On "Biblical Proportions"

"This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions."

"What do you mean, 'biblical?'"
"What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff."
"Exactly."
"Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!"
"Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…"
"The dead rising from the grave!"
"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!"

- Ghostbusters

I'm pretty sure the initial thought was placed in my head by something I heard on television. Maybe a joke on The Daily Show, perhaps an awkward comment somewhere, I don't really remember.

What matters is that I don't have the meteorological wherewithal to refute this idea that's gotten into my head:

1. The Gulf of Mexico is filled with a massive oil spill.
2. Everyone is worried that as hurricane season approaches relief efforts will have to cease.
3. Hurricanes have massive lightning strikes.
4. People are fearing the ocean catching on fire.

Now that's pretty terrifying in general, but we're all pretty aware that heavily polluted lakes and rivers and such can catch fire, and in more fun cases it is actually possible to burn seawater by bombarding it with science- microwaves.
But we all seem to be forgetting something else hurricanes do:

• Produce water spouts.

Yes, hurricanes suck water up out of the ocean and then rain it down over the course of hours or days. If that water is filled with oil, and if at any point that oily water is ignited by one of the many lightning strikes between the interior of the hurricane and the ocean, we will be getting killed by a giant raging firestorm of fire.

Almost.

And where do most hurricanes make landfall? The Gulf. Often Louisiana. Don't think this is a likely possibility? Here's a video of oily backwash raining down in Louisiana last week.

Now, I'm not usually one to buy into any of that "God is punishing us for our promiscuity and The Gays and harboring Jews" malarkey, but even I have to admit New Orleans is getting shit on pretty bad by the universe, lately. I mean it's one thing to write off the flooding as being well deserved after you built an entire tourist city below sea level, but the flooding lead to power and light outages, skin irritation and lung damage/death from mold and bacterial, and widespread famine. More recently they've been dealing with tornadoes and now it's fucking raining fire.

FUCKING RAINING FIRE!

Seriously?! So that's flooding, famine, lesions, darkness and fiery death. We were like four plagues into the story of Passover and the universe just skipped straight to Sodom and Gamorrah.

I don't know about you all, but I want to see the government step in and fix this shit while footing the bill to BP before we have to find out if two-month old moonshine counts as a first-born son.

Of Wunderkind

When I was a child of about seven I attempted to decipher my father's piano sheet music.

I took a book aside and began doodling the notes over a blank piece of paper. I had only the vaguest idea that the location of the notes across the staff had any meaning. There were so many piano keys, I ignored the frighteningly long, straight lines and hoped against all hope that I was correct in thinking they were pointless embellishments.

Finished, I proudly presented my original piece to my father. You see, my father had always hoped I would play the piano. In fact he spent several thousand dollars on a mahogany grand piano when I was still in utero. As much as I despised the too-large, too-many-keyed monstrosity that sat in the living room, I also made it no secret that I enjoyed the notion of finding a natural gift for something, so wouldn't it be lovely if I turned out to be the reincarnation of Mozart?

Rather than dash my hopes outright, my father took a softer approach, however not in exactly the best way possible. Instead of explaining that the note tails denote duration and the vertical staggering pitch, my father sat down at the piano and proceeded to play something incomprehensible from memory. For several minutes.

Several minutes in which I believed I had through simply looking at sheet music for the first time reverse engineered Western music notation and by instinct created a haunting melody. My confusion was profound. How would my life change now, knowing that while my work might not be good, the possibility of randomly creating a harmonizing piece was unlikely, even if I were only the conduit for the output from an infinite universe of monkeys pounding on harpsichords, I should be out of school. I should be touring the world. I didn't even like piano, but perhaps that was only because I had lived a full life as a virtuoso, and despite being sick of the instrument I retained a lifetime's worth of innate knowledge and talent.

When he finished, I asked my father if that was really the piece I wrote. He looked at me at first blankly, then again with disbelief and finally with disappointment that I did not get the joke.

"Of course not," he said.

On Vegitarianism

I WANT YOU!
To eat a fucking cheeseburger.

Whenever I think of vegetarianism, I think of Mitch Hedberg's one joke about wishing he just had one long, curvy tooth. I like to think this is what people would be like if they were supposed to be herbivores and, trust me, that's what some people are. They don't only eat vegetables, they eat all plant matter. There aren't even such things as vegeatables, botanically speaking.

I have all these arguments for why people are supposed to eat meat; we have incisors made for incising, rending flesh from bone, we have our eyes on the front for predatory binocular vision, the sheer quantity of (regionally highly non-diverse) produce you would have to consume to make up for the drop in protein intake is staggering, any argument of animal cruelty can easily be countered by buying (expensive-ass) organic, free-range, and cruelty-free. and have you ever tasted how delicious some animals are, hot damn.

Swear to Jebus, some animals are just ugly, dumb, ornery creatures we likely would have hunted to extinction out of spite were they not incredibly useful.

• Chickens - the closest remaining parallel to a velociraptor, in size and attitude.
• Hogs - so many flavors, eats damned near anything and cannot function in most temperate climates. Also incredibly useful for medical testing/spare parts. Tiny Pigs are cute, hogs are dumb, fat and ugly, but also delicious.
• Cows - they're slow, stinky and will graze a field to death in under a year. Additionally, they have been domesticated completely, such that there are no wild cows (Bos taurus). They serve no ecological purpose except that their farts produce excess methane and exist now only at our pleasure.

I thought I'd have to use some of these arguments eventually, but all the die-hard vegetarians I've ever knows are just really nice people who never want to push their habits on others. Some were just raised herby, others were shown one too many videos about the meat processing industry. Still others were guilted into it and convinced of the health practices, but I've been specifically told to not tell other vegetarians about their 100% relapse rate among quality hamburgers.

So I've devised a plan. I shall consume extra meat to make up for all the meat my emaciated, sickly friends with acne pass over.

When I eat a burger, I want at least one extra animal to have died for it, preferably a pig for some bacon. If you include the cruelty angle, I demand that all of my beef patties be topped with the curdled result of molesting a different cow (because we all know dairy cows are bread to different traits than beef cattle). If you include a side of chicken nuggets, I require three animals to be killed and a fourth molested, just to get my Wendy's fix. (Five, when you consider that honey-mustard is also comprised of mayonnaise and mayo is made from eggs, eggs coming from egg-chickens and not meat-chickens).

Shit, people, when I order a salad I think back to That '70s Show's Red Forman: "This isn't food. This is what food eats." Now I love salads too, but work with me here. It I really have my way, I'm eating bacon of my salad. And cheese. Or maybe I'm just having a chicken Caesar salad. With cheese.

