On Cola Marketing

Coke apparently made a "Happiness" Vending Machine. Terrific.



I'm guessing their slogan for the year is going to be "Coke: We'll make diabetics of you yet."

On Harry Potter

"Good moooorning…." Seriously, no one just appears like Batman in a scene except for
Batman. Props to actually showing a dude sneak up and pose funny.

I saw the newest Harry Potter movie the other night.

I used to hate the franchise, but–while I still vow never to read the books–I have to admit the movies are okay and I can appreciate the idea of letting your characters grow up and take on their own lives, even letting them end.

I used to think nothing could get worse than replacing badass vampires and werewolves and Jedi with unintelligible British ginger wizards, but now I find myself almost begging for more Harry Potter news to overshadow the literary and cinematic plague that is Twilight.

Currently, my beefs with HP are pretty small. Is it annoying that *SPOILERS IF LIKE ME YOU DO NOT READ THE BOOKS AND KNOW NOTHING BUT THE MOVIES* Moody dies off-camera? Yes, but only because in all other theater dying off-screen means you're probably still alive in secret. I will not fault a movie for being unconventional in how they kill beloved characters. A sudden upset is a better effect, anyway.

No, at this point all my beefs are that Harry Potter, as a franchise, has given up on the idea of making a coherent series of films.

But that's actually kind of interesting. I have to tip my hat to a production that knows it's audience knows all these extra bits so there's no need to include everything (so long as it's not a detriment to the story). Hell, the Star Wars prequels were bloody awful, but Star Wars nerds will tell you that's only because you don't understand the finer points of pan-galactic politics and trading bylaws in a representative democracy. (Shame on you.)

When did everyone suddenly develop the ability to teleport around the Harry Potter world? Why does everyone seem to be aware of an impending wedding beside us? Why isn't the general populace confused by the world's greatest teen hero suddenly being branded an outlaw?

Who cares? 90% of people seeing this movie know what's going to happen already. I've already read the Wikipedia entries twice over. Even I'm pretty familiar with the gist of it. At this point, they're making a movie for a collective of rabid fans and the trick is just not screwing up the big stuff. No one's going to notice if the narrative itself is flawed, because mostly everyone knows why already.

And frankly, it's kind of cool to see characters referring to things they are aware of that we're not. There's a wedding? Well, yeah, if you've read the book there's a wedding. And Bill Weasley shows up after being casually mentioned a few times. However, Harry and Ron have been friends for more than 6 movies years now, though we've only been privy to just over 15 hours of that. Granted, they were the most exciting 15 hours, but I'm pretty sure Harry and Ron had a few conversations in that time that didn't quite make the grade in that time.

"Oh, by the way, 'Arry, I have like a half-dozen siblings. You might see my older brothers this year. Oh, and my little sister is a few grades behind us, but that'll probably never come up again, I'd wager."

Yeah, that seems like night-one bunk talk to me.

The "So … yeah, I'm sort of boning your little sister," conversation will probably get cut later too, actually.


Addition: Best line of the entire movie? Ron Weasley: "Twilight's good too, though. Better even."

On Self-Abuse

Is it considered a bulimic disorder if you binge constantly and just forget to purge?

I've seriously hurt myself. It started with Thanksgiving day breakfast at 10, then full dinner at 2, then dessert and midnight grilled cheese.

Then the next day was a pile of fried things-which-shouldn't-typically-be-fried and beef with bacon and cheese.

And now today was Chinese buffet and miniature souffles with some kind of cream sauce.

Honestly, my stomach hates me and I can't even fault it, except I still need nutrients and I need it to take in some food every few hours but it's like, "Hey, man! Let's take it easy, alright? We don't want any funny business here. No heroes, alright, man?"

No, fuck you, stomach. Hypothalamus says I need food, so I need to put healthy things inside you. So why don't you man up and get on that so we can both be a lot happier.

I mean this afternoon is Chanukah dinner, guy. We need to be on our game by then.

On Long Island

Just to be a douche, I'd like to point out that parts of Suffolk
County are farther "Upstate" than parts of Westchester.

