New Year equals same old shit

Well, 2006 is over and 2007 shall begin in a little while. Now is the chance for us to take a look back over the past year. Reflect on our triumphs and failures. Think about the memories we might regret and the ones we will cherish with us forever.

Screw that.

I’m not writing any damn end of the year blog entry! Anybody with a computer, the misconception that they’re deep, and too much emo music blasting in their ears can do that. Naturally, I can’t go in that direction, it’s too obvious and easy. I have more fun going in my own direction. And if other bloggers have chosen the same direction as me, good for them, going against the herd is always more interesting and takes bigger balls.

So, instead of doing an entry about something completely different than New years, (you know, something like: Tips to survive a horror movie, which is vital information everybody should know and I’ll save for a later time), I’m gonna just write out some shit I’ve noticed in this wide wonderful world of ours. That’s right, it’s time to Ruminate!

-Ever notice how, when two famous people die at the same time one person’s death always over shadows the other one? And usually it’s the less deserving of the two who gets all the attention. Princess Di and Mother Teresa died pretty much at the same time, but Di got all the press! She never even did anything other than sell a few old ratty dresses she didn’t want anymore to raise awareness of land mines or something, (and a big success that was wasn’t it? Truly she has made a difference in the world). Whereas Big Momma Teresa devoted the whole of her long (and not very attractive, I mean come on, she had to be a nun, she had no other choice!) and important life to helping people in person. She went to all those third-world countries where the kids run around with swollen, empty bellies and the women just let their indigenous ta-tas hang all out and saggy and everybody always has flies just sitting on their faces and nobody swats them away. She went to these places and wrecked shop! She built schools and dams, stopped the flow of lava from erupting volcanoes, bent spoons with her mind, dropped frozen lakes on forest fires and invented the wheel. Compared to that Di was nobody, (of course, compared to a gangrenous big toe she’s nobody) and yet everybody concerned themselves with her more. Sup with that? Elton John didn’t write songs about Teresa. People didn’t line up to see her old wrinkled body go through the streets. Hell, who even knows where she was buried? Not me and I’m the only one who seems to give a damn.

Same thing is going on now. James Brown and Gerald Ford: both dead. And again the person who doesn’t deserve the coverage is getting all of it. That’s right, I’m talking about Ford. Let me put it this way: as just some regular guy with no political knowledge and the attention span of a typical American, I know very little about Ford. But I do know one thing and that is that he pardoned Nixon after that whole Watergate jazz. Based on just that bit of info I have deduced that Ford is a douche. Whereas James Brown was the Godfather of soul who made about a trillion popular songs, wherein you could only understand every third word he said and which have been sampled by every other musician in the history of the world. Long after everybody forgets who Ford ever was, (just as I’ve already done with all previous presidents) people will still be getting up On the good foot and talking about how they’re all Sex Machines. But all I see on CNN and FOX (motto: who needs the news when we can just report our opinion about the news!) news channels are shows about Ford’s life. BFD!

-Is it just me or has driving become really dangerous these days? I speak mostly to people who live in cities, but all areas of sprawl count. People drive any way they feel like and the situation isn’t helped by the great amount of immigrants who come to America and bring the driving rules from their countries of origin. I can’t blame foreigners though, there are so many bad drivers on the road: old people, women, drunks, etc. But you want to know who the biggest violators are? People on cell phones.

I don’t get it, I mean, there are so many worse things a person can be doing while driving, such as eating, fiddling with the radio, beating their kids, drinking, having sex, attempting to drive using the Force; but for some reason cell phones just make people bad drivers, almost as if they’re unable to drive and hold a conversation at the same time.

You’ll be driving down the road, going to Popeyes, (if you’re like me) or the neighborhood porn shop, (again, like me) when suddenly the person from the next lane just kind of swerves over into your lane. You slam on the breaks and let the person go ahead. While driving in front of you, the car is worse at staying in the lines than a kid with Parkinson’s attempting to use a coloring book. And on top of it the speed limit is 45 MPH or something and the car isn’t going any faster than 25. When a break in traffic comes up you drive by the car and look inside, expecting to see Helen Keller behind the wheel when instead it’s just some regular looking person, (insert your own definition of “regular person” here) totally focused on the cell phone in their hand.

Damn that’s annoying!

Anybody else notice stuff that makes them question the very nature of the universe? Or is it just me?

“Santa” killed in gang-style slaying

(While digging through the Washington Post this morning, trying to find the cartoon section, I ran across this story buried deep on page 12. That’s terrible! This is an important story and everybody needs to know about it. I don’t usually post columns in Eighty-Four Glyde on Sundays, but this is special. That’s why I’m reposting it in its entirety here.)

The body of a man wearing a red suit typically associated with Santa Claus was found Friday night stuffed in a drainage pipe in the 1300 block of North Capital Street in Washington D.C.

The body was discovered after a local man was walking his dog which got loose and ran into a nearby creek.

“My dog Thi and I were just going for a night walk. I don’t always keep her on a chain because she’s a pretty well-behaved bitch,” said Bob Deacon. “But I guess she must have caught a scent of the body in the air because she went running down to the creek and started gnawing on something.”

Since Santa Claus has never undergone the fingerprinting procedure, or any sort of DNA testing, positive identification of the body won’t be possible. The situation was further complicated by the manner of death and the disposal of the body.

According to the Washington D.C. medical examiner, Santa Claus was most likely forced to kneel on the ground, facing away from his killer. The killer then shot Claus twice in the back of the head, point blank, thereby obliterating the majority of the victim’s face. There is really not much left other than a blood-matted white beard with chunks of brain and bone clotted in it. In an odd turn, the victim’s ears had been cut off, as well as his tongue. The manner of the death hints strongly at a gang-style murder, said Det. Patrick E. Able, spokesman for the district police department.

“We don’t have any specific info yet to hint at one gang or another, but the cutting off of ears and tongue is usually a mark of a local crew called the Black Hand. That mutilation signifies that the victim was a snitch,” Able said. “What Santa was going to snitch on we have no idea, but we’re looking into it.”

The Black Hand has had run ins with city police on many occasions. They are known to run drugs in Northeast D.C. as well as being involved with the theft and selling of merchandise.

According to an unnamed source in the police department, the Black Hand is in some way involved with more than two dozen deaths in the district in 2006. They also have ties with New Jersey mafia, making them a gang the police will have to keep their eyes on in the future.

While the police are unofficially looking into the Black Hand for the murder, they still have been unable to come up with a motive.

“The first thing we have to do is figure out just what Santa was doing in Washington D.C. in the first place. ‘What business could he have that would bring him here? Shouldn’t he be at the North Pole getting everything ready for the big day Monday?’ Those are the questions we need to ask and get answered as we continue in the investigation,” Able said.

Area residents are wondering what Santa’s death will mean for Christmas this year.

“Who’s going to bring our presents?” said 8-year-old Latisha Jones, a resident of North Capital street. “What’s going to happen?”

So far no answers are forthcoming.

“There are three days out of the year that my five children look forward to: their birthdays, the last day of school and Christmas. Now that Santa is dead it looks like Christmas isn’t going down this year. I have no idea how I’m going to deal with how disappointed they’re going to be,” said Jasmine Jones, Latisha’s mother.

Christmas will arrive on Monday. Until then people don’t know what to expect. Christmas morning could leave people happy and full of holiday joy, or with empty areas under their Christmas trees and in their hearts. We can only wait to see what will happen.

“I really hope Christmas comes. I’ve been waiting for it all year!” Latisha said. “And I hope they find the mean men who killed Santa and punish them!”

Watchout! She’s got an Adams Apple! (or Boys will be….girls?)

I’ve been to some weird places in my life, and done some weird things, (the time I walked through the secret underground tunnels of my old college, used mostly by some goofy collegiate secret societies comes to mind, as does the time I went to war, and the other time I went to war) not to mention the multitude of weird things I’ve seen, (and by that I mean: cows. Ever seen a cow up close? I mean, really seen a cow? Those things are freaky!) But I’ve never seen something like Club Chaos.

Wednesday night was my first experience with a gay/lesbian club, on “Ladies’ Night,” featuring a Burlesque Show, and all the glories entailed therein. But first let me set the scene.

Two days ago was my white cousin’s birthday. How do I have a white cousin you ask? (I’m black for those of you who couldn’t tell by my pictures) Well, it’s a long story full of mystery, intrigue, action, pathos and drama, so I’ll just give the short version: her ancestors raped my ancestors down on the plantation. Got it? Great. Going on.