Guys, when I eat a salad I need at least two animal products on top of it! I've eaten things I can't pronounce because they're delicious. I'm a true omnivore! I eat pretty much everything!



Except seafood. That shit's just gross.

On Spontaneity

My friends are not very good planners.

Sure, we prioritize, set dates in advance, but when it comes time to actually get shit done, we're not exactly the army corp of engineers. The best laid plans seem to be set only a few days in advance. Maybe four or five, max. Anything longer will require excessive planning that will change repeatedly, then again the night before and usually involves large cash expenditures for gas and admittance and food-slash-drink.

Somehow we've all adapted, though. It's gotten to the point where I'm pretty sure we all leave our schedules open because we know something is coming. I've been invited into The City with a half hour's notice. I've been invited upstate the night before. I've been invited to a theme park in New Jersey of all places on maybe three days grace. I've been invited to someone's prom two hundred miles away with maybe a month beforehand.

But today was a new one. Today I was invited to be a bridesmaid's date to a wedding on Long Island thirteen hours ahead of the ceremony.

Thankfully, this was somewhat facetious, but somewhere in the infinite void is a universe where I end up going down to Lawn Guyland and partying with a bunch of people I've never met. I think I'd like to live in that universe, but my responsibilities for tomorrow were set by my own volition weeks ago. Would that I could, but I'm already seeing the dozen tiny sings that the universe has seen my altruism and is pleased.

The Universe is an everlasting river with lulls and eddies and currents, and if you listen carefully to the sound it makes you will hear its multitudinous voice, forever speaking, "Ohm."

Either that or The Universe is a fickle bitch, created in my own vast but tiny mind too terrified of emotionally dealing with the rest of humanity on anything but my own limited terms.

But probably the first.

On The Truth About Cats & Dogs

Yup, that's a hairball, alright … and IIIIIIIIII helped!"

I'm going to be very honest with you.

I have never seen Cyrano de Bergerac, nor do I even like "Roxanne" by the Police. I neither have seen The Truth About Cats & Dogs and particularly dislike Uma Thurman's face, though like all good misanthropes I harbor an unrequited geek-crush on Janeane Garofalo.

I'm willing to bet this is for the same reasons I like cats better than dogs.

I know, I know, I'm a traitor to men everywhere, whose ancestors hunted with their semi-tamed wolf partners to bring down enormous prey and eat its delicious, delicious flesh-bits.

Fuck it. Dogs smell bad. I know men smell bad, but I try really hard not to. I'm not even allergic to dander in the slightest, I just don't like how dogs smell. I don't like that that scent gets all over you immediately as you touch one, that it's not even completely water soluble and takes some serious scrubbing to get off. Cats? Cats are fuckin' OCD about bathing themselves. On top of that they don't do much all day long. They don't get tired and pant since they can't sweat. When a cat gets hot they just know to cut it the hell out and lay down 'til it cools off.

Cats are lazy. Not only does this keep them from smelling just awful–or at all; you really have to get a facefull of cat to smell anything off them–it also means they don't require a lot of maintenance. Feed a cat and change its litter box every so often. The cat will take care of the rest himself.

Cats are dicks. We recognize our own and they appreciate my bluntness, my honesty and my aloof attitude. The nastiest cats in the world love me, because I don't cause them grief and I don't pump out fear-mones like they're paleolithic giants and I'm a tiny, wounded gazelle of some kind, an impala, perhaps.

Do you know what it feels like to get that unconditional love from a pet or another human being? Doesn't it feel much better when you actually respect the other creature? When you feel like you've earned that love and deserve it?

Of course it doesn't. You're dog people. All you want is someone to throw you another stick to fetch.

On Robby's Killbox

In early 2006 those of us taking a certain Visual Narrative class were tasked with creating a video out of a truly awful script titled "Robby's Killbox." We were told it was a collaborative internet project, which does appear to be the case, but at the time I was convinced it was something awful our teacher had dug out of her undergrad portfolio, due primarily to a great number of blatant, yet completely superfluous uses of lesbianism in the plot.

Knowing that 89% of groups every semester filmed "The Park Bench Scene," we decided to film a series of our own shots, to be inserted into the original story. The female protagonist, whose name I forgotten completely, has a sort of psychic power that compels people to confess to her their darkest secrets. The police utilize this to search out a supernatural serial killer with an artistic bent, who I think might have been her psychotic brother.

We found that all horribly uninteresting and unoriginal. Enjoy this series of random confessions and let it's terrific badness steep your soul down to its basest elements.

On Catch-22's

So according to some news site I'm unfamiliar with and a friend of mine named Claudia, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg could be facing life imprisonment, death or life as an internationally hunted fugitive.

This of course because he and several other named parties created Facebook, Facebook then years later hosting a group for "International Draw Mohammad Day" which protested violence by Islamic extremists against (granted, tasteless) depictions of the Holy Prophet (blessed be his name) in popular media. This of course was highly insulting to anyone who takes being a Muslim seriously.

Since this group existed for a couple weeks before anyone important asked for it to be removed and Facebook immediately did so, Zuckerberg, who is not actually in charge of anything substantial, is obviously guilty of personally blaspheming The Prophet (BBHN). Long story short, the Pakistani representative to the U.N. is asking permission to bring this before the General Assembly and get Interpol to drag Zuckerberg out to be lynched tried for unholy crimes.

Honestly, I'm not sure I can infuse this with enough humor to make it funny-haha. Frankly, this is a best definition of a Catch-22 I've heard since "Catch-22 is such a long, dry book that no one can finish reading it, but since no one has finish it no one can complain about it being a legitimately bad book."

We grant freedoms of existence and expression in this country to people who would not grant us the same, but would then use our refusal to forcibly silence their extremism to meet their own objectives. We pried ourselves on allowing anyone to say anything unless it physically damages another human being, but it is that allowance itself that some take offense to, knowing we by principle can not silence their objections.

Extremists: can't live with them, can't descend to their methods of arguing.


But mostly the first thing, because they keep trying to imprison/kill people.



You know, as an aside, if you were to replace every instance of Islam in this post with "Scientology," every "Pakistan" with "Hollywood" and "extremism" with "Tom Cruise," this would all still be a perfectly valid editorial. Consider that for a moment.

On Guinea Gorilla Juiceheads

Much like her Bump-It wearing counterpart from MTV's beloved show Jersey Shore, my friend Jo has a thing for big muscly dudes.

Actually, that's a bold-faced lie.

