Beware of the Blog!
This is not so much a blog about my life as it is the idea of a blog about my life, were my life more interesting and witty. It is like a normal blog, only without the pretense of honesty. Most of the events are true, except for the fact that they never actually happened. All the ideas and opinions expressed in this blog are mine, only better.
[ the new | the old ]
November 17, 2:27 PM
Just a Thought I Had Today
Have you ever seen that practical joke where someone has glued coins to the ground so you think that you just found some change and then look like a jackass when you try to pick it up? I wonder if anyone has ever commited suicide because of that joke. Because I can see it happening.
Imagine some homeless guy. He's had a rough life, maybe served in the army and experienced some things he's never recovered from and didn't have much to come back to when he got out. It's been a week or two since he's eaten something that didn't come out of a dumpster. It's been hard to get a good meal since the local soup kitchen had a budget shortfall and had to cut back to opening twice a month, rather than once a week. It'll be another three weeks before the dude's name comes up again to get a bed at the shelter, so until then he's out in the cold. He tried begging, but he doesn't get much, just dirty looks. Assuming they look at him at all. He just needs a little bit to help him out, just enough to fill his stomach with something that isn't rancid or to get a drink to help calm the shakes enough for him to get to sleep in some doorway. As he's thinking this over he sees some change on the ground. His heart leaps a little. A good sign for once. He reaches down to pick up one of the coins, but it doesn't come off the ground. Frustrated, he tries again, not wanting to believe what his sense are telling him. He's sitting on the sidewalk now, trying to pry the coins up, tears stinging his eyes as he nearly breaks one of his fingernails for a nickel. He gets up, dejected, ashamed at what he's been reduced to, silently cursing the little bastard who wasted this money on a joke rather than give it to someone who needed it, all for the sake of making a total stranger feel like a fool. The man sees his life as a waste, with no way out of the hole he's trapped in. He walks to a nearby overpass, but rather than using it for shelter, he flings himself off the top of it in an impulsive act of self-destruction. He regrets it the minute he feels gravity's pull and screams for the last few moments of his life before he impacts with the black asphalt below, his neck shattering. His body goes to the morgue as a John Doe and is dissected by a gross anatomy class at a local med school before being buried in a potter's field.
Now that's funny.
July 17, 11:10 PM
The Dick of All Media
I know I haven't been posting much recently. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I've been doing some writing for other sites recently and have been involved in a couple of non-internet projects in my attempt to expand my social life and become less of an apartment-bound troll. I've started filling in slots at a local college radio station, mostly so I can burn music and play what I want on the radio. I've started an additional blog, which I write in during my shows: www.frequencymodulatedzombie.blogspot.com. I've also been writing for someone else's site, www.moviecynics.com, under the screen name "Troglodyte." I've written a movie review and a couple of lists, and will probably be posting an article a week there from now on.
I've also joined a book club and am attempting to start a second one. These are not taking place on the internet, but rather in reality (or "meat space" as I like to think of it).
The second reason that I've been updating much is that it's summer and it's hot and I'm feeling fucking lazy. I hate summer. Pollen, sunshine and humidity, the shitty-feeling trifecta. I can't afford to go to the beach every weekend and I don't have AC in my apartment, so my whole summer is a long slog from one air conditioned room to another, trying to feel more like a human being a less like a pile of raw meat broiling in my own fat.
In other words, not conducive to sitting in front of my computer and updating this site. I'll try to do better.
June 23, 6:23 PM
Target Practice
What with my occasional mockery of Jesus, it might have occurred to some of you that I'm not the religious sort. I don't tend to talk about it directly, but this is in fact the case. I am, to put it succulently, a godless heathen who will end up being kindle for the Devil's campfire, to quote my grandmother.
I don't hold grudges against theists of any sort, provided they leave me in peace (there are a couple of Buddhists I wouldn't mind seeing die in a fire, but it has nothing to do with their religion. You can't blame Buddha for attracting assholes). I'm not some frothing-at-the-mouth atheist type (like I said, I don't talk about it much) and I grew up in a Scandinavian Lutheran church (about as good as atheism, for all practical purposes) which taught me some sense of humility (I fucking rock at humility).
But sometimes I do get a bee in my britches about the subject, especially when I come across some idiot piece of proselytizing that makes some pretty bold assumptions about the logical structure of my belief system.
The following list is a popular little bit of propaganda that has probably been mailed by more than one knee-jerk conservative older gentleman to members of his family and his circle of friends. These sort of things generally end up lining my digital recycle bin, but I decided to take a whack at this particular bit of fluff, more because I have the time than because I think it will be worthwhile. According to my info, the author is one Debra Rufini, who I imagine is on a school board somewhere trying to fuck with the science curriculum. Just so you know, my comments are directed to the author personally, not theists in general. Many of the religious folks I know aren't this pig-fuckingly oblivious. The original list is in bold, while my responses are in a more humble standard, unbolded font. All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes made in the list are exactly as they were in the version sent to me.
It is easy to prove to yourself that God is real...the evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
Whilst agreeing that random patterns occur naturally by chance, DNA however, consists of code, which requires a designer.
Admitting that patterns can appear by chance admits that code can appear by chance as well. Check up "infinite monkeys" and "Shakespeare." Also "proper sentence structure."
How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine - I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.
There are no such things as ghosts or angels. You thought you saw a ghost. When I was a kid I thought I saw Superman beating up Godzilla in my backyard. The difference is that I grew up, whereas you went on to prove your propensity for superstitious beliefs.
Try praying. What good is it when a mind is set to coincidence & disbelief regarding the positive outcome?
Praying is worse than useless. You might as well just sit and watch sick people die for all the good you'll do. Why believe in coincidence when you could say good things happened to you because of your entreaties to an invisible entity in the sky? Easy: Because the results are the same either way. Flip a coin and pray for heads. Have a friend flip a coin and not expect any specific result. 100 flips and who got heads more often? 1,000 flips? 10,000? Notice any difference between the two results? Maybe God is just sick of your shit.
The law of cause & effect - in order to have an effect, there has to be a cause. Everything is caused by something.
There was nothing. It exploded. What more do you want? Not having a specific reason yet doesn't mean you're justified shoving god in there.
Mindless nothing cannot be responsible for complex something.
Then explain "The Matrix" trilogy. Really complicated, while also totally stupid. Result: I win. See point one for a more specific answer to this.
Science can only be the detector of certain things. You cannot scientifically detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically we must.. These things which do not consist of matter are beyond the detection of science.
Actually, you can detect emotion, memory and thoughts. They do consist of matter and are part of a chemical reaction going on in our brains that gives us the illusion of free will. What's this shit about matter, by the way? What about light? Radiation? Electricity? You know, all that energy shit? And in any case, just because something is not understood by science doesn't mean it can't be understood. That's like a kid saying that because they can't do math they will never need to use it. Closing off parts of the world to scientific inquiry is an impediment, not a rule.
Evolution has never been proved, which is why we call it the 'theory of evolution'. It's a fairy tale for grown ups!
Evolution has plenty of evidence. If you are not aware of this then I must assume you cannot read. Also, I'm surprised you can go to the bathroom without the assistance of a trained chimp. "Theory" has a different meaning in science than in common parlance and if you do not know this you have no basis to talk about science. You know, gravity is just a theory. Shit still falls down. You work it out.
Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved. The disbelievers have not witnessed anything to not believe in, whereas the believers believe because they have witnessed. There is no 'good news' to preach in atheism.
You're an idiot. Do you believe in everything that someone told you about? Vampires, leprechans, the Loch Ness Monster? Buddha, Allah, Vishnu? If you don't, then you are taking a stand against the belief in those things. It requires no leap of faith, just logical inquiry. I believe in one less god than you do, that's all. I don't need "good news" to preach. Just common fucking decency.
How much of the atheist's faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?
How much of your faith relies on what you were told as a kid as opposed to what you consciously decided to put your faith into?
Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don't believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don't they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don't they leave this 'God nonsense' alone?
Because we keep getting stupid fucking emails like this one from well-meaning nitwit family members. You don't actually know any atheists, do you?
What created God? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not going to deny the existence of the chicken or the egg, merely because I don't understand or know what came first. I don't care - they both exist!
What? That's one of your proofs? A childish logic riddle that exists because people are too lazy to look into evolutionary biology?
Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
This seems to negate your whole "complex structures need a creator" thing, doesn't it?
How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?
What the shit? Look up at the last point! You just fucking wrote it!
How could the complexity of the human mind possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells? Where does our consciousness come from?
Twice with this shit! If you can't be troubled to look at the answers to this question that scientists have been working on for centuries, then where the fuck do you get off telling anybody about anything?
What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we're supplied with?
Things which needed liquid and didn't feel thirsty died. Things that did feel thirsty drank and hence lived to propagate other things that felt thirsty.
Most of us are born with the five senses to detect our surroundings, which we're provided with.
Is this a proof? See above.
What/who knew that had Earth been set nearer to the sun, we would burn up?
No one, you 'tard. I guess God hates Mercury.
What/who knew that had Earth been set any further from the sun, we would freeze up?
See above. God hates Pluto as well.
What/who knew that had Earth been built larger or smaller, its atmosphere would be one where it would not be possible for us to breathe?
Apparently God just hates most planets. Vindictive little shit, isn't he?
What/who knew that we require the oxygen of plants, just as plants require the carbon dioxide of us?
You're just fucking with me now, right? Evolution explains these things without having to resort to "someone did it."
The concept that life came about through sheer chance is as absurd & improbable as a tornado blowing through a junk yard, consequently assembling a Boeing 747!
Not really. And we covered this "improbable/impossible" thing before.
We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.
