On The Rocks - Boom Shalock Lock Boom

In Nomine Patris

2009-06-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

I suppose the first order of business, before a lofty and swooping pronouncement of my return to the world of blogging, is to speak to the primary reason my attention has been cast away from this medium, lo these many months. Allow me the indulgence here, to speak on the subject of fatherhood, and the riveting last few stages before reaching those shores.

When Eleanor Sheridan Sonnier arrived, (gasp) almost six months ago, the feelings associated can no more be put into words than, perhaps can the very thoughts she was having at the same time. Fear, elation, confusion, and a limitless and bewildering array of sensations bring that to mind images of plasticine porters with looking glass ties. It’s just too much to take in, much less describe. However, the essence of good story-telling is embellishment, so I will muster what little aptitude I have as a wordsmith, and do my jolly best.

Sheer unadulterated joy was not what I felt. I have felt sheer, unadulterated joy before, and this was not it. This was fear and confusion, and though unmitigated happiness was there, I could feel it waiting in the wings, looking at its watch. I was crying, I knew that much, but it was more sheer exhaustion than anything else, and perhaps great relief that the ordeal was over and most of the danger had passed.

She was crying, both of them were, but the smallest one was crying because she didn’t know what was happening, and because it was cold and someone was poking and prodding at her like a half-cooked turkey. Her weight was healthy and her size above average, but now the final gauntlet was set to begin. For this, unfortunately, we were unable to hold together and slog through; she would be on her own this time. She was removed and we were alone again. Thankfully not for long, because even though I had known her for only a few minutes before they whisked her away for tests, her absence was felt like a weight, a great pregnant pause filling the room.

She was returned to us with a clean bill of health, to gawk at, and to do our own, albeit unscientific, poking and prodding, the way one might kick a tire on a car about to be purchased. She was tiny and to be handled with great care. She was quiet, almost frighteningly so, and I was soon to learn the meaning of the words muconium and vernix.

It was a flurry of forms and pills and family members and The Eukanuba Dog Show and weights and lengths and bits and pieces of Big Trouble in Little China on a struggling laptop. The world outside was visible from the window, but its pallor seemed gray and lifeless, compared to the bright light inside that room.

That was when I felt it. That’s when the joy came to me, the moment I left that room for the first time. I walked out of the hospital to a Burger King a block away for some approximation of “real food.” I sat in the dining room of the establishment, wondering about the time, deducing that since I was eating a breakfast burrito, it must be between the posted hours of 5:00 AM and 10:30 AM. I chewed slowly, savoring everything but the meal. I was filthy and tired, hair more unkempt than usual. I watched as two men on horses rode through the drive-thru. They clopped past my window with coffees in one hand and reigns in the other, bags of Croissanwhiches and mini-hash browns resting behind the necks of their rides. This was not the most amazing thing I had seen all day.

The happiness I felt at that time seemed to inflate me, the way standing over an air-vent will puff up your untucked shirt. I thought for certain that the other people in the dining room, a handful of fraternity fascists recovering from a night of self-abuse, would notice something was amiss with this man, something painfully wonderful was happening in his life. But they took no notice of me. I was alone in my joy, a thought that sent me scurrying back to the hospital room, most of a breakfast burrito deposited in the garbage where it belonged.

The next few days were a blur of naps, work (yes, I was working the whole time) and sudden interest in diaper commercials and life insurance advertisements. Though riddled with guilt, we sent baby Eleanor to the nursery the first couple of nights hoping for uninterrupted sleep after such exhaustion, but I found myself waking in the night, feeling in the dark room for her bassinet, and that weighty absence again.

We brought her home, and the rest is too boring and typical to bother telling. It’s been a great deal of trial and error, learning as much about ourselves as about her, and the lack of sleep has given way to an abundance of anxiety over her bowel movements. I am closer to my family than I have been in years, and they are closer to me. The relief of coming home after a trying day at work, now features the added benefit of an absurdly wide smile and even a chuckle at the sound of my voice.

Despite seeing the ship of a former life sail farther and farther into the horizon, so much that it appears only as a speck to the naked eye, I have found more happiness that can be contained. Despite the frustration of the mundane aspects of parenthood, the satisfaction cannot be compared. This is not only the rank satisfaction of the achievement of one’s biological imperative, but the thought that you have created a new person in your own image. God truly is in the man.

Mine has not been a sheltered existence, and I have experienced all the pain and joy and fright and elation that we are designed to process, but before staring into the huge, doe-like eyes of my daughter, I did not know the magnitude of happiness and devotion I was capable of experiencing.

A lot has been said to diminish the human experience on the planet earth. There are those who don’t believe in love, deferring that it’s a mechanism to ensure coupling and effective child-rearing, which can be reduced to a series of chemical reactions in the brain. I don’t dispute this, being essentially a secular humanist, but humbly submit that my fratres in armis acknowledge the very real power these emotions have, and value they add to the very humanity they celebrate.

I Wanna Make Love in this Showbiz Pizza

2008-11-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

Amusing Cake-Related Photo of the Day

2008-10-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

Girls and Dolls

2008-10-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've always been fascinated by the unbelievable complications of the human brain and all the weird things that people do simply because they're compelled to. I'm not speaking specifically about the mentally ill, but their addled attempts to interact with the world by covering dead squirrels with mustard and putting them in people's mailboxes are always a welcome respite from the humdrum of daily life. I'm talking about the bizarre, ridiculous and creepy ways people, who are otherwise normal, functional members of modern society, seem to express the animalistic feelings, desires and impulses we humans are forced to endure and interpret with our big, modern logic-seeking minds.

We can start small, with a subject I've bored you all with many times in the past. It's to do with the brains primary function gone haywire: pareidolia. This is the brain's attempt to take any and all stimulus and form it into a cohesive image or message, even when none exists. This phenomenon has formed the basis of our inquisitive human nature, but also makes us easily fooled, this why you hear all the stories about the face Jesus appearing on Google Maps or Allah's name showing up on the label for Burger King ice cream. Pareidolia can even be fun:

Is it a duck or a rabbit? The fact is, it's neither, but your brain takes all the appropriate bits it recognizes about both and tries to make a decision, which can't be done.

The brain is an amazingly complex and extremely flawed mechanism, and when all of this raw computing power is filtered through the twists and turns of an enigmatic, counter-intuitive and paradoxical society, well now we're cooking with gas.

Society, fashion, tradition, values, these are all considerations that we take into account when we interpret data, and make decisions for ourselves about the way we live our lives. Of all the impetuses we feel, of all the desires we have in the most carnal and primitive corners of our brains, the desires we feel for sex and procreation are by far the most powerful, the most complicated, and the most ceaselessly frustrating.

There is, perhaps, no better indicator of the extreme nature of these feelings than those individuals that choose to opt out of the whole game. Take, for example, the purchasers of one of the most creep-tastic products available: The Realdoll. The Realdoll is a super-realistic (and pornographically expensive) doll that men purchase for drama-free sexual relief. Think of it as a $6,500 wanking machine.

While the Realdoll may be nothing new to you, let me introduce you something, perhaps, even creepier, The Reborn Baby.

The desire to procreate, and all the inherent nuances, drama, taboos, social stigmas, restraining orders, highest of highs and lowest of lows involved, are by far the most intense we as humans are forced to endure for the past and future success of the species. For some people, this can just be too much to bear, and in classic modern fashion, seek a better and less complicated solution from technology.

Both of these extremely creep-tastic products appeal to the same physical and psychological desperation of their consumers, albeit the disparate male and female versions thereof. It has to do with the anguished expression of those very biological imperatives of sex and procreation, but thanks to technology, now attainable by people who are unwilling or incapable of making the necessary investment or commitment to achieve such things in reality.

It's obviously a gross simplification to chalk it up to "men fuck things, women care for things," but these two products actually make a pretty good case. The point is, we all face desires to do things we're supposed to do, like have sex and care for babies, but like anything that's filtered through the modern human brain, sometimes the messages get mixed up.

As a fan of human nature, these two things appear to me as two side of the same fucked up human coin, latex approximates to serve the deep-seated desires with which we contend, but without all the mess and fuss of actually having to interact or care for another person. It's a classic psychological shield: I make no investment, I won't get hurt. A plastic woman won't tell you that you're not a great lover, or step out with another man and a plastic baby will never grow up, and will never leave you.

However, some manner by which people sidestep their fundamental biological desires are worse than others. Trying my best to not sound misogynistic (a battle I face each and every day) I'd like to try and make the case why women who heap maternal love and affection onto inanimate objects is worse than men who fuck plastic women.

Men fuck things, and not ll of these things are necessarily human women. The desire to jam your penis into anything and everything is a desire with which we men have been forced to battle since time immemorial. It's natural and it's always more of a burden than a joy, but it's part of the package (pun intended.) Women, on the other hand, are much more complex creatures, dealing with many more complex emotions and desires. A man fucking a doll, while discomforting and extremely strange, is just a manifestation of our gender's limitless sexual needs in the rare situation of living alone, and possessing disposable income.

On the other hand, an adult woman who heaps maternal affection and care onto a plastic baby is not just creepy, it's a waste. Even crazy cat ladies are providing care, love and attention to living things that can actually benefit and return that affection. A woman exercising her maternal instincts on a inanimate object is like pouring water down the drain during a drought. The best part of being a human is that our brains are wired to reward us when we do things that are good for us and other people: it feels good to work out, it feels good to eat food, it feels good to make love, and it feels good to help other people. I simply refuse to believe anyone could get as much satisfaction loving a doll, which is vastly different than simply fucking a doll.

I suppose I could try to get some external input on this quite rattled and rambling post. Fucking a doll, or mothering a doll: which is creepier?

Schrodinger's Splat

2008-09-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

The theory of Schrodinger's cat is a paradoxical thought experiment wherein a cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter, a sealed flask of airborne poison and a small amount of radioactive material. The mechanism is designed in such a way that if the radioactive material decays, the Geiger counter will detect it, activating the mechanism that will shatter the glass and kill the cat.

Quantum mechanics has always been above my pay grade, but as I understand it, the theory was designed to illustrate its limitations. The point is that as long as the box is sealed, there exists an unlimited number of possibilities within it. The unobserved cat, which may or may not be conscience, is simultaneously alive, dead and everything in between. Inside the box, all possibilities and probabilities exist, insulated from time and space. In the box, there exists a dead cat, a living cat, sixteen copies of Henry Kissinger's Harvard transcripts, a headlight from 1974 Dodge Dart, an empty copy machine toner cartridge, the holy grail, and just about everything else.

The point of the experiment (as far as it's been explained to me by very good-bearded scientists) is that outside of human observation, all probabilities exist paradoxically. By the act of observation, we inject the variable probability of ourselves into the infinitely complex equation, changing the results. In this theory, the act of opening the box kills or rescues the cat, not the poison.

The fetching Mrs. Sonnier and I are scheduled for our first "anatomical ultrasound" today. Yes, another post about baby-related insecurities, you're no doubt groaning. The fact is, this is about the most monolithic thing going on in the world today, so you can just shut it.

There exists, in Mrs. Sonnier's abdomen, all probability of things. Granted, it's most probably a baby boy or girl, but, though improbable, it could also be an octopus, the DVD special edition of C.H.U.D., or a ziploc bag filled with paper clips and stale Fritos.

Despite the clear 50/50 probability of human male or human female, I can't help but be flabbergasted that one of the two has to be true. By the very act of observation, everything will change. The very act of narrowing the list of probable names from two to one, will change the outcome of every action I take for the rest of my life. There exists in that container all things, all manners of joy, grief, responsibility and possibility.

There exists in that container my first and most important contribution to the world, and once the nature of that thing is observed, the nature of everything else will change.

UPDATE

It's an anatomically perfect baby girl.

By Any Other Name

2008-08-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

In the early days of our species, before civilization reared its ugly head, names were almost unnecessary. Humans lived in small family tribes and only occasionally interacted with others outside that unit. Language was minimal, and people, if they did have a name, were typically known by defining features. “One-arm,” or “Father of many” or “Penis-nose” were standard names for individuals. Then came the obvious “Son of Penis-Nose,” and so on and so forth. As the seeds of civilization began to bloom, tribes became larger, and cities sprang up along trade routes, people and families became known by their occupations: Baker, Smith, Hancock and the like. As commerce became more and more important, as did personal property, and natural resources. The combination of natural resources and personal property leads inevitably to conflict.

It’s been said that civilization emerged when a group of people who spoke similar languages decided to come together and defend themselves and their property. Once that happened, it was time for more specific names. In the barbaric and oft idiotically idealized “time of chivalry,” armor was what kept a fighter alive. Unfortunately, armor also hid the fighter’s face. In order to identify himself and the family from whence he came, knights and the like began carrying standards displaying the symbols of their names. It was this tradition that is attributed with the catalog and importance of familial names.

In more superstitious times, it was believed that to know the true name of a person or a thing, was to have power over it. It was believed that to know the name of a spirit or a demon, for instance, gave one the power to summon it from the shadows and command it to do one’s bidding. Once can easily see the roots of this superstition, because there is not power greater than the one who names a thing. We name pets, boats, and we also name children.

The fetching Mrs. Sonnier is expecting in only an armful of months, and one of the innumerable responsibilities associated with that eventuality is determining the name of the child. One would think that once the sex is determined, choosing a name would be much easier, when in fact it just brings the list of choices from one hundred million to fifty million. Narrowing our choices to two has been a most impossible task. Elise likes classic names, yet won’t commit because they’re on the rise in popularity right now. I, on the other hand, like contemporary names, such as those of characters from Transformers, Thundercats and popular pornographic films of the eighties. As you can see, we just don’t see eye to eye.

This is a huge thing, let’s make no mistake. The proper naming of a child is part and parcel to their proper care, and delicacy is imperative. However, I’m beginning to realize this is just a symptom of a larger issue. Very soon, we’re going to be parents to a helpless baby, a fact which fills me with equal amounts of dread and elation. Having never even met the little guy, I’m already starting to feel the creeping instinct of protection. Its cliché, but everyone wants the best of everything for their children, and an obvious first step is giving them the perfect name.

Take for example, the dashing young Almighty Supremebeing Allah of West Hartford, Connecticut. You see, his parents really, really loved him, and saw fit to give him the most amazingly perfect name that one could imagine. If we named our kid Almighty Supremebeing Allah, it would just seem kitschy and lame. It seems like all the good names, like Nevaeh, Pilot, Apple, Trout, Nacho, and Zenya Zulu Butterfuly Wallace are all taken. I even found out that Asswipe Johnson isn’t even up for grabs anymore. Neither is Sunshine Megatron.

We can’t even have Talulah Does The Hula From Hawaii, and that was number three on a very long list.

Everyone wants the same thing from a name: something recognizable that most people at the DMV will be able to pronounce, but not something that seven other kids in his class will have, but also not something pretentious or made up like Jaydon or Kristobell. (Sorry Jaydon and Kristobell, your parents are retarded)

Despite everything, I’m still just scared. Names are important, and to name something is indeed a manner of having power over that thing. In just a few short weeks, we’ll be finding out if it’s a boy or a girl (or the “hamburger or hot dog test,” as they call it in the ultrasound industry, yes, they do have quite the sense of humor…) and then the process of actually coming up with a name will begin its journey towards full stride. Once this little thing has a name, that’s when my power and responsibility as a parent will come into real focus, and that’s a terrifying prospect.

What’s in a name? A hell of a lot, as it turns out. It’s what you’ll be yelling loudly when you find a permanent marker drawing of a ninja turtle on the kitchen cabinet, it’s also the name that will be standing forefront in your mind as your wife squeezes your hand as she pushes the little bugger into the world. It’s a daunting task, picking a name, but it certainly won’t be the last, I just hope we can get off to a good start.

The Creature Stirs...

2008-07-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

The air is still, the only sounds are of spiders creeping across the stone walls of the underground cavern. Light struggles to break though the few cracks and windows, but dust and gossamer choke it to a wisp. The cold, musty room is the picture of neglect, and of death. Death comes to mind as one’s eyes settle on the coffin situated in the middle of the room.

No decoration or adornment, blanketed with filth, the crypt sits silently as the dust flits through the occasional ray of light. One is impressed with a feeling of timelessness, as if the inexorable motion of the earth has no effect here, as if one is stranded on an island frozen and unaffected by the rushing waters of days gone by.

The silence weighs heavily and cautiously, like a beast in slumber, and seems as if it will remain forever. Yet suddenly, the silence is broken. The sound is a rustling, far more audible than the scraping of rats or the scurrying of spiders. The sound is coming from within the coffin. A muffled knock is heard and the origin confirmed. There is something in the coffin, and that thing is alive.

Scratch, scrape, knock. The thing inside the coffin begins to move with a greater regularity, as if probing the interior of the box for a latch, or a hole, some nature of escape. Scratch, scrape, knock. The thing in the box is becoming more desperate and frustrated. As suddenly as it had broken, the silence is returned. An hour passes, maybe a day?

The hinges of the coffin scream in dry protest as a set of thin, dessicated fingers scrap around the lid. The hand attached to those fingers pushes the lid up, exposing the creature that lives inside. The corpse coughs and a cloud of dust is expelled from its mouth, the creature rasps. It grips the sides of the coffin and slowly stands erect, the filthy gown that clings to its thin, brown frame is dotted with rotten holes and cakes of dust.

The creature looks at you. Its yellow eyes fixed on yours, and it steps from the coffin and begins to move towards you. You are paralyzed by fear, as the creature reaches one bony hand toward you and opens its foul mouth to say...

No, I’m not dead, I’ve just been really busy lately. This stake protruding from my chest is just itchy. I don’t want to call this a resurrection of OTR, as that would infer a prior death, but let’s just say that my unscheduled and unannounced hiatus has come to a close. The door to the OTR Institute has had its hinges oiled, the floor has been swept and a fresh pot of coffee was put on in the break room.

Welcome back everyone (especially you Mom).

If you must know the details of my recent adventures, I’ll keep it short. I am thankfully no longer working out-of-state and now have the privilege of spending each and every night with the loving and fetching Mrs. Sonnier. This situation is made all the more rewarding by the fact that the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is now heavy with child. Despite the fact that careful mathematics indicates that I was somewhere on the upper East Coast and she was likely traipsing around France when this tiny miracle occurred, I will reserve my skepticism until the appropriate test results are available. Until then, we could not be happier, and I could not be more terrified.

Again, if curiosity had taken you by delicate bits, I will relate that the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is a little less than fourteen weeks progressed, and is expected to deliver our little bundle of oi! in late Winter 2009. While I have no pictures to post, (our one and only ultrasound photo looks like a shell-less oyster in profile), composite artists believe he looks something like this:

As my life takes on a more adult flavor, cigarettes and jello shots become a thing of the past, and my concern over the current state of the lawn becomes more forthright in my mind, I hope to have more time to devote to this forum. Though the number of people who partake in my semi-regular diatribes can be counted on James Doohan's right hand, it is an extremely cathartic exercise with the added advantage of keeping the hands away from the genitals.

Salutations to all, and godspeed.

I Never Come Up With The Good Ideas

2008-06-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

You Can Tell By The Looks On His Face...

2008-06-02T08:49:00.001-07:00

...that it's totally true.

Mom, I Know You're There.

2008-05-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

best of craigslist > austin > Mom, I know you're there.

Originally Posted: Tue, 11 Mar 16:38 CDT
Mom, I know you're there.
Date: 2008-03-11, 4:38PM CDT

Mom, I know you’re out there, reading this.

How do I know you’re out there?

Let’s begin with that ad of mine that you recently responded to, shall we? You know the one I’m talking about. It was entitled, “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?—m4w--22” That ad ran for three days before I got a response, and I can’t tell you, Mom, how my heart fell when I saw the photo that accompanied the response. It was your Realtor’s headshot, the one on your business card. Even worse was the text of your response. I’m so, so sorry I know now what you’d do to me if we ever “hooked up.” On the other hand, Dad must’ve been a very, very lucky guy back in the day. I dunno, maybe he still is.

I guess, Mom, when I think a bit about it, that I should resign myself to whatever it is that you are doing. After all, you’re an adult and I’m an adult. I can’t tell you what you should do with your life.

But Mom, I’d like to raise a few points.

The first point I’d like to raise is that you’re still married to Dad. Please, please PLEASE tell me that you have his blessing. My mind is reeling now, hoping that you’re not the people who posted “Fun Couple Looking For Others—MW4MW—57” I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that it is you. Now that I know you’re cruising CE, I suspect that there aren’t too many other 57 year old swingers from the Westlake area posting on Craigslist.

The second point I’d like to raise is that you owe it to whoever you’re trying to hook up with to be honest. I mean, I lived with you and Dad for 18 years. You’re not that fun.

Finally, I’d like you to stop responding to my “College Stud Needs a MILF—m4w—22” ads. The only one who should find you to be MILF-y at all is Dad. For me, you are just an “M”. Got it?

Your son.

PS. I’m going to swing by at around 7-7:30-ish to do a load of wash, is that okay? I tried to call you at the office, but they kept telling me that you’re busy.

* Location: Austin
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Against Stupidity, Part 2

2008-05-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

I hate to go over a topic that's already been pretty well covered, but I'm afraid there's something going on in the world. I think the stupid people have gotten stupider, and the really stupid people have just gone plain crazy. What could it be? Sun spots? Dramatic shift in the lunar orbit? Is there a large group of people out there trying to quit smoking and taking Chantix and going completely nuts?

I know that lots of people in Cambodia smoke, but is a drug-induced hysteria any excuse to shove a high-pressure air hose up your five-year-old's asshole?

A Cambodian father and mechanic learned the hard way not to inflate children when he inserted an air hose designed to fill car tires into his 5-year-old son's anus and blew him up, local media reported on Thursday.

The Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea daily reported Try Sienghym was "playing" with his son Sok Sambo when the incident took place.

The paper said the child's stomach became distended and his concerned mother rushed him to hospital, where he remains in a stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.

"The father very much regrets playing like this now," the paper quoted a family member as saying.

I'll bet he does, especially because people the world over are mulling over the question of whether he's tragically stupid, or criminally psychotic.

Do you think these morons regret digging up a random grave and decapitating a corpse for the sole purpose of making a bong out of it?

Again, I must note that most people don't attempt to inflate their children anally or abuse corpses to get high, but as I've shown here, some people do.

Could we be facing a national crisis, a plague of idiocy sweeping across this great land? I think, perhaps, it's a possibility. Or, perhaps, it's just an election year.

You Can Tell By The Look On His Face...

2008-05-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

...that it's totally true.

Dad?

2008-05-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Want to occupy yourself for a few minutes with an exercise in the creeptastic?

Try out ManBabies.com.

The Day I Met God

2008-04-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

I met god at three o’clock in the morning in the lobby of a hotel in Philadelphia. I asked god what brought him out at such an hour and he said he was going to get a cheese steak sandwich. I told him that’s exactly where I was headed, and god offered me a ride.

God and I took the elevator to the parking garage, second floor. God explained that he was in Philadelphia for the weekend. God said he’d read an article that listed 100 things to do before you died, and having a cheese steak sandwich in Philadelphia was number sixteen.

After walking around the second floor of the parking garage for a while, (god had forgotten where he parked), we found god’s 1992 ford escort hatchback. God had forgotten to have his parking ticket validated, so I offered to pay the twelve dollars to get out of the garage.

God said he was in Philadephia doing research for a book about salvation. He said people were rising from the dead in Pennsylvania.

We arrived at Geno’s cheese steak house and got in line. God and I were both surprised at the crowd at near four in the morning, as it took us another half-hour to get to the window. I ordered two cheese steak sandwiches with provolone and onions and two sodas. I handed one of the sandwiches to god and we sat at a nearby table.
The sandwich was delicious, god agreed. God took some photos of me with my sandwich, I took some of him with his. Then god went to take photos of the building, with all its over-the-top neon tubing bordering a near endless mosaic of photographs of the famous people that have eaten at Geno’s over the years. God was particularly impressed at the photograph of Sylvester Stallone. God said he was a big fan.

God and I finished our sandwiches, and walked back to his car. God said he was thinking about going to the west coast, I told him he should. I told him it was beautiful.

God drove us back to the hotel and we talked about politics in America. God said when he lived in London, he voted Labor. We walked thought he lobby of the hotel and got into the elevator. God was staying on the same floor as me. We got out of the elevator and as we walked through the hall. I asked god what his book was called. God said he was going to call it “Salvation in Seven Acts.” God said it was about finding truth in yourself, and how every person is God in their own way. God said this whole thing about how god can be whoever you want him to be was bullshit, (god actually said “bullshit,” and to be honest, was something of a potty mouth) and that god was a real, substantive thing and part of everyone, that there is no hell, there is only salvation, and eternal and everlasting love for humanity, his most cherished of creations.

I shook god’s hand and told him goodnight. God said he’d look me up next time he was in my neighborhood.

The Day I Got the Vapors

2008-03-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I met number two on my list of the top five people I had to meet before I died. Right in the nick of time, I'd say, as Mr. number here two just turned eighty years old and has recently announced his plan to retire in 2009. I will say, however, despite his age and recent heart troubles, he is as sharp, funny, eloquent and inspiring as his numerous books and television appearances would betray.

If you're looking at this photograph and wondering who this very well-bearded man might be, you're missing out on the exemplary work of one of the most important and influential intellectual activists, and best magicians, in the world. May I recommend his books Flim-Flam!, and The Faith Healers. I also recommend plugging this site into your Google Reader to catch his weekly updates as a flickering candle of logic and reason in the swirling darkness of flummery and pseudo-science.

Thank you for all your wonderful work, Mr. Randi, and thank you for only briefly ridiculing my pink camera.

P.S. I should note my mild disappointment when Mr. Randi's phone rang during the lecture (barking dogs, of all things.... of course, maybe he's got the advance release of Dog Party) and I saw that he uses an iPhone. This must be a boon to pretentious Mac users the world over. On the plus side, it was a call from none other than Jose "Carlos" Alvarez himself.

Why I Love "The Best of Craigslist"

2008-03-13T07:53:00.001-07:00

From the "Free" section of CL San Diego:

Carton Of Irregular Cat Hats

Date: 2008-02-07, 11:01AM PST

Hello. I have a big box of used cat and kitten hats that I have collected over the years for various occasions. As of recently my cat, Snowman, is no longer living and thus I am forced to get rid of these precious memories. I would not feel right asking money for them so I am offering the whole box for free. There are many styles from formal to cute and funny.

You think widdle Snowman put his little cat head in the oven? Maybe he closed the garage door and started the family car. Ketamine overdoes, perhaps.

Poor Snowman.

Also, what the fuck is a "formal" cat hat?

Against Stupidity

2008-03-06T13:43:00.000-08:00

"Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain." -Friedrich von Schiller

The stupidest person I ever met was a high school girl. One could easily say that all high-schoolers are stupid in their own way, but this girl was a unique specemin. Her name eludes me, but I remember she had brunette hair, stood about five feet tall and was wearing a purple pantsuit. The first and last time I met her was February of 1998.

I was judging a round of Oratory. In high school, I was active in Speech and Debate, and by my senior year, I had established enough points that I was allowed to judge in tournaments in which neither I nor any of my teammates were competing. For those of you that don’t know, Oratory is an event where one writes an eight-minute speech on virtually any topic and simply delivers said speech. As this young girl stepped in front of the class of spectators, opponents and judges, she wrote the title of her speech on the chalkboard. It was titled “Sugar.”

Her speech began with a short history of sugar. She spoke about the early origins of commercial sugar in the Western Hemisphere as being derived primarily from beets, but during the age of European colonization in warmer climes, the import of sugar made from cane flooded Europe, offering a much cheaper alternative, and the use of sugar as a sweetener in beverages and baked goods began to rise. She then skipped ahead to the modern era, telling us about the commercial use of even cheaper corn syrup as a sweetener in everything from manufactured beverages and candies, to breads and infant formulas.

At this point, I was forcing my eyes to keep from rolling. I was fully expecting her to launch into a diatribe about the abundant use of sugar in virtually every product on the shelves, and into the various conspiracy theories about manufactured sugars being directly responsible for every malady from obesity to Parkinson’s disease. Judging these things was grueling at best, so one must come prepared for the worst.

These speeches are supposed to have a point, you see, a thesis, if you will. 1. Sugar is everywhere. 2. Sugar is bad. 3. We need to get rid of sugar. Thank you, goodnight. What she did, however, was something entirely different.

She told us all a story about how nurses caring for the wounded behind the battlefields in France during World War II used hand-made sugar pills to treat the ailing soldiers when they ran out of morphine pills. Amazingly, the nurses reported, many of the men felt better. She then told a similar story about combat hospitals in Vietnam. Then she cited several studies performed by very reputable medical institutions across the world throughout the early part of the 20th century about patients that are told they’re being given a drug to cure their maladies, but are in fact given sugar pills,. Amazingly, in some case up to 90% of patients feel better. Thesis: The medical establishment has ignored the healing power of sugar. Thank you, goodnight.

I was stunned. I was flabbergasted. I was speechless. I was without speech. This girl had prepared an eight-minute speech on a subject, and had completely missed her own point. I scored her last in the round and wrote two words on her score sheet. I’ll give you a hint: the first one starts with a P.

This girl stands out in my memory as the stupidest person I’ve ever encountered, not because she simply missed the point, but because she had clearly been working on this speech for weeks, had likely run drafts by her coach and teammates, had done research to support her thesis, and still missed the point. If she had stumbled upon the phrase “placebo effect” in any of her readings, which we can only assume she did, she tossed it aside as immaterial to her point.

