Things I Have Learned From the Movies

• The black guy always dies first, unless there's a scared Arab guy or a muttering white teenager lying around.
• “Brief, partial nudity” means a chick holding a sheet over herself with her back to you, from the waist-up. It is never worthwhile.
• Keaneu Reeves was only believable as a very confused man staring at his palm in The Matrix, and as a very confused boy staring at his hand in Bill and Ted.
• All haunted houses have either seven or nine people inside. If there are eight of you, be on guard.
• Make sure your one true love is sexually conservative. It will keep you alive longer.
• Bombs slow down in the last minute before they go off, just like football games.
• If you go back in time always make sure to do whatever it was you were supposed to do. Don't avoid doing anything else because you probably were supposed to anyway. Do check your pockets before you leave.
• If it can't be the murderer because they're dead, it is.
• Romantic comedies are good, comedic romances are not.
• Independent movies only seem better because no one wants to think they spent more time and effort to find a theater actually playing a piece of crap by someone of whom you've never heard.
• Slow-moving, murderous hulks are surprisingly agile when you're fleeing through the woods.
• "Remove the head or destroy the brain." Words to live by.
• The proper order for watching the Star Wars saga will always be 4, 5, 6 then 1, ,2, 3.
• Everyone pays for adult tickets after the age of twelve, even if they need a legal drinker present to see the movie.
• Everyone knows how to make a tourniquet.
• Subtitles make you feel smart, unless you can't turn them off.
• If John Connor could drive a motorcycle at thirteen, I should be able to at twenty-three.
• Everything “seemed” like a good idea at the time.
• Under no circumstances is one permitted to say, “Well, at least things can’t get any worse.”
• Nothing bad ever happens from secret government programs. Ever.
  
• Always believe the lying teenagers.
• Be constantly pregnant. Nothing ever kills pregnant women.
• Your high school history teacher significantly underestimated the number of explosions back then.
• Except for Batman and James Bond, bad guys get the best toys.
• There are apparently no unattractive young Asian women.
• Heroes have the best hair, no matter what exploded.
• Everyone knows how to drive stick.
• There really are seven different copies of Mike Meyers.

On Gyms

I'm starting to plateau in the kind of results I can see lifting weights at home, so I'm putting some thought into joining a gym.

Many people are embarrassed to start hitting the gym because of how they look, but I'm more concerned with looking stupid because I have no idea how to perform any of the exercises.

This, I gather, is why people who aren't in shape tend to go to the 24-hour chain gyms in the middle of the night.

Everyone seems to think this way. Go to the gym when it's late and no one's around.

If that's the case and everyone's there at midnight I'm going to start going to the gym at three in the afternoon when no one's really around.

On Intellectual Property Theft

Double Edit!
Apparently Hot Topic just fucking loves ripping off other people's shit.
Take note: Topic Crap one and two.











Cute, I must admit, but then here are the original buttons of copyrighted comic material from Kawaii Not:
Turned the puzzle piece, but didn't even bother to alter the camera beyond adding a flash. Same faces and artwork. Real shame, after all the integrity Hot Topic has….

Feel free to send your support/outrage to the appropriate sources. I'm fucking tired of people stealing shit and passing it off as their own. Especially this week. This week has been fucked up with it. Hope you choke on a pair of red-and-black striped knee-high Converse All-Stars.





EDIT: Actually it turns out these guys were very nice and apologized to Vera Brosgol personally. In their defense, they probably just bought an unethical designer's work, and they now are responsible for buying back a few thousand unsellable shirts, which Hot Topic and Merch Direct are already taking down.

That said, I'm simply going to replace "Pierce the Veil" and related links or terms in this entry with the words "Peanut Butter," because this blog is still a valid criticism on intellectual property theft, which is occurring constantly.



Sorry, but today's post has been preempted. Preempted by rage.

There will be nothing funny here, except perhaps the amusing ways in which i colorfully curse the band "PEANUT BUTTER" for being hypocritical money-grubbing cock bandits with no regard for personal property.
Fucktards PEANUT BUTTER, moronically labels themselves "indie," despite being signed to a record label and having their shit sold in fucking HotTopic.

They advertise every piece of merchandise they produce on their myspace, and I don't mean they advertise everything there, I mean they seem to have a different fucking ad for every piece of shit they sell.

Oh, but not all of it is shit. This piece is pretty nice:











Maybe because it's stolen from this:
an original piece by independent artist Vera Brosgol.

Please note, in addition to stealing it, emo bitches PEANUT BUTTER heteronormalized it into a straight couple. Then they made it inexplicably a straight couple of zombies, because maybe then we wouldn't notice.


OH BUT IT GETS BETTER!

Apparently being materialistic, unethical and avaricious is not enough for these walking retarded haircuts.

In their effort to gain fame and fortune strictly on the merits of sounding exactly like every other fucking screaming emo band in the last five years, these assholes have decided that if they're going to rip off someone no one outside the independent art community has heard of, they might as well make more money ripping off something everybody has heard of.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Glow Monster":
Yes, that is blatantly, flagrantly, and apparently fragrantly, Crumb, of Nickelodeon's Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. If there was any doubt in your mind as to weather perhaps Ms. Brosgol simply allowed her work to be traced, recolored and stripped of all its inherent meaning, this should dispel that.