That's because we can test and control these waves. We can observe them and use them. And when we stick a penny in a light socket, it hurts like a motherfucker. We don't have to take it on anecdotal evidence if we don't want to, we can just convince our little bother to lick a battery and there it is. Science might be painful, but it works.
Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.
You are just high off your tits, aren't you? You know what will happen to that tomato, if you leave it on the ground, rotting? The seeds from it just might grow a new tomato plant and make more tomatoes, if the conditions are right. Entropy only works if there is no outside force pumping in energy. We have sunlight and heat from beneath the Earth's crust, which keep the system running.
Our 'inventor' of evolution, Mr. Charles Darwin had this to say to Lady Hope when he was almost bedridden for 3 months before he died; "I was a young man with unfathomed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions. wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire - people made a religion of them." Darwin then asked Lady Hope to speak to neighbours the next day. "What shall I speak about?" She asked. He replied; "Christ Jesus and his salvation. Is that not the best theme?"
This is made up. No, really, I looked into it. According to members of Darwin's family who were with him the entire time of his death, he never changed his agnostic opinions or his view on evolution, and Lady Hope was a evangelical tent revivalist who often made shit up. She might have visited him, but was certainly never alone with him, and most of the details of her story (such as at what point Darwin was bedridden) were incorrect. This took me two seconds on Google. And he didn't event evolution, he just had an idea of how it worked and backed it up with evidence.
Where do our moral values held within our conscience come from? If the atheist is right, why then would we care about what we did?! If there is no God, then we've no-one to be accountable to.
Moral values are societal constructs used to keep people in line. You can't run a successful society if everyone is murdering and fucking each other all the time (at least not in most places). Morality changes as our needs and situations change. It used to be okay to stone disobedient children to death (says so in the Bible). Now it's not. No one wants to get caught doing anything they would be ashamed of or would get arrested for. That's what we're beholden to and that's what keeps us accountable for our actions.
If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn't he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.
You've never been to a sports bar, have you? We behave exactly like animals, but since there are no animals exactly like us we tend to forget this fact. What we call civilization is the result of an adaptive social behavior. We banded together because those that worked together could get more food and defend themselves from predators. We were successful and bred and the more of us there were the more complex the structure we created became. But our basic goals are still eating and fucking and raising kids so our group will survive.
'Chance' isn't the cause of something. It just describes what we can't find a reason for.
Thanks, Professor Pulling-This-Shit-Out-Of-My-Ass. According to Webster's: "Chance: The unexpected or random element of existence. This element is regarded as the cause of events."
Science & logic do not hold all the answers - many people are aware of forces at work which we have no understanding of & no control over.
...yet.
Look at the date/year on our calender - 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus' existence.
Unless you're living in China, in which case I guess Jesus didn't exist. Our calender system is arbitrary. When you are dealing with a system of keeping time that any asshole who became King of England could fuck with during the course of history, then you have to realize that you are working with something that we just made up. And the historical record for Jesus is actually pretty slim-to-non-existent. Please cite examples.
Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
In the 1920s there were reports that a number of women killed themselves when they heard that Hollywood heartthrob Rudolph Valentino died. People will kill themselves for a lot of stupid reasons. No need to go getting worked up about it.
Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.
Written only 40 years after, eh? I know my memory is crystal clear after 40 years. I also am quite certain that people have never lied and gotten away with it. I'm a magical pixie, by the way.
From as early as 2000 BC, there is archaological evidence to confirm many details we're provided with in the Bible.
There is also evidence that contradicts it. I win.
Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.
Wrap something in enough vague language and you can make it mean anything.
The evidence from liturature & historical studies claim that Biblical statements are reliable details of genuine events.
Give me some examples. Otherwise, shut your face and learn to spell.
From the birth of science through to today, there is no evidence to claim that Christianity & science are in opposition. Many first scientists were Christians; Francis Bacon, Issaac Newton, Robert Boyle, to name a few, along with the many who stand by their work & faith today.
True. Doesn't prove any gods though. The problem is when you try laying the religion over the science and trusting in faith over reason. The two aren't in necessarily in opposition, but mixing them is a sure sign of quakery. The folks you mentioned put what they saw over what they felt, and often got flack for it, as many scientists have over the ages.
Science can explain 'how' something works, but not 'why' something works.
This is some special kind of stupid. Those two words are nearly interchangeable, unless you are using "why" in way that implies a conscious motive, which makes no sense when talking about the natural world. Giving personality to natural forces is religion's realm, not science's, so I'm seeing science as being in the clear here. In any case, the "how" is the "why."
Science is constantly recorrecting its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which are held today. Our present 'discoveries' may change again in the future to rediscover how we originally came into existence.
Fuck consistency. I would rather be right than consistent. You take what you have and you make sense of it. Turns out wrong, then work on something else. Been working fine so far. I don't see the Bible detailing any polio vaccines.
By the way, I think we've lost track of the whole "proving God exists" thing at this point.
Evolution describes the way life possibly started, yet doesn't explain what made life start & why. Scientific questions fail to do that. Even if evolution were proved, it would still not disprove God.
Yeah, so? Just because we don't know something doesn't mean we have to fill the hole with god. It just means we go back to the lab for more testing. And no one said evolution disproved god. That's not what it's there for.
The two people who discovered Jesus' empty tomb were women. Women were so low on the social scale in first century Palestine, so in order to make the story fit, it would have made far more sense to claim that it were male disciples who had entered the tomb. But it wasn't - we're left with the historical & Biblical truth.
You know, there are plenty of websites that have big long lists of logical fallacies and how they work. It's not like these are hidden from anyone.
Think about Near Death Experiences. It's naive to believe that they all are induced by chemicals or drugs. How do we account for a blind person having this experience, coming back to describe what they had never before seen, a person telling the Doctor that there is a blue paperclip on top of the high cabinet, which they couldn't have otherwise known, an african man being dead in his coffin for 3 days, coming back to life to tell of much the same events which took place as those of many others? We never hear of the witnesses describing "a dream". We're not silly - we know the difference between even the most vivid of dreams to that of reality.
Because if you can't trust someone whose brain has been severely deprived of oxygen, then who can you trust? I knew a guy once who was legally dead for five minutes. He saw an empty black void of nothingness. Therefor there is no afterlife. See? How do you like it?
There are many skeptics who didn't believe in Jesus before his crucifixion, and who were opposed to Christianity, yet turned to the Christian faith after the death of Jesus. Just as the many who continue to do so today.
There are also plenty of people who once believed in a god and now don't. And that number is growing.
Albert Einstein said; "A legitimate conflict between science & religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind".
He also said this: "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." He also got a lot of pussy and was a revered genius and humanitarian. In your quote he was speaking of religion as more a spiritual sense of grandeur regarding the universe. He was an atheist, and considered the idea of a personal god "childish."
A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. "Who threw that?" He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; "No-one threw it - it threw itself!"
Your proof is a joke. You should look into this.
It is easier to believe that God created something out of nothing than it is to believe that nothing created something out of nothing.
Not really. I'm doing it right now. See? Isn't it cool? And who cares which idea is easier to believe? Which one can be proven and studied?
Stephen Hawkins has admitted; "Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?"
Once again, not a proof of anything. The universe doesn't "bother" to do anything any more than a piece of granite "bothers" not to explode for no reason. We know the universe exists because its here. What happened before it existed is conjecture based on available evidence. Don't attach personal motives to things without personality. It's childish.
We cannot confuse God with man. With God in the equation, all things, including miracles are possible. If God is God, he is Creator of all, inclusive of scientific law. He is Creator of matter & spirit.
You're getting all googly-eyed.
If we are the product of evolution - by sheer accident, chance, then we are still evolving. Does it just so happen that we exist here today with everything so finely tuned for our living. as we now have it?
Things were finally tuned for our living when we lived in trees and ate bugs for protein. Things are always finally tuned for your living right up until the point something changes that throws things out of tune and then your species either evolves or dies off. Works pretty well without any gods or anything mucking about.
Could it possibly be that the missing link does not exist?!
Holes in the fossil record prove we haven't dug up enough bones to make a complete picture yet. We're just making conjecture off of the available evidence. As opposed to just making shit up.
God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?
You've had this whole list to give me a proof and you haven't done it yet. Don't cop out on me with this shit.
Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
Or he didn't exist at all and is an amalgamation of different messiah mythologies combined with life details from any one of the many "saviors" that infected the Middle East like so many pubic lice back in the day.
YOU DECIDE!!!
Done. Want to guess what my decision was?
May 3, 10:53 AM
Political Shit
I don't usually write about politics on this site. I have been using this site as a way to relax, and politics does everything to my emotional state other than relax it. But sometimes I just need to vent my thoughts in the hum-drum clickety-clack of blogging. I probably won't say anything original, certainly nothing you haven't read elsewhere on the great wide Internet, but indulge me while I babble.
The specific topic of my ire recently has been the presidential campaign, the gigantic media clusterfuck of empty rhetoric and meaningless symbolism. I've grown very cynical of the American political process. This has happened at a quick rate given my relative youth. Not too surprising given the elections that have happened in my lifetime. My entire life since turning old enough to vote has been spent under the Bush II presidency, which has been like a master's course in boldfaced hypocrisy. That the Democrats, the opposition party in this bumbling and idiotic affair, have been about as effective in maintaining the balance of power as silly putty has been in stopping artillery fire does not given me any great respect for the political institutions that manage our social structures. Having now grown more familiar with America's history, I have found that this has actually been a fairly civil period for our government, at least compared to the days when one congressman would beat another half to death while in session. Keep the Civil War in mind when talking about "polarizing politics."
Have I gained any hope during this presidential election and all of its historic implications? Maybe the fact that it is entirely possible America will elect its first woman president, or its first black president, or its first old white guy president, has given me a newfound respect for the system, some brief ray of sunshine in my dark and cloudy political world? No. No it has not. Because every time in my life since gaining some level of political sophistication I have found that hope does not work.Hope is a cliff which you are pushed off of by the harsh winds of reality.