Virginia, (for that is her name) and her fiancée Jessica, (which everybody calls her because her name just happens to be Jessica, what a coincidence, eh?) had family and friends out to dinner Wednesday night at a sushi joint in D.C. called Generic Sushi Restaurant, or something like that. Then, that delightful meal (consisting of numerous little edible things of varied colors and textures) was followed up with a trip to the neighborhood club for the love that dare not speak its name.

I was excited to go to a lesbian club, for the obvious reasons (hot chicks making out with each other! Yeah!) and to test out my pimp skills on various lipstick lesbians, (hey, it’s worked before.) What I hadn’t counted on was what a weird place it would turn out to be.

When I first stepped in the club I knew immediately that I would be doing no hitting on any type of women that night. Mostly because I probably would have had my nuts ripped off by some chick’s uber-manly girlfriend, but also because I couldn’t always tell who was female and who was just dressed in women’s clothes.

It became somewhat freeing to be able to go to a club and not have to worry about hitting on anybody, or being asked to dance, or being too scared to check anybody out in case in turned out that person had a penis. I could just enjoy the booze and watch everybody else having a good time. And there were some people having a really good time.

Has anybody ever noticed that super-flaming black guys are probably the best dancers around? This would explain why they always end up as back up dancers for J-Lo and Janet, or they become choreographers or runway walking consultants. I guess when you’re all over-the-top gay, (I’m not talking prison gay, I’m talking Men on Film gaaaaaay!) you can dance around anyway you want (within the limits of rhythm and the beat of the song of course) and enjoy yourself. Some guys were having a good time that night.

Another person having a good time was the post-op tranny who was obviously in love with him/herself. He/she was dancing by herself in front of a full-length mirror. And it wasn’t so much dancing as it was a stripper routine involving her humping her Members Only-style jacket while it was on the floor. I’ve never seen somebody so involved with themselves while on the dance floor. It was fun to watch, (keeping in mind that had it been a guy or a girl totally trying to seduce themselves in front of a mirror, I still would have watched. The fact that it was a combination of both just made it more interesting.)

It (and I do mean “it”) was more interesting to watch than the “burlesque show” that happened that night. The line-up of Rubenesque women undulating to Christmassy music while seductively removing items of clothes left me feeling dead inside, as if there was no such thing as beauty in the world anymore. Luckily, alcohol was there to see me through that nightmare.

All in all it was in interesting time, marred only by the fact that I might have accidentally hit on a guy while drunk, (it wasn’t my fault, it looked like a woman, I just went up to talk to her until I realized where I was and I asked point blank if I was talking to a man or a woman. After a short hesitation he said he was a dude.) but it still worked out because I gave him the confidence to go out on the dance floor and find some guy to rub his junx all up on, (that’s how I dance by the way. I find some lady and go rub my junx on her through my tight and incredibly sexy pants. It never fails me!)

So in the end, I got to celebrate my cousin’s birthday, have some nutritious food-like substances, watch people acting totally weird in public and help an androgynous person get over their fear of dancing. Do I dare go back to that gay club and see how things go on a weekend night?

I don’t think so. My recliner is just too comfortable.

Insert clever Christmas related pun here

I’m a big fan of Christmas. That’s right, no Scrooge am I. Not an ounce of the Grinch is to be found anywhere within my genetic makeup. I’m a big ole heap of Christmas cheer. There’s something about the holiday season that warms my cockles (a phrase I will never get tired of using) and makes me radiate joyfulness and triumph. I don’t know if it’s the weather, (it certainly isn’t this year. It’s December 18 and it’s supposed to be 64 degrees today!) the crass commercialism that assaults me at every turn, the smell of pine needles rotting in the living room, the insane amount of Christmas lights some people put in their yards and over their houses that do a great job of burning out my retinas, or perhaps the music.

It might be the music. Christmas carols make the world go round as far as I’m concerned. They invoke images of warm and toasty winter nights with snow falling outside and a roaring fire going on inside, while everybody just kind of hangs around together, possibly as families were meant to do, (I have vague memories of my family doing those kinds of activities but the memories are hazy and from a time long forgotten. Perhaps I’m thinking of any random episode of Leave it to Beaver.)

Anyway, it always seems that (as far as the secular carols go) people in these songs are just having ridiculous amounts of fun. Sure some of the lyrics don’t make sense, (Dance in that new old fashion way? What does that mean? Or this brain twister:

I’ll be home for Christmas

You can count on me

I’ll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

Does that register logically to anybody? I mean, the singer spends the whole song saying how he/she will be home for Christmas to help do all these things and partake in some holiday happiness, but then caps off the song by admitting to a deep psychosis and tendencies to hallucinate. What’s that about?) but they don’t need to. They just have to rhyme and sound vaguely wintery. I would like to write my own Christmas carol, but I don’t think I’ve got what it takes. On the other hand, I can give you all hints to write your own carols, if you so choose. It’s fairly simple.

How to write a Christmas carol

Christmas carols are like country songs, they have to contain certain elements to fall into that genre. Those elements are:

• Jingle Bells. If you throw jingle bells somewhere in your song you can’t lose.
• A Choir. Not always easy to find, but if you can get your hands on one you should definitely use it.
• References to snow, cold weather, fires, love, presents, trees, etc. Remember, the more wintery images you use, the better the carol.
• Mentions of familial traditions or some kind of holiday activity. You can talk about everything from decorating the Christmas tree to making Christmas cookies. Is your family tradition to get drunk and belligerent? Perhaps you like to open a present or two on Christmas Eve. Whatever your poison, put it in your song because it invites listeners to be a part of your family, (though that might not be something they want.)
• Bonus element: A reference to an obscure, possibly European Christmas tradition that’s been lost in time and nobody knows. Some examples of this include talking about figgy pudding (what the hell is that anyway?) wassailing and giving people weird, potentially inappropriate presents spread out over a series of days. Presents that can include other people. Which is not something I knew was an option when giving gifts, (unless you hand out prostitutes to your friends for Christmas, which isn’t such a bad idea.)

Wayyyyy back in Christmas of ’01 I was in boot camp. It wasn’t my plan to go through boot camp in the winter, but it wasn’t up to me. The government seems to do what it pleases with random American citizens.

Anyway, the environment at Fort Knox wasn’t the best for holidays. Nary a paper cut-out snowflake or cardboard Frosty was to be found. The drill sergeants were more interested in decking the concrete with our faces than decking the halls. So I decided to do something about it. I had my father mail me the lyrics to as many Christmas carols as possible. Now I don’t have any type of singing voice whatsoever, but after weeks of singing cadences while marching and running we all became immune to bad singing. It became my job to serenade the other sixty something guys in my platoon with holiday song. Or, more accurately, I attacked my fellow soldiers with a wobbly, off-pitch voice and scary hand gestures reminiscent of Parkinson’s. But it got the job done. After a week or so people would request songs of me and I would be happy to oblige. Whether we were cleaning our rifles, making our beds or dropping deuces in bathroom stalls, (there’s nothing more relaxing for the sphincter muscles than hearing Grandma got run over by a reindeer while you’re trying to pinch off a loaf. Gross, I know, but try it sometime.)

It was small, but in my own way I was able to spread some holiday cheer. Thereby taking care of my one good deed for the decade. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a naughty list I need to bribe my way off of. That Santa is a crusty old guy. He doesn’t like to bargain often. Luckily I know that he likes the white powder, and I don’t mean that stuff you ski on!

Merry Whatever people!

If you don’t open this your family’s private parts will be gnawed upon by wolves

I can’t stand it anymore! Aren’t you tired of getting emails and Myspace bulletins with some kind of attention-grabbing subject line and you end up having to read something weird that somebody’s trying to pass off as non-fiction?

You know what I’m talking about: Internet rumors and chain letters. I don’t want to know about some possibly fictitious African country where the leader has been disposed and the government desperately wants to dump millions of dollars into my account. I don’t need to find out about some kid who supposedly has a pity-inducing and extremely debilitating cancer and will somehow get monetary donations if I pass on a chain letter. And I don’t care about what random and unnecessary beauty product they’re testing on Nummy Muffin Coco Butter and the rest of her cute rabbit family.

Let me give you an example of a bulletin I got two days ago. In this bulletin a person claims that “Starbucks are for terrorists.” Let’s read, shall we? (Original syntax and spelling intact.)

Recently Marines in Iraq wrote to Starbucks because they wanted to let them
know how much they liked their coffees and to request that they send some of it to the troops there. Starbucks replied, telling the Marines thank you for their support of their business, but that Starbucks does not support the war, nor anyone in it, and that they would not send the troops their brand of coffee. So as not to offend Starbucks, maybe we should not support them by buying any of their products! As a war vet writing to fellow patriots, I feel we should get this out in the open. I know this war might not be very popular with some folks, but that doesn't mean we don't support the boys on the ground fighting
street-to-street and house-to-house for what they and I believe is right. If you feel the same as I do then pass this along, or you can discard it and no one will never know.