I drove back up from the center of Long Island yesterday, after a truly wonderful Thanksgiving.

The first half of the sentence is, I suppose, superfluous, as I am told no human creatures actually live on the outskirts of Long Island. Apparently, everybody's clumped together about 45 minutes away from each other in the center of the land form.

Irrespective, I drove a different route home than I usually would because I met an old college friend for lunch. (This is where I plug Bryan Haas.) Maybe it was just the sandwiches and the fried pickles and fried Twinkies and fried Oreos from a sandwich shop with subs so big you get to name one if you finish, but I think I've made an observation no soul has ever before noticed about Long Island.

There are a ton of Marshall's department stores. Also, a disproportionate number of Chuck E. Cheeses along the Sunrise Highway, which I might also add runs contrary to the pretty, lightly-trafficked roadway Straylight Run once lyrically painted. Frankly, Sunrise Highway is one of the worst, ugliest, busiest hellholes I have ever had to drive through. But thank God I didn't have to turn down "Hicksville Road."

Still, I must ask you, Long Island, why it was I had to pass the South Shore Infectious Disease Institute? Is one solitary infectious disease institute not enough to serve all the shores?

If it's like the Jersey Shore, then I completely understand and I'm sorry. You can have all the infectious disease institutes you want. In fact, take, like, seven. On me.

On Thanksgiving Dinner

My aunt has a habit of clearing people's plates before they've actually finished eating off them, which is kind of ridiculous for an Italian family. She'll still try to send food home with you, because you're too skinny, but God forbid you lay your fork down to grab a napkin or some salt. As soon as you make that lay-down, it's like throwing in the towel. No conversation, no good times, just eating. Everyone eating like ravenous boa constrictors, gulping down their meals in single portions by dislocating their jaws out of fear they might not come across further sustenance for weeks.

The only acceptable reasons to stop eating on Thanksgiving are:

1. Pass out,
2. Vomit (which only frees up room for dessert), and
3. Recently recovering from gastric bypass surgery.

None of this "I'm getting full" crap.

You can have my turkey when you've pried it from my cold, dead, cranberry sauce stained hands.

On Hand Turkeys

When I was in grade school we actually drew some hand turkeys a few times. Sure, some kids would free-hand theirs, and that was fine too, but we were allowed to do pretty much anything we wanted with them. Add little hats and belt-buckle shoes, what have you.

But I was an odd child.

I knew how feathers worked. They were layered, with different colors and patterns. No matter how anyone else wanted to draw theirs, I knew my turkey wasn't right, at least as far as turkeys went.

So I would sit there for hours, adding shorter and thinner feathers between the finger lines of my hand turkey, brown with dark outlines and little red arrowhead tips, until my turkey was some kind of overly rounded, misshapen turkey-ball.

I'm sure Purdue farms would love to get their hands on my turkey hands, genetic modification permitting.

On Penile Enlargement

There really is an app for everything. Or at least there was, until Apple pulled it for being a load of crap. Still, a Penis Enlargement Hypnosis App is pretty high up on lists for both "utter horse shit" and "…okay, maybe I'll buy it now that no one is looking."

Seriously, go ahead and listen to some of the audio in that. It's appalling. It's just called Penis Enlargement, and it's some pretty piano music with some guy talking over it telling you you've got big, growing junk and he's frankly not very convincing. Plus, it probably doesn't even use binaural audio.

Dudes, the only way to grow your junk permanently and effectively is called jelqing and it's best reserved to liberally regulated games of Scrabble. If you're curious, it's stretching your manhood until the tiny fibers inside it basically tear and then reform. It's the same thing you do building muscle except, you know, spongy material that isn't designed to to that and can break horribly if you try this and do it wrong.

But yeah, if you don't mind hurting your dick, by all means, add that extra 1/4 inch.

On Under Armour

Seriously, it even looks like a superhero's logo. Maybe a lantern.

I sucked it up and got some Under Armour shirts for working out. Now I can go to a gym and at least not look like a dweeb in front of all the meatheads. No one likes to look like a dweeb in front of the meatheads.

