-owner or footman. Violence is not tolerated here in Belltown, center of Seattle's far-famed arts scene and the only place in the territory you can see a talkie feature, dear sir! J'accuse!! *slap-slap*

I had forgotten that things like this were even reported on in Belltown. Unless there are robotic pandas attacking people or another Mime-Gang turf war, I just assumed that things like this were viewed in the same way as tornadoes are in Kansas, or drunk-driving Kennedys were in D.C., California... well, everywhere. Imagine my surprise when a whole five sentences were devoted to the description of what I generally referred to as "A slow night" when I worked in the area.

If you are unfamiliar with Belltown, its surroundings, or what passes for decorum there, let me paint a picture:

Now just add:

Now place both in a blender, add enough Red Bull and vodka to Kennedy-ify the New Zealand All-Blacks, a hot dog cart, 500 striped button-down shirts and you've got Belltown on a Wednesday. What, did you think I was going to use words to paint a picture? If I still haven't found where my name is on my diploma (I think it's somewhere to the left of the DeVry insignia, and below the bright red letters that say "copy: not for publication"), what makes you think I would use pictograms to give voice to my talky-thoughts? Pay attention!

When it comes to Belltown, I know of what I speak. I spent the better (read: majority, not better) part of two years as a doorman every Friday and Saturday night there. Being a doorman makes you privy to all sorts of fun. Some of my favorites include:

My boss buying "illicit substances" (see the previous video if you want specifics) with wine from his wine cellar.
A drunken, drive-by motorcycle shooting wherein the shooter was a) on his 21 run and b) on a stolen motorcycle, and the targets were six bike cops who were waiting for him with guns drawn because he had threatened them earlier in the evening when he was 86'd and was then spotted revving his stolen bike at the bottom of the hill and pointing at them for several minutes before he actually proceeded to commence his drive-by (see: stealth, lack or disregard of)
Local sports caster Dan Devone using the line "Don't you know who I am?" when trying to sneak past the line at a dance club and being answered with: "Yeah, you're a hack sportscaster on a second rate news station. Tuck in your shirt."

And so on...

People, this is not news to anyone. News usually follows the simple formula of: something unexpected or singular happens somewhere (i.e. Keanu Reeves acts!! or Kelly Rippa not Pregnant. For local flavor, replace Kelly Rippa with Anngie Menken from FSN). The sun always rises in the east, GM makes cars that self destruct at frightening rates and Italian soccer players flop more than Matt LeBlanc movies involving baseball-playing chimps.

So don't waste your time reporting on things that we as Seattleites take for granted. We expect good coffee, exceptionally bad drivers and violence in Belltown. Now go and report on something that we aren't expecting...

Look, that bear is playing hockey! Oh, you win again Russia...

Kevin Bacon's Ghost in the Machine

2008-12-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

My brain has a tendency to go on epic journeys right around 1pm if I'm not careful. Careful meaning well-caffeinated and completely distracted: If I'm not surrounded by 30 crying babies, a homeless person cage-fighting against ghosts and a fair amount of Emo music blaring out of a sub woofer next to my head then I'm not going to get shit done. This afternoon was no different, except for the fact that I was in a quiet coffee house in the ass-end of nowhere.

No homeless people yelling at pigeons.

No Fallout Boy warbling out of a blown-out amp in the background.

Not even an ADHD adolescent screaming about his girlfriend... Obama... His car... The metaphysical implications of Fight Club... Ooh look, that kid has a Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo's are awesome.

None of that. Just me, alone with my thoughts.... And a hangover.

This lead, inevitably, to an afternoon of me ignoring my Inbox, wondering who's phone kept ringing (it was mine) and stumbling into the morass of distraction that is Google and all of its radiating roots, tentacles, sewage pipes and mole burrows. If one is not careful google web searches can inexorably lead to a downward spiral of button-clicking that eventually ends with a purchase of bootleg X-Files DVDs from Malaysia or reading about the metaphysical implications of watching The Wiggles while bloated on Mescaline and Yerba Mate on some Norwegian teenager's blog (don't ask). If one is, say, seriously hung-over, not properly caffeinated and prone to left-clicking on anything that has bright colors or nifty catch-phrases this can lead to some epic Aboriginal Internet walkabouts.