I am reasonably sure that Nickelodeon did not allow their 1990s animated property to be reprinted without notation on t-shirts sold by a majestically foul band with zero popularity.

Face it, they couldn't even secure the rights to www.PEANUT BUTTER.COM. It's a redirect to fucking New Age book ads by a middle-aged couple that looks like it was recently moved over from Geocities.

In summation, friend these fuckers on PEANUTBUTTERbook, MyPEANUTBUTTERspace, wherever and tell them they're fucking asshats. Tell them they're thieving, criminal fuckers unworthy of even the small modicum of playing ability they've been granted by The Universe and autotuning studio equipment.

Fuck you, PEANUT BUTTER. You PEANUT nothing. You reveal nothing new of nature or music. You are untalented, thieving hacks.

On Diversity

No, this isn't awkward at all. Why do you ask?



I realized today that I don't really have any black friends.

I used to have a black friend but I haven't talked to her in a while.

Which kind of sucks because she was also my lesbian friend. It was very convenient.

Before my close circle of friends included a woman, a gay and a minority. Now we're just a bunch of overweight white guys who like drinking and using the word "nigga" ironically.

Which come to think of it is probably fairly awful now that we don't have black person sitting with us anymore.

Lando Calrissian: Space Pimp

Killer Whale Kills, Everyone Shocked and Appalled

I'M AN ORCA. I'M AN ORCA! SUCK MAH DICK, I'M AND ORCA!

Beloved orca in a string of many who, like Lassie, carried on the "Shamu" name, has apparently mauled and killed a trainer.

1. The whale had just been introduced to this new trainer. I guess he didn't like her.
   
   
2. This is a killer whale and we have decided to keep in in a confined space since 1992, its only interactions being with people wearing slick black wetsuits and flailing wildly like baby seals, the orca's natural food source. Brilliant.
   
   
3. Since this was a killer whale, and we all know whales are as intelligent as dolphins, dogs, and retarded blond children who fight ecoterrorists in small Atlantic coves, homicide detectives have been called into investigate.

I suppose it's going to be … a whale of a case.

On Hypotheticals

A few weeks back my friend Jay offered up a hypothetical question. He wanted me to seriously consider my answer before giving it and make sure that it was the precise answer I'd want to give.

The question was, "If you could pick any act to punch, once, in the face with no repercussions, who would it be?"

As an odd afterthought he added, "I might know who it'd be, and if you don't pick him when I say it you'll wish you did."

Now Dean answered right away with some possibly dumb, timely answer, but I sat there contemplating for maybe a good twenty minutes while I thought out my response. The conversation changed while I sat, thinking.

I am not a violent man. Nor am I a strong man. I have, twice in my life, diffused almost certain ass kickings of myself by pointing out how incredibly easy, unsatisfying and unproductive kicking my ass would be. However the thought persisted. I was to punch any celebrity. Regardless of how we came there, I was to strike a man–need it be a man? Could I strike a woman?–I was to pummel an actor.

The part of my brain the works through time-travel/predestination problems kicked in. If, in the future, I know I will be punching an actor in the face, who could possibly drive me to such an act?"

I considered my list of people who instantly piss my off, simply by seeing them: Ben Stiller, Ashton Kutcher, Sandra Bullock, Mel Gibson, Nicholas Cage, Keanu Reeves, but nothing. All these people I hate with a passion. I see them and I instantly are aware that they are actors. Every movie they appear in is ruined for me. I hate them all and I wish they would stop being alive.

But at the same time there are redemptive qualities. Nick Cage, for example, is a horrible actor, but I think he'd be a nice guy if I met him. Mel Gibson might be an antisemitic bastard, but he knows he's a bastard. i appreciate assholes who know they are assholes and don't try to hide it.

Yes, there are other actors I would desire to inflict pain on, personally, but I want this punch to really count. If someone punches Kevin Fedderline in the face this week no one is going to care next week. Likewise, if I smacked Sandra Bullock it won't stop her from making horrible movies that make divorced 30-somethings and housewives cry. Tom Cruise will still be just as insane, and what's worse he'll feel vindicated in the prosecution of scientology.

This punch needs to be for me and me alone. I can attain nothing from it. It must be high-profile but also satisfactory even if it has no lasting repercussions.

And the weird thing is I've known all along.

I tell Jay, "I think I've got one. And the weird thing is I'm pretty sure this guy could take the hit standing and then turn around and kill me with his bare hands-"

And this is where Jay reminds me and says, "No, it's cool. You get one hit, no consequences."

"-But I think I don't care. I want this one," I finish.

"Okay…" Jay waits.

"Tom Hanks," I say. "I would want to punch Tom Hanks in the face so hard I don't even care if he kills me after. He just annoys me. He seems like a perfectly nice guy in interviews, but he's too nice. I hate him and everything he's ever been in, even the things he's been in that I liked, I hate because he is in them."

"That's interesting," Jay says. "Most people who say that have only seen Old Tom Hanks, not his early stuff."