I’ve been thinking about this poor, misguided soul a good deal lately, and not just because I’ve been in a bad mood for three months, or because I hate pantsuits. While I still believe the vast majority of humans are intelligent, resourceful and responsible people, the evidence that the tide is turning in the opposite direction has begun to mount. I’m skeptical, and am not yet prepared to make a final decision, but I’m beginning to fear that people are getting stupider by the minute.

I walked into a dry cleaner the other day and hung up several shirts and pants on the rack attached to the counter. The woman picked up the receipt book and asked my name. I told her. I asked when the clothes would be ready to pick up. “Tuesday at five P.M.” she told me.

“Excuse me?” I asked, “The sign right there in your window says that if I drop off my clothes off by nine A.M., they’ll be done by three o’clock. It’s 8:30 A.M.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “We don’t really do that.”

“Then why is the sign in the window?”

She stared at me, blankly.

I stared back at her.

Her eyes wandered to the sign that was in the window, then back to me. An awkward minute passed, no sound, no motion. It seemed that time had stopped, the sound of the morning traffic outside seemed to mute and the world paused on its axis. It was true, I knew it was true, there was no way to deny it any longer: people are getting stupider.

And the woman at the hamburger stand I visited the day before, where I ordered mustard on said hamburger, and she couldn’t find the “mustard” button so she pressed the “mayonnaise” button instead. I watched her do it. Or the young man at the sushi bar, when asked what kind of sake was available, replied “The clear kind. Also, some that’s not clear.” I overheard a woman in the office tell a story about how her father was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and another woman asked “Did he survive?”

I simply can no longer ignore the big, stupid elephant in the room.

Take, for example, the story of a man in Houston. The restaurant where he was eating called police after he left without paying for his food. They informed the officers that he was seen entering a nearby vacant building. The police entered the large, empty building, and one officer, deciding to inject some levity into the situation, called out “Marco!” The man called out, “Polo!” and was soon located and arrested.

Let’s also consider Lane Jensen of Edmonton, Canada. In an effort to make the tattoo of a cowgirl on his calf more “sexy,” Jensen paid a plastic surgeon to insert tiny breast implants under his skin. They became infected, the sutures split and to quote the article, “a litre of lymphatic fluid drained from Jensen’s leg.”

There’s also the story of the Marion, Florida woman who is convinced that the holy lord, Christian god, the creator of heaven and Earth, the redeemer and the savior of all humanity, is speaking to her through the insides of a potato.

Finally, in a sweeping example of growing stupidity, I direct you to a report from the Centers for Disease Control in which they document the deaths of at least 82 youths in what they call “the choking game.” Apparently, in a desperate attempt to alter their minds, they strangle themselves (or have someone strangle them…..imagine your friend asking you to do that…) and enjoy the resulting “cool and dreamy feeling.” Just think, if those poor Namibian kids had heard about this, they wouldn’t have to huff poo-gas just to get through the day.

(To prevent any unnecessary comments, yes I am aware that the Jenkem story is mostly an urban legend, but it’s still funny as hell. I also like that some news outlet dubbed it “butt hash.”)

Even while I’m writing this, I’m still forced to answer this evidence by pointing out that for every person that doesn’t install saline bags in his calf, or speak to Jesus through vegetables, there are billions and billions that don’t. On the other hand, there’s the woman that sued a shopping center after being attacked by a goose, the man that bothered to make the world’s biggest fish stick, and I’m sure SOMEONE has actually bought one of these. I’d rather not discuss Miss South Corlina.

No, I don’t think most people are stupid. I will reserve that judgment until after I’ve met most people. Until then, I can only shake my head in disbelief when I read about a woman in Montana that paid a door-to-door salesman to give her a tattoo with a homemade gun, and was shocked when it got infected.

Is the tide actually turning? Can we expect a trend of de-evolution, like in Idiocracy, where humanity will find itself spraying sports drinks onto crops and watching hours and hours of men being kicked in the balls for entertainment? Run a search on you tube for "kicked in the balls," and tell me we're not in trouble.

Despite my crabby mood, I still think the best of humanity, I just fear for its future sometimes, like a concerned uncle that’s too lazy to do anything but tell the bartender that he “worried about Timmy.” I suppose I could just stop reading Reuters “Odd News.”

The Worst Parents in the World

2008-02-29T22:26:00.000-08:00

Seriously, this is child abuse.

Happy Valen-Time's Y'all

2008-02-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

You can make your own here.

The Evidence is Mounting...

2008-01-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

Evidence is mounting that people are, in fact and across the board, getting stupider.

Woman reports Her Own Drunk Driving

A rural Fox Lake woman early Sunday was able to give a detailed description of a suspected drunken driver and the suspect 's vehicle to a Dodge County sheriff 's dispatcher.

That 's because the woman was calling from that vehicle -- a tan 2002 pickup truck -- and she was driving it, Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls said.

The woman 's boyfriend in the passenger seat suggested she call 911 to report her own drunken driving, so she did, Nehls said. The boyfriend was not driving, she said, because he was too drunk.

The call came in at 12:29 a.m. Sunday on the county 911 line as a hang-up call from a cell phone, Nehls said.

Dispatchers used a reverse 911 directory and called the phone, which was answered by a woman who identified herself as Patricia Dykstra, 51. She said her boyfriend made her call, because "somebody seems to think I can 't drive home straight. "

When the dispatcher asked her why, she said, "He seems to think I 'm too intoxicated to drive. "

During a relatively pleasant conversation with the dispatcher -- a recording of which Nehls released Monday -- Dykstra gave her name, location and vehicle description before saying she should probably hang up because "I don 't like being on the phone while driving. "

Asked by the dispatcher if she had too much to drink, she said "I don 't think so, ma 'am. "

She said she was almost home and gave the intersection. Throughout the 3 -minute call, however, the dispatcher did not suggest the woman pull over. Nehls said the dispatcher assumed the woman had already stopped, although her last advice to Dykstra was, "So Pat, drive carefully, OK? "

Deputies went to her home, where Dykstra met them on the porch, Nehls said. She had consumed a six-pack of beer, she said, and her boyfriend a 12-pack. She was ticketed for drunken driving, her first offense.

Wait For It...

2008-01-25T08:50:00.001-08:00

This is what my grandmother would refer to as "bathroom humor."

I love bathroom humor.

Stowaway Kitten

2008-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

My biggest concern is not with the kitten, though I do feel bad for the widdle thing, but who was working the fucking x-ray machine at the airport? Seriously? They didn't notice a very kitten-shaped skeleton in the bag?

I'm concerned that people are getting stupider, and at an exponential rate.

MIAMI (Reuters) - A kitten survived a plane trip halfway across the United States after accidentally ending up in a suitcase, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Seth Levy's suitcase, in which 10-month-old tabby Gracie Mae stowed away, was mistakenly picked up by the wrong person after a 2 1/2 hour plane trip from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas.

But the man who took the suitcase called the kitten's Florida home and spoke to Levy's wife, Kelly, of Palm Beach Gardens, and agreed to hold the cat until her husband could pick it up, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper said.

"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas. And I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage, and when I opened the luggage a cat jumped out," Levy recalled the man telling her on the phone.

UPDATE:

This is officially getting out of hand.

Loaded gun slips through airport security

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A passenger who went through an airport security checkpoint -- before remembering that he had a loaded gun -- is facing charges after going back to report his error, authorities said.
art.reagan.security.gi.jpg

Travelers go through security at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Gregory Scott Hinkle, 53, of Davis, West Virginia, went through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport about 7:30 a.m. Sunday, an airport spokeswoman said.

After the traveler evidently recalled having the gun, he returned to the checkpoint and disclosed the weapon, authorities said.

The TSA contacted airport police, who charged the man with possessing or transporting a firearm into an air carrier terminal where prohibited, a misdemeanor, and released him. He is scheduled to appear April 2 in Arlington County, Virginia, General District Court.

Hinkle did not immediately return a phone call to his residence.

A TSA spokesman said the agency reviewed airport surveillance camera videos of the incident and removed the screener from security duties while an investigation is under way.

UPDATE

2007-12-18T18:08:00.000-08:00

Since seeing is believing, this is frozen Pennsylvania, as seen (and clearly photographed) by me on the four hour drive from Pittsburgh (amidst significant blizzard conditions).

This is me...

...and this is what I'm doing right now.

boosh.

Daft Hands

2007-12-18T15:50:00.001-08:00

I now the YouTube posts get a little boring, but this one's pretty cool. Plus, I'm frozen in Pennsylvania right now, and I don't have the energy to blog. I do, however, have the energy to drink Glenlivet 12 year and watch Cops. So there.

Turn Up Your Computer Speakers....

2007-12-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

...and call an ambulance. Your face is about to get rocked off.

Face The Fax

2007-11-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

I have a new job that requires me to be on the road all the time. Consequently, I spend a lot of time in a hotel room being bored. This means I spend a great deal of time online. The funny thing about the internet is that it’s so huge, and encompasses so much information, unless you know specifically what you're looking for, there’s almost no way to decide where to start.

After reading all my regular websites, news sites and blogs, I find myself staring at the Food Network watching Alton Brown (my own.. personal... Jesus) grilling what can only be described as the most delicious-looking pork chops ever prepared by man. The unfortunate part is I'm usually eating a Hot Pocket, though, thankfully, not tasting said Hot-Pocket because the “cheese” that squirted out of the rock-hard end of the "bread" has completely destroyed my mouth.

The amazing bit is that with all the information, entertainment, pornography, shopping, education, and pornography available online, it's remarkably easy to come to the point where you don't know where to go next.

So what’s on The Internet these days? Because I’m bored and I need something to do, but also because people seem to love pointless lists, here’s a list of things I’ve learned from The Internet in the past few months:

1. Ramen was invented by 1940 by the founder of Nissen Foods, Momofuku Ando.

2. There is a popular show in The Netherlands about a professed “baby whisperer” who claims he can psychically communicate with infants. The name of the show is “What Baby Wants Is Law,” or in Dutch, “Baby’s Wil Is Wet.”

3. The Xbox 360 has officially broken the $250 barrier.

4. Apparently you can buy a wig for your cat.

5. David Hasselhoff is the Anti-Christ.

6. Neil Diamond has revealed, on the occasion of her 50th birthday, that Caroline Kennedy was the inspiration for his 1969 hit "Sweet Caroline."

7. Being that Caroline Kennedy was born in 1957, Neil Diamond is a pederast because he likes to write sexy love songs about twelve-year-old girls.

8. All mammals have tongues.

9. Barry Goldwater has a tattoo. Seriously.

10. While the banana is a fruit, the plant on which it grows is an herb, not a tree.

11. The FDIC insures U.S. banks from insolvency, and the FDIC is insured by Chuck Norris.

That about sums up all the knowledge I've gathered after months of aimless surfing. I hope this has been both engaging and enlightening. Now if you'll excuse me, the lady with no teeth is here to change my sheets.

12. Also, unrelated to information available solely on The Internet, I've learned that if you smoke 450 cigarettes a day and consume nothing but white bread and Coca-Cola, all your teeth fall out.

Why I Think I May Have Been Sexually Abused as a Child

2007-11-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

I was in Mike’s Movie Madness in Portland, OR, arguably the best video store on the planet earth, browsing through the new releases. I had the weekend to myself, as the fetching Mrs. Sonnier was out of town, and I had made big plans to do a whole lot of nothing. The ultimate goal was to catch up on some movie-watching, so callously neglected with all this “going to work” and “doing the dishes” and “let’s talk about your drinking problem” nonsense. It was going to be great, I was going to watch a bunch of movies, perhaps play the occasional video game, probably not put on pants all weekend, and would probably eat ice cream with a ladle.

Mike’s Movie Madness was definitely the place to start, but it did complicate the problem a little, since that oddly-shaped, ramshackle of a video store boasts over 50,000 VHS and DVDs. I decided to start in the new release room, and that’s where I saw it: Transformers: The Complete First Season. I almost jumped out of my skin. I had been belly-aching for months over the VHS set on eBay going over $100 each and every time, but was able to reassure myself that it would soon make it to DVD, at the very least before the movie was set to premiere, and I held in my hand proof of that fact. The box was shiny, and I could see the reflection of my “five-year-old on Christmas morning” grin in Optimus Prime’s faceplate. While waiting in line, I momentarily thought of just putting the DVD back on the shelf, heading to the nearest department store and just buying the box set, but I was impatient and it was getting dark outside, and I was getting the brew-shakes. I’ll just pick up the box set later, I thought to myself with deep satisfaction.

A stop off at The Belmont Station for a bottle of moderately priced Unibrou (Trois Pistoles, I think it was) and off to the crib for a serious nostalgia-thon. Soon enough, I was installed pleasantly on the sofa with a bubbling glass of Belgian beer, a plate stacked with cold pizza, slamming my finger hungrily on the play button of the DVD remote control….

“Transformers….robots in disguise…Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Deceptacons…Transformers…”

And it stunk. It was terrible. I couldn’t even make it through the first episode, though, oddly enough, I actually remembered how it ended. The reason I remembered was because between the years of 1984 and some much later year that I choose not to disclose here (let’s just say that the show was well into syndication) I watched Transformers, the original television series, every day.

The animation was terrible, the voice dubs were comically out of sync. The storylines were ludicrous, even for a show that’s about robots that turn into cars and trucks and fight each other for glowing cubes of energy. I was flabbergasted. How did I watch this show for years and never realize it was so crappy?

It was about this time that the little quasi-retarded man that lives in my brain brought to my attention several other conclusions I had recently reached and strung them together for me:

1. Thundercats sucked. The animation was hokey and the voice acting was ridiculous. It was also borderline racist. Also, Mum-Ra is possibly the dumbest villain ever conceived.

2. He-Man sucked. The animation was even worse than Thundercats, and there was no hot Cheetara to keep you from noticing. Teela does not count.

3. Rainbow Brite was a conspiracy by Hallmark to turn kids into homosexuals, like Captain Planet was an effort by Ted Turner to turn kids into limp-wristed eco-freaks. My little brother’s sexual persuasion and ferocity on all things environmental is a testament to the efficacy of these reprogramming initiatives and his weak constitution.

Unavoidable Conclusion: The 80s were absolutely rife with shitty, shitty cartoons that we kids happily lapped up with all the restraint of Andy Dick at a coke party. GoBots, The Centurions, Captain Power, M.A.S.K., Pole Position, David the Gnome, and the vast majority of the others were masticated, over-produced, pre-packaged garbage that had circled the globe and been recycled so many times, they barely even made any sense anymore.

So why did we love these shows so much? Because nothing else was on and it was better than staring at the wall while you made your brother begin the twenty minute process of getting the Nintendo to work, what with the pressing and the resetting and hitting and the swabbing with the Q-tip taped to the butter knife.

The sad realization that all the television programs I loved as a child were nothing more than pop-culture, toy-sales-driven crap was not what bothered me the most. What really caused me to swallow that lump of cold pizza in my throat was this heavy question: If everything I remember about being a kid is wrong, what have I subconsciously chosen NOT to remember?

This is why I think I may have been sexually abused a child. I don’t know by who, or when, or why, but it does go to explain a few things. My little brother, for example, perhaps not completely under the control of the legion of the bone-queens by the efforts of Rainbow Brite, Twink and the rest of the Color Kids, must have witnessed me being abused by some as-yet-unidentified member of the family or circle of friends and is now attempting to act out this grim scene of cruelty on other boys, usually dressed Hannah Montana.

Perhaps this recent spate of seeking out my once-favorite shows and learning them to be utter drivel is my own subconscious way of exposing my own self-deceit, and forcing myself to dredge and confront these awful truths about my abusive childhood in the hopes of exorcising these demons that have tormented lo these many years.

Then again, maybe I was just a stupid kid who didn’t know any better. I mean, I used to really like hot dogs. I also used to believe a man got a woman pregnant by peeing on her. You can thank my older brother for that one, though, I have to give him props for figuring out the penis was involved at such a young age.

TV shows, movies, cars, music, and just about any other tangible thing that can be quantified and categorized, almost always ends up like Burning Man: the last year you went was the last year it was cool. I have numerous friends and family members that constantly winge and bellyache bout the quality of TV and films and toasters and lawn equipment these days, invariably concluding that “things were a lot better back in the day.” I myself am guilty of this when I watch a few minutes of Code Lyoko, my six-year-old nephew’s favorite cartoon. Incidentally, if anyone can explain this stupid show to me, you’d be doing me a favor. Even Wikipedia’s entry is less than enlightening, but it does indicate the show is French in origin, so I’m not sure that one’s even supposed to get it.

In any case, what these naysayers fail to realize is that EVERY generation thinks they had it better, that their lives were simpler, that they really knew the score and that they had cornered the market on wholesome living, American style. The fact that it’s all bullshit. By every quantifiable variable, life, in virtually every capacity, gets better every day. The average cost of living decreases, while the quality of life increases. The average American lives significantly better and longer than out counterparts only 100 years ago. Our food is better, our hygiene is better, our education, medicine, and pretty much anything else you can think of, is better than it was even ten years ago.

Okay, so I wasn’t abused as a child, unless you count the endlessly mean and embarrassing things my older brother did to me, which I do. I was, however, among the first generation of children in America to grow up in an entirely mediated world, even in the backwoods of Louisiana. It was no coincidence that my favorite superheroes were toys and puzzles and video games before they ever graced my television screen. I was among the first American children to be subjected to, and totally buy into mass merchandising, tie-in promotions and subliminal advertising, and now I’m finally old enough to resent it.

On the other hand, though, Voltron was totally awesome.

Like A Gong!!

2007-11-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

OTR - Giving You What You Want: Pornography

2007-10-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Fiction

2007-10-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

He decided one day to write fiction. He sat at his typewriter and began to hit the keys in a determined manner, like those newsreels of reporters, sheets of white paper swirling around the room. He started writing, not with an idea in mind, but simply to put words on paper in the hopes that it would become something, perhaps anything. Something is always better than nothing, he thought, except in the case of testicular cancer, he then corrected himself.

He started writing about a man in a foreign land searching through the jungle for a fabled gem worth more than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Then he realized that was exactly like Romancing the Stone, which he saw on TBS about three weeks ago when he couldn't sleep. He pulled the paper from the typewriter, a loud ripping sound rending the silence of the room. He then started writing about a robot culture that hated humans, except for the man that invented them. Then he realized that it was exactly like that novel Software that he'd stolen from the waiting room of his dentist's office when he was sixteen. Another piece of paper was torn from the machine and balled in the nearby bin. He then started writing about a revolution of slaves on Mars and....shit, that's just like that fucking video game Red Faction that he'd beaten last Summer.

He was beginning to get frustrated, so instead of writing about exciting things, and serious things, and things that made a difference, he started writing about the real world, at least how he saw it. He wrote about how he'd like to call himself a writer to other people he meets, but he can't bring himself to because he's never made a penny writing and, after all, there must be some standard, otherwise he could just as well call himself an astronaut or a professional alcoholic. He wrote about how he likes to think of himself as a writer, but sometime he's afraid he’ll never really be one because he doesn't always have really great ideas that turn into wonderful works of art, or otherwise. Sometimes, he wrote, he has okay ideas, but he forgets them because he's too tired to get out of bed and write them down.

He wrote about how he's very afraid he might not be a writer because he sometimes goes weeks and weeks without writing so much as a grocery list. Coincidentally, it's always in those weird times that he doesn't read either, not really being able to tell if one is contributing to the other, or if they both seem to occupy the same space in his brain that has become temporarily atrophied. He wrote about how his biggest fear in the world is that he'll never be able to tell anyone that he's a writer, and know it to be true.

He started to write about his life, but figured no one really wanted to know about his life. The way he sees it, there are a lot of stories out there, interesting ones that are about people that travel the world, fight in wars, love forbidden loves, battle adversity and work for justice with cold determination. his story didn't have any of that stuff, except for that week he spent in Jamaica, but even that was pretty tame, except for the guy that tried to sell him pot, then acid, then mushrooms, then a jet ski. He thought that was pretty funny.

He wrote about how he'd love to know what people wanted to read, and write that for them. Then he got depressed, because if someone is coming up with ideas for you, then you're not really a writer, you're just th guy hitting th kys. Spaking of kys, the ky btwn th “w” and th “r” was stuck again. He hit with some oil. Good.

He wrot about th world in an abstract snse. Crap. It was still stuck. Stupid fucking typewriter. Sure, it looks cool and trendy and 40's chic, but this Remington is truly a piece of shit, he thought to himself as he oiled the key again, making sure to get as much oil as possible on his hands. Is this big, honking, clacky typewriter supposed to make you a real writer? That's bullshit. You've just spent too much time staring at that photo of Ernest Hemingway in his study in front of that huge Corona typewriter. The fact of the matter, he reminded himself, is that you've never fought in a war, you don't smoke, you don't even like rum, and you don't suffer from crippling depression (last you checked). Why make an effort to be like Hemingway?

He was stuck. He'd written himself into a corner. He realized he'd gone of on a tangent about Hemingway and wasn't sure where to go from here. Then he realized he didn't start anywhere in particular, so it really didn't matter where he ended up.

He wrote about riding about his first bicycle, a beautiful red Schwinn with one gear and a front fork that could turn completely around. Then he realized that was dumb. No one wanted to know about his bike, except for bike enthusiasts, and they probably didn’t read very much other that bicycle magazines.

He wrote for a shot period of time about a tree frog he found hiding in the window when he was a boy. The moment he saw it, he was taken by a feeling of devotional love and decided to keep the little guy in a box in his room. He named the frog Ralph. Ralph died soon after, and he remembered being sad, and a little guilty because he never fed the frog. He didn’t know what tiny little frogs ate, anyway. Come think of it, he thought, he still doesn’t know

He stepped up from the desk and stretched. Not bad, he told himself. It’s a start. He had a glass of metallic tap water and looked out his apartment window at the snow that was accumulating. He looked at the powdery snow outside, and the occasional person trudging though, bundled against the elements, and he felt cozy and warm, and even a little happy.

He sat back down at his desk and began typing again.

Anyone Can Herd Cattle...

2007-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Rock On!

2007-09-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mike Gravel is running for President of the United States.

No, seriously, he is.

Word of the Day: Dribbly

2007-09-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

The other morning, exiting my front door, car keys and brown bag in hand, I chanced upon a peculiar sight. A pack of dogs were tearing down the street of my quiet suburban neighborhood wrestling, biting, peeing and otherwise carousing noisily at a steady pace, headed directly for me. There had to have been at least seven of them, each larger than the last, being led by, what I presumed was a horse-sized Great Dane/ Dalmatian mix.

I was transfixed. Between the growls and yips and occasional stream of urine hitting the sidewalk, I could only stare. I was reminded of one of the bloopers at the end of “Talladega Nights” where Will Farrell and that other guy make a public service announcement about packs of wild dogs terrorizing major American cities. I pictured these usually harmless house pets on a wild rampage of death and destruction, and was wildly amused, which is quite a feat for me so early in the morning.

The ravenous ball of dog parts got closer and closer. I stood motionless. How does one react to a pack of dogs invading your front yard? Does one yell or throw rocks? I decided to wait and feel out the situation. If figured, if they were just having a good time, who was I to interrupt?

As the biggest of the dogs lifted his gargantuan leg to piss on my hibiscus bush, I was enamored by the shape of his airborne leg. What a peculiar shape, I thought, how uniquely specialized and complicated a limb is, with all its bones, ligaments, fluids, joints and various other whatnots (I’ve been accused of being needlessly introspective when fatigued and/or intoxicated, at eight o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, it’s anyone’s guess which applies). One can almost conclude that this extraordinarily complex mechanism is so specialized, and so intricate, and so unique, that it would be outside the realm of pure chance that something so fantastic would have simply come into existence without the mindful eye of a Creator. Almost.

Then, as the Great Dane’s pee party ended, and he let the first few dribbles of runny poo onto my hibiscus’ leaves (I don’t even like hibiscus, but fuck, they’re mine and you can’t poo on them!) I shooed the pack of dogs away, instantly putting to an end their morning rampage and they all retreated to their respective houses.

On the drive to work, I remained fixed on the mechanism of the dog’s leg, and the human leg, and the arm, and horses’ legs (not to mention the curious nature of the hoof) and various other animals and their various modes of transportation. A thought struck me as I looked at the cars around me: Dumbing down the mechanism of evolution to a simple task of “construction” of species with available resources, (i.e., the best, most efficient organism available utilizing the least amount of raw materials and requiring minimal upkeep) the question is begged: If a robot limb, for example, articulated and complex, is so difficult and consuming to manufacture, why have no creatures, large or small, ever evolved wheels?

Consider this simple fact: wheels rule. The wheel is the kind of thing that gives James Burke a big British chubby. Not only are we talking about the fundamental building block of civilization (yes, James, even more than the plow) but just about the first innovation of man. Not only is it cheap, extraordinarily effective, adaptable to virtually any use (that involves “rolling”) but it’s so easy, you would think even the non-sentient but “all-knowing” and ultimately opportunistic forces of evolution would have figured it out first. Hell, if monkeys can figure out how to get ants out of a mound with a stick, the wheel seems only days away, right?

A lesser rational man would look to this question and say “See, evolution is not the answer to all man’s questions about the origin of life! Let me tell you about the Discovery Institute…” as he reached into his fanny-pack for a colorful brochure. We here at the OTR, however, are not so weak of constitution. You see, every learned person has to acknowledge that the theory of Darwinian evolution, his theory of natural selection (a.k.a. “survival of the fittest”) and modern evolution theory in general, possess great flaws.

That’s right, despite what Richard Dawkins says, evolution is a theory, sure a theory that is virtually agreed upon by every thinking and learned person on the planet and is the only far-reaching theory that meets and effectively explains the most of the fossil record we’ve been able to uncover up to this point, but still just a theory.

I feel significant joy when a Creationist makes the, oh-so-hilarious appeal to scientific reason in his attempt to debunk scientific reason for purely emotional and spiritual motivations. In that vein, a common (if underrepresented) criticism of evolution is related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and a concept known as entropy. Entropy (in a simplistic manner of speaking) is the manner in which chaos begets more chaos, change begets more change and so on and so on. Basically, entropy dictates that irreversible changes occur spontaneously in closed thermodynamic systems, which increase the likelihood that more spontaneous changes will occur. The basic conclusion one draws from this law is that order cannot come from chaos. It’s against the law.

The classic example is ice melting in tumbler of 18 year-old Highland, single-malt Scotch. The Scotch, you see, is room temperature, and the ice, we can presume, is at least 32 degrees Celsius. When the two are combined, chaos ensues. The chaos, in this case, is the temperature differential between the ice, the scotch and the room, and in this situation, the chaos that is causing both the ice to melt and the Scotch to cool, all in a chaotic effort to normalize the temperature with the surrounding air. This is, of course, an extremely dumbed-down version of the definition of entropy, but it’s the only way I ever managed to understand it, when it relates to Scotch.

Creationists state that the theory of evolution countermands the second law of thermodynamics in that it dictates that the ordered and varied existence of life on this planet evolved from the chaos and disorder of, well, whatever came before. This laudable appeal to reason and science is engaging, but ultimately worthless, dribbly shit, similar to what is currently gracing the leaves of my hibiscus plant.

"The use of thermodynamics in biology has a long history rich in confusion" — Harold J. Morowitz

My own confusion is paramount, but the nut of the issue is this: entropy can only increase in a closed system. The problem is, the Earth is not a closed system, like a stone or a glass of water or a microscopic organism, our planet is powered by the Sun.

The really sticky issue is that “entropy,” as it’s defined in thermodynamics (there are numerous other definitions relating to information technology, communications, etc.) can’t really be fully explained because, as John Von Nuemann put it, “No one really know what entropy is anyway.”

As much as this whole post seems like some bizarre exercise in futility (as opposed to all those eother, really important and life-changing posts that frequent this forum), I assure you it is not. The point is that occasionally, we humans get so focused on the moment at hand: what to make for dinner tonight, when am I going to find the time to visit Grandmother’s grave, did I remember to feed the gimp?, we often forget that there are a lot of big ideas out there. These ideas exist not to make us confused or feel stupid, they exist because someone just like you and me (well, mostly like me) found the time to think about them. Isaac Newton saw an apple fall to the Earth, and wondered why? Albert Einstein saw the Sun warming the Earth, and wondered, how? OJ Simpson learned of the murder of his ex-wife and her lover and wondered, whom? These were great men, but not great because they possessed some superpower (though OJ had a mean rushing season in ’68) they were great because they applied their gifts to their fullest extent.

The big ideas in the world are the product of Man, and the application of his skill, not gifts from god. When an NFL running back steps in front of the camera to thank god for helping him bring home that touchdown, he’s not prostrating himself in front of a higher power, he’s diminishing his own hard work and his own talent and intensive training. He’s admitting that he is not the master of himself, which in the end, is the only true power a human has.

So why have humans, pinnacles of achievement never evolved something akin to wheels? It’s a tricky, and somewhat stupid question, but after much thought, I’ve come up with a few ideas. Firstly, evolution is not a zero-sum game: for every major achievement in evolution, there are variable stages. Take the lungs, for example. The fossil records gives us an incredible array or various types of tissues, sacks, prongs and all sorts of other weird stuff that creatures have used to utilize oxygen from the air or water. The big problem with a wheel-type appendage is that variable stages required to get to the end product (a real, flesh and bone wheel and axle mechanism) would be completely useless. Also, you have to consider that for quick stopping and turning, climbing and jumping, nothing really beats a set of legs, even primitive ones. Also, I’ll bet the interstate system really sucked about 130,000 years ago.

iHate You

2007-08-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

All you iLifers can take your iPhones and shove right up your iHoles.

That being said, this is pretty funny.

(Author gracefully bows out stage right so as not to draw attention to his grossly apparent absence of late. As if you care.)

please pass the syrup. please.