Hope in 2000: Maybe we will elect Al Gore and have a chance at sensible environmental policy.
Hope in 2004: Maybe we will elect John Kerry and have a president who isn't a war-mongering puppet. Maybe more than a half dozen states won't codify their discrimination by banning gay marriage.
Hope in 2008: Maybe we will have a political campaign that deals with something more substantive than flag lapel pins. Maybe a majority of Americans will realize that patriotism is more than "ra ra, go team go" nationalistic cheerleading and may actually require you do something to make your country a better place. Maybe a few more people will get it into their heads that mixing religion with politics (or religion with anything other than more religion) is a slippery slope and leads down a painfully regressive pathway.
Maybe this time it will be different.
For cynicism to be broken down, something good has to actually happen on more than an infrequent basis. I'll be hopeful for the future when I look at the government and don't see a vast, seething viper's den of corruption, incompetence and greed perpetuated by anyone who enters it for more than a week. Don't call me pessimistic until you can prove me wrong.
April 21, 5:53 PM
Popular Things I Hate: Part Three, "The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, Boondock Saints and Donnie Darko"
These three films represent for me a sort of subgenre of trendy cult films that are defined more by their fans than their style or content. I don't like the films personally, but I can see why other people like them. However, I refuse to view them as an example of great cinema, as certain groups of obsessives try to convince me that they are. You know the people I mean. The guys who want to be filmmakers but lack the imagination or commitment to get a project on the ground (they do plan to move to Los Angeles one of these days and they will spend a solid goddamned hour telling you about their great idea for a movie). So out of pure disrespect for a small, annoying group of people, and with all due apologizes to the many friends I will lose because of this, here is why I hate these movies.
"The Usual Suspects"
This is the kind of movie you write when you have no idea what crime actually is or how police investigations actually work. Every time I see this movie I get the feeling that everyone in it is trying really hard to be a bad ass, thus elucidating the difference between "being" and "posing." It's like watching some privileged suburban middle schooler talk up how he belongs to a gang and could totally kick a high schooler's ass if he wanted to, it's just that he doesn't want to right now because he's better than that. The same kid who cried like a pansy when someone cracked a recorder over his head during band practice because he's an insufferable prick who will one day grow up to be a fan of "The Usual Suspects."
I won't talk about the ending, because it's fucking stupid.
"Fight Club"
"Fight Club" is a little difficult to review because it has an underlaying philosophy to it, which means that most people will either talk about how the film looks or what it is about, but not both. Let me sum up the basic issue in one line: It's a film with a lot of well-done stylistics gimmicks that don't really help it say anything of value. I think there is a rewarding level of irony in a movie that makes anti-materialistic arguments and yet currently retails for $26.98. That attempts to be subversive, yet is released by 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of News Corp., which is run by Rupert Murdoch, who owns everything you see and read. That is best known for having a macho, "what do you really know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" attitude that it actually shows as leading to an overt fascism. That has had books written about its philosophical underpinnings and yet cribbed its entire ideology from a Fugazi album. To be honest, the last thing I want to hear in a movie is complaints about how the world has made promises it couldn't deliver coming from the mouth of Brad Fuckin' Pitt. This movie is the guy who lived in your dorm who always wore a Che Guevara T-Shirt (retail price $17.99) and who thinks writing "Fuck Bush" graffiti on the sidewalk is a subversive act.
"Boondock Saints"
I think "Pulp Fiction" is one of the best films of the 1990s, but sometimes I wish it had never been made simply so that we would not have to deal with the hordes of filmmakers who followed in Tarantino's wake. This film bears no resemblance to "Pulp Fiction," but it probably never would have been made if "Pulp Fiction" hadn't been such a success. The film has garnered a cult following from people who quote the lines and make sure everyone who comes in contact with them has seen the film. All of this would be fine and dandy if they didn't earnestly think this was a good movie, which it is not. The plot is something ripped out of a bad comic book and the cast is once again out to play tough rather than actually being tough. It's like watching children play mobsters and vigilantes. It's so far below the films that inspired it that it is still to this day digging up new strata of mediocrity.
"Donnie Darko"
Sometimes people confuse "complex" with "complicated." "Donnie Darko" is not a complex film, it is merely a complicated one, its entire structure and its message about the nature of time a rather pointless display of metaphysical philosophizing that shows a lot of cool stuff at the service of something that isn't that original or interesting. The hero's death is given as a sacrifice to save the one he loves, but then he only has a limited view of his future. What if he had lived and gone on to cure cancer, saving the lives of millions? What if he dies and the girl he loves is hit by a truck a week later despite his sacrifice? I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it, but if you are talking about alternate time lines then you are talking about an infinite number of different possibilities, of which the film ignores all but two. It isn't a bad movie, but it's hardly anything profound.
My complaint about these movies really has more to do with the amount of praise they receive from certain quarters rather than the films themselves. I don't mind most of them (except "Boondock," which is an unredeemable piece of shit), but I don't think any of them are all that original or interesting. I just hope that they don't enter classic status without a little reflection on the part of the audience.
April 13, 6:48 PM
Lifestyle Changes
So I'm back. In case you have been wondering about the lack of updates over the past couple of weeks, it had to do with my lack of internet access in my new apartment. I have now corrected this and am blogging at a furious rate to catch up. I'm now living in Eugene, OR for anyone who is interested. Back on my home turf after an extended stay in the Great White North. I've already attended one record convention and a large book sale, as well as a smattering of concerts. I'm also drinking more beer, which should be gratifying to some of you. I'll now be updating the site with a tad more regularity, though I doubt I'll be doing it on any set schedule.
Cheers until next time.
March 9, 2:34 PM
My Funeral
Though I know I won't be in any position to complain when the event does occur, I've always dreaded that when I die I'll end up with a boring, uncomfortable funeral. I've never been a fan of any ceremony that requires me to spend any more time on my appearance than I would for your average Foo Fighters concert, particularly if I don't really agree with the underlying philosophy of the ceremony. Into this category fall such activities as weddings, job interviews, divorce hearings, criminal court appearances, graduation ceremonies and ballroom dancing competitions. That I'm probably destined to be buried in the same sort of clothing I found so uncomfortable in life is a little depressing. That my friends and relations will engaging in the same sort of empty ritual I've always despised in a misguided attempt to honor my memory is almost too painful to think about.
As I stated before, I won't be in any position to complain at the time, what with being dead and all. Nevertheless, when the time comes it would provide me with some small comfort to think that my loved ones were a little more creative wit my funeral arrangements. I've always hoped that those closest too me would take the time to, say, launch my body over downtown Portland from a trebuchet. I would fly hundreds of yards until my naked corpse (I would be naked, by the way) slammed against an office window, scaring the bejesus out of some poor office drone while he was making copies. I would then fall to the sidewalk below, nearly landing on Isaac Brock, who would be inspired to write a song about the experience (if he's not available, Britt Daniel will be a decent alternative). Alternately, if I could be aimed to hit Stephen Malkmus, that would be cool. Nothing against him personally; I just think it would be a cool way to go out.
March 6, 2:52 PM
Emergency Site Reorganization
I had a little incident today with the "Hypographia" section, it that I apparently deleted the file and it no longer exists. This was somewhat of a pain in the ass as I had not intended to make any more major changes to the site for some time. However, since I wanted to fill the space and I still have all of the material saved in this Word document or that, I decided to make some changes I had been thinking about. "Dialogs From Nowhere," the most common feature in "Hypographia," is now its own section. While I was making new stuff, I decided to add another section, in the form of "The Children's Corner." This is my section for all of the little ones, and is generally a way to indoctrinate them to my worldview as soon as possible. It will include stories, lessons and other tidbits for the kiddies. I don't expect to update it that often, but I think I'll have some fun with it.
February 25, 10:10 PM
New Projects and the State of the Site
First off, I started a new off-site project, a little Blogger thing called Eugenertainment. It's just getting going, but the idea is it will be a run down of the A&E scene in Eugene, Oregon, which is the town I'm currently living just outside of and into which I will probably soon be moving. We'll see if I can keep up with this, or if it will be another failed, forgotten project, like so many other projects in my life (my marriage, for example).
Since there is no point in wasting another perfectly good blog entry on describing something I'm doing on some other site, here is a little run down of the different sections of this site in particular and my current feelings in regards to them:
Review-o-Matic - I haven't been working on this as much as I would like, having just recently done my first update in over two months. I'll be trying to get more entries into this more often.
Hypographia - This section tends to get more entries when I spend more time in coffee shops. As I'm now back in the Northwest after an extended sojourn in the Midwest, and am at the moment still unemployed (or as I prefer, funemployed), I've been spending a considerable amount of time in coffee shops, writing nonsense into a notebook in order to look deep and try and impress girls. So this section ends up with a lot of material.
Audiography - I don't update this much, but I never intended for it to be a regular feature. I've been feeling the itch for it though, so I think another entry might be due (my last one was basically a cop out).
Tales of Zimm - The newest member of this grumpy, disgruntled family. I've been enjoying writing it and it will probably become a steady feature, though the more in-depth I get, the more likely it will end up on its own site.
One Man Book Club - I am so far behind on this I won't be able to catch up on it without the assistance of anything short of a miracle (or a speed-fueled orgy of lit crit excess, though I don't have the funds or the energy for such endeavors anymore). The last book I reviewed, "The Great Gatsby", is one I read almost a year ago. I have more than 30 books between that one and the one I'm currently reading ("The Way of All Flesh," in case you're interested, which I'm sure you're not). One of my goals this year is to actually get at least halfway to being caught up, but that proves more difficult all of the time, as I've read more than ten books since becoming funemployed a couple of months ago.