"I am aware of his early works," I say. "I have not seen them because I can't stand him, but I am aware of them. I can't stand his face. That stupid, confused face like crushed boyhood optimism straining under the weight of reality that he wears every day in every scene of every film frame. I cannot abide Tome Hanks and I am sure he is a wonderful person to sit and drink and joke with, but I cannot stand his stupid face and I want to punch him in it so much that my muscles tense at the thought. My adrenal glands secrete liquid energy, my eyesight becomes suddenly sharper, my hearing more acute. I become so enraptured with the idea of striking this man just once, to cause pain to him for everything he has done to keep me even the slightest steps farther out of touch with humanity at large and I become even slightly aroused at the idea. This is passion brewing. Pure passion unfettered by morality or logic, only a sense of carnal justice unleashed by the thought that I can cast off society's restraints and once, for a brief moment, indulge my baser instincts to destroy that which I hate for pride and honor and the chance to usurp what it has I feel so wrongfully been lavished with."

"So yeah," I say. "If I could punch any actor in the face it'd be Tom Hanks."

"Alright," Jay says. "I'd punch Hayden Christiansen. I just feel like he'd be a little bitch. I had a dream where I got to meet him and I realized I'd never get the chance again, so I apologized and just punched. Him. In. The. Face. He cried like a little bitch."

"I want to make him cry," Jay said.

On Dreams, Pt. II

I'm not sure how much I buy into the idea that dreams are wish fulfillment. Sometimes, yes, obviously.

Last night, for example, I dreamnt myself into a very awkward moment with a former romantic partner. Now we did not exactly leave on the best terms, so her desire for me could have been seen as wish fulfillment on my part.

However my brain knows what it knows. This person promised to be kissy kissy only because she was drunk and only after she was done making out with some girl she'd just met.

Essentially true to life.

So what could be the wishing was that I turned down sexy dream slobbers because I knew it was wrong. I also learned that I have a habit of being placed into dominant roles in relationships by manipulative submissive women, so A) my family screwed me up like everyone else but quietly and B) now I know and there's nothing you can do to stop me from safeguarding against that attack.


Anyway, I felt really good about denying that bitch the satisfaction of using me as a third-string chew toy. Still, I was rather upset that I ever have to consider this person at all, so I grumbled and went back to sleep.

But for resisting temptation even in dream where one can do anything, I was rewarded with a second dream where I received in the mail the latest Green Day CD with the single and some bonus stickers and other bands' demos and then got to go on an international (i.e. Canada) car trip with my friends Jay and for some reason Trips.

If that weren't wish fulfillment enough, after that I dreamed I had sex with an unreasonably attractive Mila Kunis double. At the bottom of a waterside.

Also, I was a pizza boy and apparently a high school geek and the jocks caught us cuddling the next morning and respected me. Fuck. Yes. Dream Dave.

On 1337

If you're looking for a sexual cheat code, may I suggest ^^ˇˇ‹›‹›BA START."

Some time back in high school I set myself the challenge of writing dialogue entirely in leet-speak. [As in "elite," that stuff nerds post in nerdy chats non-nerds don't go to and thus never learn.]

Now, being maybe 17, obviously what I wrote was porn dialogue. It was the least nerdy thing I could think of.


- “0, jeah. S|_|x0r |^|y c0X0r, 817[|-|!”

- “|^|mm, 848y, j3s. d0 17 |-|4rD!”

- “0k4y, 8483, 83|\|D 0\/3r $0 1 [4|\| f|_|x0r j0|_|r |>|_|$$y!”

- “00oo, j3s, 848y, j3s. F|_|x0r |^|y |>|_|$$y!”

Line 1: THRUST LEFT
Line 2: THRUST RIGHT
Line 3: THRUST UPWARDS
Line 4: DEEP THRUST
Line 5: Go to: Line 1.

- “0, j3s, 848y! [)0 |^|3 |-|4r[)3r! F|_|X0r |^|3 |-|4r[)3r!”

- * |_| |-|!* “[0|^|3 0|\|, 817[|-|, |/\||-|3r3 [)0 j0|_| |/\|4|\|7 |^|3 2 [|_||^| ?”

- |^|m, 0, 848y, [|_||^| 1|\| |^|y 4$$!”

[Sp700dg3]

End Program
Prompt: Save “|/\|0m4|\|”’s phone #?
No.
Quit.


If it isn't clearly evident, I was having zero sex at this time in my life, as is the case with anybody who managed to read all that.

On Dreams

Last night I had some stomach/side/back/everything muscle aches, so I slept weird, tossing and turning and otherwise giving myself some pretty bizarre dreams.

Anyway I remember becoming good friends with Jane Krakowski, demanding she become my new "30 Rock friend." We would watch the show together, but as I hugged her creepily I also demanded she "not give anything away," in new episodes, "because then [she]'d be a bitch."

After this I watched some zombie-movie that might have been partially set in the Firefly universe, but obviously watching an outbreak on a news report was boring so my brain flew me through the TV screen and into the fray.

There I was inundated by slow, dumb zombies and a few fast runners, one of which was played by Ethan Suplee, of successful fat kid fame.

Anyway, the church was filled with all zombies sitting calmly in their pews, still holding their bibles, which is a hilarious shot I have never seen used and is such a wonderful religious commentary.

So then I tried to get away by climbing a tree. Hey, I was surrounded. Unfortunately it was one of those little saplings they plant in industrial areas that never quite stop being red even in Summer. It did not go well, especially since my being asleep hindered my climbing acumen.