2007-08-14T09:33:00.001-07:00

Raisin Toast

2007-07-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

If you've never seen Frisky Dingo, you should. Really. If you ask nice enough, I might send you a copy.

Sense: This Picture Makes None

2007-07-26T08:06:00.001-07:00

Of Bean Dip and Toilet Paper

2007-07-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

It’s been said that a man is only capable of perceiving the world as it truly exists in the 20 seconds immediately following orgasm. It’s said that, in these rare moments, he is able to catch a fleeting glimpse of reality, untainted by his own hormonal tendencies, social pressures, and misconceptions about the world. The doors of perception are said to throw open, casting the blinding light of truth on all he can survey.

The opportunities for these moments occur much more frequently, but perhaps it is only in that uniquely clear-headed state that most men are able to acknowledge them. These incidents are what addicts refer to as a “moment of clarity,” the split-second when their drug addled brains send a completely fogless signal to their consciousness and they are able, usually for the first time, to see who they truly are.

I was in the self-checkout line at the grocery store yesterday. I went to the grocery store to obtain the two things the modern man needs to survive: bread and beer. The bread was to be used for a delicious spicy artichoke garlic bread, the beer was for drinking, because that’s what I drink in the Summer. Walking into the supermarket, through the deli aisle, I caught a glimpse of something tantalizing: 7-layer dip.

Perhaps my biggest mistake, one I make with disastrous regularity, is shopping on my way home from work, a point in the day when the only sustenance that has passed my lips is a cup of coffee and a peanut butter sandwich.

The thought of digging a think, hearty corn chip into layer after layer of cheese and guacamole and sour cream was just too much to bear. I picked it up and made my way to the self-checkout.

Bread: $2.99. I know it’s a lot for bread, but good bread makes good spicy artichoke garlic bread. Beer: $6.49. Again, a tad on the expensive side, but you tell me Abita Restoration Ale isn’t worth every penny (if you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up).

Dip: $16.99.

I was speechless. I was aghast. I was flabbergasted. I was……without speech.

I looked around me at the other folks checking out eggs and milk on their way home. I huffed, hoping someone would look up so I could point to the 10” dish of canned beans and processed cheese they expected someone to pay $17.00 for. No one looked, they just quietly bagged their wine and adult magazines.

I was incensed. Seventeen fucking dollars?! For bean dip?! What has this world come to? Anyone out there willing to shell out close to $20 for refried beans, shredded “cheese” and guacamole flavored dippy sauce needs to contact me immediately because I’ve got some amazing real estate opportunities tell you about.

It was at that precise moment, when I was able to see myself standing at a self-checkout kiosk in a supermarket, holding a plastic dish of bean dip, staring at like it was dancing the Charleston, that I realized I was old.

Okay, to be fair, being thrifty does not equate being old. I’ve always been thrifty. I’ve always been of the mind that the good life can be purchased at a discount if you just wait and look around enough. The difference is, that as a younger man, making even less money than I do now, I would have bought the fucking bean dip because I wanted it. Sure, I would have bitched about how much it cost to anyone that would listen, but I would be doing it with a mouthful of delicious 7-layer dip.

I’m reminded of once, when my little brother and I were perhaps seven and five years old, respectively. He and I were on our parents’ bed watching cartoons. Dad walked into the room in a mild tizzy clutching a roll of toilet paper. “I just replaced this roll yesterday!” he exclaimed. We were both at a loss for words. Possible responses to that statement were limited. Dad pulled off the last three sheets clinging to the cardboard tube and he looked us dead in the eyes. “When you use toilet paper, don’t just grab a whole bunch and wad it up, fold like this.” He diligently folded three squares of toilet paper into a neat cleaning apparatus in the palm of his hand. He stared at us.

The only response we could muster was to laugh so hard we started crying and we both fell off the bed. Thankfully, my Dad, able to see the humor in the situation (especially since he was in his underwear at the time) and started to chuckle as well. That lesson always stuck in my head as the inane activity of old people.

Yesterday afternoon in the supermarket was my equivalent of the toilet paper speech. I’m not just an adult, I’m an adult who gets pissed off about the price of bean dip. What’s next? Am I going to start clipping coupons to save thirty cents on a brand of canned chili I don’t even like?

I suppose it truly is all relative. Do I feel old? No. Do I feel entirely justified in making a big deal over bean dip? You damn’ tootin’. Some people say you’re only as old as you feel, but that’s clearly bullshit. When you go to buy a car and the salesman says, “It’s a 1995 model, but it drives just like the 2000 model!” you would look at him like he fell on his neck. What the hell does “old” even feel like?

My dad would say enlarged prostate, possibly throw in something about a colonoscopy.

Is this really about bean dip? Certainly not. It’s not even about getting older, or time slipping away. It’s about how perception can change based solely on how long you’ve been perceiving. My unwillingness to part with seventeen of my hard earned dollars shows that reason, for the first time in my life, trumps my love for tex-mex inspired snack foods.

You’re only as old as you are. That’s the only truth out there, but age means different things to everyone. Murakami didn’t write anything until he was twenty-nine years old. Of course, Mozart composed his first music when he was five. Again, I suppose it’s relative.

That being said, you all have to admit, $17.00 for bean dip is absolutely preposterous, even if I do need the fiber.

Oregon: That Place Just Ain't Right

2007-06-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

My favorite part is the horse's owner using words like "concise" in reference to some neighborhood kid cornholing his horse under cover of night. Oregon is a strange place.

Teen caught having sex with horse on CCTV

A US teenager has been arrested after he was caught on video having sex with a horse in a barn.

The owners of the barn in Corvallis, Oregon, had installed the video surveillance camera after previous assaults on the horse, reports the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

They were shocked to see footage of the teen sexually assaulting the mare when they checked the video in February.

Deputy Clay Stephens, who viewed the video, said the youth seemed very practiced, not hurried but not wasting any time. He seemed to be following a "very concise, deliberate, well-thought-out plan".

The owners then installed a silent alarm in the barn which sounded in their house at about 2.30am on June 7.

They checked the video monitor, saw the teenager preparing to assault the horse again, and called the sheriff's office.

Police officers rushed to the scene and arrested the teenager who was charged with burglary and sexual abuse of an animal.

Going Back to College, College, College

2007-06-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

“You’ll have to excuse me, it’s been so long since I’ve been on campus, I’ve actually forgotten what the “advising meeting” is supposed to accomplish, other than having you lift the hold on my account and allow me to register for classes.” I shifted nervously in my chair. My faculty advisor was out for the Summer, so here I was meeting with the head of the department, and on very short notice. “Well,” she said as she folded her pleasantly wrinkled hands in front of her, “The idea is to lay out some goals for the upcoming semester. I look at what you’ve taken, make recommendations on what you need to take, and so on.”

I was officially daunted. Her plush office was like the writing studio of my dreams. Simple, hand-made bookshelves covered every inch of the wall, laden with paperbacks, hard covers, serials, magazines, newspapers and huge books of art from every age and every corner of the world. The only sections of the pleasantly tacky wood-paneled walls that were visible were the ones holding up her inconspicuously displayed Doctorate certificates in Literature and Philosophy. I was torn by jealousy and fear. Basking in the presence of a bonafide intellectual is something I had not experienced since my surly youth, a time when I could not have appreciated the gravity, or even mustered the sobriety to care.

“So, what were you planning to major in?” She asked, flashing a toothy, receding gum-line grin. “Um, well…” I was legitimately thrown off by her ending that last sentence with a preposition. I suppose we’re not all perfect. “English, definitely. Creative writing most likely. Given my penchant to give up on things that prove either dull or too hard, I suppose if I choose something I actually enjoy, I might have a better chance at success.” I started squirming again. This time, it wasn’t solely because of her, but because she was examining what appeared to be my transcript. Needless to say, that amazing beer-a-mid I built from MGD cans in February of 1999 did not appear on this document.

“I see you attended honor’s English your freshman year?” she asked. If by “attended” you mean “showed up sober twice,” then yes, I thought to myself, I attended honor’s English. “I had the good fortune to enter into the honor’s program here in 1998, a distinction I squandered with unmatched aptitude.” I replied. “I wouldn’t dwell on it,” she comforted, “Not everyone is cut out for college their first go ‘round. The ones that return are the ones that take the opportunity seriously and usually prove to be some of our most valued students.” She was caressing my injured ego, I liked it. “I suppose you could say I experienced what alcoholics refer to as “a moment of clarity.”” I stated.

She smiled again, like rolling the cover off a set of piano keys. “Very good.” She said. Very good? What does that mean? I grew more nervous, this time unable to determine precisely why. It was school. School always made me nervous, perhaps that’s why I pretended never to take it seriously. It’s almost a Pavlovian response: enter faculty’s office, get nervous. It’s not without cause, after all, the only times I ever darkened the door of any teacher’s or administrator’s office was for some nature of reprimand. This was going well, however, and the impulses to run away screaming were coming less and less often.

“Well, you can take just about any classes you want.” She said, handing over the upcoming semester’s prospectus. I though to myself, that’s a nice way of saying ‘Since all you accomplished your freshmen year was to determine the recipe for the real Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, any credits will be an improvement to this dismal transcript.’ This time I laughed. As sad as is sounds, the real Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is so good, it was almost worth it.

We agreed on American Literature 206, I groaned when she brought up the calculus class I needed to take, I signed the appropriate forms, we shook hands, she flashed those mighty teeth one more time, and I left her eclectic office. All in all, it had been a good meeting. I strolled back into the hallway feeling good about myself. I was finally going to get this college-level monkey off my back. It’s going to take a few years, but I’ll soon be able to feel a little bit better about myself, and that’s certainly worth tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, right? I checked my watch, I still had twenty minutes to get back to the office before the conference call started. Plenty of time to stroll the campus, get my bearings again.

I emerged on the quad, strolling slowly, admiring the freshly shorn lawn, the bustle of students shouldering backpacks from Lee Hall to Griffin Hall, in and out of the library, sitting in front of PJ’s coffee discussing important, collegey things. The day was nice and I was feeling like I was on my way to accomplishing something, and my apprehension about the time and cost required were beginning to feel not-quite-so-stifling. Yep, I was feeling alright about stuff.

“Excuse me?” I heard around my shoulder. I turned to see a blonde woman, about my age, thrust her hand into mine and begin vigorously shaking. “I’m Julie. I noticed you leaving Dr. Gaudet’s office (it’s pronounced “go-day” –ed.) and I just had to meet you. Are you our new English instructor? I just can’t tell you how excited we are to have you. From Florida State, right? I’m the new head of the undergraduate English department.” I was stunned. Even if I hadn’t been completely speechless, I doubt I could have squeezed a word in edge-wise. She kept talking, and I sort of zoned out, in pure embarrassment.

Then there was this awful silence, a strange hiccup in the universe. This hiccup was all that was required for the world to shit in my freshly poured bowl of Cheerios.

“Um.” I stammered. I don’t usually stammer. “Um. No, actually. I’m a re-entry student, undergraduate, junior division. I know, I’m a little old, but I’ve been away for a while.”

There was that silence again, that awkward pause. If I had been on top of the world only a few moments earlier, I was now firmly planted in a 12th century Turkish prison being ritually gang-raped by horses.

“Oh.” Julie stammered. She seemed like the type of person that doesn’t usually stammer. “Um. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll do very well. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other around campus. It was nice to meet you.” She shook my hand again, a little less vigorously this time, and walked away.

I stood there for a second, picking up the pieces of my shattered ego, the very one that Dr. Gaudet had so convincingly pretended to polish only minutes earlier. I watched the students as they passed. Girls and boys, ten to fifteen years younger than myself, walking to and from classes, classes I don’t even qualify to take, educated years beyond me. Suddenly the June heat got a little more than I could bear and I slinked off to make my two o’clock conference call.

There's Butter on the Fucking Floor

2007-06-06T15:09:00.001-07:00

Cooler Than the Other Side of the Pillow

2007-05-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Everyone’s got those few things, those unique items that have been around since the beginning. It could be a stuffed animal, a pewter bank shaped like an elephant, or a blanket with moons and stars. In my case, it’s a pillow. Not a baby pillow, but a regular adult pillow that I’ve rested my head upon virtually every night for my whole life. I can’t remember exactly how I came into possession of this pillow, only that I’ve always had it.

While making the bed last night, I came to a strange realization: my pillow will soon be on the better half of thirty years old.

The idea that time inexorably moves forward is not something upon which I will expound. Nor will I ire endlessly about how quickly it escapes us. I will only point out that in about two months, my pillow will be twenty-seven years old.

It’s not a shock when you look at it. My pillow’s kind of stained, misshapen, sort of bulgy in the middle. It’s been stuffed and re-stuffed so many times, the threads on the edges seem to blur together, defying census. It’s flat in some parts, and sort of wobbly in others, but all in all, I think it’s still got a lot of life left in it.

The fact that my pillow is rounding thirty is not a surprise: it’s sort been looming for the last ten years or so. I think the reason I find myself stupefied by my nearly thirty-year-old pillow is that I always presumed my pillow would be in a much different place by now. Perhaps I imagined a bigger mattress, or a nicer bed spread, perhaps in a farmhouse in the country with horses, or maybe a high-rise flat in Prague. Perhaps, the biggest problem with me coming to terms with the fact that my pillow will soon span three decades is that, maybe, I never bothered to imagine anything at all.

Perhaps my pillow saw itself as more successful when it was younger, perhaps my pillow thinks he made some poor decisions along the way. Then again, how much better can a pillow hope to have it? It has a great bed, a beautiful woman that sleeps next to it at night, and a tastefully appointed house to live in, which is by all means the nicest house it’s ever been in. But why does the pillow sometimes feel like a failure?

It has expressly to do with time. The fucking pillow is almost thirty! By the time his dad was thirty, he was knee-deep in the career that would determine the course of the remainder of his life and he had three children. This is not to say my pillow needs children to justify his existence, it could even be said that the thought of procreation so terrifies my pillow that he’s unsure that he’ll ever be comfortable with the idea until someone forces his own small, defenseless and all-consuming loin-fruit into his arms, pretty much extorting him into accepting the idea on a meaningful level.

I think mostly, my pillow is just disappointed. Facing the prospect of thirty with no meaningful direction, no significant prospects of a lifelong goal and no oversized check for one million dollars to pose with, just makes everything a little more difficult. Perhaps it’s disappointed because the world didn’t tell him where he’s supposed to go, and what’s he supposed to do when he gets there. Worst of all, the world never told him what he’s supposed to be.
Facing the more philosophically vague concepts of joy and personal satisfaction, my pillow is faced with the prospect of having to figure all this out, and I think sometimes it’s daunted by the idea of trying to wrestle these Herculean notions so close to thirty years old, a time when most pillows already seem have a pretty good idea about all that stuff.

Not that my pillow feels like he’s been left behind. Far from it, when my pillow contemplates all his experiences, his assets (physical and mental) and the people all around him that love him and care for him and all that he has, he feels like a very rich pillow, but sometimes he just gets down because he thinks he’s supposed to always want more. But wanting more is good, right? I mean, wanting more will motivate my pillow to get out there and work for what he wants, so that by the time he’s rounding forty years old (yikes) he’ll just be a little less hard on himself, and maybe even a little proud.

My pillow has seen a lot, and been lots of places, and he has a lot for which to be happy and thankful, but I think a little self-deprecation can be good thing, especially when you think there’s more out there for you. But don’t think my pillow is one of those “type A” personality dudes with slicked hair and perfect teeth that always talk about grabbing things, and taking things, and not letting anyone else tell you that you can’t. My pillow takes things one day at a time and, at least I can hope, is generally seen as humble and self-restrained.

Despite the fact that my pillow is feeling significant anxiety about turning thirty in the exceedingly nearer and nearer future, my pillow has a lot to proud about. He lives in a wonderful home, he has a wonderful wife, he has wonderful friends and his family, while terminally psychotic, eventually find their hearts in the right places. Perhaps my pillow will find a way to focus that anxiety into improving himself in meaningful ways that help him understand the world and other people a little better, and god knows he would benefit from a more satisfying career. But these are things that will come with hard work, something with which my pillow if finally coming to terms, a great deal of patience, and whole lot of whiskey.

Washing-Ton

2007-05-19T18:11:00.001-07:00

Don't Make Me Reach Back There!

2007-05-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

Well, Mother's Day has come and gone and the doldrums of Summer are fast approaching. Unless, of course, you neglected to appropriately congratulate your mother for the bang-up job she did pushing your writhing body through her cervix, then you are condemned to watch this video, ponder for a moment the message, then call your mom crying for her to come pick you up.

Since we, here at the OTR are pusposefully forward-looking folk, we must ask you all to mark your calendars for the impending date of June 17th, 2007. Partly because it's Venus Williams' birthday, partly because it commemorates the day China performed its first successful nuclear ordinance test in 1967, but mostly because it's Father's Day.

Let's face it, kids, Moms are easy. Some flowers, a syrupy card ("Hey look what this other guy wrote in this card for ya.") and perhaps an ipod shuffle, and she'll be all atwitter with progenic love. Dad, on the other hand, mostly wants to be left alone. While not being around would be an simple and easily procured gift to give to dad, society (read: Mom) demands a bit more from you. That's why OTR is here to help.

Dads are hard to shop for. That's why there's that awful section off to the side of Marshall's and TJ Maxx comprised of bins full of golf ball washers, Hummer brand flashlights with magnetic backs and ties that have prints like hamburgers and glocks. It's not because Dads are more complicated than Moms, they just tend to have more storage space available for all this crap they'll be given over the course of their lives.

Dads, prepare to thank your lucky stars, and possibly that defective condom, for:

OTR's 2007 Father's Day Gift Guide

First, a question: Do you like being peed on? (Not you, Dad, the other Dads) Of course not. Well, say good bye to all your urine-related anxiety and welcome the Pee-Pee Teepee. Having never changed a diaper myself, I can only relate stories I heard corrobrated endlessly, that when changing a baby boy's diaper, projectile urine can be a real danger (also, when Dad's had sixteen too many Heinekens). A phrase that's stuck in my mind all these years has been "As soon as the air hits that damn thing..." betraying both the disguisting truth behind procreation, and the general disguist most women feel toward "that thing."

The Pee=Pee Teepee is essentially a washable cotton cone that is used to hastily cover your kid's pecker when removing that wad of cotton that you tied around his waste to catch his shit that will involuntarily leak from his ass until he reaches about three years old. In the case of my younger brother, the only infant with whom I can claim any experience, the shit will resume leaking from the mouth around age sixteen and continue with no signs of abating well into the early twenties.

Trust the OTR to show parenthood in the stark light of truth.

Does your Dad constantly threaten to beat the crap out of you and eat your face off? Well, you've likely been present at a Sonnier family reunion after 6 pm! On the other hand, if your Dad meant it affectionately, then do we have the perfect gift for you. First Chocolate, holders of the patent for the edible photograph (#6,376,000) are proud ton offer their signature Chocolate Picture. Simply upload an image to their website and they'll print it on chocolate for your visual and gastronomic delight. As an editorial note, I'd like to pint out that having them print a picture of cat poo onto a chocolate square for people to eat would be really funny.

Does your Dad love football? Does your Dad also love Jesus? Then he'll simply crucify himself to get his hands on any of these inspirational (and slightly heretical) statuettes. You can choose Jesus playing baseball, football, soccer, or basketball. I mean, Jesus is white, so he'd only play American sports, right? Jesus curling? Not in those sandals.

For the sake of piety, and since nothing they could do would make the staues look any sillier than a man in a robe playing hockey, each statue comes with a plaque that reads "Jesus is my coach." Considering this particular statue, it looks like it should read "Jesus and me like to spoon." As if professional sports weren't homoerotic enough.

Is your Dad a hunter? Is your Dad particularly accident-prone? Then he'll love the disposable body stapler kit from Cabela's. Now, Dad can not only fire into the woods with reckless abandon, but should a stray bullet wound his beer-holding hand, his hunting buddies won't have to bottle-feed him Budweiser until they can get him to the nearest ER for stitches.

The description on the website claims that the kits works great for dogs too.

What are the two things that Dads like the most? Like most men, drinking booze and endangering their lives on motorized equipment. Well now your Dad can have it all with the X-treme Cooler-Scooter. This handy little piece of inane human ingenuity features a 300 watt motor that will propel your dad and up to twelve nicley chilled brewskies directly to the emergency room.

I hope the OTR 2007 Father's Day Gift Guide has been helpful to you. Remember guys, while your dad was at a bar watching the Padres lose the $100 he was going to spend on flowers for your mom, he's still a decent guy and he deserves a dumb present that's going to find a home at the bottom of his drawer next to the leopard print Speedos your Mom bough him as a joke because he's really fat, but he still wears occasionally because he doesn't think he's fat. So on behalf of dissatisfied children whose dads wouldn't get them the fancy mongoose bike with the trick chucks and the front rider pegs: "You're not my real father!"

2007-04-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to write about writer’s block? It seems that would be like talking about silence. I’m reminded of that great Steve Martin quote “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” I suppose I’m less suffering from writer’s block than I am stuck under a general malaise of late. It seems all my free time is spent trying find a better job, wrestling with the mechanics of returning to school (hoping desperately that the lack of discipline that soiled my last effort has passed like a bad case of the clap) and trying to come to the ultimate decision if moving back home was a brilliant strategic move, or the worst idea since Greedo shooting first.

Yet, here I sit, deeply needing to write something, and having nothing to write. My thoughts go to the great works about writer’s block: Throw Momma from the Train, 8 ½, Adaptation, and my all-time favorite Barton Fink. If anyone can write a kick-ass movie about writer’s block it’s the Coen Brothers. Barton Fink also happens to be about a bit of advice Ian Fleming gave to aspiring writers “If you have a book that just isn’t getting written, get a hotel room and a bottle of whiskey and don’t come out until you’ve done it.” Funny part is, he never specified what “it “ was, finishing the book or the whiskey.

I suppose I could write about my recent obsession with funny names. Rather, my interest in people whose names fit too perfectly with what they do. The really interesting part is that names like Baker, Jagger, Smith and Hooper were, in their origins, respective to a family’s trade (to save you the Google search, hoopers make barrels and jaggers sell fish). When I called last week to have the windshield in my car replaced because of the cracks and chips, I find out the guy that owns and operates Auto Glass Experts is named Rocky. The guy that oversees my employee 401K and the company’s stock portfolio is name Tom Risky. The guy that rolls his wheelchair downtown all day, back and forth, shaking people’s hands and blessing everyone is named Jack Legg. There’s a woman in Portland with a prostitution rap sheet a mile long named Oralia Cash. This stuff just sticks with me.

Also, perhaps worth mentioning is that charges have been dropped against the New York man that broke into a barn and spray-painted orange the testicles of three of the farmer’s goats. Conspicuously, the article omits why the man vandalized the poor farmer’s goats, but I think a safe bet would be that he was battling with writer’s block and, perhaps, alcohol. Just try and tell me you don’t feel the urge to vandalize animal genitalia after a few cold ones.

I imagine writer’s block is a scary proposition to those who depend on their words for a living, so in that small way, I can be thankful I’m not currently living my dream of writing for a living. On the other hand, if I didn’t have to spend six hours a day on the phone being berated by people with third grade educations yelling at me about “what y’all issurance gonn pay!” then perhaps I wouldn’t be suffering from stress-induced writer’s block.

The funny thing about writer’s block is it’s so specific. Have you ever heard of filmmaker’s block? They call that writer’s block. Painter’s block? Painters aren’t real artists anyway. Wheel-worker’s block? That’s just silly.

Creativity is a tricky thing: inspiration can be here one day, and just vanish the next. An idea for a story may pop into your head while you’re in the shower, and if you don’t scratch a few notes into your stomach with that razor, you may never remember it again. Of course, now I have the work “chicken-monkey” carved into my body and I can’t remember what it’s supposed to mean. No more booze in the morning, seriously.

I guess all I can say is that inspiration is fleeting, so take advantage of when it arrives, be it a picture in your mind you just have to put on canvas, or that Batman symbol you have some strange desire to burn into your front lawn with weed killer. Perhaps it’s the three sets of orange-colored goat testicles that haunt your every waking moment. Be creative, it feels good and makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something (even when, clearly, you haven’t). They call it catharsis; I call it being drunk.

There Must Be Some Kind of Way Outta Here

2007-04-02T08:11:00.001-07:00

"So, how was your weekend?"

What the fuck kind of a question is that? How can any answer be satisfactory?

"Excellent! I found out that you can drink four pints of human blood before you throw up!"

As if Mondays weren't bad enough, some asshole in the office has to spend the first two hours making rounds between the coffee machine, the copy machine, and the cubicles asking everyone how their weekend went. First of all, why do you care? The answer is, you don't. You're just asking everyone about their weekend so, out of politeness, they'll ask you, and you can mention that your five-year-old got his black belt in karate on Saturday. The absurdity of giving a black belt in any martial art to a five-year-old notwithstanding, you need to step away from my cubicle before I put a fucking staple in your eye.

"Not so good, our dog Rusty died. Even worse, he died of worms so we weren't able to salvage any of the organs."

This job is seriously going to kill me, though probably not directly. The actual task of killing me will go to the police officers in the parking lot that mow me down when I exit the lobby with an assault rifle, covered in the blood of my co-workers, especially that guy with the ninja five-year-old. The sweet release of death; even better if I can get it done before lunch.

"It was okay. I think I may have contracted genital warts, though. Would you mind taking a look?"

People always claim that you're not defined by what you do for a living, but that's complete bullshit. Watch any talk show and it's always "Please welcome Dwayne "Dog " Chapman, professional bounty hunter and media slut." This is what he does for a living, and this defines him. What about the guy that works at the coffee shop while going to school to learn how to pretend to be an intellectual? Those activities, working at the coffee shop and going to school, define him until he chooses to change those activities. What about the unemployed asshole that smokes weed and plays Xbox all day? You better believe that people know him as Skeet Ulrich, that guy with no job.

"It was great! After five glasses of wine, my wife finally let me put it in the butt!"

What you "do" does define who you are, at least in an immediate sense. What's the first question you're asked at a party after "What's your name?" and "So, how do you know Skeet?" The routine third question is "What do you do?" I hate that question. I hate it because it's expected that you answer in a sentence or two, and elaboration is forbidden unless you do something really interesting. "I'm a trapeze artist," or "I work the impact hammer at the slaughter house," or "I'm a billionaire media mogul that owns %6 of everything on the earth."

And honestly, is there anything more pathetic that the "qualified answer?" You know, the pieces of shit that state what they do to pay the rent, then follow it up with what they do creatively? "I wait tables at Chesty's Sports Bar, but I'm really an actress. Here's one of my headshots" or "Right now I'm in sales, but I hope to have my novel finished by the end of the year."

The best are those assholes that don't even have any ambition and try to dress up their pathetic jobs. These are the "custodial engineers" and "beauty technicians" of the world.

"My weekend was fine, why, what do you know about it? What did you see? Who are you?"

But what's the solution? Does anyone ever get to do what they want? Imagine that thing you do creatively (everyone has something), now imagine getting paid to do it. Seems perfect, right? Except that now, it's no longer a hobby, it's your job. You've got deadlines and customers and you don't get to do it when you want, you do it because you have to, and that makes it a lot less fun because you're no longer in control. You hit rock bottom right about the time you no longer enjoy that that thing you do, and it becomes just another job you can't wait to quit.

The problem is that there is no answer. There is no perfect job, hell, there's no perfect anything. The best we can hope for is something that keeps our interest, something that doesn't make us want to murder everyone in the office then take our own lives, and something that we can feel just a little good about at the end of the day.

A great quote from Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker is "We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." There's a lot of truth to that, and it applies to many other aspects of life. Instead of waiting for the perfect person, or job, or house, or philsophy (none of which actually exist) you have to find the one that fits best and change yourself to be best suited for it. The very act of compromise makes it more valuable because of the work required to get to a place where you can be happy and feel good about what you do.

Except, of course, for me. There's no hope for me. My job sucks like you couldn't even begin to understand, that that fat ninja-daddy is the least of my problems. But the search is on and I'm certain I'll find a better place for myself soon enough. Maybe at your house.

Perhaps if I started charging memberships to the OTR I could sustain myself, because the generous endowments the Institute receives are barely enough to keep the lights on and fresh ice in my Scotch. If every reader were to contribute a paltry $24.99 per month, I'm confident I could clear upwards of $74.97 each month (don't worry Mom, you won't have to pay).

The Bun is in Your Mind

2007-03-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

The schedule posted on adultswim.com indicates that at 10 PM tomorrow night, they will be playing the world premiere of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters. This, of course, will be the first time a movie has been premiered on television before it's theatrical release. If, perhaps, you ask why they would do this, look to the commercials they've been playing on adultswim that clearly state, "because we're ****ing crazy."

Good enough for me.

Yesterday afternoon, I was plugging that date into my PDA (laugh it up) and noticed something peculiar. Tomorrow, the very date that this unprecented premeire is supposed to take place, is April 1, April Fool's Day.

I think adultswim just spit on my cupcake and called it frosting.

In any case, I'll be watching at 10 pm just to see what they'll be playing, maybe it'll be funny as hell.

I also found the very first appearance of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, on an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast that never aired. Master Shake sounds strangely like Ignignot and Frylock (who has funny curly fry legs) sounds a good deal like Err. Meatwad looks and sounds pretty much the same, except he keeps asking Moltar to kill him.

Okay, SOMEONE has to have a comment on this one...

2007-03-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

...least of all because the woman's name is Raper.

Mother sues Planned Parenthood over failed abortion of baby girl

by Tom Strode—BP News

WASHINGTON — Jennifer Raper did not want a baby, and she underwent an abortion to make sure she would not give birth to one. She has a 2-year-old daughter now, and she wants Planned Parenthood to pay for the child-rearing expenses of the little girl the abortion clinic failed to kill.