"Semper Fidelis."
Sgt Howard C. Wright
1st Force Recon Co
1st Plt PLT

Now, does anybody believe this in any way? Be honest, I won’t make fun of you. After all, it does have the proper items to make it a successful Internet rumor, (successful in that though it was created years ago it still gets circulation.) What are those proper items, you ask? Let’s break it down.

1. It’s written in letter form. Doing this makes it seem as though the person writing it has first hand knowledge of the events described within the letter.

2. It takes advantage of current events. Writing about the war in Iraq, what’s more up-to-date than that? Not to mention that the war is a very polarizing issue, you’re going to have an opinion of it one way or the other. Having the rumor seem patriotic will always help.

3. It attacks a huge, faceless corporation. Everybody hates huge, soulless corporations, and we all believe that they secretly hate their customers and do everything they can to steal our money while giving us inferior products. So everybody will love to see their beliefs confirmed in the rumor.

4. It uses truth and fiction combined. Mixing in real things with blatant lies will help make the lies more acceptable, especially if the lies confirm pre-held notions the readers might have, (see number three.)

5. It calls people to come together to fight. People like to feel like they have the power to change things.

6. It has a vague timeline. Without any details as to when something specifically happened, you can make it sound like it happened yesterday or three years ago.

7. It has a name. Throwing a name in the letter implies honesty. I mean, who would sign their name to a lie, right?

Of course, this bulletin didn’t give the whole story. If you want the whole story you have to go to one of my favorite sites, snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/starbucks.asp. Which will lay everything out for you. It just goes to show that you should never trust anything anybody ever says. Ever!

As is often the case, I’ve been inspired by this whole phenomenon, and I’m going to make my own Internet rumor. It will incorporate all the things above and will make absolutely no sense. But it’ll be just weird enough that people will believe it. Not only am I going to put the rumor here, but I’m also going to send it out as a bulletin, in a two-pronged attack. Feel free to copy the bulletin from here to make it your own bulletin, or pass it along if you get the bulletin from me. I think it’d be hilarious to see just how far it’ll go. Maybe it’ll be spread around, maybe it’ll die a horrible death. Either way, I’m bored enough to try it.

Here goes:

Nuns get the shaft from government

When I heard about this I was shocked at how backwards in time some people still are! We’re in the 21^st Century and we need to teach our children everything to ensure a future for our country!

A few months ago, at the St. Rose High School, in Tonganoxie, Kansas, the county school board decided to put three teaching nuns on administrative leave for teaching children about other sexual positions besides the “Vatican approved” missionary style.

“We can’t just have teachers in our school system who refuse to teach children in the manner prescribed to them by Our Lord and the state department of education,” said Croyden Missider, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Education. “It’s just something that Our Lord doesn’t approve of.”

That above quote was taken directly from Mr. Missider by members of the Kansas Committee for the Separation of Church and State (K.C.S.C.S.) That group, like all right-thinking Americans, are trying to keep Neo-Con and outdated modes of thought out of the school system.

Help support KCSCS in their effort to keep the minds of our children open to ideas that will help them become well-rounded and vital members of America’s future. Please repost this bulletin (with the subjectline: Nuns get the shaft from government) around to help create awareness for what the Kansas Department of Education is doing. If we are all aware, we can make a change!

Thank you!
Dr. Richard Brakeston, M.D.
Topeka, Kansas

it's two a.m. do you know where your appetite is?

It’s the middle of the night, or sometimes the ass-crack of dawn. You’ve spent the whole night partying, drinking, smoking, snorting, rolling, looting, pillaging, sewing, running, jumping and having sex with various barnyard animals, (is it just me or is bestiality a reoccurring theme in some of these entries?) now you’re hungry.

What do you do hotshot?!

What do you do?!

If you’re from around my way you end up at that beacon of light, that midnight Mecca of munchies, that haven for nighthawks: The Tastee Diner! Tastee for short, to those who know.

The Tastee is a 24-hour eating establishment, (actually, there are two of them) with low, low prices and decent food, (decent in that at two in the morning you’ll shovel it into your face without worrying too much about flavor or taste) and a clientele base that’s either one step above being homeless (in some cases a step below) or refugees from a tear in the space/time continuum who were pulled from the 1930 depression era. That’s just the kind of place it is, you feel that at any moment you could be accosted by somebody asking for spare change or somebody asking if you have any “Bromo” to soothe their upset stomach, (that was a joke about a really old product for those who weren’t really following me there.)

The fun thing about the Tastee is that you often run into somebody you haven’t seen in years. And of course they’re in the same blurry-eyed state you’re in. They stumble into the diner, drag themselves to a booth and wave the menu in front of their face until they can manage to get one eye to focus and make sense of the words on the page.

I don’t know why they bother, at this time of day all people can handle is fried foods. I take a different approach. I burst through the door, point at the nearest employee is if they stole from me and tell them, my loudest and most authoritative voice, to take one of each thing from the menu and throw it in boiling oil. Then I stride over to a table and sit there as regally as possible, waiting to be served on. Once all the oily, greasy food is placed in front of me, I take a deep inhalation and immediately run to the bathroom to puke. This approach has worked well in the past.

I like to fondly recall the time I and some friends of mine, (you know who you are) entered the Tastee, in interesting apparel. You see, prior to going to the diner, we had broken into a local pool to do a little skinny dipping, (there were some cute girls visiting from Jersey, so we had to impress them and get them naked. Skinny dipping accomplished both goals at the same time.) Unfortunately my guy friends decided it would be more interesting to throw each other in the pool fully dressed, much to the dismay of their clothes. So we had no choice but to ransack the lost and found box.

Well, it seems that munchkins are the only people who go to that pool, because all of the clothes were size 0 and smaller. One friend of mine had to wear a tiny Pokemon shirt, intended for an infant, and the other had to wear something similarly hilarious and ill-fitting. They both just wore their boxers as regular shorts and had to share one pair of flip-flops.

Now, imagine these two, grown ass men, dressed like five-year-olds who were just granted their wish to be bigger, walking into a diner in the middle of the night, acting as if wearing a blood flow-constricting shirt, boxers and bare feet is the new hotness, (they actually pre-dated Brittney “My vagina looks like two big pieces of roast beef” Spears by a few years by walking into a gross place that probably hadn’t been cleaned for years in bare feet.)

I crack up every time I think of that.

No matter who you are or where you live, there’s an establishment like the Tastee nearby. Go there at a time when most people are asleep. Order something greasy that’ll probably take five years off your life. Be drunk. Trust me, it’ll be fun, (not as fun as putting lit firecrackers in people’s mail slits on their door, but that’s a story for another time.)

I bet that most of you guys and gals have already been to a Tastee-like diner. Got any interesting stories?

The return of WTF!!

Hello boys and girls, (and the rest of you) I have good news today! After lengthy and extremely involved negotiations, my good friend Dr. Gustav Otto Olberov Christof von Hubberstein, (better known as Dr. Gooch) has agreed to return to Eighty-Four Glyde to answer questions. In fact, he's going to take over the duties of hosting a favorite show of mine " What the F*ck?" So now, without further ado, Dr. Gooch, plus a few of his friends, will answer your (and by you I mean made up questions posed by people who are dead or don't exist, or both!) questions on fashion and apparel. Enjoy!*

What the F*ck?

Greetings all, Dr. Gooch here ready to answer oodles of important questions. I enjoy the opportunity to set things straight with my massive amounts of wisdom.

Q: Dr. Gooch, a friend of mine told me that plaid is out. Is that true?- Tom Servo

A: No Tom, it's not true. Plaid is in and will always be in. If you don't believe me just ask the millions of senior citizens who infest south Florida. They always know what's hip. They should, they've been around long enough.

Q: Dr. G., is it just me, or do white people wear sandals and shorts in inappropriate weather? –Graham Chapman.

A: Seems that way doesn't it? Unfortunately this isn't my area of expertise, so I must refer you to my white friend, Chip.

Chip: You're right, we WPs do wear clothes with absolutely no bearing on the weather conditions. I don't know why that is. I think it has to do with a deep, underlying desire that all white people have to spend as much time at the beach as possible. Hence the shorts and t-shirts in sub-zero temperatures and the sandals or flip-flops year round. We do make one concession to the weather though. Between December and February we often wear socks with our sandals. On a similar note, I offer absolutely no excuse for why women wear boxer shorts as real shorts or pajama bottoms as actual pants, because I don't understand that shit either.