After that I woke up and a thought occurred to me. What would it be like to have dinner at George A. Romero's house?

Me: "… What kind of soup is this??"
George A. Romero: "People."
Me: "…"
George A. Romero: "No, I'm kidding! It's tomato-lentil."

What a weird guy.

cop-out

blog in the morning. will deal with extended family before noon. almost surely a story there.

Things I Have Thought Up In the Shower

YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!



Things I Have Thought Up In the Shower

• How to say, "I'm sorry, I'm a stupid American. Do you speak English?" In Italian, French and Japanese. Note: I actually speak only the most rudimentary Spanish.
• A method of instantaneous, superluminal telecommunication over astronomical distances utilizing quantum computing and a binary language of stable entangled particles.
• The speed of light squared
• The energy that would be released if I were instantly converted from matter
• An end to Donnie Darko that reconciles free will with predetermination
• How The Sarah Connor Chronicles broke Terminator time.

And now a fun nerd addition to the list:

• What would happen if a human being was struck by a single particle of anti-matter?

For the sake of the argument, I'm assuming the antimatter is a positron (anti-electron). This is a few thousand times smaller than an anti-proton but has an equivalent inverse electrical charge, and is far easier to propel along the track of a particle accelerator. If you want to go the antiproton route just multiply (m) by like 1800 before you start. Just know you'd be a horrible mad scientist.

Anyway, I wanna know if I should be dumping my corpses inside the LHC at CERN. I mean do they really check inside a lot? Could I just drop bodies down an access hatch and let science nerds annihilate the evidence?

Well let's see.

Einstein's energy/mass conversion equation is fairly simple: E=mc².

In this case we're assuming a positron of mass (9.1093821545•10^-31)kg is impacting SOMETHING IN A CORPSE, but that something can really only be one particle, and that particle must be composed of ordinary matter. Additionally, in annihilating itself and the particle it hits, the positron can only release the energy of its own mass and an equal mass of ordinary matter, so an electron.

So E= [(2 particles)(9.1093821545•10^-31)kg][(the speed of light)²]. The speed of light, in metters/second, is 299792458

Do a little reducing and we have:

E=(1.82187643090•10^-30)(8.987551787•10¹⁶) kg•m²/s²

After more math we find the energy release would be: 1.63742088•10^-13 Joules (or Wattseconds).

This is equal to about 163.7 femtojoules, which to put in perspective is a 6.82•10^-25 Megaton blast, or (averaged) 4.4•10^-25 Hiroshima atomic blasts.

That is 44 nonillionths of a Hiroshima bomb. ⁴⁴/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.


So no. No, it would not be a good idea to use the Large Hadron Collider as a bodydump.

On Blogging

Apparently Wordpress went down for two hours yesterday, losing the interwebs up to 5.5 million hits.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say, "Thank you," to Wordpress' ISP for screwing everything up and maybe getting me some extra hits while there was no one else to read.

Thank you, Wordpress' ISP, for getting me extra hits.

On The DMV

I legitimately feared this to be the experience I should expect.



Shockingly, I've only really had good experiences with the DMV after getting my license at 16. I think those first couple trips bought me some karma points or something. The wait was long because the computers were down, and rather than schedule my instant pass/fail test for weeks later, I took the written test and waited 4 days to hear back about my scantron, which was, obviously, a near-perfect score. So I waited a few days and got my permit, took my driver's ed program and got my junior license at 16, my senior at 16.5.

That was really it.

I've been down there only four times since then: once when we moved and I had to update my address, once to renew my license and update the height and photo, once to get my motorcycle permit (yes, I am secretly even more awesome than you originally conceived) and once just now to re-update my photo and renew that permit.

Now for moving, admittedly, they didn't alter my height then, which is why I made sure to get it done when I renewed a few years back. However to fix waiting at the DMV, my mom (who was there to fix her license as well) and I ran into this girl who went to my high school along with her mother. They were there for some similar reason and we killed time chatting.

When I went to renew it was up at school so I got to visit a DMV that used to be a bank. This meant that their "storage room" was a vault with A GIANT SPINNING WHEEL FOR A DOOR, casually left ajar behind some iron bars. Very laid-back atmosphere there. Not only was this place awesome, but the tellers were all speedy and super-nice. Like loving grandma/aunt nice. I was in-and-out in enough time to make it to my class for the day, which is great because my TA was waiting in line behind me and I didn't want him to beat me back and mark me late.

My last sojourn to the Department of Motor Vehicles was kind of hilarious. Out drinking one night, my friend Molly announced that she had to go to the DMV because, as a City Girl, she'd let her license expire over a year prior and now had to retake everything including her road test. I happened to mention, "Oh, wow, that's really funny, actually. I wanted to go down to the DMV tomorrow." This of course led to her disbelief that someone could want to go to a DMV, the revelation that I was learning to ride a motorcycle and me eventually demanding all Dave-related shenanigans immediately cease if Molly at all desired my licensed driver ass to schlep her down with me. This story ends with an equally speedy and efficient business experience for me, as I actually studied for my permit test. I believe Molly passed, despite years of real (not) driving interfering with her retention of DMV by-the-book regulations.


This trip was astounding. I remembered where the building was without having been there in at least six years, I found easy parking, spent about 5 minutes wandering outside looking for the right door and then remembered it's actually inside a little mall-type thing.