Raper, 45, of suburban Boston, Mass., filed a lawsuit recently seeking damages from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, the physician who performed the unsuccessful abortion at the clinic and another doctor who failed to recognize she was still pregnant three months later, according to The Boston Globe.

Raper’s suit does not claim her daughter has any health problems.

In her medical malpractice suit, Raper said she underwent what she thought was a successful abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Boston in April 2004, according to The Globe. She chose to have an abortion for financial reasons, the newspaper reported.

In July, she had a pelvic exam, but the doctor at Boston Medical Center failed to recognize she was 20 weeks pregnant. Only when she went to a hospital emergency room for pelvic pain in late September was she told she was pregnant, according to Raper’s suit, The Globe reported. Her daughter was born Dec. 7, 2004.

Raper’s suit alleges Planned Parenthood and its doctor were negligent for not aborting her child and the other physician was negligent for failing to notice she was pregnant.

Raper’s so-called “wrongful birth” suit will have to undergo review by a panel consisting of a judge, lawyer and doctor to decide if it can go to trial, according to the Globe.

“That the phrase ‘wrongful birth’ exists and a mother would ever conceive of making a legal case out of wishing her kid was never born does always seem to me a clear sign the end is nigh and Judgment Day won’t be merciful to our national soul,” National Review Online Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote about Raper’s suit on a weblog.

How Much Is Your Dignity Worth?

2007-03-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here are your choices:

1. She has no self-respect and she's trying to cash in.
2. She really did eat dog food, and is simply seeking restitution for her pain and suffering.
3. She's been eating dog food for years and made up this story to try to pretend this is not the case, but really did finally get sick.
4. In addition to a regular dog food consumer, she routinely devours light bulbs, silverware and small pieces of doll furniture for a living on a pornographic website.
5. Other (please explain)

Whatever the case may be, she clearly knew that in order to make a claim for damages resulting from the tainted pet food, she would have to admit to actually eating it. Regardless of what the reason may be, that's fucked. Of course, in high school, a guy named Chris and I drank most of a bottle of coconut rum we found in some couch cushions and probably half a box of dog biscuits. Then again, this lady isn't even claiming she was drunk.

Woman sick after eating tainted pet food
CanWest News Service
Sunday, March 25, 2007

An Ottawa woman is recovering after becoming violently ill after eating some of her dog's food, in a case likely related to the tainted pet food that has killed several dogs and cats and sickened dozens more across North America.

In this case, a canine and its master wound up in hospital — Missy at the Alta Vista Animal Hospital and Elaine Larabie at an after-hours emergency room.

[...]

After adopting one-year-old Missy six weeks ago, Ms. Larabie discovered the little dog refused to eat anything but table scraps.

"I was trying to get her to eat," Ms. Larabie said, but Missy’s protest continued. Desperate, Ms. Larabie tried "just a little bite" of the Iams dog food to make the terrier think it was people food, then gave Missy the rest.

"I said, 'It’s not going to kill me to take a little bite' ... but I guess it could have," said Ms. Larabie, who notes the trick worked.

"When I would take a bite, she’d eat it," Ms. Larabie said.

The mealtime routine continued for about two weeks, until both dog and master became sick on March 17.

Check out the rest of the article here.

My Back Hurts!

2007-03-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

From the desk for the Society and Culture editor here at OTR, I wanted to bring to your attention a bold new ad campaign from the makers of Hot Pockets (tm) brand laxatives.

You gotta check out the website too. I fucking hate Hot Pockets, but that Hot Pockets Master dude is kind of funny. Check out the e-cards. The best is "2007 is year of pig. 2007 remined me of you!"

War! uhn. What Is It Good For!?

2007-03-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

Wars sucks, and I’m not just talking about the 70’s funk band with the social agenda (although I hear that “Lowrider” has done wonders for the sales of Marmite).

Death, disease, destruction, violent thinning of the gene pool, and anguish for generations: this is the product of Pauly Shore movies, and war is just a little bit worse. No one with a balanced mind would prefer war to peace, chaos to balance, or Pauly Shore to Corey Feldman, but what you can never ignore is the inevitability of armed conflict or how good Lost Boys is. As ubiquitous as armed conflict is in human history (like Haim/ Feldman in the 80’s), the situations that invariably cause war are even more common: hunger, oppression, religious intolerance, and good old-fashioned greed and hunger for power.

So, in the face of the dire situation where war cannot be avoided, especially since the definition of “war” as we know it constantly changes from simple “armed conflict” to espionage, information wars, technological conflict, Corey Haim’s lame comeback attempt in Bikini Bandits Go to Hell, economic conflict, surgical military strikes and assassinations, we can only look to the bright side of armed conflict: good movies and technology.

The good movies part is obvious: Wars make for good movies, and Corey Haim has never been in a war movie (unless you count Legion and god knows, that doesn’t even qualify as a movie). This is not to say that all war movies are good, but when you consider movies like The Eagle has Landed, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Green Berets, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Flying Tigers, Casablanca, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Ran, The Caine Mutiny and television series like Band of Brothers, it comes into focus. Even fictional wars make for great film: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Starship Troopers, and various other films with the word “star” in them (except for A Star is Born)

As for technology, necessity is the mother of invention, and war is one mother of a necessity. During the campaigns in WWII, for every soldier in the field, firing shells and pushing the Allied forces further into Europe, Africa or Japan, there were three soldiers whose duty was to supply him. Food, clothing, clean water, ammunition, socks, cigarettes, chocolate, lemon powder, gun cleaning kits, more cigarettes, prophylactics and even more cigarettes; your average GI needed almost 70 lbs. of rations and supplies every day. This doesn’t include the massive amounts of fuel needed to operate the ships, airplanes, trucks and jeeps moving back and forth from the front lines. This required a national industrial effort that has never been matched, even to this day.

And American industry is nothing if not industrious. With billions of dollars being thrown around by the Allied governments, the companies that could offer (that “oh-so-American" of standards) bigger, better, faster, more were more likely to get the contracts to manufacture the goods that kept the fighting men fighting.

Most of the following inventions are more precisely described as innovations of evolution, not revolution. Most of the things that made the war winnable already existed, but were made better, more practical or cheaper by technologies developed in the build up to and during the war.

Shelf-Stable Foods

“Canned foods” actually began when Emperor Napoleon issued an invention contest, offering a cash prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could find a way to effectively preserve foods to be transported to his legions of troops, scattered as far away as North Africa. The winner was a man named Nicolas Appert who discovered that vacuum sealing food in airtight containers (he used glass champagne bottles) would preserve food for months. Unfortunately, the heavy glass bottles were impractical and canning didn’t become popular until the early 20th century with the mass production of tin canisters (from which we get the word “can”).

In WWII, every soldier in the field got C-rations, which included canned entrees. Notoriously inedible, they literally provided the fuel for the men who won the war. After the war was over (I suppose there were a lot of cans left over) the rise of foods that were more convenient (read: cheap and indestructible) led to the canned foods we love (or rather, avoid like the plague) today.

Radar

Although the Japanese actually discovered most of the basic principles of radar, their failure to appreciate its applications allowed the British, desperate to find a better early detection system for the constant blitzkrieg bombings from the German Luftwaffe, put the technology to work.

Radar, an acronym stemming from “Radio Detection and Ranging,” has spread from its use in defense coordination to aviation and air traffic control, meteorology, and those assholes in uniform who stand next to their squad cars and point their “radar guns” into traffic right behind an overpass, giving you a fucking heart-attack, even though you know you’re only going five miles over the speed limit.

Penicillin

Although the anti-bacterial attributes of Penicillin were discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928 (due mostly to the fact that he was a slob that kept dirty dishes all over the laboratory and never paid his half of the utilities), the first patient successfully treated with Penicillin wasn’t until 1942 (in America, I might add.)
It’s been thought that the use of Penicillin, even as woefully under-supplied as it was back then, was responsible for saving the lives of an estimated 7.5 million servicemen and civilians.

Penicillin is also a Japanese rock band in the style of “visual kei,” which is just a fancy way of saying they dressed like women and pranced around like fruitcakes, but were way less talented than David Bowie.

Plastics

It started as parkesine, celluloid, bakelite, it even faced competition from organic materials like rubber and gutta percha, but it wasn’t until 1941 that the scientists at DuPont developed a chemically inert, super light weight, inexpensive material known as neoprene. It immediately replaced the much more expensive silk in the parachute and went on to meet endless industrial applications in mass production.

You can tout the “plastic is forever” shit like the hippies do, but never forget that the low cost and complete availability of plastics make modern life what it is today. From the bumper on my Toyota, to the keys I’m typing on now, to the nylon stockings clining to every curve of my hairy legs, to the “Wee Man” XS condoms (ribbed for somebody’s pleasure) that I wear on my shamefully tiny penis, plastics are the building blocks of modern society and sexual perversion.

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons have been […] working for peace in the post-war world. They make the cost of war seem frighteningly high and thus discourage states from starting any wars that might lead to the use of such weapons. Nuclear weapons have helped maintain peace between the great powers and have not led their few other possessors into military adventures. Their further spread, however, causes widespread fear. Much of the writing about the spread of nuclear weapons has this unusual trait: It tells us that what did not happen in the past is likely to happen in the future, that tomorrow's nuclear states are likely to do to one another what today's nuclear states have not done. A happy nuclear past leads many to expect an unhappy nuclear future. This is odd, and the oddity leads me to believe that we should reconsider how weapons affect the situation of their possessors.

-“The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better” by Kenneth Waltz, Professor, Emeritus, Political Science, UC Berkeley

The list goes on and on (and, unfortunately, gets even more boring). However, as the great Richard Dawkins once wrote, “There are innumerable ways to die, but only one way to live.” For every invention that hit the mark and found some, if even minor, use in the war effort, there were countless inventions or innovations that were too impractical, expensive, and sometimes just plain dangerous. The best ones, though, were just really, really fucking stupid.

In his book “My Tank is Fight!” Zach Parsons chronicles the most absurd inventions to arise out of the WWII war effort. The book details everything from wooden jet-packs for Nazi Sturmtroopers, to an attempt by the American Army to invent a tank that could fly, to the P1500 “Monster,” (funnily enough called the “LandKruezer”) which was to be the biggest cannon ever built (800mm) stuck on the biggest tank ever built (200+ tons).

The best one that Parsons writes about, however, is the one in which even the most brain-dead among us can see the flaws: the aircraft carrier made of ice.

It was called “Habakkuk” (a biblical reference, specifically a paragraph having to do with awe-inspiringly stupidity) and the plans put it at 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, displacing 2,000,000 tons of water and was to be made out of 280,000 blocks of Canadian ice. The question “why the fuck…?” comes to mind, following by a headache and a little drooling. The answer is summed up rather well by a great critic of the project, Sir Charles Goodeve:

"Ice," it was pointed out, "was plentiful and didn't sink. Let us build large unsinkable aircraft carriers of ice and thus provide air cover for an attack on a remote and unprotected part of France. Steel limits the size of our carriers to tens of thousands of tons; with ice we can throw off our shackles and build carriers of millions of tons each.
"Ice is plentiful! Ice is unsinkable! Ice is hard! The enemy will never suspect it! Ice will win the war!"

Certainly, the limitations of steel can be endlessly expounded upon, but it does have one distinct advantage over ice: it doesn’t melt. Needless to say, the project soon evaporated (ha!), but I daresay, mostly because the British didn’t have the $70 million dollars it would have required.

Where exactly I was going with this, I don’t know, but what I do know is that people, especially people faced with a hardship like fighting fucking Nazis, come up with a lot of really great ideas, and a lot of really shitty ones. We can all agree war is the worst thing we’ve ever invented (aside from Hot Pockets), but it’s the kind of necessity arising from conflict and fight for survival that puts human ingenuity, an already awesome force, into overdrive.

So next time someone mentions that the war in Vietnam was bullshit, you can say “Hey buddy, without the Vietnam War, we wouldn’t have napalm, or Kevlar, or Apocalypse Now.” That oughta shut ‘em up, unless they look like they’re about 60 years old and they’re missing a leg or something, then it’s best to just agree with them.

A Note From the Management

2007-03-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

If you're like me and tend to read, or perhaps "author" (the word "author" is in quotes because I hate it when people improperly employ "quotations," also, "authoring," as a verb, is a super-pretentious thing to say, much less "type") a blog or website that is irregularly updated (which is the best way to put it, I suppose) but don't want to have to bother with all that RSS, Atom, Gator, SharpReader, BubbleJump, SansaBelt, and various other things I just made up, may I recommend Feedwhip. You subscribe (for free, of course) and they politely send you an email letting you know when that drunken asshole finally gets around to posting some inane shit on that fucking blog you're still checking out every now and again, partly because you want to see just how annoyingly self-depricating he'll pretend to be this week, but mostly to see just how long a single sentence can be, or perhaps how many commas can be used in one sitting.

Also, I think you all need to see this.

Viddy Well Little Brother

2007-03-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

I have a love-hate relationship with television: I love TV, and I hate myself for it.

I love TV because it’s the best way to turn off your brain for as long as you want it turned off. I hate TV because, in the classic “opiate of the masses” kind of way, one could easily argue that after significant exposure to American Idol, The Biggest Loser, The Apprentice and Deal or No Deal, the mind-numbing effects can easily to seep over into the periods of time not spent drooling in front of a cathode ray tube. Optimally, one should spend less time in front of a glowing television, than not.

Groucho Marx once said, “I find television very educating. Every time someone turns on a set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

I love television because, from a purely sociological point-of-view, it’s changed the world fundamentally in ways that could never have been predicted. Instant information bouncing all over the atmosphere twenty-four hours a day, just waiting to be plucked form the airwaves, and usually at no cost to the consumer. How many people do you know don’t have at least one television in their homes?

I hate television because it reminds me of “the wire” from the Ringworld book series by Larry Niven. In Ringworld, narcotics are a thing of the past, and “the wire,” a powered crown that jacks directly into the cerebral cortex of the human brain, is the “stimulant of choice” for those weak of constitution. The crown directly stimulates the pleasure center of the brain, inducing what is at one point described as “an intense orgasm that lasts for as long as you’re jacked in.” In Ringworld, the streets are littered with people, literally wasting away from malnutrition, rolling in their own feces, with ecstatic smiles across their soiled faces. That’s right, it’s just like Eugene, Oregon.

I hate myself for loving television because it’s so pedestrian and, at heart, I’m just a snob that’s better than everyone else. Then I hate myself a little more for thinking that, because I hate people that ascribe to those types of pop notions of intellectual elitism, like those assholes that think there’s nothing to be learned from anything on television. “I don’t watch television” is like some badge of honor for people that can’t actually accomplish anything else with their time other than to pretend to be smarter than everyone else in the room. As if announcing that you haven’t eaten meat in five years is supposed to make us fall to our knees and wipe your feet with our hair. Well, as Jim Gaffigan says, “I haven’t eaten a banana in a month. Big whoop.”

Certainly, “Three’s Company” isn’t going to help you understand the world any better than you already do, but just try to tell me there’s nothing to be gleaned from Mythbusters, or Bullshit! or The Wire. Not just truth, entertaining truth, just like OTR.

On one hand, I constantly fret about all the books I’ll never be able to read before I die. This anxiety has worsened of late, since the Lafayette Public Library just had their annual book sale, resulting in me purchasing more books than I can read in a year, but that’s neither here not there. As much as we’d like to believe that time spent reading good literature is not deducted from one’s lifespan, I think that there’s a grand delusion that all written word is noble, and all television is plebian.

In his book “Everything Bad is Good For You,” Steven Johnson proposes that the beneficial aspect of television and video games is not the subject matter, but the format itself. As a consumer of “good television” (reality shows, low-brow sitcoms and anything involving Howie Mandell will hence-forth be known as “bad television”) you are required to explicate complex plots and storylines, getting a “cognitive workout” that math problems, chess games and the digestion of quality literature would impart. Johnson postulates, “No one evaluates the benefits of chess based on its storyline or monotonically militaristic subject matter.”

Can the best of modern television drama approach the cultural importance of, say , Shakespeare? With certainty. Take, for example, HBO’s Rome. For my money, there’s no better television. Drama, violence, sex, politics, deception, war, rivalry, anguish and mythology, all of a caliber that can only be appreciated in the context of the ancient world. Compared to Shakespeare’s histories (the third and often neglected category of his works) they prove to be, for all intents and purposes, the very same thing: Political intrigue, dramatic rivalry, forlorn affection, savage violence and sex, all set in the exciting and idealistic periods of ancient human history, when men were men, women were women, and a tooth infection was more likely to kill you than an enemy’s arrow.

At his peak, Shakespeare enjoyed great popularity, but was generally considered by the intellectual elite (yes, they’ve been around that long) to be popular drivel with no real meaning, context or truth: precisely the way your typical intellectual snob would describe prime-time television.

However, while a comparison between The Bard and “Everybody Loves Raymond” might be intellectually feasible, you won’t see it in this forum.

The main reason TV gets such a bad rap (aside from Aaron Spelling) is that it’s so ubiquitously available, and as we all know, something everyone else has, is generally just not worth having. The irony is that the near limitless availability of television programming is the medium’s greatest strength. The ability to reach most people, regardless of age, race, wealth or disposition, with a message, whatever it might be, is the alpha and omega of politics, culture and economics.

“I was born in a house with the televisions always on” goes “Love for Sale” by Talking Heads. It’s worth mentioning that David Byrne meant it as a damnation of the culture in which he was raised, but I see it differently. I was also born in a house with the television always on, and I’m smarter, more culturally literate and, if I do say so myself, a good deal funnier and quicker on the draw that those that weren’t.

Pop culture junkies unite! (except for you, Quentin Tarantino, you keep your seat)

Now, am I advocating raising all future generations “Clockwork Orange” style with pliers on their eyes, forcing them to watch re-runs of Green Acres for days at a time? Not yet, but those parents who refuse their children access to the singularly most popular medium of information and entertainment are denying them the cultural literacy and common ground with others upon which modern society is built. Any perceived advantage a TV-less child might have, which no study has ever confirmed, would far out-weighed by their inability to relate to everyone else, especially me.

And the consequences of a world without me are simply too devastating to imagine.

There is one criticism of television, however, that even I can’t defend. As Tom Robbins says, “There’s no better way to avoid a wonderful night of love-making than to spend it watching television.”

At it’s best, television, like literature, cinema, and “legitimate theatre” (the two words have to spoken aloud in a snooty British accent) is engaging, thought-provoking and at times cathartic. At worst, it’s a waste of time. Just like OTR.

Wrong Again, Albert

2007-02-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

I was on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the one from Next Generation, not the original where there were only like six buttons that did everything. We were approaching an unknown planet, and anxiety gripped the officers, though I couldn't explain why. I wasn't the captain (Patrick Stewart was there, but thankfully, Jonathan Frakes was not) but I suppose I was someone important, being on the bridge. Suddenly, my little brother, I'd have to guess to be about six years old, comes off the turbolift and onto the bridge, wearing that ubiquitous red uniform sported by the sad underlings on the ship, and holding a bullhorn in his hand. He raised the bullhorn to his mouth and began to emit this most shrill and nauseating squeal that turned rhythmic and peircing after a second or two, forcing everyone on the bridge, especially yours truly, to cup our hands over our ears and start running about like crazed orangutans.

I was late. Shit.

I jumped out of bed, trying not to dwell on the fact that Ensign Wesley Crusher hadn't been wearing any pants, and started the shower. It was then that I heard the sound of the truck down the street. The garbage truck. Double shit.

No, to answer your question, the garbage had not been thoughtfully placed at the curbside the previous evening. I threw on a robe to hide my bulbous, pasty shame and opened the garage door just in time to catch two scruffy-looking dudes jump off the back of the truck and walk up my driveway to meet me. The first one grabbed the can from me, looking expectantly. In retrospect, he may have been waiting for a tip, but if you're stupid enough to think that some dude wearing only a robe and a pair of crocs has any cash on him, you should be prepared for a long career in waste management.

After the awkward moment passed, the garbage man casually swung open the lid to the garbage can and proceeded to rifle through my garbage right in front of me. In one hand he grabs an empty bottle of booze and and in the other, an old button-down shirt I'd thrown away the day before. He gives me a long, accusatory stare.

In retrospect, in his left hand, he was holding a bottle of Highland Park 12 year single malt, which I'd purchased months earlier for $42.99 to get me through the troublesome Christmas holidays. My other goal was to advertise to any house guests what type of scotch I liked to drink, in case they ever get invited back. If they knew what I drank during the week (J&B, the jug with the handle, $29.99) I'd never get anything else. It just so happened I'd finished the last drops of that sweet, sweet Highland Park the previous evening. In his right hand, he was holding a shirt with a Structure label, a shirt I'd bought years before at a second-hand shop in Boston for $2.00. What he couldn't see was the giant grease stain on the back, or the fact that the ugly shirt never fit me worth a damned anyway.

So there I am, standing in a bathrobe in my driveway at 7:45 AM while the garbage man secretly chides me for living the type of life of which I can only deam, where I drink Highland park every night and throw out designer shirts like so much kleenex.

Well, I thought to myself as I looked at the high-ceilinged, well-proportioned, palatial homes that surrounded our own, welcome to the neighborhood.

Like so many other of my seemingly endless barrage of erstwhile posts, I must begin with an apology. Not only because you, dear reader, have sunk so low as to find yourself reading this drivel in some puerile attempt to amuse yourself, but because, of late, you’ve had so little opportunity to do so.

This will be one of those rare narratives in which I talk about myself, so you may want to get another cup of coffee, and possibly some pink bismuth. Your only solace is that this post will also feature news of the new Maison d’Awesome, the fetching Mrs. Sonnier, the good brindle kitty, and the bad, bad black kitty.

The indomitable duo that is Team Awesome has vacated their previous Pacific Northwest headquarters at Fort Awesome and are proud to introduce you to the newest base of operations: Maison D’Awesome. As an organization, we feel this recent acquisition will strengthen our presence in the ever-growing American South and allow us a more strategic foothold in our plan for global dominance.

First, Acadiana, then the world, then Detroit, then we’ll give Detroit back and apologize.

May I introduce Maison D’Awesome (troublesome crack of lightning added for dramatic effect.) She’s a beautiful three-year old, two bed, two bath marvel located around an artificial retention pond that’s unevenly oblong like a Mike n’ Ike candy. She’s 1,634 square feet with a sweet garage, extra-big lot and, though it cost us a pretty penny, verification by the National Indian Burial Site Survey to be %100 vengeful Indian spirit free (margin of error %10-%45).

This is the great room. Very popular these days. The only drawback is that when you drop a dinner guests’ steak on the floor, they’re seated only a few feet away sipping on that wine you gave them that they never thanked you for. The amount of time you have to deposit spit on said steak is limited: these rooms are only for professional ninja-chefs.

I discovered that the so-called “great room” is not so great as to easily include most of it’s proportions in a single photograph. Alas, you shall have to make due with a tiny sliver of a view from the dining room. You may note beautiful Persian rug the fetching Mrs. Sonnier picked up for us and a recent estate sale. If you blur your eyes and shake your head, the pattern in the rug kind of looks like you’ve inexplicably blurred your eyes and are shaking at your head at a big reddish blob. Awesome.

This is my awesome kitchen. I say awesome because I have more counter space, prep space and storage space than any other human being on the planet. Go ahead, prove me wrong, you’ve never even been here.

The bitchin’ fireplace was definitely a big draw, especially for me. You see, the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is very torn when it comes to fireplaces: like most of us, she feels that a gently crackling fire not only warms the bones on a cold winter night, it also provides soothing ambiance and calmness to a room. On the other hand, Elise seems convinced that at any given moment, a golem of burning embers, comsumed with pure, bloodthirsty rage will spring forth from the fireplace, incinerating any and all who dare defy his will. Thankfully, she just drinks a little more on fireplace nights.

This is the Sweet Baby Kitten. She’s licking the furniture. This caption sort of writes itself.

If you ever find yourself in the unenviable position to be eating a saliva-covered meal prepared by yours truly, you have four seating choices: the dining room, the bar, the precious little breakfast area (pictured here), or your car. If you’re of the Irish persuasion, I would like to recommend your car.

This is our big boring yard. I say boring because we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities. I say big because it fucking huge. Thankfully, Elise’s mother has given us these beautiful rose bushes to liven up the view. See, aren’t the beautiful?

I’m kidding, of course. Once spring hits, these puppies will be throwing out more color than a Turkish butcher shop. And I swear, if I catch you kids fucking with my roses one more time, I’m gonna tan your hide like it ain’t never been tanned.

Our backyard is the future site for the fetching Mrs. Sonnier’s painting studio. I will be overseeing the construction project and personally tending to all the necessary demolition. That’s right, I can build. Once I become a notary, I’ll be a triple threat. As an aside, I’d like to make a small mention of the fetching Mrs. Sonnier’s upcoming art shows at Gallery Hibou here in Lafayette. Snapshots of her recent work can be viewed here.

This is Edgar, and he likes to poop on, in and around inappropriate things. Once again, this caption writes itself.

Once again, I’m limited by aperature. To give you the full effect of our master bathroom, I would have to take about thirteen photos, not only because it, like my genitalia, is so friggin huge, but because it, also like my genitalia, is so oddly shaped. So just picture it, if you can (the bathroom… not my genitalia): sixteen foot ceiling, extra-large stall shower, extra-large Jacuzzi tub and right off to the left, is a walk-in closet. The elephant circus and off a few miles to the east, and the monkey butlers serve your every need.

The weather has not been overly cooperative of late, and it’s been dreary and cold. The sun will soon make its appearance, though, and by then we’ll have much more to photograph. We’re hoping to have the moat installed by the end of the spring and I’ve already begun measuring for the portcullis. As it stands now, we can probably house, feed and defend up to seventeen people once the zombie war begins. If suggest you get your spots early, and remember, no matter what the price, your family is worth it.

To view the rest of the (poorly executed) photographs of the new house, point your browser here.

Equal Parts Harmless and Sad

2007-01-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

“I once caused your cells to shimmer,
and you once caused my cells to shimmer
and now we go all the night
without love.”

-All the Night Without Love by Elvis Perkins

Human beings have been given an immeasurably valuable gift by evolution: extraordinarily large brains. This single physical characteristic represents perhaps the greatest divide between we homosapiens and the rest of the life on this planet. The enormous size of our craniums affect virtually every aspect of our existence, and with every extraordinary gift given in the natural sphere, it comes with extraordinary costs.

Humans, unlike the majority of the creatures on this planet, are extremely fragile, susceptible to illness and injury, and oddly proportioned in virtually every way. Our astronomical craniums are the reason the young of our species are born at such an early developmental stage, usually born only one at a time, and almost always with some difficulty. Have you ever watched a calf or a colt being born? They plop out, mom gives them a lick, and they’re on their own four feet in about twenty minutes, if somewhat wobbly.

Humans, on the other hand, require constant care and protection for the first three to four years of their lives. Why this grand disconnect? Our inordinately large heads, designed to hold our inordinately large brains, have to be pushed though our mother’s ordinarily narrow hips before they get so big they won’t fit at all. This tends to happen around the ninth month. Unfortunately, the human brain does not entirely develop until age four to six.

You women out there try to imagine passing a six-year-old through your vagina and thank the forces of natural selection.

The payoff is obvious: I think therefore I am. We don’t just see the rain and run for cover, we see the signs, we learn why it rains, learn it’s purpose, learn to predict it, and we’re not that far from being able to control it. Old Greek tales of Gods and Monsters would tell of the early days of Man during which the Gods would hunt humans like stock. Certainly, they didn’t have sharp tusks like boars, or strong jaws like lions or swift feet like deer, but their brains made them the most exciting game of all. Instead of simply running from the arrows, they would question from whence they came, and soon enough, would be wielding similar weapons of their own design.

Comparatively, we’re a soft, squishy pink, virtually hairless species that just lucked out to have enough abstract computing power to figure out that when you bang rocks together, you sometimes get a spark. We’ve transformed this strange ability into a myriad of skills that have brought our species, MAN, to the top of the heap. With everything, the golden rule of nature decries, there is a price.

Anxiety, depression, jealousy, hatred, envy, loathing, boredom, these are the prices we pay for our brains. The truly double-edged sword of consciousness and “feelings” is what ultimately sets us apart from the other beasts that call this rock home. Elephants don’t feel inadequate, lizards don’t feel anxious, monkeys don’t feel anguish, animals don’t feel empathy.

Animals don’t love.

Ah, love, the ultimately beautiful and horrible state of the human mind, the emotion to end all emotions, total, inescapable, unavoidable, unconditional and completely mind-bogglingly annoying love. What is love? This is a question that has plagued poets and scientists alike since men first emerged from their caves and stood upright, blinking at the sun.

Is it chemical? It is mental? Is it spiritual?

This very thing that separates us as a species from the beasts, is the very thing that keeps us deeply separate from each other: You can never know what goes on in another person’s head, the same way they will never know what goes on in yours, no matter how many hours they waste at a keyboard blogging to no on in particular, for no particular reason. As a species, we are islands of loneliness in tumultuous seas of subjectivity. As a gregarious species at heart, we may never be truly alone, but as thinking minds, we will never be anything but.

Is love simply what you want it to be? Can the subjective definition of love vary so greatly person to person? If love can be anything, then it can be nothing, and the concept loses all meaning. The ethereal nature of something as simultaneously ubiquitous and rare as love is both simultaneously gratifying and infuriating.