Looking at myself in the mirror of the dressing room, I had to admit: I hated myself just a little bit, in the same way and for the same reasons I hated seeing football players suited up for game day back in high school. Also, like I kind of hate hearing about Lance Armstrong, but only when I wore the shirt in blue and pretended I only had one testicle and cheat on my wife.

The kind of funny thing is that for the first time in my life I'm fitting into a Size-L shirt. I mean, yeah, it's a compression-fit large, and a regularly fitted Small is enormous on me, but dammit I finally feel like a big man, I'm not taking that away from myself.

In fact, it's a blessing. I'm going to pick up a long-sleeved version in medium because when I tried it on before it didn't just make me feel like a big man, with that black "second skin" stretched and contouring my form in pleasingly deceptive ways, I felt like Batman.

So yeah, I'm getting one size down and long sleeves so I can be a superhero. It's going to be awesome.

(Note. I might die later.)

Christmas Ideas I Should Save For Marriage

Year 0: Engagement ring in little black box, wrapped inside an ugly Christmas sweater in its own box.

Year 1: Sexy lingerie, but paired with Wonder Woman Underoos.

Year 3, after promotion and raise: New Car with one of those giant red ribbons.

Year 7: Vacation to some really pretty island.

Year 8: Baby crib, wrapped in one of those giant red ribbons.

Year 28, after no longer caring: Three books about kids in college and empty-nest syndrome, but with one of those giant red ribbons.

Year 40: A gift card to T.J. Max. Hey, giant ribbons don't grow on flipping trees.

On Hooliganism

Back in college, we had a saying: "Binghamton Football - Undefeated since 1946."

We said this because we did not have a football team. We had a pretty good sense of humor, though. Plaster that slogan across t-shirts and head out to the basketball game where we imported violent felons for their specific athletic prowess.

We were rather skillful at creating a quick fervor when it looked like we actually had the opportunity to win something important. I remember one season when men's soccer was doing really well, right after the start of the basketball team's Alighierian descent into shame and disgrace; quite literally overnight we wrangled a crew of die-hard Binghamton soccer hooligans complete with original football chants and songs, which published in the next-day's campus paper so that everyone would know the words.

I think we lost that season pretty lamely, but the lesson learned was that without a football team to focus all our attentions on, we could very easily jump ship every time a team was led away in disgrace and scandal and switch affiliation to a new up-and-coming team. (I never cared, but I probably would have drawn the line at painting my face to root for women's track and field.)

It's too bad major cities don't have that kind of ability. Pro-team fans don't have the ability to stop caring when their team is embroiled in scandal or, like the Mets, just continuously blow every important opportunity they're given.

My father used to say his three favorite New York teams were the Jets, the Mets, and the Rockettes. Well, at least the Jets have been doing okay, lately. They won against Cleveland this week.

I'll give you a moment to go back and actually read those links you might have reasonably assumed to be sports statistics.

Yes, a drunken Browns fan speared an 8 year old boy because "he" (read: "his father") was a Jets fan.

Seriously? Please, God, tell me you were aiming for the father. Tell me you were aiming for the larger Jets fan in the happy family and due to your enhanced inebriation merely lost your equilibrium and tackled about eighteen inches too far to one side.

Tell me it was a case of mistaken identity. Tell me instead that you had been harassed all game long by a rowdy midget in a green t-shirt and you thought that the parking lot after the game was the perfect opportunity to show that caustic little bastard he couldn't get away with treating other people like that just because it'd be one-sided to fight a little person.

Tell me that the only reason people were throwing food at this family was because they looked hungry. Can you tell me that, Cleveland?

The worst of it is the family isn't accepting any of the apology offers the NFL is sending them. The Jets offered to fly them out to New Jersey to watch a game from a luxury suite. They declined. The Browns showed up asking to do anything. They declined. His dad asked the kid if he still enjoyed the game he saw and he said yes, but he doesn't like Browns Stadium.