Q: Dr. Gooch, I..'m a black man, yet the reason for why people get "grillz" still eludes me. Could you help me understand this phenomenon? –Petey Wheatstraw (Devil..'s son-in-law)

A: Again, another question I don..'t think I can answer. Allow me to bring out my friend Sir S. G. Thuggish Killington III, Esq.

Killington: I do believe that I can properly enlighten you as to the verisimilitude of reasons behind the purchasing and consequential wearing of said "grills" by certain factions of America's youth. You see, having layers of metal or precocious stone made to fit over your teeth is a status symbol to certain people. Why this has come to be is a long and boring story, so I won't get into it. Suffice it to say if you think that having expensive and somewhat ridiculous-looking braces (but soft, how many people simple end up with the visage of that most nefarious of James Bond villains: Jaws?) is a look that you wish to acquire, then by all means go forth and spend large quantities of monies on said "grills." However, if you subscribe to the erudite school of common sense then I bid you to refrain from such activities.

Q: Dr. Gooch, are there any fashion "do-nots" that I should avoid?-Willy "The Merlot Broham" Washington

A: There certainly are. Ready?

1. Dreds are not for white people!

2. Tucking pants into boots? It's not at all hot. It doesn't matter what famous person does it. They look stupid when they do it too. The only thing boots are for is hiding knives and bottles of booze

3. Capris, pedal-pushers and gauchos are hideous and an offense to God. Please never make that mistake.

4. If you..'re going to wear a cap of some sort, put it all the way on your head as if it fits, having it lay on top of your head like you've got Marge Simpson hair just makes you look like you don't care. Oh, and while you're at it, feel free to remove the tag.

5. Basically, if it looks stupid, then it doesn't matter how popular it is at the moment, don't wear it!!!

Bonus question:

Q: The song "Lola" by the Kinks; is that really about a man dressed as a woman? –Joshua.

A: Sad to say, but yes! Imagine my surprise! For so many years I had no idea. That'll teach me to only listen to every third word in a song! Now I have to go re-listen to that delightful song Jeremy by Pearl Jam.

Well, that..'s all the time we've got for WTF this week. Join us next time when I make fun of just about everybody and totally alienate myself! I can't wait!

*Dr. Gooch's answers and opinions in no way represent the views or opinions of the staff (me) of Eighty-Four Glyde. Dr. Gooch, is a fictional weird old guy who spends the majority of his time in the bathtub with buckets of fried chicken. Take his advice at your own peril!

Four tiny-ass in-line wheels of speed!

(I would like to apologize for the length of this entry. I usually try not to write so much, but I got caught up in the story and memories. So I had to just let it all flow out. I’ll try to keep it shorter next time.)

As I was driving around my home town of Silver Sprung (a.k.a. what the hell happened to all the homeless people and filth, MD) Maryland, I was suddenly and inexplicably thrown back into a reverie of the halcyon days of my youth when I and the rest of my friends (Silver Spring Crew, 301 represent!) used to terrorize the downtown area on rollerblades.

We grinded on curbs, slid down improbable handrails and made outrageous jumps off of staircases, (well, not me personally. I was usually afraid of falling and breaking every bone in my body in multiple places and being forced to use a colostomy bag for the rest of my life. So I mostly hung out and watched everybody else perform these aerial feats of daring-do.) It provided such a rush to be part of a thriving urban landscape in a way that the designers of the city had not planned. We saw Silver Spring through the eyes of explorers and discoverers. It was a lot of fun and something I won’t be able to do again (I’m too old and brittle these days, the army and time have not been kind to me!)

But one of the most fun things we did was the parking garage races. You see, at that age just about everybody we knew had rollerblades or a skateboard, but not everybody was willing to strap said skates on their feet and attempt to ride a handrail down a flight of steps, (they had no balls in my hypocritical opinion.) So, if we wanted to involve as many people as we could and try to take over the city with a wave of pimply teens we had only two options: 1. playing roller hockey, (I bet none of you remember the movie Solar Babies. It’s a curse to love such bad movies) or 2. parking garage races.

Our favorite parking garage for such activities was known as the Spring street garage. We liked it because it wasn’t so popular that you’d get run over and dragged five levels by a car, but it was still in the city enough that you never knew what could happen. Ah, youth, when we purposely played Russian roulette. Those were the days!

Allow me to drag you back with me to one of those races, so that you may enjoy them as I once did. Shall we?

Saturday afternoon, 2 p.m, April, 1996. You get the most people out and able to participate on weekends, during the week days everybody’s busy doing drugs or having all types of inexperienced sex.

We have quite the turn out today, there’s about 20 or 30 (my math sucked back then too) kids out here on the fifth floor of the parking garage. We even have a few skateboarders, but those guys never get props because if they are ever in danger they can just step off their boards. Those of us with things strapped to our feet don’t have that kind of option. But it’s okay, we let them participate anyway.

It’s always great to have so many people out. That way maybe they’ll get run over by cars instead of me. I like the odds.

I look down at my skates. I enjoy participating, but this early in my illustrious skating career, I didn’t have the right equipment. (Fer chrissakes, my skates had sparkles on them!) Not the most popular brand, in fact, nobody else wore anything similar. That should have been a clue.

The 30 or so of us line up, (sorta) at the top of the garage. We have five levels of pain, suffering and speed to get through before one of us emerges victorious. Anything goes, it’s like Road Rage baby! If you can do it and get away with it without falling yourself, then go for it! It’s Mad Max on rollerblades! I look to the left and to the right; sweat beads on many a forehead. Looks of intense concentration abound. Teeth are gritted in anticipation and barely restrained enthusiasm to hurt our friends. There’re big guys, who look like college linebackers, but they’re nothing to worry about. With such high centers of gravity, one well-placed shin-punch will take them right out. The people to worry about are the small ones. They’ve got low centers of gravity and just cut through the air like little shark fins on wheels. The current champion, Brian, is someone to look out for. His beady, little eyes belay his ferocity. The time has come to race. We prepare ourselves.

Go!!!

Everybody is off to a good start. At this highest level in the garage there’re no cars yet, so we can take it easy. Everybody goes around the first turn with grace and style, but that matters not. There are still nine more turns to go.

On the first straight away we lose our first racer. It’s a pity considering how early in the race it is, but oh well. As long as it’s not me I don’t care. I have to stay focused, keep my eyes on the prize, (actually, there is no prize) and keep my head in the game. As we continue we tend to follow the ways of the great NASCAR racers (who’s names I can’t think of because it’s a stupid sport and I don’t follow it) and begin drafting, to get as much speed with as little energy as possible.

Three floors to go and people start making their moves. Elbows are thrown, people are tripped, thrown into columns and those annoying guide wires that always seem to have bird shit all over them. Pain and blood are the order of the day. Gashes, cuts, abrasions and contusions will be the trophies of this day’s battle!

Four turns left to go, we all cut as low as possible and try to stay inside, but it’s not possible for everybody, somebody’s going to be forced to the outside, and, unfortunately for that person, this time there’s a car coming up the ramp. I try not to watch. I stay focused. I hear the screeching of the tires, the blast of the horn, and the odd crunching noise, but I pay them no mind. That’s one less person in my way. The fact that it was Brian, the current champion, certainly doesn’t make it any worse.

I duck and dodge and make my way to the front of the group. It’s not pretty, and nothing I should boast about, (sticks and other obstacles in front of the skater next to me was my specialty) but it gets the job done. I’m in the top three! And I have yet to fall myself! I have a good feeling about this race.

After five intense minutes we can see the end. Daylight. With Brian out of the race it looks like I might have a chance. This is great! A misplaced skate drops the guy next to me. It was his own skate, so it’s his own fault. The wind on my face feels good, it pushes the sweat out of my eyes and makes me feel like I’m going fast. I look around, to my left, to my right. Nobody is close to me. I’m in the clear! The end is right in front of me, the last turn having come and gone. I can see daylight. It looks so beautiful. I look behind me and am pleased, nobody could catch up to me if they tried!

One hundred feet left, ninety, sixty (I told you I was bad at math) I check my skates to make sure they’re still on correctly. They’re good. Another look behind me to ensure my victory and I’m good. I face confidently to the front. I am sure of my inevitable victory! Finally, for once I will be the hero instead of the goat (thanks Charlie Brown)! I will be the winner!

Fifty feet.

Forty.

Thirty.

Twenty.

The tension mounts as the finish line draws closer. My blood pressure rises, my breathing speeds up. This is it! The thing that will define the rest of my life! This race, and this race alone is how I will know whether I’m destined to spend my life as a winner or a loser. This is the most important thing I’ve ever done! The rest of my life hinges on this moment!