As a married man, in a happy and functional union, I have the good fortune to experience of love on a daily basis, often many times a day (depending on how much vitamin E I can get my hands on). Words alone cannot describe the feeling of looking at another human being knowing the deep value of that love when she pledged it to you in front of both your families, all your friends and a creepy statue of a frowning and bleeding Jesus.

Equally as valuable is when you offered the same to her, and she accepted it without gagging.

Something even the happiest man is rarely reminded of, however, is what it feels like to fall in love. The awkward first steps taken just before you start running towards that cliff edge, hoping desperately that the bungee cord holds and you don’t end up with your overly large brain smeared on the rocks below. As functional as our brains are as storage facilities of memories and knowledge, sometimes, especially after many years, something as important as how you got someplace as hard to find as love, can be a bit fuzzy around the edges. The good news it that the mechanisms of memory work quite well when someone takes the time to remind you.

Required reading for every man is the illustrated novel by Craig Thompson called Blankets. To those that have yet to locate and conquer love, this book will prove beyond the shadow of doubt that the venture is worth the blood, sweat and tears. If you’ve had the good fortune to find yourself in the enviable position to claim love as your own, but got your eviction papers late in the game, this book will be the scrapbook you wish you had, but never had the gumption to make for fear your friends would find it.

Finally, for those of us that enjoy the benefits (and withstand the tribulations) of love every day, this book is a near-perfect journal of youthful obsession and of love that is only felt by the fortunate few.

People often recommend books with phrases like “it changed my life” or “my perspective” or “my opinion” on something as meaningless as opening chess moves or weight loss programs or whether or not Jesus had a wife. This book will do precisely the opposite: It will remind you of how you felt when you first loved, and if you’re lucky enough to still have that person in your life, it will strengthen that love and reassure you of what you already knew: It’s worth it, it really is.

So what is love? The quick answer is (a phrase that has never, and will likely never again appear in this forum) I don’t know. You may as well ask “what is pain” or “what is expression?” For certain, love is not simply what you believe it to be, because beliefs are always changing and fluxing as we grow and know the world a little more, which happens every day. Love is what you know it to be, you just may not have figured out how much you know about it just yet.

I had the good fortune to be the best man at my best friend’s wedding and I was asked to give a speech at the rehearsal dinner. I tried for days to think of something both meaningful and witty to say (I know, shocking that I couldn’t come up with anything, says every reader if this fine forum) but came up blank. The fetching Mrs. Sonnier offered to help, but I assured her I had it all under control. As usual, I was only fooling myself.

For all the people that were gathered that night, I remembered for them a conversation he and I were had some years earlier while we were deciding where to hang our movie posters in our (ill-gotten) apartment. He asked me when it was that you know you’re in love, when does it become clear. I can only imagine that he felt I might have some experience in the matter because the future fetching Mrs. Sonnier and I had been hand-in-hand for several years at that point, as if I had any say in the matter.

Having virtually nothing of any meaning to tell him, I just told him that once you have to ask, you probably already know the answer. This, as it may shock Luke to know, was a huge cop-out. I really didn’t have anything to say, but they seemed to receive it well, nonetheless.

I hope these recently passed holidays found you all well and just rolling in love and good tidings from all directions, requited or otherwise. I also hope you all will accept my apologies for my recent “under-the-radar” status, which hopefully can soon be rectified.

And finally, thanks for reading. I love you all. Like a father. Or perhaps an alcoholic uncle. Something non-committal, and sort of equal parts harmless and sad like that.

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

2006-11-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

Simply saying “the holidays” can conjure up images of warmth and togetherness that are so necessary during these cold and lethargic months. Gatherings where the family awkwardly watches your uncle pour himself another double Old Crow into the mustard jar he’s been sipping from since 10 AM, all the time certain that the “turtleneck” he’s wearing under his off-white, cable-knit, reindeer sweater doesn’t extend past his shoulders. Images of the children, bathed in the yellow glow of the fire, as they sip hot chocolate and stare pensively at the smattering of wrapped gifts under the nearby tree, forcing you to fight the urge to smack them in their respective mouths for being so ungrateful for the food you put in their bellies, the roof over their heads, and the expensive methamphetamine-based narcotics you choke down their throats to dull their senses enough to make decent grades on their geography exams and make it into an ivy-league college, the cost of which will drain you of every last penny like some long-fanged vampire with a taste for retirement funds. The heart-warming memories of cutting into another of your wife’s bone-dry and flavorless turkeys, sawing back and forth at the breast like a hunk of granite, all the time dreading your auntie’s green bean casserole that every year tastes more and more like the cat urine in which her entire home is steeped, your vegan hippie sister’s curried cabbage casserole, which is at that precise moment filling the room with the unmistakable reek of backpacker’s crotch, and your mother-in-law’s fruitcake which, you’re quickly becoming certain, is made from some sort of fissile material that fell to the Earth sometime before life began to stir in the planet’s oceans.

Maybe your uncle doesn’t have such a bad idea after all.

The terrible food, the awkward family gatherings, the obligation to tell everyone that you know doesn’t give a crap “how you’re doing,” the cheap gifts, the uncomfortable silences after someone tells you you’ve had enough eggnog, the old people constantly talking about “waiting for the Lord to take them,” the malcontent teenagers that complain because grandma’s house doesn’t have HDTV and on top of all the personal struggles with which we all must contend during this most heinous of times, every manufacturer, retailer and street-peddler in the industrialized world is desperate to get everyone to spend money they don’t have, to buy shit they don’t need, to give to people they don’t like.

We can speak endlessly about the dangers of consumerism, especially during this time of greed and gluttony, but this ignores the basic tenet that every individual is responsible for their own actions, their own decisions and the consequences thereof. Take a quick look around eBay and you’ll see the new Sony video game console, the Playstation 3, on account of very limited supply, selling for $4,000 and up. Some have even sold in the $8,000 range. Sorry, the ones with auction end prices of $40,000 are just too high to believe, even this time of year when a human’s basic sense of self-preservation is casually thrown by the wayside as they claw a child’s eyes out to get at the last Elmo TMX doll.

In terms of hysteria, these things always have a way of combusting on a fuel of their own creation. Remember the mild hysteria when Microsoft released their next generation console, the Xbox 360? Pathetic losers camped out in front of department stores for days in advance, hoping springs eternal that they be given the opportunity to pay $500 for a few oddly shaped hunks of plastic so they can go straight home and sell it to some even more pathetic loser on eBay for $1000. Interest is peaked, more people see an even better opportunity now, least of all because of the growing holiday gift-chasing paranoia, so even more people can be seen camped out weeks ahead of time, which garners an obscene amount of media attention, both nationally and locally, because with the elections over there’s nothing else worth covering (except possibly the genocide in Rwanda, the Europe-shaking PM elections in France, record low gas prices, etc.) which fans even higher flames of interest, which makes the bidding for the pre-orders on eBay sky-rocket because the most pathetic of the pathetic losers (you guessed it: overpaid, absentee parents) are foaming at the mouth for this one material object they have deluded themselves into thinking will guarantee an intimate and deeply satisfying relationship with their alienated twelve-year-olds.

God, I need a drink.

Look, don’t get me wrong, stuff is cool, especially cool stuff, but there is a limit. Anyone willing to pay %1000+ over retail because your child MUST HAVE this doll or this game or this bike is doing no favors for anyone, let alone the kid. Sure, yours is the only kid on the block with a PS3 or that new at-home tattoo kit, but what has the young lad or lass learned about the most singularly important financial concept that can be taught to an individual that will soon enough be expected to freely participate in this most beautiful of concepts we call capitalism?

In case any of you misguided and self-absorbed parents are reading, the concept is called delayed gratification.

Wanting stuff is normal, don’t let the Commie anti-free marketeers convince you that you should feel guilty for wanting something that’s cool. The wanting is normal, the anger and the resentment and the aggression is not. Buddhists believe that all of life is suffering, and that all suffering stems from desire; that is to say, unfulfilled desires. The logic of the Buddhist is that suffering can only be assuaged two ways: get everything you want, or stop wanting stuff. Since getting everything you want is impossible, especially when you consider that most people don’t even know what they really want, the only achievable goal is to stop wanting altogether.

Of course, this is a lot easier when you live in a monastery in the mountains with no electricity and you’re brain is barely working correctly because all you eat is boiled carrots and no matter how many times you ask, they still give you that funny look when you ask if they have any coffee in the house. Clearly, the life of a committed Buddhist monk is not a realistic option for the typical citizen of industrialized Earth, but there are many lessons we can glean.

Getting everything you want is not a good thing. Aside from being pretty much impossible, it creates unhealthy expectations that can never be achieved, leading to disappointment, resentment and disillusion (read: Buddhist-style suffering). It also only serves to engender a grand disconnect from the other %99.9 of humanity that, not only doesn’t get everything they want, often don’t regularly get what they need. This disparity breeds animosity, discontent and envy. And let’s admit it, we’re a gregarious species, and despite what we tell ourselves, we really do care what other people think about us.

Just think about that douche-bag you went to high school with that drove the nicest car, got all the most expensive toys, and is now in prison for possession and distribution of child pornography. Sub-lesson: sky-high expectations also tend to warp one’s perceptions of behavioral boundaries. To illustrate that point, I recommend you all read The Dirt by Motley Crue.

Clark Howard, a nationally syndicated talk-show host and wildly successful author, speaks about people whose debt outpaces their earnings, a problem that is growing in magnitude in the United States, but also in Europe and Asia. His main point is that there’s plenty of money in the system, and average wealth is the highest it’s been since the economic boom after WWII, but in 2005, for the first time ever, for every $1.00 earned by the average American, they spent $1.01. Mr. Howard calls this a “wait problem.”

The problem is not that this person can’t afford that new car, or that new handbag, or that new computer, or that new PS3, (though, may times this is the case) they just don’t want to wait. That’s where the credit cards, the equity loans, refinances and debt, debt, debt come into play. After interest payments, that $6,000 PS3, paid off three years later (if you’re lucky) cost you $12,000.

Despite this Curmudgeon McScrooge routine, “the holidays” do have their limited charm. The annual box-load of underwear my mom gives me, despite the seventeen pairs she gave me last year have barely been worn, always reminds that she thinks about me all year long….while in the underwear department. The opportunity to buy the fetching Mrs. Sonnier another piece of dazzling jewelry, guaranteeing that tenuous affection she holds for me will last at least another six months (just until the anniversary) is also a bonus.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be watching television at any point during this time of the year, you’ll be bombarded by children’s specials and PSAs and the like explaining “the true meaning of the holidays” (on account of the PC Nazis having virtually obliterated the word “Christmas” from the routine vocabulary”) as a time of giving, and generosity, and family and all that horseshit. Just remember, there is a grain a truth somewhere in there, even if you have to get waist-deep to find it.

What the hell is an aluminum falcon?

2006-10-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

Needless to say, it’s been an eventful and all-consuming week. Then again, if it’s so needless to say, why did I say it?

Because I’m complex.

The drive down was particularly uneventful. By “uneventful,” I mean driving for 14 hours a day for three days will cause a person’s brain to turn into a viscous goo, making it virtually impossible to retain any information input during that time.

A few items of note are the two piles of dog shit outside the hotel room in Evanston, Wyoming, the cows fucking in New Mexico, that decent fried okra can be had at the only gas station in Bellevue, Texas, and that my cat goes into the litter box to fart.

The offices of the OTR Institute are still in the transition period, and for the time being, will be making broadcasts from our secret remote location, that’s right, the same one where they send Dick Cheney when the compressor in the White House refrigerator clicks on and spooks the cook staff. We got our cans of beans and our potable water, try and find us you pigs!

Life is still somewhat surreal, and until I start my new job, I most likely will not be able to shake this feeling that I’m on vacation. However, much like vacation, the familial obligations seem to be piling on the Smurfs at Smuckfest. That’s right, I’m Smurfette.

In the meantime, I’d like to point the attention of my local readers to an organization in its infancy. The Young Professionals of Acadiana is a group that meets monthly to give the nubile corporate fodder in this town the opportunity to shake each others hands and talk about how great they are for a few hours while sucking down imported beers and using words like “litigationary.” All in all, the first meeting was a success, especially for an organization so young, and I wish the heartiest of congratulations to its founder and president, Captain Turdy McPoop-Bottom.

Way to go, Ace.

As the Captain and I were chatting on the sidewalk after the “event,” we were approached by strange-looking fellow in a baggy hoodie. He immediately began to mumble incoherently and hand Luke his driver’s license. I managed to glean a few words from Mush-Mouth, and pieced together that he’d been in prison for something and would like some money, or at the very least a cigarette. Luke gave him some change, and as he turned away, we both immediately left the scene for our respective cars, parked in opposite directions.

About a block away, I began to replay the encounter in my head. “Did he say what I think he said?” I asked myself. I thought about calling Luke as I fingered my cell phone.

Suddenly it rang.

“Did that guy say he was in prison for assault for putting a stick up someone’s ass?” asked Luke.

“Yeah, I heard that too. I think he said he went to prison for sticking something up someone’s ass because ‘that’s how they fuck with you up there’” I replied.

“Yeah. That’s what I heard too.” Luke agreed.

So, who knows what colorful characters you’ll get to meet at the next YPoA meeting. A drunken sailor bent on fondling your kneecap? Perhaps an insane ex-toll booth worker who wishes to extol the group with his fascinating collection of memorabilia from the set of Biodome? I have my fingers crossed for the guy that gets paid to watch paint dry.

In any case, our pirate broadcasts of the OTR Institute’s brainwave patented brainwave-altering info-tainment will be erratic in the coming weeks, until we can find a legitimate base of operations from which to unleash our wretched and rancorous musings on the unsuspecting internet.

Until then, in the immortal words of Wilford Brimley, “Check your blood sugar, and check it often.”

2006-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

America's Poop Idol

2006-10-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

As much as those kooky Libertarians might like to think that we human are beholden to no one, we do, in fact, live in a land (and by and large, a world) that is goverened by basic rules of behavior and standards of law.

There are those, however, that would say that these standards have become so lax over the years as to have lost virtually all of their meaning. Their logic is that with each explitive ridden t-shirt or scantily-clad bimbo, we lose a little bit of the groundwork that holds this whole thing we call society together and takes it one step further into the darkness of chaos and despair.

They might have a point, especially in the legal sense. The limp-wristed, namby-pamby judges we have in this day and age, the very gatekeepers of that rule of law, are letting the baby-boomer "I'm okay, you're okay," "wheatgrass before my morning meditation" mentality seep into their professional lives and ruin it for the rest of us.

I refer you to the case of a Vermont judge who sentenced a man to 60 days in prison for the repeated rape of a seven-year-old girl. According to Judge Edward Cashman, "The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul."

Yeah, thanks. I'm sure that's gonna help that little girl sleep at night.

As it turns out, there a whole shitload of things you can get away with, even if you do them RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE.

From Brietbart.com

A Chicago man apologized for spreading his feces around a courtroom during his trial on drug charges.

Vandale Amos Willis, 28, apologized Wednesday before being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Willis was convicted earlier of importation of a controlled substance, cocaine, and two other charges.

"Im going to take full responsibility for everything I did in Duluth," Willis told the court. "I want to apologize for everything I did in court. Im sorry, your honor."

He asked Judge David Sullivan to put him on probation. Sullivan told Willis his actions wouldn't be held against him, but there was no reason to depart from sentencing guidelines.

Ladies and gentleman, we have officially reached crisis point. When a man can smear his own feces in a hall of public justice, and have the judge, or any human being, offer him a shred if sympathy, we have crossed the raging river of despair and entered into dark, dark territory.

An Invitation

2006-09-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

You are cordially invited to view and contribute to the latest collaborative effort of Misters Scott and Zachary Sonnier, The Salt Makers.

The Salt Makers is a discussion forum, open to any and all, to discuss the topics of politics, pop culture and any other items of interest. You are invited to contribute to any discussion by responding to a post by any of our members, or by posting to the blog yourself. You may simply post a link to a news item you find of particular interest, or regale us with your opinion on the current farming techniques of Indo-China.

To become a contributing member, simply send a message to the site administrator at scott.sonnier[at]gmail.com.

All opinions are welcome, as are any disagreements. The purpose of this forum is to promote discord and discontent through rigorous debate.

"Debate and divergence of views can only enrich our history and culture." -Ibrahim Babangida

Thank you,

The Salt Makers Team

Darth Vader is an Asshole

2006-09-17T23:07:00.000-07:00

I swear every time I watch this, I laugh a little harder.

Ely (noun): The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.

2006-09-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

I can still remember the day vividly. I came into work on the morning of May 11, 2001, sat down at my desk and powered on the shitty terminal (not computer) I used to enter data for eight hours a day into a database system that was perhaps three generations from punch cards and beads on string. Howie, the raggae-junkie-jew that sat across from me had been staring at me like a freshly packed gravity bong from the moment I walked in.

This, however, was not unusual.

I ignored Howie, hoping like hell he wasn’t trying to clean up again (he tended to get either violent or extremely emotional) and sipped the muddy water Dunkin’ Donuts calls coffee. I could feel his bugged out eyes on me like two balloons being rhythimcally smashed into my face.

I was really not in the mood for this shit.

“Did you hear?” Howie asked. “Hear what?” I responded, dreading the response.

“Douglas Adams is dead.”

You know that camera trick they do in movies when they move the camera closer to the subject while they zoom out with the lens? It makes the subject zoom closer, while the background zooms backward, giving the illusion of time and space bending slightly along the edges. As a viewer it gives you that feeling of vertigo and dissolution. That’s what it felt like.

I went to the nearest actual computer, (that douche-bag Marina was out again with a coke hangover or maybe another STD) and looked it up. It was true. He’d had a heart attack. That blonde California cunt he’d married, the one that got him to quit drinking and smoking and start exercising, she did this to him. He started feeling chest pains while on the treadmill. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital.

I was devastated. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I really was. I had read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at the tender age of thirteen and had since acquired and devoured everything he had put his name to, including some very rare and limited titles like A Last Chance to See and The Meaning of Liff. The man was an icon, a demi-god. He smoked and he drank and he slept late, he was funny as hell and he was the picture of half-drunk effort transmuting into incredible success, a trait I find extraordinarily endearing.

Of all the reasons I was so distraught, the ones that really got to me were the most selfish. Sure, the world had lost an incredibly intelligent, amiable and hilarious writer, and little Polly had lost her father at the tender age of seven, but all I could think about was the fact that I would never read another work by Douglas Noel Adams. This later turned out to be false, but unfinished The Salmon of Doubt, posthumously published, made the void of his absence in this world just a little darker, not brighter.

What affected me the most was that I was never going to meet him. I know it sounds weird, but I had always assumed that one day, somehow, I would get to meet him, shake his hand, and let him know how important his works were to me as a developing self-loathing alcoholic and under-achiever.

But it will never happen.

In deference to the great loss I was feeling, that very weekend, Elise and I bought a adorable gray and white dwarf hamster and named him Douglas. The cat, however, promptly drowned him in the toilet.

Anyway, the reason I’m regaling you with this tear-drawing narrative, is to punctuate precisely how I did not feel when I came into work on the morning of September 4, 2006. I was in the kitchenette making a pot of coffee and Perry, the coffee freak I made fun of a while ago, now our administrative guru (read: secretary) came out of the bathroom. As he wiped his hands on his jeans he said, “Hey, did you hear Steve Irwin died?”

“Yeah.” I said, as I tried to figure how the damned pot turned on. I mean, there were three buttons, and none were marked. Who the hell designs a coffee pot with three unmarked buttons? How many things can a coffee pot do that it needs three buttons?!

Needless to say I was not devastated. No offense to those of who will sincerely miss the old Crocodile Hunter, but I always thought he was a bit of a joke, and frankly, seemed to take great pleasure is annoying dangerous creatures by smacking them in head and shaking his kakhi-clad bottom in their venomous faces. Fortunately, this made watching his television specials kind of enjoyable. After dinner one night at the mother-in-law’s house, we found ourselves rolling on the carpet, watching Steve Irwin repeatedly slap a black mamba in the face, warning the viewers at home (on account of Black Mamba’s being so common in the Detroit area) to never attempt such a thing.

As it happens, last year, my mother-in-law was in Australia visiting a friend, and got me some Steve Irwin postcards from a local Toyota dealership. They pictured the Croc Hunter jumping into the air like a Kansas City faggot next to a Four Runner with the word “CRIKEY!” hovering above his head. They were great fun, and the three days the fetching Mrs. Sonnier let me keep them on the fridge were equally so.

Yesterday I got an email from the mother-in-law. The email stated that, in addition to the postcards, she’d coerced the guy at the dealership to give her some promotional posters picturing Mr. Irwin wrestling stuffed animals for the sake of letting everyone know that genuine Toyota parts were vastly superior (crikey!) to non-genuine Toyota parts. In light of Mr. Irwin’s untimely demise, she thought that they might be worth some money, so she looked online and found a signed Croc Hunter poster on eBay that sold for over $3,500!! ($3,500 AU = $2,600 US)

Now this is about the time my skepticism takes front seat, sticks his thumb in the belt of his trousers and says “bullshit” just loud enough for everyone I the room to hear.

The question is: Did this transaction actually take place? Or perhaps is this just a ploy to generate freakish interest in other posters this guy has listed?

It wouldn’t be unheard of for some guy to create an account just to “buy” his own poster to freak people out and make them think his other posters are worth more money. I find it extremely dubious that since the slae of this poster, two more have sold in the neighborhood of $2,000, and the next most valuable signed poster sold for a paltry $800.

This is where I run into questions about my implacable love for the human race. Could someone really be this stupid? I mean, this is not John Lennon or even JFK Jr., this is a friggin’ Aussie hillbilly with a mullet and penchant for reptiles.

In any case, the listings I made for the mother-in-law’s posters was removed, presumably for a violation of terms and conditions. The listing stated that a “portion” of the proceeds would go to conservation charity (I just cut and paste the item description she emailed me) which apparently is against the law.

Is my skepticism getting the best of me on this one, or do you think some asshole might really be willing to pay $3,000 for a signed poster of the sexiest man in kakhi?

I must admit, however, that with just a little digging, one can find innumerable examples of Steve’s death sending shockwaves throughout the world. The guys over at Super Awesome WOW have concocted (by that I mean cut and paste) a list of Chuck Norris-like facts about Steve Irwin. My favorite is “Steve Irwin took revenge on the stingray by piercing its heart with his penis.”

A flash game by the title of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” has been making its way around the internet. The purpose of the game is to guide Steve’s widow (a native of Eugene, OR, if anyone cares) through a sea of stingrays, blasting them with her trusty shotgun and a handful of “croc-bombs.” There are few things more endearing than tasteless humor.

And on the subject of revenge, fans of the work of Mr. Steve Irwin (which, if you’ll remember, was conservation) having been smiting stingrays on the coast of Queensland. According to the authorities, since Mr. Irwin’s death, at least 10 stingrays have been found dead with their tails chopped off at Dundowran Beach and Deception Bay. This is, of course, equivelant to burning down rum distilleries after the death of Ernest Hemingway, just because you loved him so much.

So maybe people really are that stupid. Maybe that same guy that brutally murdered those stingrays is the same guy that bought that damned poster for $3,000. Maybe he dresses up like Terri Irwin and wrestles with his life-size Croc Hunter doll. Maybe he plays hours and hours of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” with tears streaming down his face. Hell, maybe it is Terri Irwin.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2006-09-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

September 07, 2006 12:00am

FOUR prisoners in an El Salvador jail hid mobile phones, a phone charger and spare chips in their bowels so they could co-ordinate crimes from their cells, prison officials said today.

The men, all gang members, wrapped their phones and accessories in plastic and inserted them into their rectums "far enough to reach their intestines," Ramon Arevalo, director of the maximum security Zacatecoluca prison, said.

Mr Arevalo said the ruse was discovered during X-ray examinations following six weeks of investigations.

The men, members of the ultra-violent Mara Salvatrucha street gang and the first in El Salvador known to go to such lengths to make phone calls in jail, used the mobile phones to manage robberies, blackmail and murders outside, Mr Arevalo said.

The Zacatecoluca prison is also known by the nickname "Zacatraz," after the US island penitentiary Alcatraz.

Zacatecoluca is about 65km east of the capital San Salvador and currently home to 337 inmates.

The Land Down Under, A.K.A., The Bush

2006-09-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

There are those that would refer to our current global situation as an "energy crisis." I find it flabergasting that people can so quickly forget even recent history and all the damage Jimmy Carter did during his term, specifically the oil embargo crisis of 1973.

If we were to learn anything from that fiasco, it's that the more the government gets involved in trying to solve problem of supply and demand, the worse that problem will become.

On the other hand, the beautiful mechanisms of capitalism allow responses well beyond the confines of even the specific industries affected by "crisis." In Japan, for example, the crisis of the mid-Seventies caused major industry to recuse from global petroleum and invest heavily in another fast growing and potentially profitable industry: electronics.

Well, as the the giant said, "It is happening again."

From Reuters:

Brothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks.

"If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we'll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter," Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

There is no link between brothels, petrol providers or supermarkets but brothels like The Site and Madame Kerry's say the system is simple.

Once you've filled up your car, bring your receipt to the brothel and they'll discount the price of your visit.

The bill for a full 50-liter tank at 126.9 cents per liter comes to A$63.45 ($48.22). With the offered 20c a liter discount, the petrol bill would have instead come to A$53.45.

That A$10 difference is taken off the A$150 cost of a 30-minute session with one of the brothel's "service providers."

That's one of the innumerable beauties of capitalism. You don't even have to be a part of the affected industry to try and make a difference, to help people, and to make money doing it. Of course, the down side is that, in order to take advantage of the money-saving offer, you have to sleep with an actual Australian woman.

It Is Happening Again...

2006-08-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

Dr. Richard Dawkins, British zoologist, famed anthropologist and expert on Darwinism, took on the hefty task of discussing design vs. evolution in his 1996 collection of essays Climbing Mount Improbable. In these essays, Dr. Dawkins illustrated the differences between things that had clearly been designed by intelligent beings (his example is Mount Rushmore) versus singularities he called “designoids.”

“Designoids,” to quote Dr. Dawkins’ text, are “artifacts of the natural world that appear to be designed, but have in fact been shaped by a magnificently non-random process which creates an almost perfect illusion of design.” The obvious response to that statement is: what the hell does that mean?

“I chose Mount Rushmore, because to live in a country where you can take an ugly old mountain and put faces on it, faces of great Americans, who did so much to make our country super great, well that makes me - Rebecca Leeman – proud to be an American!”

Let’s return to Mount Rushmore for a moment. When you gaze upon the faces of those national figures protruding from the face of the mountain, never for a moment would anyone entertain the idea that these detailed visages were the work of anything other than the hand of the eccentric Gutzon Gorblum. It’s clear to anyone that even the combined and indomitable forces of wind and rain could not be responsible for something so precise and unique.

“Designoids” fall somewhere outside this realm. At first glance, they may seem like natural occurrences of rock or trees or whatever, but after a closer inspection, things that are familiar and strange become clear to the viewer, and it’s about this time that we start looking around for the hidden camera.

Take, for example, the samurai crab. Called “heikegani” in Japanese, these small crabs, like most crabs, feature ridges and bumps on their carapaces where muscles attach to the interior of their exoskeletons. By a strange evolutionary accident, the bumps and ridges on the back of the heikegani resemble the typically stylized face of an angry and determined samurai warrior. Imagine yourself as a Japanese fisherman about a thousand years ago, pulling up a net full of delicious crabs, only to look at their backs and see a whole phalanx of samurai warriors staring back at you.

Another fine example of a “designoid” is the famous basalt rock formation in Hawaii that strikes an eerie resemblance to the profile of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The point is that the formations on Mount Rushmore were clearly designed to resemble human faces, while the heike crab and the JFK basalt cliffs were not, though our brains process the images in much the same way. That is to say, humans are hard-wired to see human faces everywhere.

The unique combination of eyes, nose, and mouth is easily the most important and distinguishable feature for the human eye and that of our close primate cousins. When we encounter another human being, we look them in the eyes and we examine their face, this is how we determine the mental and emotional state of the person with whom we are interacting. An unfortunate side-effect of this psychological focus on the face is that humans see faces in everything. Any pattern that remotely resembles the arrangement of features or shading on a human face will trigger that same psychological response. Even when we’re babies, we look to human faces for comfort and cues, and by extension, we look for, and see them, everywhere from grilled cheese sandwiches to Chicago underpasses.

This common psychological fixation becomes a problem when a person’s spirituality, already an exercise in masturbatory self-delusion, takes them from perfectly functioning human machine, to the poster boy for “this is your brain on Jesus.”

In case you hadn’t heard, Jesus and his mom have been spotted again. In fact, Jesus has been quite busy recently, his holy visage appearing in everything from dental x-rays, to shower curtains. Mary, on the other hand, has maintained the good taste only to appear in delicious chocolatey treats. I suppose this is the closest we’ll ever get to Tom Waits’ “immaculate confection.”

Over the years, I’ve come to terms with my implacable atheism. I no longer feel the urge to throttle that guy that tries to give me pamphlets explaining how I’m going to suffer for all eternity in “the fires that burn but do not consume” because I won’t kneel in front of two sticks nailed together for an hour once a week. I’ve relegated myself to a combination of quaint understanding and pity. This man truly believes that the holy bible is the inimitable word of god and that if he does not follow its tenets, he will be punished. Frankly, if I truly believed that, then it would only seem logical that I would try and save other souls from perpetual suffering, right?

But when I read about these fucking morons that see Jesus in apartment windows and chocolate drippings, however, it just makes me want to spit. I cannot imagine how brain-dead, deluded and childishly ignorant someone must be to entertain the thought for even a second that the lord and savior of all humanity, the lamb of god, the son of the almighty creator would show himself to his faithful subjects in a dental x-ray.