Do you understand, Cleveland? You're breeding hooligans and it's the type of behavior you're supposed to prevent, not apologize for. The family doesn't want anything from you. All they want is for this to hurt.

On Telecommuting

Definitely the best hit I got for a Google Image
search for "telecommuting."

Actual dialogue from a conversation with friends Thursday night:


"Self-motivation is really … a struggle."

"The day I work from home is the first day I go to work high."

"Huh. Do I wanna file expense reports or do I wanna rub one out? I think my dick says I should rub one out."
"No, fill out those expense reports! They're important!"
"REALLY??"

On Reptilian Nightmares

Aside from the one photo my father showed me of his recent trip to Paris, he also paused briefly on a snapshot of this little gem out on it's fountain pedestal again:

That would be Hercules defeating the river god Achelous, and by "defeating," the Greeks apparently meant "beating to death with a fucking rock."

But my thought is this: That's obviously a giant snake. the Greeks would have been like, "Well, the evil river god took the form of a giant snake," and then they had one carved. A giant, unruly, badass megasnake. There's almost no way they could have imagined that seriously HUGE snakes actually existed. They just took something that could kill a man and get pretty sizable and then made it what they thought was impossibly huge, then said their great hero killed it.

How fast would an ancient Greek shit his pants if we showed him a thirty foot boa constrictor? Would he just freak the fuck out and ask to call Perseus or some other famous guy to kill the thing? I'm sure there's a nice zoo in modern Athens that would just make him drop a single, enormously long deuce continuously as he walked through the snake house.

Just don't tell him we went with the Roman names for all our planets. I don't think he could take that.

On My Father

 

I can't say I really give a crap about any of the other works of art and architecture my dad showed me from last summer's trip to Paris, but this one kind of sums up who my father can be at the best of times.

My father is the type of man who, when everyone is crowding in front of the Venus de Milo to get the best possible photo, will walk around to be the only person taking a photo of her ass.

God bless him. The Louvre probably wasn't very amused.

On Telemarketers

Judy found she count make far more money in India than as an
Anne Hathaway stunt double.

I got a telemarketer calling the other day.

Normally, as soon as I find out what their deal is and determine that yes, I do not want any part of it, I say something to the effect of, "No, thank you, I'm really not interested, please don't call again. I'm hanging up now. Goodbye." Usually that works.

I know what you're thinking. "Usually?" Are there circumstances in which hanging up on a person doesn't end the interaction? Well, apparently.

"Hi, Mr. Zucker?" Yes, they new who they were looking for. In fact, the girl was very adamant about not selling me anything. She was verbose, even, in elaborating precisely how much she did not want to take my money. Instead, she wanted to sign me up for their special block list. Turns out, companies have been calling a company that handles magazine subscription services and trying to get people to renew or buy more subscriptions when the ones they had weren't even expiring. This girl wanted to make me feel very comfortable by showing me she had all my special information and subscription data. Being on this list would block those calls, and even calls from this company.

The only problem being she was the only person to bother me about this.

Think about that. Yes, it might be nice to be blocked from the call lists of companies who have no right to call me, but they already don't call me. In fact, if this company hadn't bothered me in my post-dinner stupor, I probably would never have had to deal with anyone.

Plus, I'm already on the federal DO NOT CALL list, but I don't suppose that counts for a lot.

On Dogs

Shh, shh, just go to sleep. It'll all be over soon.
You won't be able to hurt anyone else ever again.
Sleep now, forever, demon spawn.

When people came to the New World they brought their pets. When they moved Out West, they did the same. Homesteaders and frontiersmen occasionally had to deal with bears.

The thing is, big dogs like shepherds, retrievers, danes and labradors, they would try to fight off the bears an protect their masters.

Obviously, they died. Horribly. By bears.

But little dogs? Those little rat-looking things and toys and spaniels? Things that were bread with tiny bodies and short legs so they could burrow down into rodent dens and flush out the offending vermin? They yapped and yapped and yapped at the bears until they got annoyed and left.

Those fuckers scared off bears and lived.

And that's why celebritants like to carry tiny dogs around with them. They're afraid of bears.