Ten feet remain! The tension is unbearable!

I’d like to take the moment to point out, to people who don’t know me, that nothing ever works in my favor. And while this might ruin the ending, I’m sure you’ve all guessed that there’s no way in Hell I can win this race. Pretty obvious ending isn’t it?

Brian glides into the finish and crosses the finish line with seconds to spare. I’m so distracted by the fact that he recovered from his being run over and managed to win the race that I pay absolutely no attention to what I’m doing.

And get run over by a car. Isn’t life grand? Good times, good times.

This entry of Eighty-Four Glyde goes out to: Jesse “Curly a.k.a. Taco Style” Miyoshi, Amiri “Oompa Loompa” Roberts, Thomas “Legs” Cordella, Fred “Roller Derby” Irby, Pat “insert nickname here” Callahan, Rich Clarke, Brian Cooney, Mikey Marshall, and the dozens of others who used to be down with the S.S.C.

Movies R Us

Back by popular demand, (not really) here’s the latest installment of :

Reviews of movies I haven’t seen

Turistas: I’ve seen Hostel, and I bet most of you have too. I personally thought it was kinda booty. That’s probably because I was raised on Troma movies (an insane movie production company, originally from the wilds of New Jersey) where they specialized in things like showing people’s heads getting run over, or heads being impaled by various things that aren’t supposed to go into people’s noggins.
Anyway, Turistas looks a lot like Hostel, and if it’s not supposed to, then the ad company messed up with those commercials. As much as I love seeing white people getting horribly tortured and killed, I think I’m going to pass on this one. I suggest you do the same.

Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj: Ahhhh, the sequel nobody asked for starring a minor character from the first movie who had one or two funny lines. Kal Penn started breaking out with his career in the last few years, after all, who can forget Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (a personal favorite of mine)?
This movie looks like it’s full of juvenile humor and scatological jokes, so my advice is to get good and drunk, or smoke massive amounts of doobage prior to entering the theater. It can only enhance the viewing experience. And if somebody does go see this movie, let me know if there’s much in the way of boobies.

Deck the Halls: Every year, it seems like, Hollywood decides to inflict another holiday movie on us. Remember Jingle all the way anyone? Ahnuld vs. Sinbad? It still hurts to even think about, yet some relative felt compelled to give it to me and my sister as a gift. Perhaps said relative didn’t really love us.
This holiday movie stars the Penguin and Ferris Bueller, which sounds like it could be a good combination. But then you realize that neither of those two have had a good movie in, perhaps, the last decade and it makes you sad. In this insipid movie, they play old men, (not much of a stretch there!) who fight to have the best Christmas decorations on their houses. I think that’s it, that’s the whole plot. In the end I’m sure they work together for some reason, (perhaps to fight Christmas ghosts is the direction I would have gone in) and I bet everybody just has a holly jolly Christmas, except for the non Christians who probably spent the whole movie shaking their heads in disbelief at how far people will go for something so stupid.

Deja-vu: This looks like some kind of cop movie, starring Denzel Washington, mixed with Groundhog Day. Sounds like a good idea for a movie to me. It gives Denzel the opportunity to kill the same people over and over, a joy I would like to have (Bill O’Reilly, I’m looking in your direction.)
I don’t know much else about the movie, it has some chick in it, Denzel goes through time, I think that Jerry Bruckheimer is somehow involved, which means the movie is big on budget, and low on a decent story line. But it still looks interesting. I would recommend this movie to anybody! Including myself.

Never let it be said that I only cater to the Great Unwashed. For the art house, pretentious and independent movie crowds, I’m going to review a movie with such limited release that by the time you read this review, this film will most likely be out of theaters.

Broken Sky: First and foremost, this is a love story. Which means that it automatically sucks ass and I would never see it. Secondly, it’s a love story about two gay Mexican college students, which means that there won’t be any boobies, (or, as my friend Baron Von Awesome spells it: bewbies) the only thing that possibly redeem a love movie.
It seems that Brokeback Mountain has started a trend. Watch out next summer for Two Scoops of love, about the forbidden romance shared by two Good Humor ice cream men. Their cones may be frozen, but their hearts are on fire with passion! Or, the movie I can’t wait for, The Kung Fu that dares not speak its name, which is about two ninjas in love who decide to kill a lot of people, natch.

Alright, that’s all the time and space I have this week. Join me next time, when I’ve had a few beers and I start cussing out the Statue of Liberty. That crazy French bitch!

Karma is a bitch!

Last week it rained really hard here in D.C. So hard in fact, that many roads were washed out and dozens of car crashes occurred. Stuff like that is pretty typical in the city with the second or third worse traffic in the country. Most of the time everybody is just on the edge of getting into accidents, saved by the grace of God, or by the skin of their teeth. It’s pretty amazing we aren’t all dead yet.

I had the need to drive in this most foul and horrendous weather last week. I was on my way to visit my most sainted and elderly grandmother in the old folks home. I was to bring her cookies and sing folk songs to all of those wonderful octogenarians who resided there. Their own families couldn’t always make it out there to visit their parents and grandparents often enough, so I liked to fill that void of love by visiting and listening to all their exiting and interesting stories. My grandmother had the best.

It was rough going that day my friends. The weather started getting rough, my tiny car was tossed. It took all of my cunning and skills to keep my car (name: Keep Getting Caught, interesting story there, but that’s for another time) from skidding off the road and ending up overturned, trapping me in a ditch where I would slowly and painfully suffer and die. I wasn’t digging too much on that idea, so I kept my speed slow to ensure my getting there safely to bring joy and happiness to the old people without whom America would not be the great country it is today.

As I came closer to the nursing home, a car appeared in my rear view mirror. It had no headlights on and was driving a little too quickly for my taste. As it closed in on me I saw just how erratically the car was swerving. I got nervous, so I pulled over to the next lane, just to get out of this cat’s way. It didn’t work.

He must have been going to the same place as me, (maybe he had a booty call at the nursing home. I dunno, who am I to judge?) because he made all the same moves I did. Finally I got an idea. I decided to slow down enough to piss this guy off (who was obviously in a rush) so that he’d go into another lane. Dynamite idea, right? Sho nuff!

I slowed down. The speed limit was 45 mphs, I was going 20. There’s no way somebody going so fast would tolerate such a slow driver in front of them. And I was right, after a minute of his brights blinding me and his horn making me deaf, he pulled over into the other lane. I thought I was safe. But there was something I didn’t notice: He didn’t speed up to pass me.

A minute went by; I figured that everything was gravy, so I started to increase my speed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the car speeds by me and immediately swerves into my lane! The bastard cut me off! I wasn’t ready for that maneuver and was caught by surprise. I jammed my foot on the break, and tried to keep the car from spinning out of control. I barely managed to maintain. Furious at his insane behavior I kept driving. Slowly my heart rate went down until I could drive without seeing red in front of my eyes.

Then it happened.

Like a flash, the car, (which was a hundred yards in front of me) went too fast on a turn and hit a concrete embankment. It flipped, it caught fire. It was brutal looking. I slowed as I came near. No other cars were in sight. I rushed from K.G.C. to see what had happened to the driver. Smoke filled my lungs and stung my eyes until there were tears. I coughed and blindly made my way to the overturned driver’s portion. Then I saw him and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

His head was a mass of cuts, shards of glass from the window were embedded in the skin of his face. Parts of his scalp hung loosely from the top of his head in flaps. The bone from his right arm jutted gruesomely from the soft pulpy flesh of his forearm. His legs lay in unnatural positions, one behind his head, one in front of his face. Had he the ability to move his body, he could have kissed his own shin. By the way he was sitting I knew that most, if not all, of his ribs were broken.

I braved the heat and the disgusting sight until I was close enough to see him, to touch him. Then, as his eyes opened and focused in on my approach, I knelt down in front of him.

And punched that asshole right in the face.

“That’s what you get for cutting me off you bitch!”

The moral of this story? If you cut me off in traffic you are going to die. Pretty simple and straight-forward moral I think.

(This story brought to you by the Van Munchausen Board. Have you had your Munchausen today?)

An ode to good times, good weather and big ass paintball welts

There’s nothing like a cold paintball hitting you in the ass at one million miles per hour to make you feel alive!

It was a cold, brisk autumn (I prefer saying autumn instead of fall because I’m pretentious like that) morning. I found myself, at ridiculous o’ clock in the morning, at a paintball (place? Site? Area?) with one of those names that inspire feelings of excitement and adventure in people when they go there. Something like, “Exciting Adventure Balls” or whatever. Not important, on with the story.