“You know, dad, Javier has been a faithful subject for his whole life. He’s a good man that keeps your word to heart, follows my earthly example and cares for his family and his community. He is truly of the faithful flock. I think I’ll show myself to him, this day, to show our appreciation for his virtue and faith. I know, I’ll put my face in the x-ray his dentist took to see if he need a root canal!”

And why is when these people see Jesus in their omelet or on the mud pattern on the bumper of their '89 Buick Skylark, it’s always the stylized, western Christianity’s version of Jesus with the pale skin and well-combed beard that you see on candles in Mexican restaurants? If Jesus really were making his face known to his flock, wouldn’t he actually use his real face?

First of all, we know Jesus of Galilee was real because he’s mentioned in several Roman historical records, most importantly, that of the great Herodotus. Secondly, fossil records, realistic portraits and description along with anthropological and ethnic evidence, historians have a pretty good idea of what most people from that are, and by extension, what Jesus looked most probably looked like.

The amusing possibility is that the real face of Jesus, the one pictured above, could be appearing in milkshakes and oil stains around the country, but no one is recognizing it!

I keep thinking about that part in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when Ford Prefect is explaining to Arthur Dent how he got to Earth in the first place:

“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended," said Ford. "I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years."

"But how did you get there in the first place then?"

"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really."

Perhaps these appearances of Jesus’ face in fruit salads and tattered car upholstery are actually elaborate practical jokes by aliens. But then, of course, that would get all of these brain dead assholes off the hook.

The fact is that it’s normal to see faces everywhere, but to twist that strange psychological tendency into a spiritual manifestation, you’re doing more to slow the advancement of your cause than anything else. Seriously, would you convert to a religion whose singular epitomic symbol of humanity and divinity kept saying “hey!” to his followers by showing his face in sandwiches and on the bumpers of cars that never get cleaned? Not likely.

I could end this blog with something thoughtful and poignant, like “look for salvation in yourself,” or “the face you should celebrate every day is the one in the mirror,” but Vinay would just make fun of me for it. So if you see Jesus, or Buddha, or Ganesh, or whomever, in your tomato soup at lunch tomorrow, tell them I said they’re a pussy, and if they don’t like it, you tell ‘em to come see me. I’ll be having roast beef with extra horseradish. They’ll know where to find me.

OTR Institute Sociological Survey #6

2006-08-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

I remember waiting in line at the USL bookstore to get all the texts I would need for my first semester in college. Two anthropology books, three for british literature, two for philosophy, and more I can't remember (mostly, because I never went to those classes). Of course, I had gotten drunk the night before (read: Donovan brushed his nipple with Luke's toothbrush), and though I lived only a block away from the bookstore, I still got there too late to get any of the used books.

I still remember looking at that first anthropology text, seeing the price tag of $74.00, and promptly shitting in my pants. If memory serves correctly (which it rarely does when when I'm trying to remember anything that occurred between 1998 and 1999), I spent about $200 on books that day, and I got off easy.

While this is not a new discussion, retailers and service providers have been trying to further saturate the college markets for decades, but with the rising cost of education, perhaps it is time to re-visit this issue.

Query: If it would reduce the cost significantly, and in some cases entirely, should advertisements be allowed in college textbooks?

If not, why? If so, with what restrictions, if any?

For centuries newspapers, magazines and innumerable other publications have survived solely on adevrtising revenue. It allows retailers, etc. access to the intelligent and literate market, while the newspapers can provide their product at little or no cost to the comsumer. It's win-win.

From the Associated Press:

New idea to cut textbook costs — sell ads

Minnesota firm will offer more than 100 titles this fall — completely free.

Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won’t pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have ads for companies including FedEx Kinko’s and Pura Vida coffee.

Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, Web sites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model hasn’t spread to college textbooks — partly for fear that faculty would consider ads undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 per year.

Now, a small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall — mostly for business courses — completely free. Students, or anyone else who fills out a five-minute survey, can download a PDF file of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print.

I pose the question to you, my savvy and attractive readers (except for you Vinay, you are neither savvy nor attractive). What do you think?

How Sweet It Is

2006-08-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

The fetching Mrs. Sonnier sent an email to me this morning asking for my impression. The email is reproduced below, unedited.

From the June 2006 Idaho Observer:

Aspartame - The World's Best Ant Poison

contributed by Jan Jensen of WELLthy Choices.

We live in the woods and carpenter ants are a huge problem. We have spentthousands of dollars with Orkin and on ant poisons trying to keep themunder control but nothing has helped. So when I read somewhere that aspartame (Nutrasweet) was actually developed as an ant poison and only changed tobeing considered non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot moremoney could be made on it as a sweetener than as an ant poison, I decided to give it a try. I opened two packets of aspartame sweetener, and dumpedone in a corner of each of our bathrooms. That was about 2 years ago andI have not seen any carpenter ants for about 9 to 12 months.

It works better than the most deadly poisons I have tried. Any time theyshow up again, I simply dump another package of Nutrasweet in a corner,and they will be gone for a year or so again. Since posting this information I have had many people tell me of their success solving antproblems with this substance, when nothing else worked. We found laterthat small black ants would not eat the aspartame. It was determined that if you mixed it with apple juice, they would quickly take it back to thenest, and all would be dead within 24 hours, usually. I have found thatsometimes it will kill them, and sometimes it does not. Not sure why, may be slightly different species of ants or something.

Fire Ants: We got our first fire ant hill about 2 weeks ago. Poison didnot work. We tried aspartame and the ants ignored it until we got a lightrain. It was just a sprinkle, enough to moisten the Nutrasweet and ground,but not enough to wash it away. They went crazy, hundreds of them grabbingit and aking it back into the mound. When I checked he mound 2 days later, there was no sign of the fire ants. I even dug the mound up some, and still saw none of them.

How does it Work: Aspartame is a neuropoison. It most likely kills the ants byinterfering with their nervous system. It could be direct, like stopping their heart, or
something more subtle like killing their sense of taste so they can't figure out what iseatable, or smell, so they can't follow their trails, or mis-identify their colonies members, so they start fighting each other. Not sure what causesthem to end up dying, just know that for many species of ants it willkill them quickly and effectively.

As with any poison I recommend wearing gloves and washing any skin areas that come in contact with this poison, and avoid getting it in your mouth, despite anything the labeling may indicate.

I read this email with my usual mixture of amusement, remorse and rage. As if there isn’t enough bullshit, misinformation, propaganda, sophism and fraudulence out there that we need some douche-bag making stuff up to try and cause hysteria about something as inconsequential as Sweet N’ Low. In preparation for the post that I would write about this, I started looking on some websites that deal specifically in debunking the hoaxes that get emailed to us by our gullible and overly concerned mothers. My first stop was Snopes.com, a personal favorite, but aside from an email hoax about aspartame causing cancer and multiple sclerosis, there was nothing about carpenter ants.

Curious, I thought, and dug deeper into the miasma that is the Internet. I found the original article, indeed printed in the Idaho Observer in June 2006. Just to give you a quick impression of this publication, you’ll find other articles with names like ""The Tyranny of Modern Medicine," "Foreigners Buying Up American Roads & Bridges," "The Miraculous Healing Power of Oak Bark," "America: Freedom to Fascism," "Chemical Control of the Mass American Mind," and many more. We can safely assume this monthly newsletter is printed on an Epson Stylus 860 in the underground bomb shelter of a man that possesses an extensive aluminum foil wardrobe.

Having determined that the Idaho Observer is your run-of-the-mill, brain-dead conspiracy theory/ alternative healthcare drivel, I delved further to find more info on the article’s author.

Ms. Jan Jenson is a "health coach," whatever the fuck that means, and operates a blog called "Wellthy Choices" where pretty much all she does is try and whip up aspartame hysteria and hock a dietary supplement called "E3: The Most Vital Wild-Grown Superfood on the Planet!" In case you’re wondering, it’s seaweed.

Well, not much interesting info there, so I jumped back into the deep end, where all I found were endless "modern health" discussion forums where asshole after asshole had simply cut and past Ms. Jenson's article (spelling errors and all) into a post, which was followed by endless antecdotal responses like, "My dog one ate a packet of Nutrasweet and vomited up a tennis ball! I’m never drinking that stuff again!"

And then I found this on Spoof.com:

(In case you are not aware, TheSpoof.com is very much like The Onion)

FDA Certifies Aspartame as Ant Poison

WASHINGTON (AP)—The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has certified the popular sweetener aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, as an ant poison."Aspartame was originally developed as an ant poison and it was only changed to being non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot more money could be made on it as a sweetener," said FDA chief Ralph Roachman. "We are just notifying the public and industry about the original and best use of this stuff."He continued, "That crap kills ants dead. It works on carpenter ants, silverfish, roaches, and almost anything in fact. You just gotta open a coupla packets of aspartame sweetener and dump them in a corner of each of the rooms with the infestation. It works better than the most deadly poisons we have tried. Any time they show up again, simply dump another package of NutraSweet in a corner, and they will be gone for a year or so."

The FDA found that certain types of insects like small black ants will not eat the aspartame, but scientists determined that if you mix it with apple juice, they would quickly take it back to the nest, and "all would be dead within 24 hours."Aspartame is also effective against fire ants, but the poison may not work until it is lightly sprinkled with a light rain or a garden hose, with just enough water so as to not wash it away. One FDA technician observed, "After I wetted the NutraSweet the fire ants went crazy with hundreds of them grabbing it and taking it back into their mound. When I checked the mound 2 days later, there was no sign of the fire ants. I even dug the mound up some, and still saw none of them."FDA scientists know that aspartame is a neuropoison which kills ants by disrupting their nervous system and their hearts and their senses."Ants start acting weird, they begin fighting and having wars, and they end up dying," noted an FDA research paper.

An FDA consumer guide on the use of the poison recommends wearing gloves and washing any skin areas that come in contact with it since it is so toxic, and avoid getting it in your mouth, despite what consumer labeling may indicate. Aspartame is also effective against other insects such as yellow jackets, wasps, praying mantises, and certain other higher lifeforms.

In case you haven’t realized, or maybe too much saccharin has affected your attention span, Ms. Jan Jenson plagairized, virtually word for word (with the addition of numerous, unforgivable grammatical errors), an article from TheSpoof.com, without realizing that it was a joke.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you believe just anything that you read in the mass emails that are forwarded to you by your nervous Aunt Tilly, you are dumber than even the OTR Institute can assuage. You’re the kind of person that buys those curly shoelace things because you can’t remember what hole the rabbit goes into. You’re the type of guy that keeps a lot of rubber coated spoons in the house because if you lost another eye, they would fire you from the Sierra Club board of directors.

You define stupidity, and you have an obligation to kill yourself immediately, if only to spare the rest of us from having to change your diapers and explain to you where toast comes from.

To you, Jan Jenson, I call you to the carpet to answer these allegations. You are an fool because you thought no one would ever find out what you did, and you are a fear-monger because you try to take advantage of people’s lack of information to sell them grass in a capsule. Unfortunately, the type of people that read publications like the Idaho Observer are not interested in truth, only the twisted bits of fabricated bullshit that people like you disseminate, and would never think to check your facts, or even questions your motives.

And to you, the editors of the Idaho Observer, the tracking device was implanted inside of your eyes, see if you can guess which one!

As an aside, I would like to state that these bloodsuckers find it so easy to spread this misinformation simply because this is such an inconceivably inconsequential issue. If you're interested in reading some actual facts about aspartame (and god help us if you are) you can find them here:

American Council on Science & Health

United States Food & Drug Administration

Health Canada

Toilet Humor

2006-08-04T08:48:00.000-07:00
Luke is totally right. YouTube is the coolest thing since BevMo.com (except for the teenage morons that think we want to watch them breakdance in ther basements).

Case in point:

I can't decide which is funnier: The fact that these poor people are exposed to the public while relieving themselves, or the fact that Japanese men apparently straddle fruit bowls with their pants around their ankles in order to pee. That's just not right.

Help a Brother Out...

2006-08-03T16:46:00.000-07:00
Woody Allen has been trying to figure out women, and making movies about it, for about the last 300 years. Instead of getting any closer, I think it's obvious that he's pushed us, as a gender, further into the abyss than ever before. That Men Are From Mars... fancy lad John Gray certainly didn't get us any closer. He used to live under a vow of celibacy, for god's sake!

And don't even get me started on the myriad of daytime messiahs like Dr. Phil and Montel. Their respective loafer lightness is more likeley to get us an unwelcome green room cop-a-feel than any meaningful advice on relationships.

Ladies, we just don't get you. Some would say that it's this very inability for the the sexes to comprehend each other's motives and desires that makes relationships so interesting in the first place. Like most men, I fall somewhere in between the "vive la difference" camp and the "why do I have to put the toilet seat down, but you don't have to leave it up?" alliance.

One sure thing, however, is that we need to stick together. That being said, I hope someone out there, who can actually use it, will buy this. I mean, there are limits to what even liquor can impart the ability to endure.

Of Apologies and Rotten Meat

2006-07-28T13:17:00.000-07:00
First of all, allow me to apologize to you, my small, yet dedicated corps of readers (especially you, Mom) for my recent absence. The reasons include hail storms, car trouble, cross-country treks, and sectarian unrest in the Middle East, just to name a few. In any case, I would like to announce my triumphant return.

In case the word has not spread to the outer reaches of the galaxy as yet, myself and the fetching Mrs. Sonnier, have determined to uproot ourselves from our quiet, comfortable lives in the temperate Pacific Northwest to relocate in the muggy, moist and humid climate that bore us: Louisiana. This was not an easy decision, given the multitude of wonderful friends, sweet house, great jobs and smelly hippies at our disposal here in The Rose City, but it was inevitable. Who wants an easy, non-eventful life, anyway? Especially one that could potentially involve a firebrand like Jillian?

So, the house is on the market, the resumes are in the pipeline, and between keeping the house immaculate for potential buyers and stressing about job prospects in a much smaller town, the fetching Mrs. Sonnier is on the verge of mental breakdown, and by extension, so am I.

In case you guys have yet to experience this little slice of hell, selling a house is like selling a child: you can’t imagine how ANYONE could look at it and not fall in love immediately, and if you were to hear anyone say anything less that wonderful about it, you’d be fully prepared to belt them in the mouth. The act of belting a potential buyer in the mouth, however, has been known to have detrimental effects on the ability of a house to sell (or a child, for that matter), so our agent politely requested that we not be home when the house is being viewed by the general, punch-me-in-the-mouth public.

Last Tuesday, the first day Casa de Awesome was available for purchase on the market for an unreasonably low amount of money, our agent hosted what she described as a “broker’s open.” This is an open house intended specifically for other real estate agents in town to get to know the house so that if they have clients that think might be interested, they can bring them by at a later date. I was not allowed to attend, and resigned myself to chew on my fingers as I sat in the office and pretended to work (a skill at which I excel).

The broker’s tour ended at 1:00 PM, and so around 1:30, I made my way over to Kanda’s house to collect our cats from their play date. Once home, I got to work upstairs in my office (where, interestingly enough, I’ve gotten good at pretending to not work). A few minutes later a knock came on the door.

It was an agent named Sandra. She had fully intended on coming to the broker’s open, but had gotten caught up and could she take a look at the house now? Sure, I said, and ushered her into my unnervingly clean home. She ooohed and aaahed at the boxed ceiling and the laminate floors (total bullshit: no one ooohs at leminate floors, no matter how nice they are) and commented on how nice the house was and how appropriately priced as well (sneer). We made our way upstairs and then back down, and then she asked to see the backyard. I opened the door and showed her the fetching Mrs. Sonnier’s painting studio and the excellent fruit trees, and blah blah blah.

Oooh and aaah.

She made her way back toward the house, and, being the perfect gentleman, I stepped forward and opened the back door for her, ushering her back into the house. As I stepped in, I noticed something on the floor that had not been there only minutes earlier. The bigger (and stinkier) of our two cats had dragged a fresh cat turd from the nearby litter box and deposited it directly in front of the back door. To make matters worse, it had a foot print in it.

Oh crap, I thought, too shocked to savor the pun. I checked the bottoms of my Birkenstocks (no, I’m not a hippie) and verified no poop. Oh no, she must have stepped in it! I looked, and she was walking in the kitchen admiring the cabinets, with a wad of fresh cat shit stuck to the bottom of her espadrille (no, I’m not gay).

What do I do?

Shit, think, shit, think.

Do I tell her and clean it off for her, bringing unnecessary attention to the presence of cat shit on my super clean floor, or do I hope that she just doesn’t notice? Of course, in the mean time, here’s this pretentious real estate agent using words like “boxed ceiling” and “crown molding” while tracking cat shit all over my freshly mopped (ooh!) laminate floors.

Before I could decide how to react, she shook my hand, wished me luck, and was gone, a thin brown trail of leavings from the back door all the way to the front, the only evidence of her presence. Truly absurd, I thought as I scrubbed poop off my floor.

It seems that I am surrounded by absurdity. I experience it on a daily basis; the only reprieve is the variance of its severity. This morning on the way to work I saw a crazy man doing a jig around a telephone pole while singing to himself. A guy in my office buys green coffee beans from Vietnam and roasts them at home in a popcorn popper. My boss just got a package from England that was shipped in box labeled “Mr. Brain’s Fresh Faggots.”

I often wonder if I’m simply statistically more prone to experiencing absurdity, or am I simply more keenly aware of its presence.

In that vein, I would like to tell you all about the most absurd story I have ever heard. The story of the exploding whale.

On the morning of November 12, 1970, a cool wind swept across the beach in Florence, OR, a quiet little beach town near Astoria. That wind wasn’t just cool, it smelled really bad. At first, it was assumed that the Vietnam protestors had made their way from Portland, but they soon realized even this smell was too much to be attributed to even those stink-monkies.

The smell was emanating from a very large, and very dead, and very rotten sperm whale that had washed ashore after floating at sea for god knows how long. Weighing in at 8 tons, the small town of Florence was perplexed as to how to get this big, rotten whale carcass off the beach.

At this point in Oregon’s history, one can only assume that the city council of Florence, the management of the Oregon Department of Transportation, and the Governor’s office were all staffed with boys between the ages of 7 and 13. The unanimous vote: Let’s blow that fucker up!

Half a ton of dynamite was packed into the rotting carcass of this huge mammal; one can only imagine the ODOT engineers giggling and elbowing each other like a little boys while stuffing black cats into a dead frog’s mouth. They stepped a safe distance back and....boom.

When the sand settled, the air was still. The whale wasn’t gone, but a huge chunk had been blown out of its mid-section. Oh, well, they must have thought, it must have vaporized the stuff, let’s do it again!

It was then that it started to happen. Splat here, smash there. Plop, plop, plop. Blubber came falling from the sky. Golf ball sized chunks, baseball sized, grapefruits, basketballs and bigger began to pelt the onlookers from the sky. As they ran for safety from the rotten animal fat, they realized they had bigger problems: their town.

As the rancid blubber rained from the sky, like the smiting hand of some angry whale god, it tore through roofs, it smashed through windows, it blocked traffic, it broke windshields, and there’s even a story that one piece of blubber was so large, it literally flattened a Volkswagen beetle.

According to Paul Linman, an eye-witness to the explosion, “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

By the time the shower of rotten whale parts stopped, the damage to the town was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Paul Linman, “The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere."

Everywhere, indeed.

Oregon is a very unique place, and I’ve seen some pretty amazing things here. Met some great people, and met some people I’d like to stab in the face. Above all, I will miss the absurdity that seems so commonplace in Oregon, especially when Jillian’s in town.

If you’d like to learn more about this totally absurd and very true story, and even see the video, check it out here.

An Open Letter To My Jump Drive

2006-07-12T11:50:00.000-07:00
Dear Jump Drive,

I suppose you probably think the worst part is that I didn’t even notice when you left. By the time I realized you were gone, there’s no telling how long it had been. Does this make me a negligent asshole? Probably, but after all, you’re the one who left without a word.

Okay, I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you out to be the bad guy in this. I know we had some rough times, but we had some good times too, right? Every time I had an idea for a story or a blog, I’d just pop you into the nearest computer and type a short note, then when I wanted to write a new entry for On The Rocks, I’d just pop you in again and have a wealth of ideas stored all ready to go. But now you’re gone, and you’ve taken all my ideas with you.

No, you were right that night you came home drunk. I know you apologized the next morning and said you didn’t mean what you said, but you were right. They really weren’t very good ideas, and it was too much to ask for you to schlep them around for me all the time. For that I’m sorry.

I never meant to hit you. You just pushed and pushed and pushed until I couldn’t take it anymore. You didn’t have to bring my mother into it. I know they all say that if he hits you once, he’ll hit you again, but I can promise, in the deepest cockles of my heart, perhaps in the sub-cockle area, that I would never lay a hand on you again, except in love and respect.
I know what you’re thinking. He just wants his blogs back, he just wants his work files and photos back, he just wants the 187 pages of that book he was writing back, but you’re wrong. I want you back. I want you back more than anything else. What I want back is the jingle you made as you knocked around on my keychain as we traipsed around town. I miss going everywhere with you, I mean, we were inseparable!

But now you’re gone, and you took with you not just a part of my life, you took a part of my heart as well.

So to you, my dear 512 Megabyte Relay Jump Drive, forget the problems we’ve had. Just remember the day we first met, at the Staples store in McMinnville. It was raining that day and I let you hide under my coat as we went to the car so you wouldn’t get wet.
Remember the love, and please, come back to me.

With All I Have,

Scott

What Hippies Have in Common With Child-Molesting Nazis.

2006-06-05T15:19:00.000-07:00
There’s a kid in my Judo class named Ezekiel. If you are, perchance, asking yourself why someone would name their child "Ezekiel," all you need is one look at this poor kid’s ropey, granola-fed, patchouli-funk parents and it would all become painfully clear.

Ezekiel is about five years old, and is what can only be described as a joyless child. I know it sounds harsh, but there’s really no better way to put it. Before class starts, when all the other kids are burning off the energy from those afternoon cookies, he can generally be found sitting in the corner trying to keep his shoulder-length hair out of his eyes, hiding behind his mother’s vastly oversized, hand-knitted, fair-trade wool maternity tarp. We can presume he didn’t get any Chips Ahoy! when he got home, his parents most likely opting for the whole-grain, "celebrate diversity" rice cake with soybean butter, or something equally inappropriate and sad.

In addition to being the smelliest, Ezekiel is one of the more timid kids in the class. As such, the requirements are put upon us, the senior students, to engage the poor bastard and try to force him into having some fun and not dwelling on the four-hour speech about "sustainable living" his dad gave at the dinner mesab the night before. In Judo, the easiest thing to do to engage someone on the mat is to open your arms and ask, "Onegashimas?" (Roughly translated: "Will you teach me?).

I was tying get Ezekiel to play with the rest of us, when the instructor noticed that he wasn’t really responding. He immediately came over to Ezekiel and asked, "Onegashimas?" Ezekiel, being not only a white-belt but a five-year-old, had no idea what this meant. Seeing an opportunity to make the kid laugh, I tried to inject a joke and said, "He’s asking you if you want some french fries!"

I know, it’s not very funny, but the kid is five, should I have tried my Benny Hill routine?

Ezekiel paused, thought on this a moment, and in a very serious and practiced tone said to the both of us, "I don’t eat that kind of food."

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that this poor bastard’s parents have him practice that response on a nightly basis. "Now Ezekiel, what do we say when someone offers us food that isn’t green and organic?"

"I don’t eat that kind of food."

"Now Ezekiel, what do we say when someone insinuates that free markets and unbridled capitalism is the best avenue for freedom and individual rights?"

"You’re a fascist!"

One of the many things that makes this country the greatest on Earth, and the reason just about everyone else in the world wants to come here, is that fact that everyone has the right to live in any way they see fit, barring minimal restrictions involving property damage and public decency laws. By extension, you also have the right to raise your children in any way you see fit, barring child welfare/ endangerment statutes (or as I like to call them, the "Leonard Maltin laws). If, by some strange and cruel sociological experiment, I wished to raise my son to believe that he’s the bastard child of Jesus Christ, Garth Brooks, and a cheddar cheese log with almonds, that’s my right to do so, as long as I feed the little bugger and clean out his litter box every now and again.

The downside to this virtually inexhaustible loveable fuzzball of freedom is that, yes, in fact, everyone gets to raise their children anyway they see fit. Ezekiel’s parents have decided to shield their child from the joys of empty calories, and we can presume, Saturday morning cartoons, which no matter how bad they are these days, is tantamount to child abuse. This is, however, their right. Take for example, the dynamic and inimitable musical powerhouse known as Prussian Blue.

Prussian Blue consists of sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede, from Central Valley, CA. They write catchy tunes, are said to have angelic voices, and are described by their manager (their mother) as "White Nationalists." In case you haven’t gotten the memo: Intelligent Design = Creationism, White Nationalism = White Supremacism.

An excerpt from PrussianBlue.com: (grammar has been unaltered)

"Recently they received international media attention because Prussian Blue is a White Pride band. The songs they the girls sing reflect their White Nationalist beliefs. Today, if you are White ,and proud to be White , it is considered Politically Incorrect by the media. The music that Prussian Blue performs is intended for White people. They hope to help fellow Whites come to understand that love for one’s race is a beautiful gift that we should celebrate."

One point of contention: these girls did not receive "international media attention" because they’re white supremacists. They received "international media attention" because they’re cute, thirteen-year-old-girl white supremacists.

One must, of course, question the origin of these beliefs. Are we to presume they sprung from the womb with the "beautiful gift" of "love for one’s race?" Of course not, just watch five minutes of video of the girls’ mother and you couldn’t pity these sweet darlings more if she was wearing a cucumber mask with metal coat hanger in one hand and a scotch in the other.

I find it particularly amusing that the fans of Prussian Blue denounce claims that they’re racists, when manifestos like "Defensive Racism" and "Dissecting the Holocaust" are proudly promoted on their website. Oh, yeah, and the Hitler t-shirts don’t help, either.

A debate that’s been raging since time immemorial is the question of nature vs. nurture. Is Arland gay because of his genes, or because he was raised with three sisters? Did Yanni hit his girlfriend because he’s "programmed" that way, or because he was hit when he was a child? Does Linsday Lohan not respond to my letters and telephone calls because she’s a lesbian? There’s a very good chance that we may never receive satisfactory answers to these questions.

My boss is a CASA here in Portland. As a Court-Appointed Special Advocate, he is injected into the lives of troubled families to make common-sense suggestions regarding the welfare of the children. Over the course of the last few years he’s been involved, he’s seen some fucked up shit. The other day, while detailing his newest case file involving a horribly abusive, pathetic excuse for a man, he mentioned that the man’s parents had been overly protective and routinely dismissive of his abusive behavior, making it easier for him, as an adult, to use violence to exact control over his wife and children.

My problem with this analysis I this: Who gives a fuck?

The debate of nature vs. nurture doesn’t even enter into this conversation. It doesn’t matter if his daddy touched him or if he was born that way, any man pathetic enough to physically and emotionally abuse his wife and children the way this man has, deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Case closed.

We can talk about genetic vs. environment until we’re blue in the face, but one thing we have to be very careful to avoid is the common pitfall of moral equivelancy. Hitting your children is wrong, and is against the law, and there is simply no justification for that type of abuse. It may be helpful in the long run to determine why he hits his kids with extension cords, but no amount of reasoning can change the facts of what he did. A half-assed reason like a history of negligence in his own childhood is no excuse and should not be viewed as one.

The fact of the matter is that we, as citizens of the greatest representative republic in the world, have the right to raise our children in virtually any way we see fit, the same way our parents had the right to raise us in any way they saw fit. Granted, some people do better jobs than others, but regardless of how it went, there comes a time when you, as an adult, have to assume respobsibility for your actions and your behavior. You can’t beat your wife just because Uncle Joey touched you in the back of his Buick back in 1958, it doesn’t fucking matter, and no amount of limp-wristed psychobabble can make it matter, at least not to this guy's wife and kids.

At thirteen years old, those poor little Gaede girls can’t be held responsible for being held hostage by their parents’ twisted views of the world. There will come a time, however, when they will be responsible for what they do with their talents, and what they choose to offer the world.

Lamb, Lynx, if you happen to be reading this, "Defensive Racism" is not the way to make your mark.

Little Ezekiel came to class recently and all his hair had been shaved off. Not only did I notice he was having more fun, he was talking more and running around like a five-year-old supposed to. I mentioned that I liked his new haircut and he looked at me and said, "I was tired of everybody thinking I was a girl."

Ezekiel: 1
Hippy Parents: 0

Update on the End of the World

2006-05-29T11:25:00.000-07:00
Taken from Eric Julien's website:

UPDATE MAY 27, 2006: A clue to the timing of the anticipated event

Many people undoubtedly think that the announced event has fizzled and may be readjusting their outlook on life and returning their lives to normal.

I have trouble doing that when I think of all the dreams and other signs which I have witnessed that point to this event. What would otherwise be the purpose of all these warnings? (emphasis added -ed.) I know the window cannot be extended indefinitely into the future. Two of the people whom I have seen moved out of harm’s way under the pretext of a social gathering are to return home Sunday night. So I would expect Sunday to be the last possible day.

Today I made a review of all my own dreams about the event, using a chronicle written exactly three weeks ago, which has now been on the English website for two and a half weeks, to see whether there was any pattern that could be discerned.

All my dreams about this event happened on a Sunday.