Enter 55 ways to have "fun" with google and enter Phillip Lenssen (http://chestofbooks.com/computers/search/55-Ways-to-Have-Fun-With-Google/index.html). Phillip Lenssen spent so much time on his computer, caffeinated, high or otherwise, that he decided to categorize and publish different games that he came up with using Google's web-search tool. After much perusing of the list of 55 ways to have "fun" I have come away with an impression of Phil that while benign, is not at all favorable. Once you have read a few of the different ways that he has "fun", a few things need to be re-assessed and accounted for. First off, you need to use a slide-rule when accounting for differentiating opinions of what "fun" is.

Some people B.A.S.E. jump:

Some people chase wheels of cheese down hills (watch for the poor bastard at the 25 second mark):

or better yet even ride large phallic trees in fits of epic Japanese weirdness:

Apparently, Phil comes up with overly complex ways to create mischief, mayhem and attain a higher-consciousness via Google. He is like your crazy uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving reeking of Patchouli and "sage" and tries to get everyone to join in the fun of a rousing poetry slam while there is a 60 inch plasma screen mounted on the wall behind him showing re-runs of American Gladiators. And by "your" I mean "my friend Brent McDowell's" and by "poetry slam" I mean "knife fight". Needles to say, Phil's ideas of web-fun come off as the wooden choo-choo-train in the F.A.O Schwartz web universe.

Some of them are interesting: type "Life, the Universe and Everything" into the Google calculator and the answer you get back is "42". I know, you're either staring blankly at your screen right now wondering what the fuck I am jabbering about, or you're smirking to yourself because you actually read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy back in 7th grade. Either way, this little google Easter Egg, while entertaining/confusing, is not the basis for a chapter in a book, much less even a footnote on some graffiti in the bathroom of your local masonic temple.

Some of are a bit forced: Phil plays the six-degrees of Kevin Bacon game via google, trying to find out whether or not Kevin Bacon is the true center of the Hollywood Universe. Apparently Phil has never heard of IMDB.com or The Oracle of Bacon (http://oracleofbacon.org/). If I had to venture a guess I'm pretty sure that Phil could also come up with a great way for me to make coffee using a jet-engine, 12 virgin dwarfs and the Tibetan Book of the Dead but I think I'll stick with the old fashioned hot water and steeping technique.

And some, well, some just defy reason. One of the games is entitled "The Shortest Google Search", wherein the player tries to "find the shortest Google search that doesn't return any results, using only the letters a-z (no Umlaut or accented characters) and the numbers 0-9". Um, yeah, let me get right on that, right after I start randomly flipping through the yellow pages and patronizing establishments that I blindly point at but before I spend a week only eating foods that contain the letter "Q". Mmmmm, Quinoa.

After about an hour of slogging around through this website and only a mild fever to show for it I decided to abort my search for higher consciousness via google and its permutations. Thanks Phil, but no thanks. I'll get my entertainment spoon-fed to me by the likes of YouTube and WWTDD.com, or, better yet, a well thought out book with characters, a plot and, nay, even creative metaphors, similes and turns of phrase, not from some net head with too much time on his hands and a myopic view of "fun". Besides, I've got things to do and hangover cures to web-search.

As I backed out of my self-created google-cocoon my head began to clear. Had I found the cure to the common hangover? Was spending an hour or two researching nonsense will my brain stitched itself back together really responsible for my feeling of euphoria, that all was right with the world? The wonderful Seattle weather had turned nature's palette from a dull graphite to a wonderfully bright and dazzling charcoal gray, middle-aged women with toddlers had begun to occupy the adjoining booths in the cafe, unable to keep pacifiers in their mouths and unfazed by the falsetto pitches of their screaming. Even a panhandler outside had even begun to shout at a mailbox. All was right with the world, and all it took was burying my head in the google sand and listening to ebb and flow of the web tide... Telling me tales of high adventure.

"Kevin Bacon! What is best in life?"

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."