Anyway, days earlier, in a drunken haze, I had foolishly agreed to go paintballing with some friends. I’d never done it before, but thought it looked like fun. I did plenty of laser tag when I was a kid, (remember that shit?!) and figured that it would be similar, but more colorful. Besides, I thought to myself, I spent five years in the Army and two years in Iraq, I should beast all over the other paintballers like Rambo in a northwestern hick town! Which could make sense, except that I never fired my rifle in Iraq and I wasn’t even in the infantry. Hell, the only military maneuvers I know I learned from Stripes. And I don’t think they would apply on the paintball battlefield.

My first assessment of the paintball place was grim. It was full of little kids wearing eighty different varieties of camouflage. And here I was in a neon-bright orange shirt with yellow stripes, which could be seen from outerspace. Not the smartest move on my part. Luckily I had a left over protective chemical suit from the army, which, besides the elastic strap that goes from the back of the jacket to the front via the crotchtal region, was quite comfortable and warm.

After (literally) three or four hours of waiting, we were finally given the gear and instructions we needed to paintball successfully! (Instructions: Please don’t shoot the wildlife and don’t hit somebody in the head from less than 20 feet. Two annoying rules that I planned on immediately breaking.) Armed with my awkwardly weighted paintball gun and over 700 paintballs, I was ready to go forth and do battle in the name of queen and country!

The ineffectual employees of Adventurous Balls of Excitement trundled 40 of us would-be paintballers about a quarter-mile down this path, laced with rocks, stumps, roots and other hazards designed to rip an unsuspecting foot off. The whole time we had to wear our masks over our faces, just in case an errant paintball found its way into our eye sockets.

The rules were simple; a seven-minute game of capture the flag, 20 on 20. Try to shoot people without being shot. Lather, rinse, repeat. When I stepped out into that wooded playing area, filled with obstacles and barriers, I felt alive! I was a man, getting back to my most primitive urges of trying to shoot other people in the face, and loving every minute of it. Then, just as my sense of connectedness with the world reached it’s ultimate peak and I could barely contain the primal hunter within me, they blew the whistle to start the game.

That’s when everything went to hell.

My enemies melted into the woods, invisible to my neophyte eyes. Paintballs came flying at me from the left, the right and in front of me. I immediately reverted to my finely honed military training, dodging and weaving through the fierce hail of balls, (wow, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say!) hoping for some sort of cover, a barrier from these small spherical objects filled with a paint that suspiciously had the same color and texture of jizz. But it was no use. My opponents were skilled in the art of paintballing, they knew how to use angles and junk to take out their foes. I was no match for them.

We played a total of six games. In five of those games I was shot in the face. And let me tell you, that mask doesn’t offer that much protection. When we were done and I was able to take the mask off my face looked like I was the willing recipient of a Bukkake shot. Unsavory.

In that one game where I wasn’t shot in the face, I was shot in the ass. To be able to shoot me in the ass a player from the other team would have to have gotten through enemy lines and attacked me from the rear. Since this wasn’t possible three seconds after the game began, I could only assume that it was one of the dozen of people who were standing behind me on my own team who did the evil deed. That’s gratitude for you.

Next time I’m going to freeze my paintballs and then shoot everybody, regardless of what team they’re on. Then, once everybody is dead I will bring democracy to the paintball field and restore the infrastructure there. After all, it’s the American way!

The History of Thanksgiving

Ahhh, the colors of the leaves on the trees, the smell of a plump and juicy (unless you’re at my mom’s house in which case it’s a dried out and whizzled old) turkey, the sound of people shuffling through dead leaves, lost on their way back home because it gets dark unnaturally quickly, the taste of a fresh and deliciously prepared pumpkin pie, and the feel of something vaguely autumn-related on your fingertips; they all combine to spell out one thing: tryptophan. Just kidding, they spell out Thanksgiving, the American holiday dedicated to eating large quantities of food, watching football games and falling asleep at random points in the afternoon. Oh yeah, and giving thanks.

I would be remiss this holiday season if I didn’t help those of you out there with any and all Thanksgiving questions. Because who hasn’t wondered about the secret, mystery-shrouded origins of this ancient and beloved holiday? I know that I wonder. A lot. It consumes me. So, I figured that other people might also be interested in the past, and maybe settle a bar bet or two. Please sit back and enjoy as I present this short, but completely thorough and one hundred percent accurate history of Thanksgiving.

THE NEW WORLD, (i.e. America) 1645

After a long and devastating war between the Catholics and the Protestants, resulting in the deaths of millions and the invention of the microwave oven, the super up-tight Protestants gathered together on boats made from billions of pine needles woven together and began their journey to America where they could live in up-tight splendor. Not engaging in sexual relations, drinking, using soap or showing any parts of their bodies beneath the lower lip

When these pilgrims (Latin for geeked-out loser) arrived in America, they landed at Plymouth Rock, which immediately sunk their boats, removing all hope ever returning to the old country (Blatislava I think?) But the pilgrims didn’t mind because they looked only to the future and because they were really stupid. What they didn’t count on was landing during the biggest snowstorm to ever hit the east coast, (as featured in the movie The Day after tomorrow)

The first thing the pilgrims did was to sign a pact, while they were still on their boat (the SS Minnow) that no matter how bad it got in the new world, they would never eat each other. This important and history-making pact is known to us today as The Something-or-Other. I did a report about it in 8th grade.

As previously mentioned, the pilgrims were stupid, and didn’t really know what it would take to survive in this new and exciting world. Whereas a normal person might bring tools to build houses and seeds to plant vegetables, these people only brought corkscrews and Playstations. This was quite a tragic move as electricity had not been invented yet. So basically, ye olde pilgrims were screwed.

Until they met Squanto. You see, Squanto was a hero amongst his tribe (the asquamotavotivains) which was located very close to the cesspool the pilgrims decided to set up in. He was the Indian version of Superman, he could do anything: fight bears with his legs tied behind his back, swim up waterfalls to spawn with the trout, fly across giant precipices and make love to five squaws simultaneously.

Squanto taught the pilgrims how to plant barley, hops, yeast, bananas and cannabis trees. He showed them the secrets to trapping and killing the wiley and extremely cunning wild turkey, and he instructed them on the proper way to drink wine while acting pretentious and snooty.

The pilgrims were so thankful for the things Squanto showed them that they decided to have a really big party with food and fun for everybody. It was to be the first Thanksgiving. Sadly, the pilgrims got distracted and slaughtered Squanto’s tribe instead, but at least their hearts were in the right place, right?

THE CIVIL WAR, 1865 MAYBE?

The nation was deep in a war between people who were for turning to communism and people who preferred a totalitarian oligarchy. Our 23rd president, Abraham “Deep Pockets” Lincoln needed something to unify the people of America. Luckily, Lincoln had a time machine and was able to go back to the planning of the first Thanksgiving. He thought it was a great idea, (though it lacked a little in the execution) and decided to bring it back with him. Thus Thanksgiving was born. He also placed it on the fourth Thursday of November. This might seem arbitrary, but it actually required a lot of calculations and phases of the moon and junk like that. Trust me, it was a lot of work.

YOUR HOUSE, TODAY (well, not today really, tomorrow would be more accurate)

This Thanksgiving you will most likely (unless you’re a dirty, hippy vegetarian!) enjoy turkey, cranberry sauce, some sort of potatoes, gravy, some pies, booze and Go-bots. This is because of the sacrifice and hard work put forth by the pilgrims so long ago (and by the sacrifice and hard work put forth by the illegal aliens last week.) So be proud of your heritage and be sure to fill yourself to bursting this Thanksgiving. Do it for Squanto!

Help people, don’t annoy them

I’m sitting here in my apartment, trying to find the ultimate in Amish-Midget-Donkey porn online, when a commercial catches my eye. It’s another in the long and frustrating series of commercials by a group that I like to call “beating you over the head with the truth until you want to die.org”

You might be familiar with these people, they stage public events and demonstrations to show just how naughty cigarette-smoking is. Many of these commercials feature hip and attractive young people taking their displeasure at the very idea of smoking cigarettes to the world by putting piles of body bags outside of a tobacco company, or physically attacking and maiming innocent smokers on the streets of random cities. Well, they don’t actually attack anybody, but I think they’d get their point across better if they did.

The problem with most of the commercials these guys do, (actually all of the commercials) is that this organization chooses the worst ways to explain just how much they don’t dig on cigarettes. They end up coming across more as annoying jerks than people out to do the public good. They’re the kind of people that you wouldn’t invite to a party because they’d spend the whole time hassling the other guests about something and justifying it by saying that it’s for their (the other guests) own good.