Sunday Jan 18, 2004: I see planes falling from the sky and cry out to God in anguish “Do we really need to go through this?” (123)

Sunday Jan 25, 2004: The race to the closing gate dream. Also most likely date for my vision of the Texas coast red-lined to indicate danger, in direct answer to a question in prayer. (122)

Sunday Apr 04, 2004: Dream of a 500m high wave. (112)

Sunday Feb 19, 2006: Simultaneous clairvoyance and clairaudience of the words “unexpected attack” in answer to a question about what the event would be. (14)

Sunday Apr 30, 2006: Dream confirming that Eric Julien’s message, discovered the day before, would be fulfilled on the same day that it was predicted. I dreamt this on the last Sunday of the month, and tomorrow is the last Sunday of the month. Another way to look at this is that a day represents an entire month. (4)

The number in parentheses represents the number of weeks remaining before Sunday, May 28, 2006. Numbers 123, 14 and 4 are particularly interesting. Note that May 28th is the first day following 21 full weeks in 2006. (okay, seriously, what the fuck is this guy talking about? -ed.)

For more details on the dreams involved, see article below entitled "Why I think there is something to Eric Julien and his message".

(okay, seriously, you have GOT to read this article, I laughed until I puked. My favorite part is when the author cites his friend's dream about buying a new car and then just heaps it on the nonsense pile of "dream evidence" that the end is nigh. -ed.)

Note that Eric Julien received the date of May 25th in meditation two days shy of the seven week mark, which was on April 9th, 2006. (?!?!?!?!?! -ed.)

"Assuming the chain of events is completed on the 28th, I suspect that there is additional significance at various levels in the disjunct between the two dates. Several of the dreams in my account occurred on the 25th of the month, and that number also seems significant. It is possible that the comet has already struck -- Eric Julien saw it slice through the atmosphere, the ocean and the lithosphere without there being any conflagration. His original vision did not involve an immediate sequential link between the fragment and the wave; the comet was rather given subsequently as a cause of the event. I could imagine that ET's using comet fragments as weapons might have ways to send these directly through a medium such as water."

-Craig Boswell, Asshole (title added -ed.)

The End Is Near (The 711 On Powell Blvd. Near The Seafood Market )

2006-05-25T16:25:00.000-07:00
Folks, I've got some bad news. No, Prince hasn't mentioned anything to the press about what hapenned between you two last weekend, It's much worse that that. In case you didn't know it, today is the last day in the world.

Today, March 25, 2006, is the last day of our collective lives.

Former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, Eric Julien, several years ago completed a study of the comet “73P Schwassmann-Wachmann” and warned us that a fragment of this "perambulating ice-ball" is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around Thursday, May 25, 2006. The cpmet, discovered by Arnold Schwassermann and Arno Arthur Wachmann in 1930, has an orbital period of just less than 5.3 years and comes nearest to the Earth every 16 years.

It has followed this five-year orbit intact for centuries, but in 1995, it mysteriously fragmented. Sure, you might say, that happens all the time, right? Yes it does, but Mr. Julien reeeeeally wants us to worry about it. He says that some fragments are too small to observe (duh. -ed.) but while astronomers have predicted possible meteor showers as some cometary debris enters the atmosphere, they tell us that the comet poses no direct threat.

Mr. Julien, however, has real evidence for his Doomsday scenario. He chooses not to rely only on paltry facts and figures, and statistics for his conclusions, he has employed the latest, greatest, and most advanced technology availbale to mankind.

This very year, a “crop circle” appeared showing the inner Solar System with the Earth missing from its orbit, he concludes that this was a message from higher intelligences warning humanity of the consequences of its destructive nuclear policies, all of this tied in to the Bush administration's policy of preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iran and the effect of nuclear weapons on the realms of higher intelligences, blah blah blah addicted to oil blah blah blah 2/3 of the world's resources blah blah Kyoto treaty blah blah blah.

According to Mr. Julien, “We have to save lives when we have such information to share with the public."

The question you must ask yourself is, when have the crop circles ever been wrong?

Mr. Julien assures us that the comet-fragments will fall into the Atlantic Ocean between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer, though he says that will generate 700-foot waves, so let's not start craking open the cold ones just yet. He tells us that "each person with this information has to take responsibility to warn potential victims."

Check out his article "May 25, 2006: The Day of Destiny"

Doomsayers have been around for as long as man himself, and, much like virtually every other form of hoo-ha and codswallop that people constantly fall for, they have always employed the same basic tactic: predict something catastrophically horrific that will more than likley claim millions of lives, or perhaps all of them, a reeeeally long time in the future to scare the pants off people and get the to buy your books on how to stop it. Then, assuming your even alive by the time this date rolls around, make sure to have dropped the subject and moved onto something even more catastrophic and horrible, so its not a big let down when you refuse to aswer inane questions from your detractors like, "what the fuck were you thinking?" and "can I have my eight dollars back?"

I can't decide if I feel pity for this poor French sap because he missed Successful Doomsaying for Fun and Profit 101, or if I feel slightly more respect for this guy than all the other toe-heads because even on this very day (according to him 48 window of possibility) he's still sticking to his guns

Nope, still pity.

Chuck Norris is Allergic to Doorknobs

2006-05-01T16:03:00.000-07:00
The following list, or numerous incarnations thereof, have been circulating around the Internet for years. The other night, my good pal Luke mentioned one of the items from this list and I was reminded how much I enjoyed it the first time I'd read it. He hadn't actually ever seen the list, so I was emailing it to him, when I thought I should just post it in case any of my seven regular readers hadn't seen it. (Thanks for the cookies, Mom. - Ed.)

When searching for the list I'd read lo so many years ago, I stumbled upon numerous versions. I took three of them, pasted them together, and deleted some of the not-so-funny facts and ones that contained words like "ninja-kick" and "beard-a-licious."

After all, I have standards in this forum.

Little Known Facts About Chuck Norris:

Chuck Norris does not require oxygen to live, oxygen requires Chuck Norris.

Achilles was supposedly the greatest warrior of all time, but he died because of his weak spot, his Achilles heel. There is no Chuck Norris heel.

Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes fucking the waitress.

Chuck Norris ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

They once made Chuck Norris toilet paper, but it wouldn't take shit from anybody.

As a teenager, Chuck Norris impregnated every nun in a convent tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. Nine months later the nuns gave birth to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated team in professional football history.

Chuck Norris has already been to Mars, that's why there are no signs of life there.

Chuck Norris has counted to infinity - twice.

Outer Space exists because it is afraid to be on the same planet as Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse, horses are hung like Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Chuck Norris is not afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris likes to knit sweaters in his free time. And by "knit", I mean "kick", and by "sweaters", I mean "people in the face".

Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren't the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake ever made by a human being.

Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer, too bad he has never cried.

Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris doesn't go hunting because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

Chuck Norris is allergic to doorknobs, that's why he always kicks doors down.

To prove it isn't a big deal to beat cancer, Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer, only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris doesn't have any hair on his balls because hair doesn't grow on steel.

Chuck Norris has to maintain concealed weapons licenses in all 50 states so he can legally wear pants.

It is impossible to be raped by Chuck Norris because that would mean you didn't want it to happen.

Chuck Norris is allowed to talk about Fight Club.

Chuck Norris only has one hand: the upper hand.

Chuck Norris always clogs the toilet. Even when he pisses.

Similar to a Russian nesting doll, if you were to break open Chuck Norris, inside you would find another Chuck Norris, only smaller and angrier.

Chuck Norris doesn't use pick-up lines. He just says, "Now."

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, Chuck Norris can actually roundhouse kick you yesterday.

A handicapped parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually a warning that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there.

The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris's fist.

Chuck Norris does not teabag the ladies. He potato-sacks them.

Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life , Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, killing it instantly. This was to remind the crew that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

A recent poll discovered 93% of women think about Chuck Norris during sex. A similar poll revealed that, during sex, Chuck Norris thinks about Chuck Norris 100% of the time.

Chuck Norris thought about submitting more facts about himself to this website, but he doesn't believe in any form of submission.

Mr. Norris, a great sport, has posted a short response to these lists. Check it out here.

Cabbage Is Next To Godliness

2006-04-18T11:05:00.000-07:00
Speaking to a vegan a few years ago, I asked flatly, why? She told me that she liked the way the shoes looked with the skirt. I asked again, but specified that I wanted to know why she chose to live a life absent of cheese and worcestershire sauce. She told me that, while health was certainly a component, the primary reason was that she was unwilling to support an industry that was cruel to animals, and impacted the planet in such a profoundly negative way.

The litany of complaints about the meat industry being touted by people in this group range from animal cruelty (eating them is cruel, right?) to the environmental impact on the vast areas of land required to grow the corn and grain that are needed to feed these animals, to the contamination of the earth where these animals are raised. They march and they protest, they cover themselves with red paint and stick “meat is murder” stickers on the backs of their mid-80’s Volvos and Subarus (all the while sneering at the “abortion is murder” on the family sedan in the next lane).

Lately, it would seem that the anti-meat industry has gotten pragmatic, if such a word can be applied to people that equate chicken yards to concentration camps. They seemed to realize a long time ago that trying to get people to stop eating meat “just because” wasn’t going to work. The goal now, is to hilight the evils of the industry that provides this meat, its cruelty and its souring effect on our oh-so-fragile ecology. It would seem, even, that the soy-dog-eating masses have all but left the “inhierent cruelty of meat” argument by the wayside for another argument they feel has a chance of “playing in Peoria.” One might even say, they may have put all their eggs in one basket.

What would happen if that basket was gone? Instead of harvesting meat from the corpse of an animal, what if we could grow meat, like broccoli? What if the environmental impact of meat production dropped to zero, animals were no longer “born just to die,” and a delicious rib-eye could be made to have all the nutritional value of a bunch of spinach, a bag of sweet potatoes and a watermelon all in one.

What if?

The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t care. When one part of their argument fell apart, they’d just fill it one with a new one. They would protest, in typical Luddite fashion, that this new meat was unnatural (even though they claim that eating meat itself is unnatural) and dangerous (like feeding starving Africans) and then they’d just descend into aimless ranting about all the wrongs and injustice they see in the world and blah blah blah George Bush blah blah blah organic blueberries blah blah blah healthcare for everyone blah blah blah oh sure I’ll give you a ride home, my BMW is parked over there, yeah it’s the one with the dancing bear sticker over the Tookie Williams for President sticker blah blah blah.

While I will always respect anyone’s right to eat whatever the hell they want, I find “eating as protest” about as is idiotic and vacuous as “back window of Subaru as protest.” People become vegetarian or, god help us, vegans for various reason. Some for health reasons, some commit to a life that doesn’t exploit animals for food, and some suffer from dangerous, brain eating viruses. In any case, what you put in your mouth is entirely your business, but things are never that simple.

Saying, “what you put into your mouth is your business,” is like saying, “what you like to do on Sunday mornings is your business.” While both statements are true, both betray a naïve delusion that all our lives are lived privately and what we do privately doesn’t bother anyone else.

The unavoidable equation: Food-Nazis = Jesus-Freaks.

August 2nd, 2005
Salt Lake City, Utah.
Demonstrators from organizations like PETA and the ALF (but they’re not related, not at all. Nope. Not one bit) performed “direct action” (read: chanted like crazed, meat-starved orangutans) to protest the treatment of chickens by fast-food giant KFC.

Net result: Busiest day that KFC location has seen in months.

Best line from the article: “I think there’s a place in this world for all God’s creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.”

March 22, 2005
Washington, D.C.

Christians protest the film "Kinsey" as a "Hollywood whitewash of the man they hold largely responsible for the sexual revolution and a panoply of related ills, from high divorce rates to AIDS and child abuse."

Net Result: While I would love to say that the Christians protesting “Kinsey” made this film a hit, that would be far from the truth. The movie simply wasn’t that good. On the other hand, I guarantee about 6 of the 18 people that did see the film would not have if not for the mildly publicized discontent of some “believers.”

I’m not trying to say that everyone that protests or publicly and loudly complains about something is the same as a jesus vigilante fighting for some falsely perceived purity of culture, or some animal rights moonbat with no job. All I’m saying is that it’s high time the phalanx of morons on both sides realize that every time they speak out against something, all they’re doing is increasing awareness, and thereby increasing its sales.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

To be so committed to a utopian ideal that no one eats meat or no one talks about sex is idiotic, but these people will never realize it because they’re crazy, and they’re so committed and blinded by some bizarre ideal that they believe that anyone that doesn’t see things their way is simply not able to see the big picture.

Ladies and gentelman, the big picture is of a fat guy eating an eight piece bucket with extra skin and an extra large mashed potatoes while watching porn on his 52” plasma screen. Anyone that doesn’t see this is simply fooling themselves into thinking that they’re fighting war they can win. This is a cultural war, and the culture of porn and fried chicken will always win, because it's more fun than drum circles and prayer sessions.

It’s like the creationists. How can they think they’re going to win? While recently they’ve attempted to swathe their god-based creation idea in the blanket of pseudoscience, anyone with enough vitamin D can see that intelligent design (ID) is the same fucking thing. They have a pre-conceived notion, and are attempting to make the peg of all past scientific research fit into the limited confinces of ID’s poorly misshapen hole. The problem is that while ID freaks attempt to rewrite history to fit their thinly veiled ideas, science is still moving forward at an exponential rate, uncovering new evidence, and making new ideas, that are every day forming a more complete picture of the evolution of our species. Science is always moving forward, while ID has, since its inception, been backward looking. They can never possibly catch up, so what can they hope to accomplish?

Back on point, I'd merely like say, that you go ahead and eat whatever you wanna eat. Go ahead and do whatever you want with your Sunday morning. All I gotta say is that Schumacher Furs is doing better business than they have in 30 years, and I'm sure the weekly protests , and inevitable media blitz over those protests, have had nothing to do with it. Fucking morons.

Spy of the Century

2006-03-23T13:50:00.000-08:00
When you meet new people, the invariable addition into the first round of questions is “What do you do?” I've always hated that question because I always hated being defined by “what I did.” Just because you meet some guy at a party who says he’s a chef, do you automatically assume he’s a good chef? No, chances are much higher that he sucks, otherwise why would be at the same crappy party you got invited to, right? If some gal says she’s a “Municipal Engineer,” in such a manner that is sounds capitalized, do you dare ask what exactly that means, or just continue to stare blankly at her chest and hope she walks away.

All this time I’ve had to say stuff like “I work in a café” or “I’m in data-entry” and received the appropriate scowls of derision from the chefs, Engineers and professional dog-walkers in the room as they eat the dip that I made and talk amongst themselves about how good it is.

For those of you that don’t know, I am currently employed as an adjuster. For those of you who don’t know what an adjuster is, FreshPair.com defines it as “Fine metal or plastic hardware found on garment straps that slide up and down to allow strap adjustments.” Fortunately, the Oregon Board of Insurance, a much more reliable source of information, defines an adjuster as “A person who may act either on behalf of the insurance company or the insured in settling a claim. Employee adjusters work for an insurer; independent adjusters represent the insurance company on a fee basis; and public adjusters represent the insured on a fee basis.”

For clarification, I’m an independent adjuster.

Now when I meet people at parties, I get to sit at the adult table and say, “I’m an adjuster!” The people in the room all look at me because no one asked me anything. They then invariably ask, “What’s an adjuster?” In short order, it became easier to title myself with the better-known, but smaller portion, of my job duties: Investigator.

As an adjuster, I investigate insurance claims of all kinds, from car accidents to leaky pipes, to make sure all parties are fairly treated and appropriately compensated. These duties sometimes extend into the field of workers compensation insurance, in which the insurance company might feel that a claim is fraudulent, in which they might hire us to perform surveillance on a subject to determine if they really are missing a leg, or something like that.

The first time I went on a surveillance assignment, I sat in the back of a tinted minivan with a camcorder for four hours before I concluded that the guy wasn’t home.

I had my second assignment today.

Dan, the senior investigator, and I arrived at the subject’s house at 7 a.m. I parked across the street from his house and Dan parked a block away, prepared to tail him in the event he drove off. I set up my camera, pinned some blankets to one side of the interior of the van (to make it even harder to see into the van through the already heavily tinted windows) and waited for him to come out and start doing cartwheels or chopping firewood or something.

I had received some cursory training from my boss before I went out on this assignment. My boss, a 16-year veteran of this business, showed me the tricks of keeping light out of the van, keeping a blanket handy to hide under in case anyone got really suspicious, to notify the Police of where I was in case anyone called them, that kind of stuff. The basic lesson is: Most people don’t give a shit. Unless you give someone a reason to be suspicious, they won’t give a strange vehicle in their neighborhood a second glance.

It was 7:15 a.m., and I see a woman walking by on the sidewalk across the street (not our subject) obviously on a morning stroll (and believe me, she needed it). She stopped in front of the van. “Oh shit,” I said and ducked under the blanket. I looked up a minute later, and she was gone. Ten minutes later, two more women, pretending to exercise while they drank coffee and smoked, also stopped and examined the van very intently. I was beginning to think this was unusual, not just because I had never seen this before (on the one time I’d been out before) but because this was not supposed to be happening. No one was supposed to care.

I double-checked everything, the lights were off, the blankets were covering adequately, I was behind the seat, and I was downright difficult to see. Everything seemed in order. It was 7:35 a.m.

Then they converged.

I knew I was in trouble when I saw a guy pop up next to the van and cup his hands around his eyes to see through the tinting, and then another guy popped up on the other side. I hadn’t seen them coming so they must have sneaked up on the van. I hear someone say, “It’s too dark.” Oh shit, I thought, and dived under the blanket. That’s when I saw a flashlight beam. “A camera’s rolling, but there’s no one in there.” I heard someone say in an angry and distinctly Deliverance tone. Oh fuck, I thought, this was not supposed to happen, I did everything right! What the fuck am I going to do?!

Then a kid, not more than seventeen, jumps on the hood and peers directly into the van through the crystal clear and untinted windshield. “Thar’s somebawdy in thar!” he shouted, pounding on the windshield.

Shit. Think. Shit. Think. Shit. Think.

Taps and knocks were coming on the windows, taunts like “Come on out, pussy!” and “what the fuck do you think you’re doing in front of my house?!” were being spoken only feet from where I was laying. It was then that I realized how stupid I looked. Here I was, a full grown man hiding under a blanket in the back of a mini-van while being taunted by a posse as they circled my vehicle like a scene out of West Side Story.

I sat up, and grabbed my phone to call Dan. I had dialed the first few numbers when I felt a bump that shook the van. The kid had backed his Honda in front of my van and actually touched it, to prevent me from driving away. I got Dan on the line and apprised him of the situation, he said he’d drive over and we’d caravan out. It was then that I noticed that I was surrounded by no less than eight people, including some fat fucker with no shirt, an even fatter bitch with crazy bloodshot eyes and a skinny white freak with a baseball bat. The taunts continued.

Dan arrived and I slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The kid sat on the hood of the van and Jabba the Shirtless demanded that I roll down the window and answer his questions. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks. “Sir, we’re performing an investigation into possible criminal activity.” I said. “I’m calling the police,” he says and opens his tiny flip phone, which was dwarfed by his giant sausage-fingers (I could actually smell him at this point). By the time Dan got there, the crowd has swelled to no less than twelve people. The fat bitch with the crazy eyes and the mullet starts screaming at me, “What are you fucking casing my house? You gonna fucking rob me?!”

I bit my lip. Believe me lady, you don’t have anything I could possibly want.

“Ma’am, I assure you were not doing anything of the kind. We’re investigators, feel free to call the police, they are well aware of our presence.” Dan chimed in, looking a little freaked out by all this. “Would you mind getting off the hood of the car, please?” I politely asked the kid. “Why don’t you make me?” he responded in a perfect I-used-to-say-that-a-lot-in-eight-grade-and-everyone-was-really-scared sort of way. He followed it with a menacing by-the-way-I-never-finished-eighth-grade type of stare.

I put the van in drive with a dramatic clunk.

Jabba the Shirtless told the kid to get off the van, and I backed up to get around the douche bag’s Honda. Dan made his way to his car, and I idled out of the space as the crowd dispersed to let me pass. “You stay out of our fucking neighborhood, you motherfuckers!!” the crazy-eyed mullet bitch screamed as loud as her meth-soaked lungs would allow, throwing up a middle finger for good measure. As we drove away, I saw other similar gestures come from equally educated and well-mannered folk, as they began to crawl back to the rocks under which they lived.

About three blocks away, I pulled up next to Dan and rolled down my window. “Has anything like that ever happened to you before?” I asked. “Not in four years.” He said.

When we got back to the office, my boss called the insurance company that hired us. “Yeah, that happened to the last gal we sent out,” said the examiner. “Not so many people showed up, but she got some choice words thrown at her. I should have mentioned that the whole neighborhood is pretty paranoid.”

The best part is though, that since the whole neighborhood is so fucking paranoid, they all think they were begin surveilled, not just our subject. We got permission to take it up a notch and get a third investigator on the job. We’re taking this fucker down.

How’s that for a story to tell at a cocktail party?

An Update

2006-03-10T12:06:00.000-08:00
The Mystery of the Microwaved Penis (TM) has been solved.

I can only hope this will help those of you most affected by this story sleep more soundly. I know I will.

A Call to Action

2006-03-07T09:11:00.000-08:00
"Ultraviolet will be studied with great interest in the future - not for its quality or its artistic merit, but rather to discover how a turd like this was made."
-- Kevin Carr, 7M PICTURES

Last night, I went to an Oscar party. I know, I couldn’t quite believe it myself, but I really didn’t have a legitimate excuse not to attend, and there was supposed to be sushi. So, grabbed a bottle of wine, a bottle of sake, and a bottle of scotch and made my way to Penny’s house to watch a group of overpaid, under-talented hacks swish around in $180,000 dresses and tuxedos and give each other accolades as if the services they offer to the world really matter one tiny little bit. It was disguisting, and I grew more nauseous with each montage. Being as there was a montage about every three minutes, it wasn’t long before I had to leave the room. But I was torn.

I had the choice of staying the room with John Stewart desparately trying to make a career out of deadpan humor, or go into the kitchen and listen to pretentious wine girl. (Sorry Arland, I thought she was nice, and I respect the fact that it’s difficult to disconnect oneself from what you do, but she came off as a pretentious wine ass.) Do I go back to the living room and watch another montage, and then listen to John Stewart make another joke about another montage, or do I go into the kitchen and listen to ostentatious wine lady talk about wine that smells like airplane glue?

I went to the backyard.

"Wimmer [director of Ultraviolet] is so brazen that he doesn't even bother to pretend that there's an original concept here: all his ideas are borrowed from other movies that borrowed from other movies that borrowed from The Matrix, and he doesn't care who knows it."
-- MaryAnn Johanson, FLICK FILOSOPHER

There was a time when I really enjoyed the Oscars, although I really couldn’t tell you why. The pomp of the awards has always been a standard, but for some reason, there was a time when it did not affect me so much. I still remember the last Oscars ceremony I watched on purpose, in its entirety. The year was 1994, and there was no question in my mind that Shawshank Redemption would walk away with the best picture prize and Morgan Freeman would win best actor for his role in the film. But when the Hollywood Hogwash ™ that was Forrest Gump was handed those coveted trophies, I was heartbroken.

"The bad guys [in Ultraviolet] stride through spotless corridors in buildings where weirdly calm disembodied female voices say things like "Switching to emergency backup lighting system." If only I could have found the button for the emergency back-up better movie system."
-- Nell Minow, MOVIE MOM AT YAHOO! MOVIES

Well into the ceremonies, having successfully avoided them for several hours, the sushi finally arrived. Arland and I realized that there was probably not enough to feed all of us, so Arland has the bright idea of going down the street to the sports bar and getting some nachos. If you’ve never had the nachos from The Scoreboard, you have not tasted nachos. Needless to say, the plan was a go.

We trekked down the street the couple of blocks to the bar, all the while complaining about the tripe that’s been spewing from Tinseltown for the last ten years, and me promulgating my own theory that Hollywood has officially run out of ideas.

The anxiety of it all was just beginning to wash away, like the mud off Andy Dufresne’s body when he finally escapes Shawshank, and then we entered the bar. Seventeen televisions, three of which were over 47 inches, staring me down with images of this crowd of self-important miscreants clapping for the winner for Best Picture, Crash.

My friend Arland went into a bit of a fit, being as Crash was the only one of the nominated movies he’d actually seen, a film which he described as, “craaaaaaaaaaap-uh.” The guy sitting at the bar next to turned and said, “I never saw that movie. I didn’t think it looked very good. I thought it was, like, an action movie like that movie with the bus.”

“Speed?” I asked.

“Yeah, dass right. Man that was an awesome movie.” He replied.

It was then that I told Arland that I was looking forward to the news reports on Monday morning, the same reports we’ve seen every Monday morning following the Oscars since 1998, that once again, the rating are down. I always found it so amusing that each year, the Oscars got longer, and fewer people watched them.

This year was only a slight exception: They weren’t much longer, but fewer people than ever tuned in.

"The violence [in Ultraviolet] is presented in such a childish fashion, that it has all the impact of a Pokemon battle."
-- Joshua Tyler, CINEMABLEND.COM

Okay, so it’s time to get real.

Kyle Smith wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Real History of the Olympics, and Why They Should Come to an End." In the article, Smith makes the point that the modern Olympic games were originally and specifically intended to prevent armed conflict in the world, allowing nations to meet their best against the best of their rivals. This, of course, is complete bullshit, as the Olympics has done nothing to limit armed conflict, and in fact has only provided another forum for national rivalries to be agitated.

Smith states that the Olympic games are, at best, zero-sum, filled with scandal, intimidation and poor sportsmanship from front to back. To make matters worse, the television ratings for Olympic events has dropped each and every year for the last sixteen. His solution: cancel the games. They do more to promote national rivalries than quell them, and nobody watches them anyway. And seriously, does anyone really think curling is an Olympic sport?

I would like to take this idea even further, a task with which I feel entirely comfortable because Kyle Smith, the author of the above-mentioned article, is actually a movie critic for the New York Post. The ceremonies are rife with corruption, nepotism, negativity, childish rivalry and misguided political and social activism. No one watches anymore, and no one cares. In order to promote a more harmonious movie-going public, I implore you, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, please cancel the Oscars.

"[Ultraviolet is] an unholy combination of comic book and video game,...so awful that you'd swear it had been directed by Uwe Boll."
-- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION

Also, in a related action, if you would like to sign the petition to ask Uwe Boll to never direct another film ever again, please do so here.

Shocking Human Behavior: Incident #34,855,548,425,967

2006-02-24T12:18:00.000-08:00
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, February 24, 2006

A clerk at a GetGo station made a horrifying discovery last night after a man walked into the minimart and asked her to heat something wrapped in a paper towel in the store's microwave.

When the item in the microwave gave off an unusual odor, the clerk opened the over door, unwrapped the paper and found what appeared to be a severed human penis, according to KDKA-TV.

The clerk immediately called police, but the man who handed the item to the clerk fled from the store on Fifth Avenue, KDKA reported.

McKeesport police declined comment last night.

Several questions lay heavy on my mind:

1. What....the....fuck.

2. What kind of irresponsible news organization would print such a gruesome story without a shred of substantiation? (I refer you to the word “appeared.” For all we know, this thing could be a pickled pig’s foot, or worse, Dennis Kucinich.)

3. What...the...holy flippin’ fuck.

4. Do people routinely waltz into convenience stores with random things wrapped in paper towels and request that they be microwaved?

5. Are these mysterious items often placed in a microwave by the store staff without even a cursory examination? If so, why don’t we see more stories about squirrels being microwaved?

6. If it truly was a severed penis, wouldn’t there have been blood on the paper towel? (this, of course, lends credence to the pickled pig’s foot/ Dennis Kucinich theory)

7. Okay...seriously...what the fuck?

What I find even more shocking is that I’m even shocked anymore.

Do It Yourself, and Be Ridiculed

2006-02-22T08:37:00.000-08:00
I work in a really small office, only four other people, and because of the nature of what we do, two or three of us could be out at any given time. We’re all friends, and our familiarity routinely leads to us wasting time chatting about movies, current events and breakfast cereals.

There’s only one girl in the office, she’s our Administrative Professional (read: secretary) and her name is Jessica. Jessica was telling us about her new boyfriend the other day. His name is Perry. Perry is twenty-four years old, is a graduate of the Computer Science Department of Wesleyan, and currently is the manager of a bike shop here in Portland.

Also, he roasts his own coffee.

“He does what?” you probably just asked.

He roasts his own coffee. He orders raw, green coffee from suppliers in South America and Asia, and roasts these beans at home in his electric table-top roaster. He keeps recipes, additives and roast times in a notebook and apparently takes great pride in this hobby.

I imagine my response to this statement was the same as yours would have been. “Is this guy some kind of an asshole?” I asked, genuinely interested. “You know, I’ve never really liked you,” Jessica responded.

I found myself in a bit of a pickle, and I would hoping one of my seven readers could help out. I know full well that roasting your own coffee is weird, but I can’t put my finger directly on why.

I’ve made beer before, and frankly, when someone tells me they make beer, I feel an instant fraternity with that person. I also make jam, I pickle vegetables, my wife makes soap and candles, why is coffee so weird?

Here’s the conclusion I came to: When I make beer, or jam, or whatever, I usually pick or grow as many of the ingredients as I can, or in the case of beer-making, I obtain the ingredients from a nearby brew shop. Coffee beans can only be grown in a few, select regions of the world, and you can’t exactly buy green coffee beans from the 7-11. It has to be something about the amount of effort this guy has to put into it that makes this weird.

I mean, it would be weird if I made my own cheese, right? I’m sure it would be cheaper in the long run, because I really love cheese, but would it be worth the stigma of being “that cheese guy?” Would it be worth building a tiny cheese factory in my backyard. Would I milk my own cows? The fact of the matter is that cheese, like coffee, is extraordinarily popular throughout the whole world. Coffee, either the beverage or the beans, can be obtained virtually anywhere, especially here in Portland. 7-11, Plaid Pantry, Starbucks, Stumptown, and every grocery store, restaurant, and street side booth in the industrialized world serves coffee in one form or another. Not even cheese is that universally available.