Beware of the Blog - To give you an idea of how this section is doing, notice that this is the longest entry I've managed in more than six months. Not that I don't like writing it, but I have a boring life and any other ideas I have I tend to route into other efforts.
I'll be keeping this site going for as long as I remain interested in it, which should be for some time now. I might make changes in the future, but for now things are staying pretty stable. As usual, comments, questions and suggestions can be sent to zombieunderground@gmail.com.
January 29, 5:00 PM
More Changes to the Site
I've found a replacement for "Hollywood Round-Up" in the form of "Tales of Zimm." This is a blog written by a fictional character who appeared in a few short stories I half wrote some time back. I didn't like the stories much, but the character has stuck with me and I decided to give him a place to voice his views. I don't know how long this idea will last, and if it ends up becoming something of worth I might end up moving it to its own site. But for now its home will be here.
January 9, 8:20 PM
Some Changes to the Site
I'm making a few changes to the site. Well, one change. I'm moving "Hollywood Round-Up" to its own site seperate from this one, since I feel it would work better as a stand-alone blog. The section will stay on this site until I find something to replace it, but all future updates for the section will appear at its new home, Hollywood
Troglodyte. If you have any questions about this, let me know at zombieunderground@gmail.com.
Peace out, y'all.
December 31, 7:53 PM
Some Attainable New Year's Resolutions Now That My Wife Has Divorced Me
1. Be lonelier
2. Wallow in more self-pity
3. Spend more time complaining to friends and trying their patience with me
4. Make half-assed attempt to get in shape then give up and eat a cheese platter
5. Die alone
6. Practice being bitter and cranky
7. Create self-fulfilling prophecy that no one will ever love me again by becoming completly unloveable
8. Masturbate more
9. Spend more money on meaningless purchases that bring me no real happiness
10. Finish "Ulysses" (might not be attainable)
November 10, 1:45 PM
Some Thoughts from an Old Notebook, Revisited
Some people are pretty defensive about their tastes. Take a look at any random message board and you can find a wide range of examples. It's as if the Internet has unleashed the vast, quivering, incoherent id of the populace, allowing anyone with the inclination and a keyboard to fight out a transcribed battle to the death over the merits of, say, "Lost." The most rewarding of this drivel, from a psychological perspective, comes from those intent on ridding the world of anything they deem of inferior artistic quality through the tried and true method of bitching about it. As if someone making music or movies the commentators do no like were doing it as a personal insult, an insult anyone who enjoys said music or movies is complicit in.
The tone is a slightly more sophisticated version of the one used by children when they don't want to eat their vegetables.
"You know, I really enjoy Sonic Youth."
"You are such a poser. How can you like that garbage? Brussels sprouts are icky!"
The tone is at least understandable in a child, who presumably hasn't learned how fucking annoying it is. But it does becoming a tad silly when you reach the age of, I don't know, 30.
In critics, you seem to hear this tone more often, which makes sense in that critics presumably have to see/hear/read/play everything that comes out in their medium of employ. You begin to have a vested interest in good working being released when you work as a professional critic. This point however is negated by the fact that if you went into a career as a professional critic expecting everything to be good, you obviously did not prepare yourself properly.
The basic job of a professional critic is to evaluate art based on 1.) its technical merits and 2.) the critic's personal taste, which is, ideally, more refined than that of the average consumer. But like most people, critics often tend to view quality as part of the technical aspects of the art in question, as something intrinsic such as grammatical construction or cinematography. As if the quality of a work can be objectively judged, rather than simply a matter of subjective taste. Which leads us back to the defensiveness so many people seem to have about their taste in art. If quality were an objective fact, then They Are Right to like it/not like it. Where as you dislikes/likes it Are Wrong, and your wrongness can be proven.
"See, Mom. I have scientifically proven that asparagus sucks, as you can see on this chart I made."
It's this attitude that leads to critics such as Dale Peck or Armond White, both worshipers at the alter of their own taste, knee-jerk contrarians who take every bad piece of literature/cinema as a direct affront, reacting more against the "hype" (in other words, the reactions of other people) than to the artwork in question.
Of course, I don't profess to be free of guilt in regard to this attitude. My sins are many and well documented. But it's important to make an effort.
October 29, 8:25 AM
A Short Conversation with a Friend, Which Demonstrates Much of What is Wrong with Modern Technology and Western Civilization in General
My Friend: Dammit, I hate it when that happens.
Me: What?
My Friend: The camera on my cell phone keeps taking pictures of the inside of my pocket and I think I just sent one to someone.
October 22, 7:50 PM
My New Hobby: Making Elaborate Backstories For People I Encounter During an Average Day
An example of this: I was walking doing the street earlier today and as I was crossing an intersection, a man driving a pick up pulled up to a stop sign and quickly continued driving, his tires squealing slightly. Now why was he in such a rush to continue on from that intersection even though he didn't seem in that much of a hurry otherwise? He must be scared of stop signs, obviously. It's a rare mental illness. Only a couple of doctors in Germany will treat it, so he has to travel to Munich at least once a year to fill his prescription, which is illegal to sell within the United States, due to its side effects, which includes the sterility that led to his wife leaving him for a real estate agent she met at a convention in Chicago. He once tried to by a substitute drug over the internet from a Canadian website, but he ended up with a pack of sugar pills and a stifling credit card bill. He has thought about therapy, but the idea of talking about his past with a total stranger makes him uncomfortable. How do you explain to another person that your father, who worked for the Department of Transportation, used to spank you with a stop sign and that he still keeps it hanging on the wall above his La-Z-Boy as he slowly smokes himself to death while waiting to join his wife in the grave, and that when you go to visit him to watch the playoffs you feel it glaring down at you, reminding you of the time you got caught beating off to Redbook and the walloping you took?
September 9, 8:20 PM
Guestbook Entry I Wished to Enter But Didn't at the Coast Rental House I Stayed In for Three Days in Oregon
We came to this fine log home on a sunny afternoon after following the directions that indicated it was next door to the white house with a front yard full of crusty old semen, though this turned out to be a comment on our temporary neighbor's maritime-related lawn ornamentation rather than their sexual proclivities (as far as I was able to ascertain, in any case). The house turned out to be perfect for our needs, full of easily pilfered bric-a-brac that would have it been considered kitsch if not for its sheer bulk and obvious earnestness. It is so difficult to find a clock made out of a cast iron pan in this day in age, though the fake swordfish mounted over the sofa seemed to be pushing the limits of taste, even for rental property and seems to have been purchased during a drunken bet.
The rooms were well accommodated with wood panelling that absorbed a musk that can only be described as being akin to desperation, with just a hint of vintage urine. After splitting up the rooms according to our family's rank and experience, we took in our surroundings (in the form of drawing much hilarity from the mismatched cutlery and leftover refrigerator items). We also explored the beach, which seemed to contain the appropriate combination of sand and water, with the occasional rock, shell and unidentifiable amber gel mixed in for variety.
We spent many a pleasant afternoon over the next few days exploring the local eateries, having pleasant conversations with local shopkeepers over the meaning of "proper public attire" and purchasing useless knick-knacks on the mistaken belief that they would look excellent on some random piece of shelving in our home, when in fact we would probably leave them in the rental home (this last behavior is not uncommon and I have come to believe that it is responsible for the home's interesting decor, for there is no other way to rationally explain the owl lamp or the sturgeon-themed Christmas lights). In the mornings my mother and aunt would wile away their time gambling while my wife drew much hilarity from the poor spelling and fuzzy thinking of the previous guestbook entries.
But too quickly the time passed and we soon were gathering our luggage (and stolen dishware), preparing to leave our too-brief abode. It was a pleasant stay, full of memories involving sitting and deciding where to eat, separated by incidents of sleeping and walking.
To the next resident of this quaint little vacation spot, we say only this: Be careful with the white chair closest to the door in regard to stains. Bloodstains are difficult to remove when you don't have many cleaning supplies and the cushion can't be turned over a second time.
August 10, 2:15 PM
Popular Things I Hate: Part Two, "Oprah"
A billionaire media mogul who has made a fortune promoting pseudo-inspirational horseshit, as if feeling good about yourself is something you can learn from an overbearing divorcee with an eating disorder and a messiah complex. And don't give me that crap about Oprah expanding literary awareness and getting people to read. Oprah gets people to read the same way Pavlov got dogs to drool. It's not that impressive. And let's just take a look at some of this woman's recommendations: Dr. Phil (Doctor of what? Giving shitty relationship advice to whiny people who never learned to take care of their own problems?), "A Million Little Pieces," (Looking over the fact that it was bullshit it's still an awful book. The author's philosophy regarding addiction was complete nonsense, that "tough it out" idea that addicts can just stop using and deal with it is exactly the kind of thing someone who has never had to deal with a serious addiction would come up with, and exactly the kind of crap Oprah and her audience want to be fed) and, finally, "The Secret" (Holy fucking god are people stupid. I've heard some dumb shit in my life, especially from self-help authors, but "think happy thoughts and good things will come to you without you doing anything else" has to be the dumbest and the shittiest). There are some people who do nothing more than dumb down our public discourse every time they talk. Oprah does them one better by giving her line of bullshit the veneer of culture and a positive outlook. But when you break it down it's still the same dumb crap.
July 20, 1:15 PM
Popular Things I Hate: Part One, "Harry Potter"
So let me get this straight: An uber-jock with poor study skills and a daddy-complex is granted unlimited wealth and god-like powers and I'm supposed to care about how hard his life is? And don't tell me these books inspire kids to read. Reading is easy. Let me know when something comes around that inspires kids to think.