I feel kinda bad for the people at “nobody cares about the truth.org” because even though they’re winning the battle to outlaw cigarettes, they’re doing it the wrong way. Everybody knows cigarettes are bad, we all know they have toxins and chemicals and radioactive material and whatnot that isn’t the best stuff to be around because they cause birth defects, cancer horrible mutations and conversions to Scientology. Yet this group insists on telling us this stuff constantly, as if we’re all relatives of George W. or something (ooh, that was a low blow wasn’t it? I mean, there are plenty of people stupider than him, like Jessica Simpson, Tom Cruise and, ummm, that one person I don’t like because she did that thing that one time.)

Check this out, in the second sentence of the last paragraph, I summed up, in only 38 words, (I think, my math really sucks, when I was counting I ran out of fingers and toes at 20 and had to guess the rest of the numbers) the entire point that “smoking isn’t so groovy.org” has been trying to make for years. There! It’s done! They can retire and go annoy people about other things! I’ve got a great mission for them. As a left-handed person I am forced to live in a world that is not made for me. Scissors, school desks, M-249 machine guns, all of those things are made for you right-handed spawn of Satan. This group could do some shady medical studies about how having to cope with this mad mad mad mad mad mad world has caused severe suffering for my tendons or something. Not to mention emotional damage.

Then, if they’re successful, we could sue just about every company in the world and force things to be more equalitarian for us southpaws. Because when you think about it, we’re the last unrepresented minority group. It really will be a matter of time until something goes down. With so many causes being taken up by groups and celebrities, there’s barely any causes left to champion.

And I’ve got a great idea for the commercials. We could have members of leftiesdoitright.org (you like that?) go up to random people on the streets of cities, towns and villages across America (does America even have villages?) and slap them in the face with their right hands. Then, some guy holding a piece of paper that looks like an official document, with various sentences blacked out to make it look like somebody’s trying to hide something from regular Joe American, can say how those slaps would be less painful if people were forced to use their left hands more. Then we’d throw some “stats” up on the screen, without citing any sources (sources? We don’t need no stinkin’ sources!) about how people are forced to use their right hands too much and that they are much stronger than their puny, underdeveloped left hands. And if certain laws were passed, everybody would have to use only their left hands for five years or so, just until both sides were equal.

I think that message is strong and will definitely bring out all types of legislation for change. So join me, in giving left-handed slaps more strength! Our motto? “Keep your left pimp hand strong!”

For your viewing pleasure

As hinted at (repeatedly) in previous blog columns, I used to be a professional movie reviewer for a newspaper. And of course, by professional I mean that I wrote an 800-word column about whatever movie I had seen that weekend and the newspaper printed it. I had no experience or training in films, I’ve never been in a movie, (though I have been in a commercial, music video and t.v. show, but that’s a topic for another day) and I don’t hob-knob or rub elbows with movie stars or directors. Which makes me in no way qualified to be a movie reviewer. Yet I was anyway, which just goes to show you, (I don’t know what it goes to show, but it’s something.)

Anyway, I’ve decided to introduce a new reoccurring column topic which is sure to annoy and vex many a person. Sound like fun?

Allow me to introduce the concept of movie reviewing without actually going to see the movie that’s being reviewed! That’s right, this is my first installment of:

REVIEWS OF MOVIES I HAVEN’T SEEN!!

Borat: Sorry everybody but this movie looks like straight ass to me. I don’t find it funny, just really, really annoying. It’s the same guy who does Ali G right? How many people saw his Ali G movie? All of none of them! Trust me, this guy peaked when he was the limo driver in that one Madonna video. I’m sure Borat will be the number one movie in America for eight weeks or whatever, but on the other hand, this is the country that’s had America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air for the last two decades even though it’s the same basic idea in every video, (somebody gets hit in the nuts by something and hilarity ensues.)

The Santa Clause 3: I actually liked the first one of these, and the second one wasn’t too horrible, but I think the third is overkill. How many damn clauses are in this Santa contract? Why is there a contract anyway? Do Santas die on the regular? Is there no job security for them? Perhaps health care? A Santa stubs his toe and he’s automatically dropped for a new guy? I don’t get it. If you do go see this movie make sure it’s because you have kids who want to see it. Don’t go see it in the theater alone, while wearing a raincoat. I learned that the hard way.

Flushed Away: Another kids’ movie. Remember when CGI movies were few and far between and were of better quality? Then they started coming out with these things eight or nine times a year with cutesy little woodland creatures that are highly merchandisable and America began its descent into a lower circle of hell. Flushed Away is CGI, but it’s done in the style of that guy who does claymation movies with cheese-fiend Wallace and his dog Gromit. He also did Chicken Run. You can tell this guy’s style because every character’s mouth looks as though he just gambled and lost with a messy fart in his pants. I think it’s dumb, but that’s just me. I’m sure kids will like this movie since, well, they like anything. Hell, I had the most fun as a kid playing with a cardboard box.

Saw III: The first two movies in this series were damn good, and really freaky, (that one scene in Saw II with the chick in the pit of hypodermic needles was really nasty.) So I think this sequel (triquel?) will be good, I just hope they don’t run the well dry by making too many. But didn’t the killer die in the second one? Who’s going to be the killer in this one? (My money is on Donald Rumsfeld.)

Well, I could spend all day doing this, but then there wouldn’t be any movies to review next week. Maybe I’ll actually go see these flicks then we’ll see just how good my skills as a movie reviewer are.

(And everybody don’t forget my banner contest. Remember, a kick ass banner linking to my blog, will win that creator a very special and super-duper prize, that isn’t at all a cheap t-shirt made by some two-year-old in a Chinese sweatshop located in the bowels of some tenement in the Bronx! God Bless American Capitalism. Anyway, the contest ends November 15th, at which point I will declare the winner and put his or her name out in the public for praise or ridicule, depending on what you think of this blog in the first place. Thanks for your participation and thanks for reading my blog. I write to be funny and I’m glad that you all seem to appreciate it and get the joke.)

She blinded me with Science (then severely beat me into a coma with Science)

So I was watching this show last night on Discovery Science Nature National Geographic Lifetime Learning Channel, or one of those 8 million types of channels, about Giant Squids, (you might have seen it too, and if you did then may god have mercy on your eternal soul!)

Anyway, the show was about these two scientists in different parts of the world, (Japan and New Zealand) who have dedicated their lives to finding and documenting the famous and incredibly elusive giant squid, (hence the subject of the show.) These two guys were really intent on finding out everything about the giant squid and they figured that once they were able to put all the pieces to that long-existing puzzle together, the world would be a much easier place to understand and it would all make sense.

That’s when it hit me. Here are two guys, they’re probably professors or something along those lines, I’m sure they’re smart, I mean, they know more about giant squids than I do, but they don’t seem to realize that NOBODY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT GIANT SQUIDS!!!!

And I started to wonder, how many other scientists and smart guys are out there trying to figure out things that nobody cares about and will have no impact on our lives one way or the other? Oodles, I bet. Oodles and oodles. Oh and before you start trying to rationalize the search for the giant squid, they don’t have some kind of gland that will cure anything we have or give us superpowers, (I checked) so it truly is pointless.

Think about it, honestly. We’ve got brilliant people dedicating their lives and who knows how many untold millions of dollars on things that will never affect us (people) at all. Do we really need a drug injection that can make mice stronger? Has there been a demand for that? Historically recreating, in excruciating detail, exactly what a Maculinea alcon arenaria looked like, is that vital in any way? (It’s a subspecies of Alcon Blue Butterfly, whatever that means, that was native to New Zealand and went extinct in the 1970s in case you were wondering. Hooray for Wikipedia!)

What happened to the scientific promises of our past? Where are the jetpacks? The hovercars? Robotic girlfriends with realistic warm flesh that won’t say no and will love you no matter how fat or ugly you are or how long you go without bathing? (a personal dream of mine) What about movies being directly beamed into my head, or virtual reality? Weren’t we doing something with VR back in the 90s?

I was always hoping we’d be going somewhere with cloning. I personally have no morals or ethics of any sort, so I don’t mind the idea of cloning. In fact, I was depending on it. I dreamed that by the time I was an adult, cloning would be perfected to the point where we could create and mature a clone in less time (with a few modifications a la genetic tinkering, if you know what I mean, wink wink!) and we’d be able to transfer memories and brainwaves and other scientific stuff of that nature into the new clone. Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I personally don’t plan on dying. Ever. There’s way too much for me to accomplish and I need at least a few centuries to get it all done.

So, what’s the deal? Are there congressmen we can write to, to tell them about this waste of money and intelligence? Perhaps some colleges we can go to and tell them to knock that shit off? I dunno. But something needs to be done, because I need my own Vicki (the robot chick from Small Wonder, remember that shit?) to live with for the next 200 years or so. And at this rate none of that’s gonna happen.

