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!