June 26, 11:25 AM
North Depakote
I've spent the last couple of weeks involved in a medical study where I was used to test blood absorption rates on a drug commonly used as a treatment for bipolar disorder. It paid well in exchange for a few sacrifices. I had to stay two nights and a day at the testing center, basically doing nothing but watching crappy movies and having copious amounts of blood sucked out of my arm by med students. I read, I listened to music, I dreamed of all the horrible, horrible things I would do to Ben Stiller if I ever met him in person and generally had a pretty boring, crappy, caffeine deprived time. In exchange for doing this two weekends in a row (along with some extra blood draws during the week) I doubled my paycheck for the last two weeks. I bought an air conditioner to make my apartment somewhat livable for the summer and can now pay it off (the built in air conditioner that came with the place is a relic of a time when appliances where expected to suck up a lot of energy without doing jack shit. I do appreciate the special kind of daring it takes for an apartment management company to advertise a place as coming with air conditioning when said air conditioner does not work at all. It's the equivalent of installing an oven that doesn't heat food beyond room temperature).
I don't really have any concerns about the effects of the drug, since I'm fairly sure I was part of the placebo taking control group and if not it really isn't much worse than the shit I normally dump into my body during the course of an average meal ("Is there high fructose corn syrup in that? Has it been genetically altered? Snap, gimmie some!").
The general advantage of the experience, other than the money and a free tee shirt at the end, was the chance to come out of isolation and reconnect in person with a cross section of my fellow American citizens. This particular grouping was made up of college-age men with a few older farmers supplementing their income and one creepy bald guy who sat around with his laptop and read books that explained how the IRS is a scam and that you shouldn't pay your income taxes. The female subset slept in a different room and was generally post-menopausal Perkins waitresses, as far as I could tell. But the largest group consisted of a certain type of young man. Generally in college (technical college or from the local university flight school in this case), usually obsessed with either video games or body building (never both, oddly enough. The scrawniest man there brought a TV and his Xbox and played online "Halo", which was as good of a way to waste time as any). Despite being educated, they were also generally as dense as a brick shithouse and with a similar odor control problem. If they weren't completely fucking retarded, they were a very special kind of bland reserved for people who can play at least one Dave Matthew's Band song on the guitar, but not very well. Jovial assholes, to a man. Not entirely unpleasant folks to spend a weekend confined with, provided you don't have to talk to them for more than a few seconds at a time, but not the kind of guys you would want to take a movie recommendation from.
It's good to be reintroduced to the elements of society you hold in an amiable kind of loathing. It justifies the isolation for a while longer.
May 24, 1:40 PM
Food Network Roundup
I watch the Food Network fairly often. No real reason for choosing it over other channels, but once I started watching and it became familiar it just wound up in rotation. It's not that I even like most of what is on there, but it's compulsively easy to watch. Even when it's bad, it's entertainingly bad. Here's a little rundown of some of the shows I tend to end up looking at.
"Iron Chef America"
Though it lost some of the inherent goofiness of the Japanese version (and the attempts to recreate it fall painfully flat) it still holds up pretty well. There's nothing more entertaining than creativity under pressure and subsequently this has become the closest thing to a competitive sport that I watch. Alton Brown's color commentary is wonderfully nimble and though he is obviously being fed information from off-screen, the range of knowledge he draws from is startling. Which brings us to...
"Good Eats"
Alton's own show can best be described as "Bill Nye the Science Guy" for food. More like a science lecture from a professor who has stopped taking himself seriously than a normal cooking show, it's assisted by the simple novelty that most people really don't know how cooking actually works. The show is at its best when it avoids being dragged down by it's own cheesiness.
"Throwdown with Bobby Flay"
AKA "Bobby Flay is Coming to Your Party to Be an Asshole." The perfect example of a premise stretched to its absolute breaking point. The basic idea is that Flay goes around surprising local chefs and cooks, challenging them to a cooking competition where he tries to best their signature dish. Of course, one isn't supposed to wonder how all of the local chefs know who Bobby Flay is and are aware of the show, yet still fall for the "Food Network profile" act the show uses as a set up. That Flay almost always loses is odd until you realize that in the "blind" taste tests, who made what is always obvious and most of the yokels win based on authenticity, which has little to do with taste. I don't think they are making new episodes of this one, which is probably for the best given that Flay's disdain for the show shines through on almost every episode.
"Emeril Live"
One of the network's flagship shows (and one of the few primetime cooking shows still on the air) isn't entertaining so much for the cooking as for the bubbling cauldron of insanity that Emeril Lagasse is barely able to contain behind those half-closed eyes. If you listen to him long enough, you'll realize that sometimes the words coming out of his mouth do not make any sense. "We've got a roux boiling, and we're going to be adding some chopped garlic to that, and then we're going to start grilling A PANDA! BAM!"
Rachael Ray
Not so much a human being as an institution. I've lost track of the number of shows she has, and I've never cared about her cooking. I don't really care much about the struggle between those who think she's dumbing down cooking for mass consumption and those who see nothing wrong with showing people easy ways to do things (I like to use fresh ingredients when I cook because I think it tastes better and is better for you, but I'm also having Rice-a-Roni for lunch today, so I've got no ground to stand on here). What I can't stand is her obsessive use of catchphrases. I sometimes get the impression that everything she says is trademarked and will eventually will appear written on a turkey baster. The relentless mediocrity she displays on the air is only occasionally alleviated by the fact that she sometimes appears to be visibly sloshed. Whether she's drunk on a sense of her own self-importance or on the five Harvey Wallbanger's she downed during the shoot is anyone's guess.
May 5, 1:10 PM
Book Notes
Top Five Books I Own But Haven't Read
1. "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski
Honestly, could I be any lamer? Hipster horror brilliance full of quirky typographical gimmicks and it's just sitting there on my shelf, unopened and unloved?
2. "Ulysses" by James Joyce
I started reading this in high school and made a good start on it. Then I got into a car wreck and decided that life was too short to spend it struggling, so I put it down and read some shitty science fiction instead. I haven't picked it up since, though I keep telling myself I will. Really. I will.
3. "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami
Has every literate person in the world read this and loved it and now feels compelled to recommend it to everyone? I'll get to it, just, you know, give me a minute here.
4. "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon
I'll admit that I get a little intimidated by any book that comes with a supplemental guidebook.
5. "Underworld" by Don Delillo
I swear I do not just have this on my shelf to look cool. I will read it.
Books I Will Not Read
1. "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yeah, I saw the movies. No, I'll never read the books. "But it's the cornerstone of modern fantasy fiction." Yeah, but have you noticed that most fantasy fiction sucks serious monkey balls? So I guess Tolkien is the cornerstone of primate testicle suckery. "How can you see the movies without reading the books. The books have so much more detail and depth." You know what, shut the fuck up. I'm sick of your fanboy shit.
2. "Chronicles of Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis
I won't even see the movies. I just don't care. DO YOU HEAR ME? I JUST DON'T FUCKING CARE!
3. The "Harry Potter" series by J.K. Rowling
No No No No No. Will not never NO. That's okay, you know? To just not want to read something because you don't feel like reading it. People can make choices like that and choose not to read something even though everyone else on the fucking planet has read it. I don't care whether I would like them or not. I just don't care and I will not read them. When the rest of the world starts reading the books I recommend, then maybe I will listen to what recommendations the rest of the world has. But I just don't want to read these books and there is nothing wrong with that SO SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THEM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
April 12, 1:10 PM
Brain Dump
I've decided that I'm going to respond to every inquiry with "I would, but the Bible specifically says that I shouldn't."
***
My cat recently had a traumatizing existential crisis when he popped a balloon we had left on the floor for him to play with. He couldn't figure out what happened and wandered around the apartment looking for the balloon (my wife threw away the remains, so it was quite the mystery) and basically freaking out. I could just see what has happening in the empty little cat brain of his:
"Holy crap," he was thinking. "What if that happens to ME?"
***
I really hate the Geico caveman. I want to hold his head under a pool of water until the bubbles stop coming up. So is Geico's advertising policy to annoy the living fuck out of potential customers? First it was that whole "Gecko/Geico" thing and now this shit. People say that advertising has a subliminal effect on people who watch a lot of it, but honestly it's hard to think of anything so ham-fistedly inane as being malignant.
April 04, 3:30 PM
Some Notes on My Quotes.
You might have noticed the little rotating quote thingy on the homepage of the site that puts up a new quote every time the page is refreshed. I realized recently that unless you know the context of some of these quotes you might think they were a tad, well, batshit crazy. So let me go over a few of them so I don't come off like a complete loony tune right on the first page of the site.
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
This is a grammatically correct sentence. It was devised by University of Buffalo associate professor William J. Rapaport. Since "buffalo" is both a proper name (the city), a noun (the animal) and a verb (meaning to bully or confuse someone) the sentence actually says something depending on what association you give each word in it. A good translation is "Bison from upstate New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community." (Thank you Wikipedia).
"My mother is a fish."
A one-sentence chapter from William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." And who says reading the classics is dull?
"Hail, Squishface"
Episode title from the second season of "Sealab 2021."
"Spearman defeats tank."
A strange situation that could occur in the original "Civilization" computer game in which a much weaker unit, under the right circumstances, could defeat a much more powerful unit even though the win would probably never happen in reality.
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
Another adventure in radical linguistics. Noam Chomsky's classic example of a sentence that is grammatically correct yet nonsensical.
"He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him."
A line from the film "Arsenic and Old Lace," one of my favorite dark comedies. Not a great film by any stretch, but still enjoyable. The character speaking the line is a serial killer debating with a colleague how many kills he has. This is the killer's response to his colleague's suggestion that one of the homicides does not count because the victim died of natural causes.
"You know there ain't no Devil, there's just God when he's drunk."
Classic line from the Tom Waits song "Heart Attack and Vine."