Cartoon logic at its finest!

I have no life. I freely admit that. And what little life I do have revolves a lot around cartoons. But, after 25 wasted years of life I’ve come up with a few questions, most of them deal with Scooby-Doo, but a lot of them are just Hanna-Barbara related in general.

Why do Scooby-Doo and Astro have the same speech impediment? Wouldn’t they have figured out how to correct speech problems in talking dogs in the future?
What kind of name is Scooby-Doo anyway?
Why doesn’t Srappy-Doo have the same speech impediment?
Speaking of an inability to speak properly, why is Donald Duck the only duck in the Disney universe who has beak issues? I mean, every other frickin duck has no problem enunciating.
And don’t even get me started on Porky Pig. I’ve got no problem with speech impediments, but is there some kind of union rule that all major cartoon studios can’t hire based on handicaps? Why not a cute little paraplegic titmouse? (I just like saying tit) or a raccoon without a paw or something?
Mystery Inc, (Scooby and the gang), do they actually live anywhere? I mean, in every episode you watch they’re always driving to some uncle’s house or something to spend the weekend. Don’t they have jobs, or houses or something like that? How do they even survive? They don’t charge for their mystery solving skills!
Velma: gay?
Peppermint Patty and Marcie: lesbian couple?
How did the entire prehistoric Flintstone society invent advanced shit like dishwashers and showers, but they totally missed the boat on pants? They’ve got ties, so they must have some fashion sense. But no pants? Either they were stupid in some pretty obvious ways or they were a lot freakier than we first realized.
Speaking of pants, why do cartoon animals always wear shirts and gloves, (gloves?) but not pants? Don’t their giblets get cold? I guess not, they seem to all be pretty barren down there, (not that I’m looking at cartoon animal groins, but some things, or lack of things kind of stand out)
Goofy can talk, Pluto can’t. They’re both dogs. Can somebody explain? And why does Mickey have one dog as a best friend and one as a pet? Doesn’t Goofy ever get pissed at how his boy treats a fellow dog?
Who doesn’t wish that their lives had some groovy cartoon sound effects?
Anime? (Not any question in particular just, Anime?)
What’s up when cartoon characters watch cartoons? Does that strike anybody else as weird?
I know this is an obvious one, but Bart as been 10 and in the fourth grade for 17 years now, anybody see a problem with that?
Anybody else think that the Simpsons movie could possibly (and I know this is blasphemy) suck?
Is Gem really excitement? Is she truly outrageous?
This isn’t really a sane thing to say, but I’ve got a thing for the older sister from Lilo & Stitch, is that wrong? (That little pooch she’s got is sexy!)

And there’s dozens more questions where those came from. I didn’t even get to the fact that cartoon characters always wear the same clothes, (except for the kids from Weekenders) sup with that?
Aah! I’m getting a headache. I need to go lie down.






(And everybody, don’t forget my banner contest. Remember, a kick ass banner linking to my blog, will win that creator a very special and super-duper prize, that isn’t at all a cheap t-shirt made by some two-year-old in a Chinese sweatshop located in the bowels of some tenement in the Bronx! God Bless American Capitalism. Anyway, the contest ends November 15th, at which point I will declare the winner and put his or her name out in the public for praise or ridicule, depending on what you think of this blog in the first place. Thanks for your participation and thanks for reading my blog. I write to be funny and I’m glad that you all seem to appreciate it and get the joke.)

Free at last, free at last. Thank Josh all mighty, I'm free at last!

For those of you not in the know, and for those of you who don't actually care, I just wanted to announce that after five long and painful years full of deserts, early-morning Physical Training, and having to wear the same outfit everyday, I'm finally out of the army. Yes, it's true. I'm out, free, excaped, liberated, just plain gone!

"But wait," you might be saying to yourself, "what kind of sick, twisted, pinko-commie pervert would be happy to leave the fine institution of the American military (motto: A tradition of heritage)? Has Joshua dropped the ball in doing his duty protecting this country from threats both domestic and abroad? What happens if Canada finally invades? What will we do? Has the whole world gone mad?! I'm so disillusioned!"

To which I say, firstly, don't talk to yourself so much. And secondly, yes to questions two and five.

For you see, some dream of joining the military. They go through life surrounded by the wonderful majesty that is only available because of the sacrifice of soldiers, (you know, stuff like drive-thru liquor stores. Who's the genius who came up with that idea and doesn't see the inherent conflict of interests in that concept!) and looking up to service members as heroes and idols. Then, when they finally graduate high school (or get their Good Enough Diploma) they rush off to join the army and serve a life filled with honor, discipline and military something-or-other.

I fall into that group of people who think the exact opposite. From the minute I joined I couldn't wait to get out and be free to do the things I like to do, like...watch t.v., ummmm, sit on my ass and do nothing and refer to people by their first name!

Oh and if you're wondering what my motivation was for joining the army in the first place, please feel free to refer to "It takes a helping hand" May 26th. It explains what little options I had other than living in a cardboard box for the rest of my life and enjoying long theological discussions with imaginary beings from other dimensions.

So, anyway, I have a wee small problem. After five years of planning and hoping and enacting secret, arcane occult rituals, I didn't actually take the time to figure out what I'm actually going to do when I get out!

Which means that I'm open to suggestions on what I should do with myself, if anybody's got 'em. At this point beggars can't be choosers, so a brainstorming session is just what I need. Oh, and if anybody in the D.C. area has any need for a sarcastic writer, hit me up. I'm more fun to be around than a smallpox infection!

This blog entry guaranteed to make you feel better (or your bad mood back)

I’ve been doing a little looking around on myspace (motto: a place to waste large tracts of time for little to no gain) and I realized something.

People are idiots.

No, that’s not true, well yes it is, but that’s not the point. The point is thus: During my staggeringly large swaths of wasted time I read several blogs and a pattern emerged, (actually several patterns emerged, but I’m not going to mention them here because this isn’t the right forum and I’m trying not to alienate people.)

This pattern was very simple. People were using their blogs to complain more than anything else. Everybody on myspace seems to be pissed off about everything, (I don’t blame them.) From imagined “haters” who are trying to steal the writer’s man or woman, to an intense dislike for our fellow myspacians, everybody has something bad to say about other people.

I found this to be shocking. After all, everybody I ever run into (or over) is always trying to be nice and do the nice thing and think nice thoughts etcetera, etcetera until I want to stab them in their ocular cavities with blunt objects. Yet it seems to be a mask. When given the opportunity, people will write such angry and mean things. To get their feelings of their chest? Possibly. To be funny and get away with saying shit you wouldn’t if people knew you weren’t kidding? That’s why I do it. The motives are varied and monotonous.

But the point is that people spend most of their time being pissed off and telling other people what to do, (see “This title couldn’t have anything less to do with the subject of this entry” Friday, July 28th) and not enough time proclaiming the good things going on. So here goes:
1. Thankfully, because of surfing on myspace I now know which songs are loved to an insane degree by random teens and 20 somethings (i.e. Sexyback, that one Evanessance song, and that Gnarles Barkley song that came out about seven months ago but people still aren’t tired of for some reason.)
2. Without Myspace I wouldn’t know that Tila Tequila is an extremely famous and popular musician, despite never actually having heard any song she’s performed!
3. Myspace allows me to check up on those crazy exes at various times so I can predict if they’re ever going to suddenly develop a need to get back in touch with me.
4. There are quite a lot of good looking women on myspace. And trolling around that site allows me to see the millions of gorgeous women I’ll never have a chance with!
5. Ummm, damn, this is getting hard. Okay, I got one. All the time I spend on myspace keeps me from going out and committing heinous and perverted acts against society, (my army of Werejoshuas is coming along nicely!)
See? It’s totally possible for somebody to write a blog entry without saying anything bad, (mostly.)

Now it’s your turn faithful readers. I want everybody to say one nice thing about myspace. You’re allowed to repeat what somebody else said, (I know there isn’t that much good shit to say about myspace.) Now go forth and say great things!



(And everybody don’t forget my banner contest. Remember, a kick ass banner linking to my blog, will win that creator a very special and super-duper prize, that isn’t at all a cheap t-shirt made by some two-year-old in a Chinese sweatshop located in the bowels of some tenement in the Bronx! God Bless American Capitalism. Anyway, the contest ends November 15th, at which point I will declare the winner and put his or her name out in the public for praise or ridicule, depending on what you think of this blog in the first place. Thanks for your participation and thanks for reading my blog. I write to be funny and I’m glad that you all seem to appreciate it and get the joke.)