I got in, found the right form, filled it out in line and got the very polite clerk who had just uttered, "Girl, it's dead in here all of a sudden." She gave me another form to fill out, one copy for renewing my permit, the other for updating my license photo. She took me as soon as I was done, snapped a photo and sent me on my way to wait for my service as customer #F851.

I found a good seat in pew where I could view all the NOW HELPING numbers and saw that a clerk was NOW HELPING #F850, which cut my surprise short my finishing and requesting my F851 presence. I handed over my stuff, got told I have to wait another 3 weeks before I can actually renew my permit because it lasts longer than I thought, but I could just bring back the completed form and they'd update my photo right away. I saw it and it actually looks like me. Kind of a sad, brooding, head-tilted me, but still more like me than the long-haired, no-glasses kid on my current card.

Anyway, that all took me 27 minutes. The DMV faeries smile on me. I may still have to go back in three weeks, but in theory it should be relatively painless.

And yes, within the year I will be riding motorcycles, because I collect stupid skills and credentials. I am a motorcycle-driving, webcomic-producing, published poet minister, registered with Phi Beta Kappa. I might also become a notary, just because we need one lately. Ye gods, I'm an interesting fellow.

On Advertising, II

Sometimes I like to look at the women in clothing ads on websites as the ad cycles through multiple colors but the woman stays in place.

What most people think is sad is that I'm using this as an excuse to look at semi-clothed women.

What I think is really sad is that I am entirely serious. I'm starring at boob pixels for upwards of twenty minutes trying to figure out what color was the bra that was originally photographed.

Usually, it's the grayish/tannish color. Blue, magenta, black and white can all be easily photoshopped simpy by Adjustments>Colors. That's why the resolution dips and the stitching fuzzes.


What is absolutely saddest is that I have so much time on my hands that I learned this, even more now that I don't have anything more to figure out.

I am sure this is how Stephen Hawking gets most of his work done.

On Maxim Mgazine

Things I Get From Maxim Magazine

• Great new recipes
• Gadget Reviews
• Free MP3s
• Those little cologne samples
• A basic understanding of the workings of whatever sporting event is happening next month
• Sexual, geographical and economic frustration
  

Things I Do Not Get From Maxim Magazine

• An erection
• In fact any kind of sexual satisfaction
• Who could possibly afford any of the clothes recommended as being in style or why such a person would also be reading Maxim
  

On MTV and Time Travel

No, BearCat Bummers is not updating again. These jokes simply had a lot of visual components. That and I've been meaning to draw more. Anyway, the point is if I ever own a horse I want to put flame decals on it.


It occurred to me that MTV has basically been rehashing the same shows season after season for over a decade now. Likewise, other networks are ripping off those same shows for nearly as long, and all this is happening on a 1-to-1 time scale.

THIS IS BORING, YOUR GUYS.

Wouldn't it be more interesting if, say, instead of watching the gay guy from Real World season 7 and the drunk bitch from Road Rules season 4 race for some vague idea of immunity on Real World/Road Rules Challenge season 2, we watched The Real World: 1775?

Imagine Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, George III and Benedict Arnold all living together under one log cabin roof. What would happen when these people stopped casting off the tyrannical shackles of colonialism politely and started getting real?

Washington: "There's a letter from the hosts, guys. Apparently we all need to get jobs today. If we all pick up a shift at the juice bar I think we can earn enough to buy groceries."

George III: "Mmmm … no. No, I don't think so. Just levy a tax on importing juice."

Jefferson: "Damnit, Third, do even have the slightest idea how economies work."

George III: "I believe I have a man for that."

Jefferson: "Yeah. Me!"

Franklin: "Boys, boys, let's not get out of hand here. Why don't we all just get naked and open all the windows and talk this out?"

Hancock: "Ben! This is not the time!"

Arnold: "I think it's a great idea!"

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, in unison: "Aaaar-nooooold!!"


See, I bet you didn't know Ben Franklin was a really creepy nudist. However while he was America's diplomat to France he became estranged from his wife and family and spent years abroad living in hotels, hosting "air-baths" in which everyone was supposed to get naked and bask in the fresh air. Or only he would. Whatever you were comfortable with. Creepy old Ben Franklin.

On Spam Mail 3

This spam response is, I admit, partially lifted from an old Penny Arcade script that I thought was brilliant. You should check them out.

LETTER THE THIRD:


Dear Sirs,

I am not a subscriber. Please remove me from your list and do not send or sell my name to anyone else. If you do I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the ruler of that dark place.
From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming, as if from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.

En nomine Samael,
The Reverend D.E. Zucker

On Spam Mail 2

SPAM REPLY LETTER THE SECOND


Dear _________,

What you are doing borders on criminal, the only saving grace of which is that unless
your recipients are stupid enough to give you their banks account numbers, you're not
actually committing mail fraud or embezzlement.
I have not lived at that address for years.
If you ever send me anything again in any format, or if you give my name to anyone else
for any reason and I can trace it back to you, I will hold you, Sir, personally responsible. I will
find an agency to deal with you. I will call or alert them via other means. I will then find you myself. I will trace you, and track you, and hunt you down like a rodent. I will find you and I will beat you. I will want to hurt you, break you, and as you lie on the ground I will kick you in the gonads until you vomit blood and pass out. I will then call the police, who will find you, and they will call the Emergency personal to help you, all the while wasting precious time as your testicles leak their contents into your sacks and abdomens. If you are lucky they will perhaps save one of your testicles. If I am lucky, both will be irreparably damaged and the mixing of your usually separated bodily fluids will cause you to develope a staph infection, that you might die in a hospital bed, miles from what passes for your loved ones, writhing in agony as your own blood slowly poisons you.