AND MANY OTHERS!
If there are any you want explained, or if you have any suggestions, feel free to write me at zombieunderground@gmail.com.
March 16, 10:15 AM
A Brief Soliloquy on Changes Made To the Website
I've made some minor changes to the site. After some contemplation, I decided to ditch the self-indulgent, painfully boring "Brief Tales of Meaningless Arcania" section in favor for the even more self-indulgent, painfully boring "Audiography." The basic idea behind this new section is that I write a brief memoir about describing my acquisition and subsequent enjoyment of different albums, as well as notes on what these albums mean to me, what influence they have had on my life and some information about the albums themselves. It's sort of a way to review classic albums that makes the process just that much more pretentious. I plan to update it somewhat infrequently.
February 17, 10:25 AM
Need More Inane Reading Material On The Internet? I Have the Solution
I started a new blog recently, just a simple Blogger thing I threw together a couple days ago. It's called Joke Nation and it's basically just a collection of jokes I remember or things I found that I think are funny. I figured it might be easier to just steal other people's funny content then it is to try and come up with my own.
January 13, 11:30 AM
A Actual Conversation I Recently Had With My Wife
My Wife: "Did you notice that I got you some new shampoo?"
Me: "Yeah, I saw that. I just haven't finished the old bottle yet."
My Wife: "It seems like it's almost empty. I thought you would have finished it by now."
Me: "You know it's weird. Every time I use it I think that it's going to run out but there always seems to be some left."
My Wife: "That's because I put a little more shampoo in the bottle every day."
Me: "Why?"
My Wife: "Just fucking with you."
December 11, 8:35 PM
A Sign I Want To Put Up On My Desk At Work So People Will Stop Asking Me About the Crutches and Move on to Regular Small Talk
1. I fell on the ice.
2. Yes, it hurt.
3. I'll probably have to wear the cast for a while.
4. Wow, that sure was an interesting anecdote about you/someone you know.
5. Yes, it does suck.
6. Thank you, I will.
7. Yes, it is hard for me to get up stairs.
8. Yes, it would hurt if you kicked my broken ankle.
9. Actually it wasn't worth getting a week off, considering I can't walk for three months and will have pins in my ankle for the rest of my life.
10. Thank you, I will.
November 28, 9:36 PM
Are You Going to Eat Those Sheep Brains? Wanna Split Them?
I don't generally think about what is in my food. I mean beyond the basics that is, such as "Is there anything in here that might kill me? Like, immediately, not ten or 20 years down the road after repeated abuse?" This quick screening process keeps me from swallowing, say, Drano. But I know I should probably look into the ingredients of some of the things I ingest, just as a habit. It's kind of hard to justify thoughts such as "Well, too much of this and I'll probably die of rectal cancer. And who knows what the effects these additives are going to have 20 years down the road. Oh well, time fire up the microwave. Now where did I put the butter? And the cheese? No, not that cheese, the nacho cheese."
My father-in-law is a food scientist. He's the kind of guy who knows what's in everything and occasionally likes to gross people out by telling them what it is they are actually eating. Sometimes when my wife tells him what we recently had for dinner, he likes to include some comment such as "Well, I wouldn't eat that," as if he knows some secret about our food that is too horrid to reveal. A recent example was when we had a homemade pizza with chorizo sausage. Chorizo is a Spanish-originated sausage noted for its pimento-derived coloring and paprika/chili powder flavor.
"So, you know why chorizo is cheaper than other sausages?"
Yeah, but it's tasty. He wouldn't tell us what he was referring to at first, which lead to a string of little commercials for chorizo that ran through my mind while trying to figure out what the mystery ingredient could be.
"Chorizo: All the taste of pig rectum with only half the fat."
"Chorizo: So good, you won't even notice the rat feces."
"Chorizo: For all that lymph nodey goodness."
"Chorizo: What's in it? More like 'What isn't in it?"
"Chorizo: It doesn't not contain pig testicles."
"Chorizo: You know what's in it. That's right."
"Chorizo: Well, it's meat."
(By the way, one of these is the actual ingredient to which my father-in-was referring.)
I once ate a pepperoni stick in which one of the ingredients was listed as "ox hearts" so I'll probably keep buying the chorizo. It makes great nachos. Though I'm sure all my vegan friends will be laughing during my next colonoscopy (those skinny, spinach-chompin' fucks).
November 23, 1:35 PM
I Am Totally Sick of Slate.com
I am. It's official. Those smug little fuckers have finally managed to annoy me enough to make me stop reading them. I've taken them out of my bookmarks, stopped checking the site even when I'm at my most bored. There was nothing in particular that did it. It just occurred to me one day, "Wow, this is really terrible." Once that hit it all began to make sense. I started noticing little things I had glossed over before. The smug tones. The insufferably snarky headlines. The predictably contrarian opinions. Did this happen recently or has it always been this way and I've just been blind to it?
I haven't come across an article I've enjoyed in months. Partly this is due to staff changes. David Edelstein, their excellent film critic, left for greener pastures and was replaced by their television critic, Dana Stevens (whose television reviews were engaging but whose film reviews are like reading unseasoned tofu). Other areas of cultural criticism have fallen short as well. I can honestly say I have not read more than three or four music articles on the site that I have liked. Their "Music Box" column reads like a series of Rolling Stone rejects (a recent article focused on whether U2 or R.E.M. was the best band of the 1980s. Dear fuck I thought I was going to lapse into a coma just reading the headline). Some of their more abstract pieces also annoy me to no end. Josh Levin's Sept. 22 takedown of Zach Braff, "Why Is This Guy the Voice of My Generation?" was not only unnecessarily mean-spirited but suffered from the essential flaw that no one, ever, has considered Zach Braff the voice of anyone's generation.
That the site continues to publish the works Christopher Hitchen is also a strike against it, as he's a once interesting pundit who has basically gone bat shit insane. I'm not talking about his support of the current Iraq war, which I couldn't care less about (the war or his opinion, to be honest, though it is funny to see an intelligent man try to defend the actions of people who have given a lot less thought to the situation than he obviously has) but rather his almost incessant harping on said war and his self-satisfied and (here comes that word again) smug commentary about it. He's trying to be George Orwell so hard it's almost embarrassing to watch (Orwell actually went out and fought for the causes he believed in, Hitch. Either do the same or stop pretending like you have anything relevant to say at this point).
What I think really pushed me over the edge was their Book Club podcast. My God, the inanity. Have you listened to their take on "The Omnivore's Dilemma"? Three (Jesus, here it is again) smug New Yorkers talking about farming and other forms of food production when the closest any of them have been to a farm is the produce section of Whole Foods. I dare you to listen to it all the way through without feeling a deep-seated urge to strangle one if not all of the participants.
So I'm done with you, Slate. Enough of you and your smuggery.
November 17, 11:50 AM
'Tis The Season for My Pendantic Complaints
The holidays are here. Sense the warmth and joy in my words? You do? You must be on something because I really wasn't expressing anything. Holidays kind of bore me, and on occasion I disdain them. I work in customer service. For me the Christmas season means dealing with cranky, awful people for a month. It kind of takes the magic out of the season when you get to spend 40 hours a week dealing with the same trite complaints over and over from thousands of people who take themselves why too seriously. Honestly, it's just the birthday of an imaginary character. Let's try to have some perspective on this. It's like getting all worked up over Bugs Bunny's birthday. It's an arbitrary date that has no relation to when Jesus was actually born, which there is very little historical evidence to suggest that he ever was. So everybody please stop pretending like there is any higher spiritual reason behind any of this and just revel in its pure, unabashed paganism.
Sometimes I like to go to the mall during the Christmas season and just look at people as their eyes glaze over with a well-polished sheen of desperation during their seasonal orgy of consumerism. The day after Thanksgiving is the best. "My God, the DEALS! The BARGAINS! We truly are blessed." The cynic in me just loves to have my worst impressions of humanity reaffirmed every year.
"Wow. We truly are a greedy, trite, cruel species. That makes me feel so much better, now that I'm secure in that knowledge once again. Well, looks like its time to go watch inspirational Christmas specials until I want to swallow a shotgun barrel and fire a load of buckshot into my brain. Happy holidays!"
October 20, 3:10 PM
I Go Too Long Without Toothpaste for Dinner and I Start to Get Twitchy
My Internet was gone for a whole day recently. It was a little scary, but we made it through. In the end I had to hold the Internet's kids hostage to get it to come back.
"I need to check my email, so come back on or I'll slit little Jimmy's face open."
"It's cool man, it's cool, just let the kids go."
"I need to blog man, I ain't fucking around."
"Okay, okay, just don't hurt my babies."
I swear to god, I am not a man to fuck with when I don't have easy access to kinky Asian porn films. I will get my posse in effect. Of course by "posse" I mean "hunting knife" and by "in effect" I mean "held against someone's abdomen."
So in the end we got our Internet back. I know what's going on in the world now. Mmmmm. Incandescent monitor light, soothing me. Snarky, ill-informed political opinions. Pictures of other people's cats. Poorly drawn webcomics.
Life is good.
October 13, 12:10 PM
You Know You Would Watch It
I think they should let psychologists create their own television programming. Could you just imagine what these people could come up with if they were freed from the bounds of morality or any kind of ethical concerns? Just set some university psychology department loose with millions of dollars and some cameras and see what comes out of it.
"In this episode, we're seeing how much torture we can convince someone to inflict on a total stranger. We've offered him $100 every time he turns a dial. The catch is that the dial is connected to a generator that itself is connected to another man's testicles by a pair of alligator clips. Every time the dial is turned up, it increases the voltage. We have offered our contestant $10,000 just for showing up, so turning the dial at all would simply be an expression of greed. So far he's up to $50K, and the screams don't seem to be getting to him yet. Let's watch."