She has a thing for death metal and trash talking scumbags over the internet, and though he's a pretty big dude now, her boyfriend only recently put on muscle because he was severely underweight. It doesn't really matter, the point to take away from this is he used to be skinny and only recently started working out.

As I invariably mention every week or so because it's a sizable chunk of my day now, I'm doing something similar for myself. I got to talking with Jo's boyfriend about weights and supplements and such, and at a point mentioned that, were I to have enough space for it, I would readily walk down to Walmart for one of their $90 adjustable weight benches. I was tired of doing bench presses from the floor.

Suddenly, this large man I was talking to became very emphatic, very twitchy. "No!" he shouted. A few months ago he had purchased this same item and had it collapse beneath him while he was lifting weights. I disheartened for myself, but relieved for his alive-ness.

Then it dawned on me. "Tay-Tay," I said. (Not his real name, but he hates Tay-Tay, so that's what I'm going with.) "How much do you weigh right now?"

"Like 220, maybe? I wanna be 270." he said.

"And how much were you benching when you were still doing that?"

"About 200?"

"Ah. Alright. Y'see, Tay-Tay, those benches usually have like a 300, 350 pound maximum on it. You're pushing like 450. If you make it to 270, I'm still only going to be half that."

Then we laughed and talked about eating things and lifting heavy things and such, but it just reminds me what my calling in life truly is:

I am to get ripped and buff, then celebrate with a spray-tan and an Ed Hardy t-shirt so I can go down to the Jersey Shore and live amongst the meatheads like Jane Goodall with the chimps.

Money Making Strategies For The Unemployed

Get it? "House-sitting. Ha."


This week I am playing the non-drinking driver half of a two-man paid beer tasting survey. Essentially, after gas expenses, I'm being paid something like $30 for sitting outside a Double Tree Hotel in Tarrytown for three 30-minute intervals.

After that, I'm house/dog/bird/plant-sitting my dad's house for about a week, giving me plenty of time to write, consume red meat and alcohol, sleep in, play with animals I do not have to keep and live in quiet solitude on a grassy hillside.

Now tell me again what the fuck you're doing with that paid marketing internship of yours.

Of Parenting

Seriously, add a van Dyke for facial hair and that guy looks exactly like me. Sad, really.

Questions I Legitimately Asked My Parents Before Age Five:

• "Where do babies come from?"
  
• "What is God?"
  
• "Is Santa Claus real?"
• "Can you measure how fast the [toy] boat floats over the [bath] water?"
• "If a big black hole ate a little black hole, would the mass of the smaller black hole be added to the mass of the bigger black hole, or would it cancel out part of the mass of the bigger black hole?"
• "Can you tell me the story of the entire Star Wars trilogy again? With all the lines?"

I think what I'm trying to say is, thank you, Mom and Dad for not throwing my off a cliff like any other civilized society would have done.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

I was linked a horrible thing yesterday.

I thought I'd seen every depraved, heinous thing the internet had to offer, been completely desensitized to pretty much everything not involving pre-teens, open wounds or animal abuse.

Obviously I had not considered the possibility of a Bret Michaels/Miley Cyrus duet:




Do you remember when I mentioned that part of your brain that asks, "WTF?" and "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" This is that same little loop of gray matter blaring warnings unheeded.

This is Bret Michaels, diabetic, hemorrhage-prone frontman of "Poison" and all-around celebreality douchebag dong in a bandanna. Also, this is Miley Cyrus, probably the most furiously masturbated over tween idol since Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan ruined both their careers. She has managed to so far maintain grace and dignity while staving off the more unseemly advances of both the Disney Corporation and rich spoiled slutdom. (It's entirely possible her father has threatened to beat the living shit out of her if she fucks up. That might be in her contract.)

Yes, lets put this lovely, very rapable 17 year old girl on stage with a raging 40 year old sex (etc.) addict. Brilliant. It will sell millions of YouTube dollars.


Now I can almost put a reasonable spin on this.

• Bret Michaels wrote a song for his new album "Nothing to Lose" which had backing vocals written for a young, female country-ish singer, ostensibly to score some of the sweet, sweet genre crossover record sales. Miley Cyrus is chosen as a leader in the genre.
  
• Miley scratches Bret's sexual sore laden back, so he scratches hers by allowing her to cover "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" for her upcoming album "Can't Be Tamed."
• Cross-promotion requires them to appear and sing together.

Fine. Sure. Everything's well and good in theory, but this is America, where we go through eleven pop idols before light brunch with mimosas. This is like storing matter and antimatter together, like mixing acids and bases, like putting Miley Fucking Cyrus on the same stage as Bret "Fuck Anything" Michaels.

And now there's a subtle controversy over Cyrus appearing in Michael's song because its lyrics are somewhat racy for a 17 year old to be singing alongside a grown man.

This we have a problem with? She's seventeen. That's old enough to legally do the horizontal Hokey Pokey with Bret Micahels in thirty-eight states. Are we really that up tight about letting her branch out into more mature lyrics, but are completely willing to put her in close proximity to a walking STI so long as its for her album? So long as it's time-tested dirty rock and not some new piece designed to get Michaels some incredibly famous jailbait?

Here's the cover of Cyrus' "Can't Be Tamed," for the record:

















LOL at bad Jessica Alba "Dark Angel" cosplay.

Look at the airbrushing on that girl. That's not the type of girl who dates a Jo-Bro, that's the type of girl to crack a pool cue over his head and call him gay.

When did we start applying double standards to our own double standards? Bret Michaels is a skeevebag. We've all known this since 1983. The rules were the same as going to the zoo: don't feed the Bret and don't get to close to it either. Don't go complaining when you throw your sinewy teenage pop stars into the Bret cage and they get eaten out up.

Which brings me back to my original question:

Who the fuck thought this would be a good idea?

Creatine Usage Logs

Day 1: Took single creatine pill before workout. Extra energy leads to double to triple normal routine. Felt like I should keep going but muscles stopped working briefly. (Possibly psychosomatic?) Took second pill after. Post-exercise "pump" of +1" to all measurements, lasts all night. Desperately thirsty.

Day 3: Continuing 2 pills daily. Measurements up 1.5" at all times. Energy steady. Consuming many carbs.

Day 6: Ate a loaf of bread as a snack. Hopefully does not overdoing it. +1.75 to most areas.

Day 9: +2.5" on average! Don't know why everyone isn't using creatine. Great thing.

Day 16: Working out about 2 hours daily. Have fallen behind on book. Look hot, though. Pecs are pretty good, arms are ripped, lats surprisingly bulky.