May you rot in Hell forever,
David Zucker, REV.

On Spam Mail 1

I never enjoyed getting spam in my inbox.

That's a lie. I used to love it. This would be back when I never really got anything new or interesting. Now it's an annoyance. Frankly, unemployment post-graduation has weeded out a lot of the problems. Gmail took care of the rest, but I still have to see all the emails for erectile dysfunction drugs and dirty Russian sluts being left alone on a farm.

Well, I think I've found the solution to my troubles. You see, I recently came across a series of response emails I write back in the days when I had a lot of free time and not a lot of creative outlets.

So for the next few days, enjoy my angry ramblings and feel free to use them in dealing with the few scammers that are too dumb to leave off a return address.


LETTER THE FIRST:

Dear Sirs,
Please remove me from every mailing list you have and do not distribute my e-mail
address to anyone else. I am tired of receiving spam and blank spam at that. If this e-mail
does not get returned due to your address closing down, please, know this: I hope you die from a staph infection resulting from fornicating yourselves with sharp, rusty farming implements, and that your mothers do not shed one tear at your collected funerals.

Sincerely,
Reverend D.E. Zucker

On Preparedness

My town apparently calls your house with "CODE RED" on the caller ID when a big snow storm is coming.

For the record, "CODE RED" is not telling me the Russians are invading.

They are not telling me there is an intruder alert or to get to my ready station in the transporter bay, or even that I should be drinking more gamer-aimed Mountain Dew.

I was being told not to put out any paper recycling, in case service was canceled in the morning.


I feel so much safer.

BONUS BLOG: On Lauren Leto and Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut on a train

“The passenger car glided across the tracks with the whoosh and gentle HUMMMN of a magnetically propelled boa constrictor. If bullet trains could think, this one, like all bullet trains, would be thinking, ‘HECK YEAH, I’M A BULLET TRAIN! YOU SEE THAT? YOU SEE THAT TREE? YEAH, THAT WAS A TREE, MAN! IT WAS JUST A BLURR! WHOOSH!’

“If the tracks could think, they would be wondering why no one ever cared enough to stop for a spell and chat with them anymore.”

This takes some explanation.

So about a month ago my friend Dean introduced me to the concept of this person Lauren Leto.

Ms. Leto is part of the brilliance behind the website–and now book–"Texts From Last Night" (TFLN), which I have failed to get my received texts onto repeatedly. I believe they have some system installed that simply knows I have condensed eighteen back-and-forths into three messages, correcting the grammar as I went.

Ms. Leto also has the above-linked blog and a Twitter feed, the thing Dean was most interested in because when he began following her, she did him the courtesy of following right back. Someone with a modicum of success living where there be sea monsters in the real world, was vaguely interested in seeing Dean post.

Now it's completely understandable that Ms. Leto ended up un-following Dean after a month or two. He contributed nothing of value, which is the point of Twitter but still. Things to do, people to Tweet. Whatever the case right around the time Dean got unfollowed, I began following @laurenleto. Soon after I began following her WordPress blog.

I made it my goal, as a writer, to get some kind of legitimate response from her and one-up Dean, like the time I accidentally made Ingrid Michaelson feel bad over Twitter and she complimented me.

Well, my friends, only a month in and my dreams are achieved. As directed by this post, "Writers On Trains," I appended my bit as a comment and left for the day, hoping to garner some kind of "Oh, that's cute," response.

Today Lauren Leto has given it its own entry, titled it "Genius," (something I will be saving for my first book jacket) and linked it back to Sound A Doggy Makes.

Thank you, Lauren Leto, though no one else would ever, you have made the dreams of this young, suburban, middle class white man's dreams come true.

Everything I Need To Know In Life I've Learned From Spider Jerusalem

• Always trust your journalistic gonads (or attack womb).

• Don’t kill yourself; kill everyone else.

• Always do a proper background check on your drug dealer.
  
  
• Motion-activated cameras can mistake violent sex for assault.
  
  
• Beware the Chair Leg of Truth!
  
  
• Trust the Fuckhead.
  
  
• All religions suck, that’s why I have drugs.
  
  
  
• We all have a little Hitler in us, more so the Nazi sex midgets.
  
  
• Baby seal eyes taste better fresh.
  
  
• No one gives two tugs of a dead dog’s cock.
  
  
• Don’t leave home without your journalistic insurance.
  
  
• Recreational drugs can be written off on your taxes as journalistic equipment.
  
  
• The correct proportions for Aoteroa are one part blood to one part milk.
  
  
• The perfect mood for journalism is miserable, edgy, and tired.
  
  
• Everyone’s a FUCKING EDITOR.
  
  
• TV should be seen, not smelt.
  
  
• Journalistic ethics mean nothing in the face of the truth.
  