September 24, 8:40 PM
I Am Totally Hypnotized by That "Take Home Chef" Guy's Hair
Have you ever spent like, an entire day just watching reruns of "Trading Spaces" and "Miami Ink" on TLC? No artist has yet been able to accurately describe the all-encompassing ennui that would lead to this state of existence. Let's just say it was raining, and I was tired.
From Buddhism we have the concept of nirvana, the state in which one is free of lust, anger and craving, basically the sense of happiness that comes with enlightenment. Personally I can't really get behind any religion in which the highest spiritual state could potentially be reached through a combination of prescription medications and well-controlled brain damage, but then I've always been a bit of a sourpuss. But while I was watching the Learning Channel, I got the idea that those shiny-headed, mandala-focusin', self-actualization-obtainers might be on to something. During this 12-hour orgy of self-help fashion, cooking and interior decorating programs, I found myself becoming free of want or worry. My mind loosened, my jaw became slack. Lights became lighter, coffee tastier. I was one with TLC, in tune with its shakra or whatever. I really have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
From this sense of deep televisual meditation, I have brought you some funny programming ideas for TLC. No, I was not stoned when I thought of these.
"Take Home Bastard," the show in which random people are offered money to let some guy follow them around and insult them. "You know what would really make this outfit work for you? If you lost about 20 pounds or so, you fat sack of shit. I mean seriously, if you're going to dress like a cheap hooker, at least try to look like a cheap hooker without an eating disorder." "You know, you've got a very stylish decorating scheme here. Assuming you like living in sleazy whorehouse."
"Save Your Sex Life in Seven Days," in which sex experts invade a couple's bedroom and give them advice on jazzing up their boink sessions. "Okay, Steve, you'll want to give it to her good and hard now. Okay Barbara, start putting your ass in gear."
"Let's Go Over to Our Neighbor's House and Fuck Shit Up." I think this speaks for itself.
"Midgets, Polygamist and Other Groups of People We Can Use as Modern-Day Freak Shows." Another no-brainer.
September 7, 8:00 AM
An Apology
I would like to apologize to all of the celebrities who have been mocked or threatened in the pages of this site. These are real people with real, human emotions, and they do not deserve to have their work or their lifestyles mocked and are deserving of the same respect afforded to the rest of humanity. They do not deserve to be subjects of mass ridicule simply for being public figures. I apologize if anything I have written hear has caused any harm. I apologize if I ever implied that celebrities are greedy, egotistical publicity hounds who have lost touch with even the most basic sense of reality while wallowing in their undeserved decadence. I also apologize if I have ever implied that famous actors, musicians, athletes and other such public figures are, on average, the most pig ignorant, self-absorbed group of atavistic perverts this society has ever had the misfortune to suffer through.
I also apologize if at any time I have given the impression that those who obsess over the lives of celebrities are the worst sort of degenerate voyeurs and represent everything that is sick and wrong in human nature, or that they are engaged in a twisted psychotic game in which they tie their fragile egos to the existence of those they perceive as their social betters while simultaneously wishing for their idols to fall, and that this activity represents one of the clearest signs that our culture is decaying.
I hope all involved will accept my sincere remittal of any fault I have done them.
August 20, 11:30 PM
Reading This Blog Entry Will Give You a Tumor
A lot of things happened while I was away. Gunter Grass turned out to be a former Nazi, some Starbucks in NYC are overrun with vermin, "Penny Arcade" is still the most popular webcomic despite the fact that it a trite, boring piece of self-indulgent shit. I leave for two weeks and everything just goes all to Hell, eh?
Well, I'm back now. Married and happy. It won't be long before I'm writing witless, sub-Seinfield observational humor about married life, the adorable things my kids say and other asinine garbage. Fame and fortune, here I come.
Expect those changes I promised to happen within the week or so. New sections, new material. I'll also do something about that glitch on the site that causes brain cancer in those who view it. Promise.
August 4, 12:35 PM
Have Left Site, Will Be Back In 2+ Weeks. Don't Touch My Stuff While I Am Away
This will be my last update for a couple of weeks, as I'm off on a vacation that will include entering conjugal bliss with my woman. When I come back I'll be making some changes to the site, including adding/deleting some sections and making some minor design edits. I'll probably be splitting some of the stuff that shows up regularly in "Hypographia" and "Brief Tales" off into their own sections, adding a section specifically for children (Bwhahaha!) and maybe adding a section for interviews with people, provided I can get anyone to talk to me.
Any suggestions or comment? Send 'em here: zombieunderground@gmail.com.
July 30, 4:53 PM
Your "Simpsons" Quote is Inadequate
I think that part of maturing and becoming an individual is learning that catchphrases are not a valid form of humor. I've been trying to cut them out of my everyday usage because I have come to realize that they do not stand in for original wit. They are a crutch, something you use when you want to say something funny but can't really think of something yourself. Now a reference here and there is fine, adds some spice to the language (just like swearing) but all things in moderation. Depending on catchphrases and other quoted material to make people laugh is just a form of using clichés. It's unoriginal thinking and it grows thin very quickly.
This is part of the reason I'm glad to be getting older. People who hark back to the days of their youth always seem more than a tad bit pathetic to me (though maybe I'll change my attitude when mortality has crept up a little closer). Youth was the time of witless inexperience. It was also a time when crap like "Beavis and Butt-Head" imitations seemed funny. I'm glad that I'm beyond all of that.
When your trying to be funny, it doesn't pay to just nab material from other sources, whether you're a professional or just the local cut-up. They call that being a hack. So here's the test: Say something clever and funny that you didn't hear somewhere else. The world will be a better place for it. And I swear that if I hear you say "I'm Rick James, bitch,' I will personally come to your house and kick your teeth out.
(Oh, and by the way, I am aware that I have a series of random quotes taken from various sources on the main page of the site, including quotes from "Futurama" and "The Simpsons." But I also quote The Misfits and Donald Barthelme, so I think it all evens out).
July 27, 7:30 PM
What's With All the Negativity?
So much hate coming out of this blog. Um, "I love everything and everybody." That better? Okay, cool.
July 24, 7:10 PM
I Guess I'm Just Not Up On What Wolverine Has Been Doing These Days
I don't care about comic books. "You mean graphic novels." Whatever, yeah, I don't care about them. "But there are so many great ones out there, it is really maturing as a medium." Whatever, don't give a shit. "But what about Daniel Clowes or Frank Miller?" Nope, no shit is given here. "Alan Moore?" No shit given. "You're just another of those snotty literary types who looks down on graphic novels because you think they're all about superheroes, but you know what?" No I don't. Because I don't care. "There's more to them than that." Just don't. Care, that is. "Have you read..." Probably, didn't do anything for me, screw it, don't care. "You should really read..." Dude, let it go. "But..." Let It Go. Go. Let It. You. "I just can't believe you don't like..." Didn't say I don't like them. Don't care about them. Difference. I DON'T LIKE television. I DON'T CARE about comic books. "Graphic novels." Fuck you.
July 22, 3:35 PM
I'm Less Cool Than You Are
I enjoy listening to the Moody Blues more than I do most popular bands today. There, I've said it. I find that they wrote better songs than, say, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. A bluegrass tribute album to the Moody Blues was actually, in my opinion, one of the best albums of 2004. David Eggers will have to revoke my hipness card. But let's take it further: I haven't read "Middlesex," "The Corrections" or anything by Chuck Palahniuk. I am now a social pariah within modern literary circles. The New York Times Book Review will no longer allow me to read it, crawling from my lap and tossing itself out the window in hopes of landing in the arms of someone more cultured. Hey, guess what else. I haven't been to a movie theater in nearly a year and I rarely rent anything new. I don't watch television recreationally. I am entirely disconnected from my culture. Why are you even reading what I have to say, since we have no common cultural heritage?
I think I get the better end of the bargain. You'd be surprised the perspective you get on something when you've been detached from it for awhile.
As soon as I left my college radio job I began to notice how so many of the popular-indie-trend-of-the-week-post-whatever bands my fellow DJs and I played sounded trite and unoriginal. Proximity breeds familiarity, which in turn breeds self-delusion. We recently went through a period where the cable company gave us the premium package instead of the basic we ordered (which we need if we want to get any channels at all) and scanning through it, you know what I noticed? Television still sucks just as much as it did the last time I watched. There are still commercials, and they still make me want to put a salad fork through my eye and skewer my own brain, just to make them stop. So to hell with it all.
NOW I AM THE ANTI-CRITIC! I REVIEW WITHOUT SEEING! JUDGE WITHOUT KNOWING!
"So, yeah, you have fun with that."
I WILL!
July 16, 2006, 4:30 PM
Librarians: Nature's Most Useful Obsessive Nerds
I'm totally addicted to this LibraryThing.com, ah, thing. I enter in all my books, organize them, tag them based on my own subject headings and write back and forth to other people about them. That's it. I'm not usually one to swear, but holy fucking shit is that awesome. People sometimes try to understand the appeal of things like this, boil it down to some simple thesis statement like "it's about seeing who has the biggest library," "it's about a need for connection among people engaged in the solitary act of reading and collecting," "it's about trolling for sweet, easy, book readin' ass to get nasty with." These are the sort of conclusions you come to when you need to write and article and feel you have to say something new (I know, I've done it). So why the involvement? Uh, I like it? It's fun? It makes an excellent front for my opium den? Whatever, I just dig it.
July 10, 2006, 4:30 PM
Thought I Had While Sitting In the Waiting Room of a Tire Store and the Only Thing to Do Was to Watch "Fun With Dick & Jane."