Day 23: Buying bread and pasta daily. Tapped savings for more weights and a new bench. Have nowhere to put it, but it's not like I walk through my room anyway.

Day 30: Chest and arms huge. Still wondering why no one else seems to try this.

Day 40: Can no longer see feet over pecs. Don't care. I can walk on my hands now.

Day 43: Attempted to masturbate. Could not locate testicles. Appear to have shrunken and ascended. Looking at this as a natural form of birth control? Best to stay positive.

Day 56: Working out most of waking day. Almost beach ready. Can just about fit into Ed Hardy shirts. Have become incapable of rolling over in sleep.

Day 65: Hard to sleep on back, but keep doing push-ups if sleep on stomach. Learning to adapt.

Day 73: Aggression is not out of control. I don't know what my friends are talking about. I killed plenty of hookers before I started taking creatine, didn't I?

Day 74: Killed TWO hookers today. Thinking maybe my friends have a point. Must think about it. Going to go out and find another hooker.

Day 86: Was approached to go on a date with Snookie for an episode of Jersey Shore. Figure I can get a free trip to the beach and maybe score some tail on the boardwalk.

Day 87: … Fucked Snookie. Ashamed. On camera. The Situation watched. I think he finished in her Bump-It.

Day 88: Flown back from Jersey overnight. Fractured Snookie's spine attempting to do lunges at inappropriate moment. MTV might be offering me spin-off.

Day 102: Chest is five feet around. Arms at 22 inches each. Furious they will not achieve two-foot status. Furiously curling. Up to 15 pills a day. MTV will not return my calls. Town is out of hookers.

Day 137: HULK SMAAAAAAASH!!!

Day ???: Woke up skinny again in puddle of green sweat wearing only ill-fitting, purple denim shorts. Appear to be in some large crater. Downed military craft all around me. Liv Tyler is saying something annoying. Am considering the benefits of wheat grass juice.

On Mini Bikes

Despite my enduring illness, I chose to go out in the sunshine and cool breeze today, endeavoring to blow the germs off me.

This is what I call a lie. In actuality, I went out to play a couple half-assed rounds of Wiffle Ball. However, in doing so I was able to witness a young boy of perhaps fourteen years cruise past on the nearby sidewalk, riding on of these:

This is what is called a "mini bike." You can understand where the name comes from, if you were to look at one and say, "Well, that just sort of looks like a … mini … bike, as it were. Huh."

You hear that last, "Huh," echoing in the back of your head? That's the part of your brain that hears warning claxons every time real life conflicts with supposedly common sense. It's registering "WTF?" or more often, "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!"

Frankly, I have no idea. As best I can figure it's a type of novelty, something First World nations buy out of Brookstone catalogs with rebate checks from the taxes they cheated on, the type of thing that makes people who are well off (but not well enough to actually afford their own) think, "Well, maybe the terrorists do kind of have a point about us."

Let me put it another way: The kind of people who would buy an mini bike are the same people who think that it is alright doing this to their pets –––>

What's that dog thinking? Doesn't he look happy?

NO! He's thinking, "GODDAM IT, YOU FUCKING BITCH, PUT ME DOWN! I AM A DOG! I SHOULD BE ON THE GROUND! YOUR REFUSAL TO LET ME USE MY LEGS IS GIVING ME CANINE DIABETES! DO YOU SEE MY TONGUE OUT?! I'M NOT HAPPY! I'M A DOG; I DON'T SWEAT! THAT IS ME DEHYDRATING AS YOU DRAG ME ACROSS THE BEACH, YOU FUCKING WHORE! WHY DID YOU EVEN BRING ME HERE?! I HAVE SAND IN MY EYES! THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLACE FOR A DOG! GODDAM SHIT ASS!" (I may be paraphrasing.)

These people have no consideration for how things are supposed to be. They see something cool, like a car:
and immediately assume that anything smaller than a regular-sized thing is either hilarious or adorable:






Yes, this might apply to animals, or hand-carved miniatures, or even little metal Monopoly pieces, but the sad fact of the matter is this does not apply to motorcycles.

Let's look at a motorcycle.
Yeah, that's a motorcycle, alright, but it looks a little like the mini bike, doesn't it?

This is what Big Strong Manly Men call a "crotch rocket." You sit like the more receptive partner in a gay relationship, waving your big, brightly colored attention flag which shouts, "Lookit me, lookit me!" as you drive by.


Real men prefer something like this:



Just look at that. That is what, ideally, I will own before I'm thirty-five. That is a black Honda Rebel. It's not some little Japanese sport shit, that's a road bike, technically a touring/cruiser hybrid, with great gas mileage and a starting price of only about three grand. Plus it's a Honda, which means it's actually made in Ohio by American jobs. This is the bike you get as a first bike, something to dent and ding and wipe out in so you're all practiced by the time you get one of these:

Yeah, babe. That's a Harley. No one questions your heterosexuality (out loud) when you're blasting down the street on one of these monsters. These things start at an asking price the same as a foreign car, dude. A foreign car with options added.

Even with a gay little windshield and a bitch seat and the sissy bar and a couple of those saddle bags I can't stand strapped to its motor-ass like a combustion pack mule, these animals look sick.
I'm probably going to stick just to the Rebel because I know I'm not man enough for one of these. That's how badass these are.

Which brings me to my final point: smaller versions of things are cuter than regular-sized versions of things if those regular things are already supposed to be cute. Tiny versions of many things are not manly. Tiny motorcycle? Not manly. Tiny King Kong? Regular monkey.

In fact Manly Things only get progressively more manly when they get bigger.









Manly beer. Manly steak. (That's one steak.) Manly giant saw thing.

I guarantee you no man riding a giant motorcycle will look as stupid as a man riding on a ridiculous little mini bike.























Alright, unless it's wearing tiny little training wheels. But still only maybe, then.

On Illness

I don't get sick like normal people get sick. Why should I do anything like normal people?

First I just feel lousy. Maybe I'm a little more tired or I have to blow my nose more often. Whatever.

Two days of that before I think to take my temperature, which anything above 98.5 constitutes a fever. That's right; I'm so cool, my body chemistry literally runs a tenth of a degree lower than average.

By this time I've sucked a couple green tea/honey/vitamin C lozenges. Now that I see a fever I'll start popping Day-/Ny-Quil like they're M&Ms and finish my day like usual.

Lay in bed for a weekend and I'm all better. I get this about once every seasonal change and during flu season, when everyone else is sick for two weeks and I take a half-day Friday and am fine by Monday.