This list originally compiled with the help of Matthew Sanders, who has his whole life been preparing for the role of 'Weird-But-Cool Grandfather.'

Of Nature vs. Nurture

Someone is going to be very, very offended by this. I'd prefer it be the man who said, "Yeah, we'll pay you for a TwitterBot that retweets every instance of the word 'Asperger's' without discression."


If there's one thing my family is absolutely brilliant at, it's naturally reproducing.

If there's another thing it's naturally reproducing Machiavelli's principles from The Prince in exacting detail within their home lives, all the while maintaining an Orwellian level of self-denial.

Alright, in some cases they're just idiots.


But it really is fascinating. One of the unintended consequences of this is my family, through sheer neglectful behavioral modification, has achieved the same astounding results as natural genetics in bequeathing me the non-biological equivalent of Asperger's.

Bravo, guys. Really.

I mean I have no faith in humanity and I can't relate to people unless they're emotionally unavailable to me, but hey, I've been getting better ever since I stopped seeing my relatives.

Confucius would not be pleased with me, but I think even he'd drop the notion of filial piety after July Fourth at my aunt's house.

On Good Decisions

I believe I have shielded the necessary parties in this. I'm failry certain anyone who could read this and know them were already there when this happened, but I just wanted to be safe. (You are all retarded, by the way. And not that cool, socially acceptable kind of retarded that makes you good at math. The bad kind where it's just your own fault.)


This past Friday I found my brain wracked with thoughts until I finally fell asleep some time around 6:30 in the morning.

Around 12:30 I awoke to an uncharacteristically polite text message from my friend Jay:

"Wake up please."

"Awake," I replied. "Thank you for being so polite."

"Alright mite need u at hudson valley hospital at ur earliest convience [sic]"

"Aww pick-up?" I texted back. "From the ER, I assume?"


This was only moderately alarming. Jay has a predisposition to the shattering of hands on things. Walls, water, other people's jaws, pretty much anything.

"Yeap but its not for me just dont want leave a man behind [sic]"


Now that was interesting. I immediately flashed to our friend Murray somehow battered, bruised and stomach-pumped.

I promised to be at the hospital in twenty minutes or so, depending on parking. For this I was rewarded with the promise of a breakfast sandwich. Awesome.


Upon arrival I actually found the closest parking space that wasn't for an ambulance or the already handicapped. I was asked via Jay to hang around the ER walk-in area for a while, maybe ten minutes in total during which I checked my email and subscriptions for the day on my phone.

Jay exited the "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" doors and motioned me outside so he could have a cigarette and explain.

Apparently, in preparation for the snowstorm that decimated the lower East Coast this past weekend, my friends started drinking on Friday night and continued straight through noon the next day as more and more people cycled in after work.

One of our friends, we'll call him "Snappy," sober, started talking some at our friend Jimmy, and the general consensus was that they should have a somewhat relaxed fight. Just some moderate roughhousing, nothing serious.

Now the interesting thing was that last week Jay found himself idly musing on who would win in such a fight, because he was positive Snappy could take him down and he was pretty sure he could take Jimmy, but he believed if Jimmy realized his reach and larger mass could outmatch Snappy's quickness and footwork, any fight would be over fairly quickly.


Well once again Jay can accurately size up any fight. Snappy's footwork was fancy, his light jabs quick, but Jimmy just reached out, grabbed Snappy and basically fell on top of him. If you listen carefully to the video, which exists in fairly good quality, you can actually hear the moment Snappy's tibia and fibula pop apart as his foot rolls inward on itself and his ankle turns into a throbbing purple baseball.

But if anyone asks, he fell down some stairs.

On A Defeatist Attitude

It's really crafty of pharmaceutical companies to sell their arthritis medications inside child-proof containers.

Their customers will always need them, if only to help loosen the lid.

On Vending Machines

I want to know who it was who thought it would be a good idea to drop the carbonated beverage I just purchased three feet down a metal shoot immediately before I'm supposed to open it.

Movies I Liked Starring Ashton Kutcher

Movies I Liked Starring Ashton Kutcher

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More On LOST and Astrophysics

Apparently what gets my blog hits are:

2) LOST explanations (30 hits) and

1) astrophysics jokes (128 hits).



So my new theory is this: Jacob's nemesis is the evil Lord Xenu, of scientology infamy, attempting to return to his home, Earth's diametric orbital double "Nemesis," utilizing a confluence of astronomic phenomena centered around The Temple.

So much better than my whole "Jacob and Man In Black are just God and the Devil" theory, no?

This stuff practically writes itself, just like leaky-gravity multi-brane theory, am I right, scientists??

Can I get an "It's likely, barring repeatably verifiable experimental data to the contrary" in here, brothers?

On Michelle Obama

Looking at Michelle Obama I can't help think life went a lot better for Lisa Turtle than the rest of her classmates on Saved By the Bell.

Thoughts On LOST

So I broke down and actually watched the season premier of LOST on ABC. I figured it was a good enough place to start. They gave me a recap of the first five seasons and, quite frankly, it doesn't seem like I missed much.

Alright, I missed everything after season one, episode two which I just watched the other week under duress. But judging as far as I can tell all I really missed was all the surprises and bizarre twists I was already well-aware of.

As it turns out, I'm not expecting to watch an episode until the series ends now, because I've got a pretty good hold on things.