I want to take Jim Carrey's head and set it down on a large rock, then place a railroad spike on his temple and then hit the railroad spike with a mallet until his skull cracks open like an emu egg. Then I want to play soccer in a parking lot with his brain and laugh gleefully, like a joyful child, as his gray matter gets splattered over the sun-baked pavement. Afterwards I would use the scattered pieces of cerebellum to write a poem expressing hope in the existence of a merciful god.
There's a nice piece of dark poetry for you. This is what your subconscious is thinking when your higher brain functions are saying "Yeah, I though he was pretty good in that 'Eternal Sunshine...' thing."
July 05, 2006, 4:15 PM
Surrealist Midget Manifesto
I recently watched "The Wizard of Oz" for the first time in something like a decade. It happened to be on TCM as part of a random July 4th marathon, because apparently we celebrate the birth of our country with demented works of childhood fantasy.
I always love revisiting the cultural artifacts of my youth to see how morbid and surreal so many of them actually were. If you haven't watched the whole Munchkin sequence in "Oz" recently, you definitely should take a gander. It's like watching some exhausted Hollywood producer's psychotic peyote trip. You can just imagine the conversations with the casting director:
"Bob, yeah, I need about a hundred dancing midgets for this thing we're doing. Yeah, short little people that dance and can talk in squeaky voices. And I need a really tiny fuckin' horse, Bob. To pull the midgets in their little carriage! What the frickfrack do you think it's for? Hold on Bob, those big green spider people are on my arm again."
And when you get down to it, what's the real message in this film? Don't dream of a better world because the status quo is so much safer? If you leave home, evil women will try and kill you with winged monkeys? And what the hell is up with Dorothy? She just seems to kill everywhere she goes. First one witch, then the witch's witch sister, and each time always with the "it was an accident, I didn't mean to do it." The excuse of every killer in history, pigtails. Tell it to the judge and see how hard he laughs.
"We are going to fuck these kids up, Bob, I mean really mess with their heads. You got those midgets yet? Well get cracking man, we don't have all day. I'm meeting that sweet piece of under-aged ass Judy Garland at the Copa Cabana at eight and if I tell her we've got an army of dancin' midgets I think I might have a chance to see what's under that blue gingham dress."
Ah, the memories.
July 03, 2006, 8:07 PM
Today's Activity
Get a job, you hippy.
[ the old | the new ]
June 26, 2006, 8:40 PM
Customer Service Will Make You Think These Thoughts
You are not special. The only really unique thing about you is your fingerprints, and even they are just a variation on a basic theme. As a side note, I'm not being very clever or original by pointing this out. It's a tired diatribe.
We get told much too often how special we are, how unique and oh-so-important and we're all such special individuals each and every one of us. Of course in the grand scheme of the universe we don't really play that big of a part, just some random cells bouncing around within the infinite nothingness. And for a group of unique individuals, we do sure seem to think a lot alike.
Have you noticed that when put in similar situations, people will often crack the same joke? "Hot enough for you?" as if it were a clever witticism, as if thousands of people a day have not repeated the same lines over and over. Have you noticed that, as a culture, much of our collective humor is drawn from various popular media scum buckets, a continuously trite mixture of fleeting pop culture references and exhausted clichés standing in for wit? Have you noticed how we act so predictably to the endless stream of trends and ideas, behaving in automatic for/against, action/reaction manners as if we were programmed?
Have you noticed how the grindstone of existence seems to wear each and every one of us down to dust so that we soon are lost in the swirling void of history?
So you are not special, I'm not special, and in the end none of it matters. Which, if you think about it, makes everything okay.
Sleep tight. I know I will.
June 23, 2006, 11:10 AM
My Best Friend Is:
The Coffee.
June 18, 2006, 4:23 PM
A Screaming Bonfire of Fanboys
I really hate people who are fans of anything. Not individuals who happen to like something or who are moved by something, but groups of people who are fans. No matter what it is, it seems the fans are always pissing me off. Sports, movies, music, books, art (oh, sorry, art doesn't have "fans," it has "appreciators," those stuck-up pseudo-intellectual fucks), it all comes out the same. It's so much easier to enjoy something without other people obsessing over it.
I can't go to sporting events anymore. Not that I ever really gave much of a damn about sports but still, seeing a basketball game every now and then is fun. But when I go my entire experience seems to hinge on the behavior of the audience. When people are getting drunk and screaming and puking and throwing things then going out after the game and still drinking and screaming and puking and throwing things, it makes for a pretty bad time for someone who doesn't really enjoy any of those activities.
But this goes deeper than public displays of assholery. It seems like the majority of the material on the Internet that isn't pornography is made up of highly defensive, irate fans WHINING ENDLESSLY ABOUT THEIR OBSCURE OBSESSIONS HOLY GOD WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST SHUT THE HELL UP FOR TWO FUCKING MINUTES I MEAN JESUS CHRIST.
The strain of this that gets to me the most is how much someone can seem to love a piece of art yet have absolutely no respect at all for its creator. Provided, some creators don't really deserve a lot of respect (I'm looking at you George Lucas you rat bastard), but in most cases the hatred expressed by some fans seems a tad bizarre. There are people out there who have apparently wasted their lives analyzing "Ren & Stimpy" episodes yet as soon as the show gets a DVD release, hit the message boards to complain about what scenes have been left out and how it isn't really "uncut" as if two friggin' seconds here and there make any goddamned difference to anything at all.
"Why are they holding back on us, why don't they give us long suffering fans what we want? We've supported them for so long." Dear God, get over yourselves, you sound like a pack of whining children.
It's the rigidity that gets to me the most, the utter lack of any larger worldview, the inability to make exceptions or concessions. It's like watching two best friends part ways because one votes Democrat and the other Republican. An artist creates something that people find impressive, they build a fan base but then decide to try something completely different and ends up getting dropped faster than a bag of dead cats. Some fans can't accept anything different, demanding a constant stream of what they have come to expect. If a comic book or television show creator takes a character in a new direction, the fans will act as if someone punched their mother in the teeth, a director decides to try a different style or do a new type of story, you get that tired old "He should stick with directing films about blah blah blah."
I mean really people, the world is a much easier place when you learn to sit back, relax and just let it go.
Then again, maybe I should take my own advice.
June 12, 2006, 4:05 PM
Spreading the Word
I'm think of starting my own religion. Religion is a good racket if you are able to get into it. The problem is that it's not easy to break into. Most of the territory has already been dominated by larger players with more capital on hand then most start-ups can manage. The only way for a newbie to break in is to insinuate your ideas into the minds of people who have money and influence, or to come up with an idea so crazy that it makes people pay attention to you long enough for you to convince them, which I suppose is why Scientology was such a big hit (Tom Cruise said that he can cure heroin addiction in three days using Scientology's methods, which to me brings forth the image of Tom Cruise as some sort of faith healer. If he had any charisma at all it would be a good idea for a road show).
Which brings me to my idea on how to get a new religion started. Basically, you would have to program the religion into a sort of mind virus that transmits from person to person. The virus would infect a host body, which would then attempt to spread it to those nearby. Eventually the virus religion would branch out to cover a wider area and we would have a population base converted to the new religion. As the virus spread inside of the host bodies, it would enter the brain and begin to affect behavioral patterns in the infected, causing certain actions and words to be repeated over and over at certain times. The carriers would begin to have paranoid delusions of ethereal forces influencing their lives. They will defend these notions through denial and cognitive dissonance, occasionally resorting to physical force and violence in extreme cases. They would congregate with those who shared their views (i.e. other host bodies) and the virus, though not necessarily hereditary, would infect the carrier offspring.
The "religion" would be based on the loose, collective delusions of the infected. While a somewhat standardized mythology would develop (since all the carriers would be having the similar delusions of vast forces controlling them it would make it easy for some agreement to develop as to what those forces are) each carrier would experience the religion subjectively and use it to justify whatever behavior they are already engaged in. If they are a charitable person, the forces controlling them must want charity; if they wish to cause violence to a neighbor, it is because the neighbor was subverting the will of the controlling forces (much in the way other major religions have been used to condone or condemn whatever political issues are in the forefront of the day, such as slavery, war, etc.)
The religion would spread through the carriers' interaction with the rest of the world. Occasionally the carriers will intentionally travel to spread the virus, attempting to infect people whose systems have had no interaction with it, though most infections will come from either new generations born with the infection or through the highly susceptible coming into contact with the virus. Interesting, eh?
I really ought to lay off the late nights/science fiction combos. I lose too many friends.
June 10, 2006, 6:15 PM
It's So Boring To Listen To People Talk About Their Dreams
I keep having this dream in which I take Orlando Bloom, Hillary Duff, Paul Walker and Jessica Simpson and jam them together inside of a shopping cart and then push the shopping cart down a steep hill. The cart picks up speed and they're all screaming and trying to keep it steady so they don't tip over and biff on the pavement; Bloom is clinging to the front like a hood ornament and Walker is trying to get under the basket of the cart to lower the center of gravity while Alba is sitting in the basket and Simpson is jammed into the child's seat. As they reach the bottom of the hill they are run down by a Mack truck that hits them from the left and splashes they're innards across the pavement like they were blood-filled water balloons. The truck was driven by Russell Crow and he ends up going to prison where he gets gang raped by his cellmates until he is no longer able to have regular bowel movements. The pieces of the group in the shopping cart are gathered up and stitched back together into some kind of "Frankenstein" like monster, but it ends up having so little charisma that it can't get an acting job to save its life and ends up having to work the night shift at a Denny's alongside Jennifer Lopez, who's career in show business ended when she contracted a new strain of incurable leprosy that causes her to leave skin flakes in the omelets.
After consulting some works on symbolic logic and dream interpretation, I have come to the conclusion that this dream has something to do with my frustrated artistic aspirations. However, this is only an armchair analysis and I think an expert in this field might be able to shed light on its deeper meanings.
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