The only real downsides are the following:

• tactile hypersensitivity - I feel every little eddy in the air currents like a scratchy blanket.
• I'm dumb.

Now this isn't a problem for most, but let's get down to the bones of it: I am smarted than a good percentage of human beings. I don't have to try hard, it's just natural for me. What keeps me from becoming completely conceited is the knowledge that I suck at everything else.

The one time I almost got beaten up in high school, I got out of it by explaining to a very large boy that kicking my ass was so easy as to be meaningless, proving nothing. I am a smart-mouth. That's all I've got. Now I listen to his metal band and we have fun drinking occasionally.

But man, when I'm sick I really have nothing. Things just do not occur to me. I'll miss double entendres, feed people straight lines and not even realize I'm setting them up for a joke.

It's like being average.

And now I feel conceited because this must be what all you normal people are like every day.



Man am I glad I'm not friends with normal people.

On The Last Airbender

I'll admit this story always interested me a little bit, but I am for lack of any social indications a grown man, and thus watching Nickelodeon on a regular basis is not something I can really get away with.

Sure, I'll watch iCarly while making/eating a delicious turkey sandwich, but that show is hilarious, especially while making and eating sandwiches. (It's another great show that's great because it knows its on the TV bus and doesn't try to get a better seat.)

Anyhoo, I did a decent job avoiding all this Avatar nonsense the same way I did Twilight and Harry Potter before that. Sure, I'll watch each of the Potter films once, and maybe again on cable if I can't fins iCarly while making a sandwich, but I will never read or watch anything else in any of those series.

But I never really hated Avatar: The Last Airbender. It wasn't a terrible premise, there appeared to be decent comedy and some serious themes, so it wasn't all TV-Y7. Ironically, I decided I would enjoy the movie and find nothing offensive about it when I got tired of all the ridiculous racial crap going on around the picture. Yes, the argument that the little Eskimo kids are too white is a point, but how many teenage Eskimo actors are there? The bad guys being Muslim? Kind of a problem, except it's M. Night Shyamalan directing antagonists, Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) and Asif Mandvi (The Daily Show). Honestly, if brown people are casting and accepting roles as villains, I feel like white people are trying too hard not to.

So I watched the series. It's like refusing to see a movie before reading the book, or how more likely I will never read the book after having first seen the movie. When possible, I do both, book first. Usually, I just watch the movie, but here I wanted to have a good frame of reference for a Shyamalan trilogy that I'll have to hear about for 4 more years.

And you know what?

In the cartoon everybody is Asian and racist as hell.

In fact, the point, is that the Big Bad is a racist, warlike nation, who by the way are all Japanese. The Fire Nation is all Japanese, samurai warriors and noblemen, peasants, merchants, everybody is from feudal Japan.

Earth Nation? Everybody's Chinese. Mandarin collars and Fu Man Chu's coming out their yin-yangs. Air Nomads? All bald, vegetarian Tibetan monks. The Avatar himself is chosen the same way as the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. And the Water Tribe? They're all Eskimos, except for three guys who live in a mystical swamp straight out of deliverance. If you want to see a white person in Avatar, these are the only ones. (Them and Mark Hamill using his Joker voice for the Fire Lord.)

The point is, in Avatar everyone is Asian unless they're white trash, and mostly these depictions are quite varied and tame from character to character. Edward Said might have had a field day explaining to children how Earth benders are just Westerners playing with Orientalism again, and why they're going to grow up to fear Japanese people, but I'm pretty sure that last bit can be offset by another show featuring a school with a robotic classmate.

On The Future

Last week I saw a man, mid-forties, talking to his woman-person as they exited the local supermarket. Pushing their cart, he hopped onto the back and rode downhill the dozen or so feet to their car.

In one sense, it gives me hope for my future as the type of man who will still enjoy riding downhill on the back of a shopping cart when I'm pushing fifty.

In another sense, it irks me that when I'm pushing fifty, I'm still likely to be doing stupid shit like that in an effort to artificially inject some livelihood in to asexual relationships that will never be as intimate as I'd like.

On Dreams, Pt. VI - Seriously, I Must Need To Deal With Some Emotional Issues Or Something

You know, I don't mind that when I get drunk I dream about my grandmother's house being home to a sorority of diverse young women, the uptight Christian of whom ends up murdering the fat black girl from Precious for some insipid reason and then making it look like a suicide, causing all the girls to freak out as my mother and I attempt to solve the crime and I have to call 911 to report the murder without divulging that I don't go to the same college while avoiding the operator's stalling questions about how the girls in Iona are treating me. Not at all.

I'm more worried that

A) all of these little disturbing details can easily be explained from the last maybe three days of my life (and not in a weird way), and

B) I am somehow aware this is at least the second dream-corpse I've had to call dream-911 to dream-report.

On Drunkenness

"I wish Twitter was a different place from twitter so that I could tell you again how drunk I am."

- The sign of a good night.

On FIFA & World Cup Soccer

Thoughts on the World Cup, Soccer, and Football in General:

• I never knew "My Country 'tis of Thee" stole its melody from "God Save the Queen."
• Asking whether the U.S. or England is the 'white' team feels like if I get it wrong someone is going to steal my land.
• Everything Americans hate about futból–i.e. low scoring, simple rules–is the exact opposite of what is wrong with basketball.
• We were pretty big douches to name another sport "football" despite a dearth of kicking. Did we just say, "Nope, we're using that. Sorry?"
• Apparently when a team wins the World Cup, they get a gold-plated replica, but FIFA keeps the actual cup, which some dude says can't possibly be solid gold like they say. Baller.
• Every promo commercial sounds like it was narrated by Morgan Freeman.
• When the British announcer said "Bocanegra" it does not sound like "Bocanegra."
• Ties are stupid, but I'll take it over losing.
  

Of Anal Sex

Dear Universe, please don't let my mother read this entry. Oymen.

It occurs to me that all girls should be having anal sex.

My reasoning:

1. Girls have anuses.
2. Girls do not poop.
3. Anuses must biologically do something.

Therefor, if it's not for things going out, it must be for things going in.

(Girl) Jo: DAVE, ALL GIRLS LOVE ANAL!
Me: I KNOW BUT I PROVED IT WITH SCIENCE!

"Science: It proves things. Like butts."

On Driver's Ed

I had dinner with my father and two younger half-brothers last night, mostly just because it's Wednesday, but retroactively I'm saying it was also in celebration of the older brother retaking his road test tomorrow and likely getting a license to operate multi-ton steal monstrosities.