I know, that makes me sound like an asshole akin to the ones who write the show, but let's take a look at my calls from watching the first episode desiring to prove how lame it was:

• Someone should just try whistling for the damned dog
• Locke can magically walk after being paralyzed
  
• Michael is a pretty shitty father and is either taking his kid for the summer or his ex bit it like a Disney matron
• Everyone would get along much better if they all just talked openly to each other.

And did anyone else notice that Mike's first line in the entire show was screaming, "WALT!?" Hilarious. I said it at the time and I'll say it again is what I'm thinking comes to pass: I always win at LOST.


So yeah, I watched the new episode with the clear mind of someone who doesn't have all kinds of old ideas or biases or, you know, respect for the show muddling around his head.

And the result is this: I know what's going on in LOST. Probably.


*SPOILERS*
First off, apparently it's a "Back To the Future" timeline. The nuke made a world where no plane crashed in The Island, but then no one was their to set off the nuke after going back in time, to causality paradoxes are avoided by splitting the difference between two parallel branch universes, one valid in having a destroyed Island but the other still valid in containing the original versions of everyone. The Island can exist outside normal space-time, like a Delorian, so sure, why not. Reconciling the two in a very "Donnie Darko" moment is probably the key to something in the last episode. I really don't care until then.


*Funner Stuff*

The Island is the Garden of Eden, part of this world and not. Women die in agony trying to give birth there because Eve was cursed with pain in childbirth and cast out before she conceived. Humans have been allowed back on the island consistently and only by the influence of Jacob.

Jacob is the angel with the flaming sword, who guards the gates to Eden to prevent anyone getting back in. His allowing people back in is likely what gives his Nemesis leave to bend the rules and take form as Locke, to bring about Jacob's murder.

Jacob's Nemesis was just revealed to also be the smoke monster, a black, amorphous cloud of death. Nemesis also claims that unlike the real Locke, all he wants to do is "Go home." Jacob's nemesis is Samael, the Fallen angel. Yes. Drink it in. The smoke monster is the devil.

Except in Jewish folklore Samael was the temptor and seducer but also a heavenly prosecutor in matters of will and sin, as well as the angel of death. Yes he was fallen, but he was still an agent of God's will and a servant.

OH BUT WAIT!

I'm going to crew with your head as bad as the writers of LOST. All of that is true, but it's backwards!

Samael was also supposedly the angel who wrestled with Jacob! All the relationships are the same, but reverse it! What guards The Island and punishes mortal trespassers? The smoke monster. Who is the faithful servant of God despite what he is tasked with doing? Samael. Who wanders the mortal world and interferes with human affairs? Jacob. Who is stuck on The Island Paradise forever? The Guardian.

The Accuser serves God in white, despite what humanity's made of him, while the Guardian of the Garden has grown resentful in his duty barring him from reentering heaven. Having defeated Jacob on Earth, the guardian can now kill all the humans on The Island and then manage to return to heaven some way, likely by destroying the temple patrons and all of humanity or something, ending his assignment and bolting off the mortal plain.

Basically, LOST is Kevin Smith's "Dogma."

Think abut that.

Of Siblings and Superpowers

"Sometimes being a brother is better than being a superhero." – Marc Brown

Sorry to disagree with Mister Brown, but I can't think of a single moment in my life that would not have been vastly improved by the addition of superpowers.

On Motion City Soundtrack

I really enjoy listening to music by the band Motion City Soundtrack.

It's very poppy, electric, high-energy sonics mixed with the incredibly depressed, vibrant lyrics of a brilliant drunkard. Basically, I imagine it's something like what you would get if you were to give Morrissey a case of Red Bull and an English degree.

But the funny thing is I only ever end up listening to half their music.

I don't mean collectively, I mean that on each of their four albums I religiously play only one half before getting bored/busy/distracted.

It's weird that this is so consistent, true, but it's weirder still that they're not all the same halves.

Of their debut album "I Am the Movie" I only ever really play the first track. I am familiar with many of the other ones, but this is not an album I typically listen too. If you were to pick which part of the album I am most familiar with, it would be the middle half.

Their second album (and my favorite) "Commit This to Memory" I thoroughly enjoy almost all of. Unfortunately, the time in my life I listened to this album fairly non-stop was also a period where I was walking quite a bit and on a fixed schedule. The result was I would play the slightly happier first songs as I walked out the door and generally stop listenning at some point though the day before the second half of the disc. Even though my favorite MCS song is on the second half here, I usually just skipped to it when I was in the mood and then start over. I liked the first half best, though to be fair if you replaced the last two track with the couple I like from "I Am the Movie" I probably would have a full album.

"Even If It Kills Me" was released in 2007 and I'm not sure I've ever listened passed the first half. Their are a few good bits but nothing very astounding.

However the new album "My Dinosaur Life" is pretty hilarious. The brilliant lyrics are back without feeling to stilted. It's a less forced album and, again, I could do without most of the middle half. I have the deluxe edition with iTunes exclusive track and bonus disc, so I've stopped listening to pretty much the entire first half of the album. Now I start at the end, finish it and then go straight into the bonus acoustic versions of the first tracks I did like.

Essentially, I like Motion City Soundtrack up, down, inside and around the edges.

But if you put on an entire album I might shoot myself.