Am I wrong? Is it not weird to roast your own coffee? Would it be weird to make your own cheese?

When Jesscia told us about Perry’s strange hobbies, I made a comparison that I realize now was not entirely fair. I told her roasting your own coffee was like fermenting your own mead, it’s just plain weird. I understand that was not entirely appropriate, because someone who drinks mead is weird, let alone someone who drinks so much he might see an economic benefit to fermenting his own. Roasting your own coffee, in my opinion, is like making your own tortilla chips. Sure, they probably taste better, and if you ate a shit load of tortilla chips, then it would probably be cheaper in the long run. But tortilla chips, in all different varieties of flavor, shape and thickness, can be purchased a minimal cost all over town. Regardless of the taste and economic advantages, it’s just weird. Just go buy a damned bag of chips!

So, what do you guys think?

Karate is Stupid

2006-02-07T13:03:00.000-08:00
As I'm sure most of you know, Canada's Constitution does no include an equivalent to our First Amendment right to free speech. As a result, the government routinely silences the media for the "common good," but more often than not, in true Canadian fashion, they'll simply politely ask the news outlets not to report some big story for one reason or another. The most famous incident was several years ago when a serial rapist/ murderer was prowling the rural highways of western Canada. The government simply asked the news outlets not to tell anyone about it, for fear of causing a nationwide panic.

Of course, for us in America, that's just par for the course on Tuesday's edition of "Good Morning America."

I hate censorship in all its forms, and like most truly egregious crimes, true censorship can only really be perpetrated by a government body. But why, oh why doesn't the Canadian government start censoring stuff like this, just so I don't have to waste precious moments of my day reading, then whining about it:

Karate experts hired to control marauding parrots in New Zealand

Organizers of a vintage car rally in New Zealand have hired karate experts to protect vehicles from marauding native parrots, a news report said Friday.

About 40 members of a karate club have been enlisted to protect some 140 classic cars due to visit an alpine village near Mount Cook on New Zealand's South Island on Sunday, the New Zealand Press Association reported.

The karate experts will protect the cars from Keas, sharp-beaked native parrots which have been known to damage vehicles in their search for shiny items, NZPA said.

Denis Callesen, manager of the nearby Hermitage Hotel, said bird lovers needn't be concerned the karate experts would use martial arts moves on the parrots, which are a protected species. Their job would simply be to scare the birds away, he said.

Local wildlife ranger Ray Bellringer said the karate masters are unlikely to deter the Keas.

"They will fly around and laugh," he said.

The question is begged: If bird-lovers needn't worry about any karate moves being used on the birds, (a phrase which conjures some supremely amusing mental imagery... like Jet Li kicking a duck in the face), why the hell did they hire a bunch of "karate experts" to do the job? And if they can't use their supremely gay karate moves, what exactly are they supposed to do to scare away the birds?

I'm picturing 40 beefy guys with white karate outfits on, blacks belt tied around their waists and rising sun bandanas around their heads, going "keeyah!" over and over again while chasing a flock of sharp-beaked birds around, swinging those colorful foam noodle things that are so fun in the pool.

Karate guys are so gay.

So Close, Yet So Far Away

2006-02-03T16:12:00.000-08:00
We’ve all imagined it. We’ve all wondered what would happen if it ever came true.

The dapper man in the shiny suit steps up to the podium, crowds of people holding signs with his name written in stark, patriotic letters with subtext like “The Choice for a Better America!” The crowd cheers, he waves them a thankful hello. The noise quiets, he turns his mouth to the hive of microphones poised near his face. “Ladies and gentlemen,” He says, “I want to promise you that as soon as I take that seat in Congress, I will immediately forget each and every one of you. I will wipe clean my memory of kissing that small child. I will intentionally forget everything I said about lowering taxes, “investing in our children” and keeping jobs in America. I will pander and bow to whatever special interests can write the largest check, I will increase the tax burden on you and your families to pay for programs no one really thinks will actually work. The media will easily pressure me into never making a firm stand on any single issue. I will authorize more spending on public education than has ever been seen in history, while the quality of that education goes down the tubes. Hell, my kids go to private school, what do I care!?”

The crowd erupts in thunderous applause.

“Furthermore,” he will continue, “I’m gonna fuck every intern that walks through he door of my office, when I’m not balling those hookers, of course.” His wife, sitting only feet away smiles and waves to the audience. He will look directly into the nearest camera, give that practiced dramatic pause and say, “Hookers that you’re gonna pay for.”

The crowd goes wild, streamers fall from the ceiling, and the national anthem begins to blare on the loudspeakers, while he places his right hand against his heart, and left hand in his pants.

What if they told us what they really stood for? What if they just came right out and said what they were really gonna do, once they got there?

We were close. We were just so very close.

Jonathan Sharkey, also known as “The Impaler” has thrown his hat, or maybe his cape, into the ring of Minnesota politics. The reason this is noteworthy is that Mr. Sharkey will be the first gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota history that, in addition to being an avid hunter, is also a vampire. The more distressing fact is that this is not the first time this has happened in the U.S., thank you very much California and Florida.

Mr. Sharkey kicked off his campaign on Friday, January 13th (of course) and will be running on the platform of “Pure Evil.” According to Mr. Sharkey, “Unlike the other candidates, I’m not going to hide my evil side.”

It’s refreshing, isn’t it?

Mr. Sharkey’s goals include legislation that will allow the public impaling of terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and other criminals, as well as an increase in veteran’s benefits. While Mr. Sharkey worships the Dark Lord Satan, Devourer of Souls, Destroyer of Light and Spoiler of Milk, he states that he has nothing against Christians. “I don’t mind Christians at all,” he explains, “But God the Father is my mortal enemy.”

When I first read this article I was ecstatic. Finally a politician I can get behind, not because I share the peculiar views of the Vampires, Witches and Pagans Party, but because he actually says what he means. He’s a freak of nature, and I probably wouldn’t be able to stand ten minutes in his company, at least he’s honest.

Or so I thought.

Mr. Sharkey is currently in custody on charges of stalking and escape. At some point during the media hullabaloo about his idiotic Vampire Governor campaign, he made the comment that he used to a professional wrestler that went by the name Rocky Flash. A grossly underpaid Sheriff’s Department dispatcher recognized the name as an alias for a man wanted in Indiana, and he was promptly arrested.

I really don’t care about the stalking and escape charges, but I could never vote for a professional wrestler.

On the Subject of Me

2006-01-12T12:35:00.000-08:00
"I was a caesarean birth because my mother always liked that hairstyle."

Some of you know me. Some of you have never met me. Some of you who haven’t met me would like to. Many of you who have met me would like to tell those folks that would like to meet me that they shouldn’t bother. Some of you drink. Some of you don’t care. Some of you don’t drink, or care. Some of you drink, but care.

In any case, I thought with the New Year in full swing, I would take the opportunity to get a few things off my chest. Even those of you that know me (or just pretend to, in order to soak up a few fleeting moments of my perpetual spotlight) will not know some of the things I am about to reveal. I’m not proud of these facts, not am I particularly ashamed. I just thought full disclosure would be a good way to start 2006.

Please, look upon these admissions with a kind and forgiving heart, that is all that I ask.

1. I’ve never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

It would seem that in order to reach the ripe old age of 25 having never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life” all the way through, you’d have to be purposely avoiding it. I assure you this is not the case. In fact, I keep meaning to watch it, on account of Jimmy Stewart being one of my favorite actors.

Of course, Luke was 23 before he saw “Jaws,” or “Rocky.” Now that’s just sad.

2. I used to think the first day of the week was called Sunday because it never rained.

On this one you’ll have to cut me some slack, I was pretty young. Also, growing up in Louisiana, we get a lot of sunny days. I just made a logical leap. Unfortunately, I made quite a fool out of myself in Sunday school when I made reference to this “fact” and its obvious connection to god’s holy day.

It was then that they told me that at seventeen years old, I no longer had a place in Sunday school.

3. I’ve always wanted to collect something.

I’ve always wanted to be one of those people that collected one type of thing. Decorative spoons, Civil War memorabilia, shrunken heads, anything really, just to have that singular reputation would be so liberating. To hear people say, “Oh, Scott? Yeah, he’s that guy with all those hippopotamus figurines, remember?”

I’ve tried numerous times over the years to become a collector of one thing or another, but have always lost interest in whatever it was I had. Inevitably, I end up with two pewter dragons, three animal bone horns, one prop from the set of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” six decorative thimbles from Niagara Falls, and no interest in any of them.

All I have now is a collection of Gideon Bibles I've pilfered from hotel rooms across the country, and frankly, even I think that's wierd.

4. My dad was a wannabe sheep rustler.

Some of you may know that I grew up on a farm-type thing in rural Louisiana. Well, we had this pen (as in a fenced-in area with a gate) but frankly I don’t remember why, because it was always empty. Sometimes, as we were leaving the house, we would see a single sheep hanging out in the pen, perhaps because my lazy-ass brother never mowed in there. My dad would command one of us to run as fast as we could to try and shut the gate and trap the sheep, but he always ran away before we could.

I have no idea where this sheep came from, or even why my dad wanted it. I even asked my dad about this a few years ago, and he feigned ignorance of the whole ordeal. Apparently, he's a liar as well as a thief.

5. I used to think there was a chance I might be Jesus.

Okay, now just bear with me on this one.

I attended Catholic school all my life, and was raised in a strict, lapsed-Catholic household. As a young boy, I was introduced to the story of Jesus, and took particular interest in the stories of Jesus’ younger years. According to the Bible (or at least how I interpreted it,) Jesus didn’t know he was the son of god until he was 30, after which he began his ministry and went around telling everyone how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other (and we all know how well that turned out).

Given the non-stop Catholic-style pulpit pounding about the inevitable return of Jesus, I logically thought that maybe one of us in the room might be him and just not know it. Maybe, I thought, he could even be me, or I could be him, or whatever.

This seemed especially feasible since, as far as I was concerned, the borders of the world were West Jennings and East Lafayette, and "Jerusalem" was as fictional a place as Castle Grayskull.

6. I really like Prince.

Granted, I was a little disillusioned when I discovered that Prince was not really a prince at all, but just some guy from Minnesota, but this did not reduce my enjoyment of that nancy-boy’s frilly, limp-wristed, falsetto, pillow-biting, but ultimately enjoyable tunes one bit. Except for the “Bat-Dance,” that was just fucking gay.

I hope these admissions and revelations have provided useful insight into the puzzle that is me, the President, CEO, CFO and Head Custodial Engineer here at the OTR Institute. I further hope that my own disclosures might compel some of you to share your own troubled pasts in this public forum.

I would also like to know if anyone else thought they might have been Jesus when they were young, because if so, that would make me feel a lot better.

There's a Christmas Party in my Pants

2005-12-19T14:45:00.000-08:00
Christmas is upon us. It’s been approaching for some time, but we’ve all tried to wish it away, plug our fingers in our ears and hum “The Monster Mash” to keep ourselves from having to deal with it, but it didn’t work. Christmas has been stalking us for months, in the form of “The Little Drummer Boy” as sung by Jewel on the local iPod shuffle station,and it’s been tracking our scent with it’s festive nose with signs that read “Chrismuss Trees 4 Sale” on 82nd Ave.

And now, it’s found us.

Christmas is upon us, indeed.

And after it’s ripped apart our flesh, swallowed our brains and chewed on our entrails, it’ll calmly stroll away, leaving bloody footprints, leaving our mangled corpse to the hungry carrion birds, content for another year.

Okay, I still haven’t got all my shopping done, I’m a little tense. Frankly, I wish I could just bypass this whole Christmas thing and get right to New Year’s Eve. Now there’s a real holiday. Why can’t there be more booze-related holidays? Trying to limit my serious bingeing to New Year’s Eve, July 4th, President’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Flag Day, Boxing Day, and Isaac Aasimov’s birthday just gets harder each year.

But I digress.

The OTR Institute is here to help all those unfortunate whelps that may find themselves in the same perdicament as I with our first annual OTR Institute Gift Buying Guide. This guide will allow you to give the unique gifts that people always talk about when you’re not around. The kind of gifts that ensure it will find it’s way to the back of the closet in the bathroom, and virtually guarantee that you won’t even be invited next year, so you won’t have to worry about buying another gift! Think of the money you’ll save!

So without further ado:

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The OTR Institute 2005 Christmas Gift Guide for the Unique of Mind and Limited of Imagination:

The Electric Marshmallow Toaster ($19.99)

There are numerous products available on the internet (several of which appear on the 2005 OTR Gift Guide) that engender a response like that of our rock n’ roll “chaos theory” professor Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park. “You were all too busy trying to find if you could, you never stopped to think about whether or not your should.”

The Electric Marshmallow Toaster from Wiching Fish is a perfect example of this mentality. It would seem the creators of this fine product saw the four foot long hickory stick, used effectively to this end since the invention of the marshmallow, was seen as too cumbersome and graceless, causing them to opt for a more technologically superior solution.

Favorite quote from product description: “As seen in Wired magazine!”

The Peter Potty ($39.99)

Frankly, children scare me. The responsibility, their helplessness, their dependence on you as an adult, all of this terrifies me. Not as much, however, as their fluids. And perhaps, the only thing more fearsome than their actual fluids, are the bizarre plastic things people construct to store them: that’s right I’m talking about the potty.

The potty is a thing of the past, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce The Peter Potty!

The Peter Potty is a urinal for your young boy. Now he can go just like daddy, all over the floor!!

Favorite line from the product description: “…as parents fight against super-absorbent diapers…”

Urban Asshole Notification Cards ($7.50 for a box of 10)

Imagine that you’re walking down the sidewalk in a large, metropolitan area. You pass the exit from a parking lot, and get your ass bumped by a fuck-wad in a brand new Audi TT roadster that wasn’t even paying attention.

My pal Meghan would simply spit on the hood. If you, however, are not inclined to spit, or perhaps the dry, winter air has robbed you of that wonderful revenge juice, you would casually reach into your pocket to withdraw a piece of colorful paper, make a few scribbles with your trusty pen, and hand the driver of that car one of these.

“Congratulations, You’re an Asshole…. Let’s Discuss Why.”

Favorite line from the product description: “Assholes rarely know why they are the way they are…”

The Poops-A-Daisy ($18.95)

Do you ever read those disturbing new stories about some family’s loving cocker spaniel turning on the youngest kid for a reason no one can identify. Now we know why.

The “poopsadaisy” is like a fanny pack for your dog’s neck. What goes in the fanny pack? You guessed it, POOP!

You try and tell me that you wouldn’t snap and bite someone’s face off if they made you walk around with a bag full of your own shit tied around your neck.

Favorite line from the product description: “The Poopsadaisy’sTM patented two-pocket design will safely hold the dog's 'business'”

The MP3 Breast Implant (Price Currently Unavailable)

Admittedly, this one is still in the works, but the idea of a breast implant that plays my favorite tunes is simply too alluring. You gotta wonder if the storage capacity will be associated with the cup size…

Favorite line from the product description: “…pleasing alternative to the iPod selector wheel…”

The Dream Helmet ($29.95)

Have you ever wanted to be entirely sure that everyone on the plane you’re with thinks you’re an asshole, retard, or worse? Well, then have I got the product for you!

When a pillow or a strategically placed blanket just won’t cut it, and you’ve got thirty dollars just burning it’s way out of your pocket, you need The Dream Helmet!

The Dream Helmet is a specially designed moron-indicator and sleep aid guaranteed to provide you with the best sleep you’ve ever had on an airplane. And if you play your cards right, you may get free pudding and some flight wings form the helpful crew!

Favorite line from the product description: “The Dreamhelmet... is worth its weight in psychotropic drugs”

Poop Freeze ($8.95)

What is it about pet owners that seem to attract the most bizarre and disguisting produtcts?

You ever reached down to pick up a fresh pile of dog poop, only to have it squish in your hands like so much jello pudding?

Introducing Poop-Freeze! This patented and secret blend of aerosol, CFC’s, liquid nitrogen, herbs and spices allows you to freeze that poop, making it safe and pleasant to handle, no gloves required!

Favorite line from the product description: “a specially formulated aerosol freeze spray that, upon contact, forms a frosty film on dog poop”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I hope this first annual OTR Institute Gift Guide had been helpful and informative. I wish you all the merriest of all possible Christmases, and the happiest of all possible New Years.

Also, if you're looking for gifts for that special prostitute in your life, may I recommend www.whorepresents.com.

And if anyone is still banging their heads about what to get for me this year, in thanks for a supendous year of editorial blitzkrieg here at the OTR Institiute, I’ve still got many empty spots on my Christmas List.

But please, no more ties.

We're Talking Baseball...

2005-12-15T15:31:00.000-08:00
I have a friend named Tommy Stive Gomez. No, that’s not a typo, his middle name is really Stive. Believe me, he’s not Scandanavian. Why his middle name is Stive is a story for another time.

My pal Tommy has a problem: He hates being sick. He doesn’t just hate it, he haaaaates it. He loathes it with a passion. He hates it, not just because being sick makes you achy, sniffly, and feel like shit, he hates it the most because some random outside force, namely the organism that is infecting his body, is dictating how he’s supposed to behave. Go to bed, his body says. Have some soup and chill, his achy muscles and stuffy nose beg of him. Tommy will hear none of it.

Now, Tommy is your average guy, he likes to drink a cold brew with some pals, occasionally raise some hell, but he’s just like the rest of us, he has his limit, but not when he’s sick.

When Tommy gets sick, he gets resentful. He hates the fact that he’s not supposed to go out and get drunk, and stay up all night and smoke opium out of a rusty spray paint can, so that’s exactly what he does. He drinks, he smokes, he has unprotected sex with parking meters. He does it all, just for the purpose of showing that microscopic, non-sentient organism he can.

It may not even be what he WANTS to do, but since his body is trying to tell him not to, and he’s knows he shouldn’t, he knows he should bow to the will of his disease and get some sleep, he’s gone get tore up.

Sometimes I feel that’s how the City of Portland handles its budget meetings. They know they shouldn’t, hell the almost can’t, but they’re gonna just cuz they’s not supposed to.

In case you guys haven’t heard, the City of Portland, “The Rose City,” the ever-so-ironically-called “City that Works,” is trying to woo the disenfranchised Florida Marlins to its moist shores. While words cannot describe how bad an idea this is, I’ll certainly try my best.

I’m not a big fan of sports in general, and four years of living within earshot of Fenway Stadium, baseball ranks pretty low on my list. (I once asked a guy in a NY Yankees jersey why he was peeing in the azaleas in front of my apartment complex, and he turned his half-opened eyes to me, pointed to his stream of kidney juice and said, “This is what I think of Boston!”)

Despite my own personal reservations, the City of Portland, a city I’ve grown to love and hate with equal fervor, simply cannot afford to build a fucking baseball stadium, end of story. And since everyone likes lists so damned much, I’ve compiled a list of reasons why:

1. The $15 million aerial tram that OHSU convinced the city to build three years ago, has become a $40 million dollar tram before ground has even been broken.

2. The City of Portland, in all their wisdom, has seen fit to pay for the campaigns of all Portland City Commissioners. A cost, I might add, imposed upon the city taxpayers without so much as a single vote from the public. Ironcially, it’s called "Voter Owned Elections."

3. Portland Public Schools is spending million of dollars to build a new school at the Columbia housing projects, EVEN THOUGH private parties offered to build the school FOR FREE!

4. Instead of paying the same property tax rate I pay, the owner of a $700,000 downtown condo in the swankiest area of town, The Pearl District, only has to pay about $200. You want to tell me Bush gives tax cuts to the rich?

5. In Portland’s decadent commitment to be as much like a cheeky European, limp-wristed, vertical-stripe wearing, no bathing, nancy-pants couture city as possible, they’ve ripped up downtown, and installed a comically ineffecient light-rail system that moves less than %1 of Portland commuters for about $100 million per mile of track.

6. In reference to item #5, the city is also trying to structure downtown to be more “pedestrian friendly,” which is another term for “car un-friendly.” This action, which has burdened already struggling businesses with enormous taxes, has further decreased the amount of people that go downtown to do ANYTHING, leading to fewer businesses downtown, more vacant office space than Portland has seen since the 70’s, and less income for the city.

7. For fuck’s sake, Multnomah County has yet to even open the BRAND NEW JAIL they just built, even though the other jails in the area are so full, convicts are being “matrixed out” at a rate not seen in history.

8. Bending over and grabbing the ankles for the wacked out environmental-nut-job mouth-breathers that stalk the streets of this city, Portland decided to pay TWO TIMES the amount a normal roof would cost, to cover the Portland and Multnomah County Building with a special, granola-based, soy-derived, hippy roof.

9. Portland is still paying for the renovation of PGE Park! A park that no one ever fucking goes to!

11. Portland has COUNTY FUNDED ACUPUNCTURE CLINICS!!!!

10. Whoever wants this fucking stadium, you get the money together and build it your goddamned selves.

OTR Institute Sociological Survey #2

2005-12-06T15:21:00.000-08:00
Which do you think is creepier?

A) The hair
B) The teeth
C) The eyebrows
D) The earrings
C) The fact that this person is a municipal employee
D) The way his eyes follow you as you move around your
computer monitor

Read the story here...

Come All Ye Faithful

2005-12-05T15:56:00.000-08:00
“It is happening again…” – The Giant.

I knew it was only a matter of time. We all knew, really. With the amazing ability of the human mind to convince itself of any foregone reality, it will continue to happen until we get Budweiser to stop using poison dart frog juice in their wort mixture.

Ladies and gentleman, if you needed, here it is. Proof of the existence of God. Well, maybe not of God,, perhaps just of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, that guy that claimed to be his son.

Jesus of Nazareth, a.k.a. Jesus Christ, The Messiah, The King of the Jews, The Lamb of God, The One True Light, has made his presence known. He has pierced the veil between our worlds, and delivered a message of hope to his flock, in these troubled times.

And where else in the world would The Great, Merciful and Benevolent Lord Jesus, who sits at the Right hand of God, in all his splendor and glory and forgiveness, and fruit bats and breakfast cereals, make his presence know, but in Texas. And where else in Texas would he choose to convey his message, seeing all the corruption in the churches, and synagogues, and temples, and old folks homes and public schools and pizza parlors and trailer parks, but on the tailgate of a 1992 Ford Ranger pickup. Forest green, of course.

Jesus Christ, the savior of mankind, he that was born to die for the sins of man, he who has redeemed us and allowed us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, has, in all his wisdom, made his face known to the faithful, and they rejoice.

Of course, they don’t seem perturbed by the fact that no one knows for sure what Jesus looked like. None of the 150+ “pilgrims” seems particularly concerned by the fact that this image really only vaguely resembles the western cultures’ iconic image of Jesus, the one we routinely see on hologram key chains and collectible plates.

But the truly unfortunate thing is that no one seems concerned that this really isn’t the image of Jesus Christ. They are so blinded by their faith, they are willing to ignore the undeniable truth, staring them in the face like a mud stain on the back of a truck.

That’s a picture of Destro.

Destro, high in the pantheon of G. I. Joe villains, in all his wisdom and glory, has finally chosen to make his presence known. By revealing his face on the back of this truck in Texas, he is reassuring us, in this troubled time that we need not fear. We needn’t fear Islamo-fascism, nor Communist China, we need not even fear invasion from outer space.

We must only fear the iron-fisted rule of Cobra.

These are, indeed, the end times. Soon we will witness the other signs of the apocalypse: Cobra Commander’s serpentine hiss will be heard over the loudspeaker at a very important Manchester United football game, Tomax and Xamot will be spotted shopping for matching Skechers at the Filene’s Basement in Cleveland, and finally The Baroness herself will run for Water and Sewer Commisioner of San Miquel County, New Mexico under the Green Party ticket.

Didn't you always assume the end of all life, freedom and happiness in the world would somehow involve the Green Party?

Repent, ye infidels. Abandon your puny hopes of salvation from that pathetic group of do-gooders, G. I. Joe. Not even they, with their wicked-cool gadgets and unquenchable desire to “do the right thing” and “knowing is half the battle” can save you now!

In the name of the Emperor, the Commander and our Serpentor Lord, Amen.

The Unbearable Coldness of Onion Rings

2005-11-22T11:32:00.000-08:00
I love humanity, but I hate people. It seems no matter how incredibly disappointed I become in the actions of some of the humans on this planet, some other depressing story hits the news wires and I sink just a little lower. That group of guys that beat their neighbor’s daughter’s pet pygmy goat to death with sticks to sell the meat for cocaine, the Muslims that successfully won a lawsuit to ban Winnie the Pooh piglet dolls from their workplace, just about ANY news story involving Ingrid Newkirk. And list just goes on. A few more stories like those and I’ll be officially applying to be a member of whatever species Jackie Stallone is.

But funny factoids, everybody loves them. Especially, it seems, if they’re not true. Like the urban legend that the day of the Superbowl features the highest number of domestic abuse complaints, or that the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year.

Well, here’s a little factoid for you people, and you can take this one to the bank.

What day of the year features the highest number of calls to 911 Emergency Dispatch?

The day after Christmas.

Why the day after Christmas, you ask? Well, grab that mouthpiece and start squeezing that stress pillow because I’m about to tell you.

Everyone wants to test out their new cell phones, and apparently, that’s the only number they can skim off the top of their pointy little heads.

The abuse of the most important emergency service in this country has gotten a bit out of control. Just do a preliminary search online and you’ll find endless stories about people calling 911 because the guy that cleaned their carpets at the car wash left muddy footprints on the back seat, or some guy was yelling at his dog. I even found a story about a man that called 911 and asked them to connect him to Switzerland. I also found a story about a woman that called 911 and asked for the police to go by her ex-boyfriend’s house and see if there were any cars in his driveway other than his own.

I know these people don’t read this blog. Frankly, I’m certain these people can’t even read. But for the love of all that is true and right and reproducible in a controlled laboratory environment, you people have got to stop! It gets worse every year, which is no surprise, because more and more people get cellphones each year. Is this really the only number you can think of? Holy fucking shit!

As if the New Orleans Saints weren’t enough, a woman in Thibodeaux, LA decided to further shame the state of Louisiana by calling 911 in response to the life-threatening emergency of being served cold onion rings.

So spread the word everybody. When you get served cold onion rings, get cut off on the highway, stub your toe on the edge of your dresser on a cold morning, find a pile of cat puke on your bathroom floor, or notice the guy at Burger King handling the lettuce without gloves, try to keep your hand away from the cell phone. If you get cornered by Jackie Stallone, though, you call that number.

2005-11-08T16:09:00.000-08:00
I always really hate it when bloggers blog about not having enough time to blog. It seems so self-centered and egotistical, as if the world is waiting with bated breath for your mind-numbing analysis of the most recent Spyro the Dragon video game or latest presidential speech.

What I hate even more, however, is when bloggers blog in apology for not blogging, imagining their handful of readers gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair for lack of their quasi-weekly retort on this week’s episode of “Lost.”

As they say, you always become what you hate.

My life has been a mess lately. I’m very busy doing spy-type things all over the state, and frankly my duties involve visiting the houses of far too many nefarious individuals shaking and sweating as they recount their obvious lies of injuries and loss. The funny part is when I ask them if I can take a photo of their injuries, and they lift up their shirts, point to a virgin patch of skin and remark, "Healed up real nice, didn't it?"

My lovely wife and I have also been busy in preparation of the final arrival of Luke of Useless and Pointless Knowledge and his beautiful wife Lindsey. Their lumpy, oversized, squishy, basketball shaped kitty will be tucked under their arms when they arrive. I can only hope his presence hasn’t increased their gas costs too far over the projections.

In any case, I’m working on several great pieces that feature the boundless humor, scathing insight and gratuitous laughs at other people’s expense that all five of my readers have come to love. Especially you, Mom.

Tomorrow, however, I have to drive to Bend to photograph the floor underneath some woman’s refrigerator. If you’re luck, maybe I’ll post those photos.

"Oh, I Have Slipped the Surly Bonds of Earth..."

2005-10-24T13:04:00.000-07:00
"...Put out my hand, and touched the face of god."

Last week, I drove to Madras, OR to perform an inspection of the scene of a traffic accident.. The collision occurred on highway 26 between Warm Springs and Madras, in the treacherous and unnerving twists and turns of the highway as it climbs out of the Willamette Valley, headed towards the High Desert of Central Oregon.

The highway features no shoulder on either side, opting for a direct drop of about 3,000 feet on one side and the impressive presence of a sheer rock face on the other, only about three feet from the edge of the road. The highway twists and turns and grades up and down, until I found myself at the location of the collision, mile marker 110.

Immediately off on my right side, I found a very convenient turn off where I could park and have plenty of room to do my investigation. I was measuring this, photographing that and generally trying to figure out what the heck happened (and debating whether to pee in that empty Mountain Dew bottle) when I turned around and saw this.

Now you just try and tell my I don’t live in god’s own country.

For a boy from the flatlands of Louisiana, it still amazes me that the Earth is capable of such things.

From my house, If I head west, in 2 ½ hours, I’ll be on the beach. If I head southeast, in one hour I’ll be in the mountains. If I go a little further, I’ll be in the desert.

I would like to officially tender an open invitation to anyone interested in seeing this beauty first-hand. You get your ass up here, and I’ll take you to Highway 26 Westbound at mile marker 110 and let you gaze upon the wonder of Mount Hood, as seen from the south side.

I would also be willing to do it in exchange for some skiing lessons.