That was the plan, anyway. He drove very well today, taking my father to an optometrist's appointment, but when it came time to drive his friend home with my dad in the passenger's seat, he kind of sort of mistook the gas for the break and plowed directly into the giant shed that houses all their lawn equipment. (Thankfully he missed both the Subaru beyond the shed. More thankfully, our father had to sell the Porsche Boxer he originally bought the shed to house.)

Is it "odd" that I had a somewhat psychic moment and chose to not go along for the ride? Not at all. Frankly, that kind of stuff happens all the time. I was quite comfortable hearing the medium-sized crunch from inside and coming out to view the spectacular damage.

I did my best to diffuse the situation and provide brotherly support where needed, and once dad left with my brother and his friend in his car, I did the courtesy of unjamming the worst of the more badly beaten shed door, prying off some hanging molding and stacking it neatly.

Our father handled it very well, actually. His wife, on the other hand, well, we're all hoping that she'll be too tired from working a double shift at the hospital to notice when she gets home. Then my brother can hopefully pass his damned road test and actually have a license before she takes it away.


Side note: As I was leaving, I was pointing out to my father what could be done and salvaged from the shed face when a blood curdling squeal came from the side of the house. A bat, I thought? No, too big. Some large rodent was clearly very distressed and in a great deal of pain, and then an adorable fluffy bunny hopped out of the bushes and ran off, twice, as his friend lay bleating unmercifully. Creepy to hear, creepier when it suddenly stopped. It shut up entirely when I approached close enough to save whatever it was, and I felt truly horrible. I avoided stopping at a gas station on the way home for fear of encountering a third evil this night.

On Zombies, Always With the Zombies

 
Seriously, I need to stop trying to dream about zombies. Last night was nothing but running through an infected dorm and by the time I got to a safe attic it was just some fat guy and two toddlers, one who was infected and bit me and I had to wash my arm off with mint mouthwash and I FUCKING HATE MINT.

"Zombies are just hungry nihilists."

Aside from being an epic name for the screamo masterpiece my prog-rock band is going to release after our album entirely about SNL Celebrity Jeopardy jokes, this is actually a pretty good point.

Nihilists believe in the futility of existence, if you can even call that a belief since I'm also somehow sure they refuse to believe in anything. But what could a nihilist value? Ostensibly, knowledge, as the one useful tool to advance oneself in life until he dies, staving off that final black end as long as possible in an admittedly doomed effort, or as the one thing a man can truly hold as his own without fear of theft by anything short of that same abyssal death.

And what do zombies say, when the say anything at all?

"Brains…."

Of course most modern zombies don't actually say much of anything, and they're pretty indiscriminate in what parts of you they will eat. Surprisingly, they seem to be fond of entrails and left arms, in particular. I'm not sure why the left. probably has something to do with the heart being on the left and Americans' high-cholesterol diet.

However beyond this, there isn't some great existential need for zombies seeking brains. They are the ultimate nihilists, empty shells of creatures, devoid of souls or humanity, truly everything but their basest animal instincts, cannibalizing unnatural monstrosities feeding with all the intelligence and purpose of locusts, refusing death itself but in doing so are robbed of any value or meaning.

But they're still fucking hungry.

Might put a little hole in the dark hearts of nihilists out there, but hey, I make enemies like Apple's Chinese Foxconn workers make intricate LCD screens with "Retina" displays by the dozen.

You know, they kill themselves.

And become zombies.

(There are no OSHA standards for the undead. Also, Chinese.)

On Dreams Pt. V: Revenge of the Dreamening (Based on the Song "Running with Chicken Based on the Movie Precious Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire)

Last night I dreamnt that I was in the movie Precious, except instead of just being incredibly fat and abused by her parents she was some kind of mutant with a turtle shell on her back (and running from her parents).

She ran across the entire world, hiding in a Japanese children's prison colony, in which I finally entered the story as a character, albeit as a member of a Japanese "Girl Gang" (they have them there) as we chased Turtle-Precious with rolling pins.

I felt conflicted. I didn't want to hit Precious on her shell with a rolling pin, but she was getting slower. Hey, she was still pretty fat. I ended up saving her by throwing away my pin and blocking the gang leader's path, shouting at Precious to go. I wanted to make some kind of impassioned speech, but I knew my audience was violent, undereducated Japanese gang members. "Hey. Fuck. This," I said.

It seemed to work. A bunch of the other girls were clearly tired of living in a self-terrorized feudal community. They threw away there pins as well and we walked off calmly to a new beginning, all the girls around me.

Then the leader put me in a full-Nelson. I put my hands over my throat, fully anticipating to have it slit, but instead her Number Two came over with a razor blade and told me I had to have me chest and belly cut for betraying the group.

Man. Fuck. That.

On Real Life Conversations IV: Dialogue, Real Life & Kevin Smith

"Man, there will never be another band as good as Savage Garden, amiright?"

When I was in college, one of the compliments my writing seemed to get a lot was about dialogue. People always seem to think that my writing style is very real, with little stresses in the word which make me feel like the "edgy" character on later seasons of [insert name of current live-in reality show]. This always seemed to come out strongly in the dialogue.

"I read this the way people actually speak."

Great job. So what you're getting at is no one else ever writes dialogue that sounds like two people speaking to each other? That's what you're honestly saying?

I'm not going to even attempt using Kevin Smith as a good example of life-like dialogue. Frankly, he just sounds good. Kevin Smith writes apropos, swear-laden dialogue the way George Lucas wrote techno-babble into Star Wars. Sure, it sounds cool, even fits into the story well without being clichéd, but for the love of Jeff, no one can say those things in daily life. People get beaten up for talking like that on the schoolyard.

I can't talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are. And I know this will probably queer our friendship - no pun intended - but I had to say it, because I've never felt this way before, and I don't care. I like who I am because of it. And if bringing this to light means we can't hang out anymore, then that hurts me. But God, I just, I couldn't allow another day to go by without just getting it out there, regardless of the outcome, which by the look on your face is to be the inevitable shoot-down. And, you know, I'll accept that. But I know...I know that some part of you is hesitating for a moment, and if there is a moment of hesitation, then that means you feel something too. All I ask, please, is that you just, you just not dismiss that - and try to dwell in it for just ten seconds. Alyssa, there isn't another soul on this fucking planet who has ever made me half the person I am when I'm with you, and I would risk this friendship for the chance to take it to the next plateau. Because it is there between you and me. You can't deny that. Even if, you know, even if we never talk again after tonight, please know that I'm forever changed because of who you are and what you've meant to me, which - while I do appreciate it - I'd never need a painting of birds bought at a diner to remind me of.
- Holden McNeal (Ben Affleck), Chasing Amy

Who the fuck talks like that? Seriously! Beyond the simple fact no one will ever let you speak that long without interrupting, unless is just waiting for you to be done with it so she can get the fuck out of there, no one speaks that coherently in-the-moment. Sure, maybe you've rehearsed your own speech a dozen times in your head; in real life you blow it. Your heart hurts of you get scared and you fucking blow it. That's why we pause so goddam much when we talk nowadays, either we're afraid to say the words we're thinking or we're afraid that thinking isn't smart enough to say in words.

Even Chasing Amy's tagline says it: "Finally, a comedy that tells it like it feels." Not "how it is," "how it feels." The kind of telling you come up with two days later thinking, "That's what I should've said!"

Would you like to know the secret to creating believable dialogue?

Write it out like your friends would say it.

Regional dialect isn't just for hillbilly characters and wise old bluesmen, it's the diction that makes "Where are you going?" into "Where're you guys headed?" There's something to be said for correcting spelling and grammar in a text, but I live by the rule 'Write it like you'd say it.' (This includes things like the word "you'd.") Here's some dialogue from an actual conversation with an actual person:

Me: You'll just have to get creative with my belated Christmas gift now. Sorry.
Jo: Ugh, you know I'm not creative.
Me: Well, slap some macaroni on a card and staple it to a hooker or something.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is, "you can write quality dialogue by having ridiculous friends." Not sure if that's what I was getting at, but that's where I ended up.

Of Twitter and Autism

This is why there should be living people paid to manage Twitter-bot accounts.

(Which, incidentally, you should pay Dean McGowan to do if you are a local business or celebrity.)

On Unnecessary Advertisements

Is this really a problem people have to deal with? Not having white eye whites?

Possible Target Audiences For Whiter Eyes:

• Stoners
• People with allergies
• Anime characters
  
• Red Coats who are suicidal

And just as a side note: look at those eyes! Where is she looking? It's like she's got one wandering eye and something interesting is happening waaaaay above her but her head is strapped into some kind of Sawian torture device.

Of Psychology and Divorce

My friend and I once had a conversation about divorce and parenthood, chiefly from the perspective of the child. As it stands, the parents of pretty much everyone I was friends with before the age of twelve have gotten divorced. Mine did it when I wasn't even three yet, so I like to think that once again I'm just ahead of the curve when it comes to certain things.

In talking, we noted that a late divorce probably causes more anger on the part of the child but is short-lived. A mature child can eventually deal with it and as an adult even be relatively unscathed. An early divorce, meanwhile, likely has a greater impact on the formation of the child's personality, for example, the way I can't stand loud, angry arguing or baseball.

And somehow, I'm not exactly sure how, we got to talking about the children born to parents who shouldn't have been together in the first place. Granted, my parents were like that, but at least I was planned. Also, I came out awesome.

Some of our friends, however, have already had babies. Others are the product of similar "Oops!" moments for their young parents. Let me say here and now, I have no doubt in my mind that every single one of these individuals has been the light of their parents' lives. These children are the definition of "happy accident." Despite all the possible disadvantages, I have never seen children more loved by their parents.

Still, I wondered what that could do to a child's personality, knowing that, while you are absolutely loved and supported by both parents unconditionally, it is a fact that you were not a planned pregnancy and for at least a few months before and after popping your head into the world (so to speak) were a pretty big inconvenience overall.

I postulated that one of our friends, a child conceived by accident would care very much about people liking them, would go to great lengths to please others and often go quiet as to how much those same actions negatively impacted him/herself. He would be a people-pleaser, but soft spoken. She would be as unobtrusive as possible, willing to stand up for herself when need be but low-key in her self-reliance. There might be resentment towards how the parents interact with each other, and perhaps at an earlier age than most such a child would realize her parents are human and prone to error just as she is. A child could learn from his parent's mistakes and not repeat the behaviors which years later led to their own wonderful birth, achieving great things.
And that's when my friend and I realized we were describing the exact person we had set out to mentally dissect.


Basically, what I'm saying is
a) we conducted a proof by independent verification, and
b) we conducted a colossal waste of time before going into an A&P to buy juice.

Nineteen Profile Pictures That Need To Be Retired

The Four-Square - Have an uninteresting photo? So did Andy Worhol! Until he resized it and made prints side-by-side with different colors! Now you've got a brand new kind of crappy art all your friends will be clamoring over. Bonus points for including another person in the picture, more if it becomes impossible to tell who is who. Final bonus for having 20+ similar shots all in a row.


Anything Sepia - Half of us are barely old enough to remember how to load a roll of film into a non-digital camera, let alone have decades-aged photos lying around. For that matter, those photos weren't designed to be that color, the faded from a better version. To put this on your wall says, "I have neither smarts nor class, but I'm pretty sure this fakes both pretty well." Congratulations, you've cemented yuppie photography as an enduring art form.

The "Up, Up and Away!" (Sideways) - This image can be said to do nothing more than confuse the eye. It's a bird's eye, at an angle, rotated such that gravity is pointing to one of the image's corners. This allows for increasing visual cleavage, decreasing belly rolls, thinning the hips, hiding the jowls, augmenting height and can even be combined with any other digital effect on this list for the most intelligence-insulting images imaginable.


The Baby Picture - We get it, not only were you cute once, but you've just had the stunning realization that you have to grow up and be an adult now, fully culpable for all her own screw-ups. Also, you seem to think your childhood was so much better than your life now, but you know what? You can drive now. You can feed yourself and get up to poop all on your own. You can open a credit card and rent seasons of Firefly off the Netflix. Unless someone close to you in the photo has died and it is the anniversary week of his happening, I don't want to see your dad's skinny man-legs in '80s cutoff shorts.

The Tagger - It's one image, posted 837,000 times by 837,000 people. Half the time it is unsolicited and reposted simply because people who weren't included in the image felt let down and did it all over themselves, slighting the people who slighted them with tags like, "the little slut," or, "the ditzy one."






The Eyeball - "My Best Feature" might be more accurate, but 'The Eyeball' has broader recognition for everyone. A single shot of somebody's sense organ, eye, nose, mouth, ear, even random body parts like a shin bone. Someone snapped a picture they thought would look "artsy," hit soft focus and called it a night. We're tired of looking not at a picture of you, but rather some weird selection of part of you from which we're supposed to infer meaning other than,"I'm apparently friends with an artistic plebeian."

The Beach-Bound Attention Whore - Seriously, this exact posed is utilized in a rather well known internet meme simply titled "ATTENTION WHORE." The very fact that searching for a real-life counterpart to this image through actual Facebook profiles yielded three different women and a dozen or so attempts at a handstand is nothing short of horrifying. This particular image is a particularly striking doppelganger to the original, the only difference being I believe the attention whore in the original was wearing a red bikini. Also, it read, "LOOK AT ME I'M AN ATTENTION WHORE!" But you're all whores.


The Overly Hopeful Celebrity Look-Alike - I don't want anyone to think I'm leaving the men off this list. Frankly, if every redhead on the net wasn't tagging herself in pictures of Scarlett Johansson, men would be the primary perpetrators of this face-crime. I'm light skinned with dark hair and a goatee. Do you see me tagging myself in pictured of Johnny Depp? No. Why? Because I don't fucking look like Johnny Depp. My jaw isn't sharp enough, my hair is too wavy and I refuse to wear black-rimmed glasses and a tiny fedora. (Rimless glasses and a full size, sure.) The point is you do not look like any of the celebrities who are often only famous for being good-looking. Stop it. This is hurting your chances with the ladies by making them think of all the differences between you and more sexified celebs. If you wanna score, through up a picture of Seth Rogan pre-weight loss. Make the ladies realize you are more attractive than someone famous!

Lemon Face Mmmn!! - Lion Face Arrrr! Also called the "superpucker," this does about as much to turn guys off of super-fine ladies as the overachieving celebrity profiles hinder decent looking men. Ladies, you have lovely lips. I can guarantee you that some time this week a guy will want to make kisses with. It's just nature. However, every time you make that ridiculous kissy face in photos we respect you a little less, and not in a good way. We just want you to look nice for us. It's simple of us, but it shows that you take pride in your appearance and that you take pride when we perceive you positively. Moreover, it gives us something to look at in our "alone time."

The "Photoshopped Beyond All Recognition" - Jebus Christy, what the hell were you thinking!? Was this one not even worth trying the Four Square on? Did you just say, "Oh, it's completely out of focus, but I can't bring myself to hit the DELETE key?" You had to save it anyway and play with it so much in Photoshop that it lost all semblance of an image of a human being? Picasso, for Pete's sake, would see one of these and tell you that it resembles only the mad watercolorings of a deranged impressionist grappling with his own hang-ups about breaking classical rules of shape and contour. Also, he'd tell you they weren't very good watercolors.

The Over-Captioned - This is a minor infraction spun out of control. Like lax enforcement of jaywalking or litter laws. First there's the main image, then someone plays with the brightness because it was shot at night at a party. Then it gets forgotten about for months and posted only on a fairly arbitrary month-iversary, tagged with a date, the original time stamp, a title card in curly-cue font and a message of love. Sometimes, the guy will have died of cancer or a car crash and "R.I.P." will be added next to a diminutive of his name, like Rickie of Robby or Johnny. Maybe there'll be glitter.

The Somebody Else's Baby - This profile says, "I have replaced my own desire for having children at a young age with babysitting for the same families for twelve years." Either that or, "My friends and family are all incredibly fertile sluts, but at least I get to play with one of these without spitting it out of my own happy-hole."
Odds are it'll also scare away any guys you are or will potentially be dating. Why? Because our biological clocks tick down to 'power usurped by younger, stronger males.' Not 'baby o'clock.'


The "Money Shot" - It's like Lemon Face gone awry. Why would you do this to yourself, girls? Why are you teasing us with this image and, more importantly, why are you putting twelve of them up at a time for everyone and your grandma to see? I could maybe understand it if you were doing the angry face tongue, or throwing up metal hands at the same time, but no. No, you're always smiling away and rolling out the red carpet to your esophagus like you love it and goddamit you know damned well you never act like you like it when we suggest it so why? Just why?

The Open Invitation/The Open For Business - What did I just get finished explaining to you?!







The Negative - This is either a mediocre picture made increasingly disturbing or a moderately whorey picture made fappable through inversion of color and reduction of the mind's ability to discern all the gross parts of you.





The Digital Polaroid - What? (Often combined with Sepia, Captioning and Beach Whoring.)










High Contrast Harlotry - Turn up that contrast, turn up that tan! Make your bleach-job look blonder, those intimately stained tank tops brighter! Hide your face under some insect-eye Prada sunglasses and a ventilated trucker hat and no one will know that's you showing off her underwear through the bottoms of her cut-off jorts! Sunny day? Even better! Now every item in your room that wasn't already black or white fades demurely into the background to allow for near-total anonymity, perfect for when all those pictures you're posing for and sending to your boyfriend up at school get passed around the internet like a bad case of gonorrheal Windows Vista.

Feet In the Sand - I'm tired of seeing your feet in the sand. I know I've said this a hundred times, yes, women are disproportionately angry at their feet the more attractive they are. It's something she can fixate on because feet really are just plain weird looking things. However, feet do look weird and I don't want to look at them either. There's nothing artsy about feet in the sand. Even the Christians have a poem and associated photograph about footprints in the sand. I think it's called "Footprints in the Sand." This is not a great accomplishment for anyone. More annoyingly, the types of girls who are fine with how their feet look generally have far greater issues with themselves to pick at. I don't need to be seeing your false bravado. I need to be seeing either good beach art or bad art of you at the beach in a bathing suit. Either way, everybody wins.

Your Farmville Photos - The worst offender of all. I really need to see what your farm looks like. Or what you look like on your farm. Or what a frigging pig looks like on your farm. It's not even restricted to Farmville, anymore. Tons of games are adding inane photo albums, which pisses me off. And you know what? This shouldn't even need an explanation. I don't look at pictures of farms in my spare time, and I don't play very many video games. The times I do play video games it's for entertainment and escapism. I don't need to be spending all my free time down at a fake farm growing nothing and earning nothing for all my efforts. If I really wanted to milk a cow, you know what I would do? I'd go out and find a real fucking cow and milk the fucking shit out of it. That cow would be like, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT YEAH, THAT'S A MILKING, ALRIGHT!!!" and then I'd pasteurize the milk myself and drink it with fucking cookies because I earned a real, tangible fucking reward after all that work.

*All images have been utterly stolen without permission (the fun kind of stealing) from people on Facebook and then altered to protect those guilty of these Facebook Infractions. In order to browse photos I had to keep it within a few degrees of separation from my own friends and have already been informed I circuitously snagged one person's photo, but her big sister said she shouldn't mind because it was funny. If I have used your picture and you do not think it was funny, please contact me directly a dzucker1@gmail.com and I shall remove your photo and replace it with something much more offensive.