On Men's Clothing

Seriously, this guy's like eight heads tall.
In comics, he'd be a superhero.
A tall one.

I've come to a realization: American clothing companies hate small men.
Girls' clothes look like tiny versions of women's clothes, with Juniors, Miss, Petite and everything in between. It's fairly impossible to not find your size, assuming that size is smaller than, say, a 9.

Men? No. I went through an entire mall's worth of department stores and specialty shops and even a Marchall's looking for a simple softshell winter coat. And do you know what I found?

They don't make size small, anymore. Anywhere, really.

Sure, some have that little S printed on their necklines, but that's just a tiny lie. Most are too big, if you can ever find them.

And I get it, guys, your thinking is, "Most men are bigger than a small," so you just make fewer smalls and more of the other sizes. Mostly mediums.

But guys, have you ever seen a store full of clothing at any point other than delivery day? Smalls are the first thing to sell out!I comb through an entire Men's department of Ms and Ls and those abnoxious navy blue XL tags and not a single S in sight.

Obviously, there are far more S-men than there are S-clothes in the world.

Apparel makers are just being S's about it.

On What God Really Hates

I'm not really positive there is a biblical God and I couldn't prove it anyway, but I'm fairly certain if it exists it does not hate a lot of things. But a lot of people seem to think they know what He hates. Mostly, they tend to focus on "fags."

I'm going to take the pedestrian approach and just rule out the vague possibilities that they think their God has a thing against a bundle of sticks or British cigarettes, though that last thing might be somewhat sensible. No, I believe they mean to say that God has a thing against homosexuality, which if you think about it is pretty weird. I mean God makes all-female species of lizards and vertebrate virgin births. He does some pretty bizarre stuff and gay isn't even on the list.

Think about this: The top 10% of anything is a pretty rad achievement. One in ten people are gay. How about that?

So what does God hate? Maybe it was a miscommunication. Maybe someone just misheard Him.















Disunity. God totally hates people acting against togetherness, at least in the New Testament. The Old Testament was pretty much nothing but. File that under the maybes.

Ooh! Bad proofreading! None of the prophets ever seemed to be much for punctuation, but that's really more of a recent innovation. Still, considering how many different versions of even the most basic stories there are going around from the Early Days, I'm guessing if God didn't have a problem with poor writing and diction from The Beginning ("In the beginning there was the Word"), He's definitely developed a distaste in the aeons of being misquoted since. Poor syntax, check.

Maybe? I guess? I mean they usually taste pretty bad. Not like I've had a whole lot of experience with that, though. I'm just saying they're clearly made from that smelly red rubber crap paddleball balls are made of and, man, those things taste awful.

Yeah, I'm absolutely backing this one.

On Friends, Food and Weed

I'm going to come out on this issue: I love weed.

I don't even smoke it, but I have a great affinity for the stuff because I have friends who smoke it who I also enjoy. I'm also aware of the possible health benefits and haven't heard a single cogent argument for why it's a bad thing, but that's really over selling the point.

That point being, "I have fun, straight, around people who are high." I went out with a friend the other night, ostensibly to buy him some weed, and the drug dealer we end up going to is a kid we've known to one degree or another since grade school. Kid doesn't even sell much now, because the cops are kind of watching him, but tonight he was alone with his girlfriend and a couple friends were coming over. He was nice enough to let us creepily leave rather than forcing us to stay and seem inconspicuous.

Which kind of sucked because holy crap this guy had the cutest kitten ever. Swear it. I'm talking a single handful of gray fluff with a white stomach and paws and a scraggly little tail. Adorable.

Then my friend smoked and we went to McDonald's with only a single cop-car-behind-us scare which I didn't even notice because it turned away. We got to the drive-thru and my friend goes to order.

"Can I get two four-piece nuggets…?"

Silence.

"…Did you want something else?"

"No!"

"Do you want any sauce?"

"No."

Really, dude? First off, you act like she was supposed to know you were done. The way you trailed off, you clearly sounded like you were going to say something else. Poor girl on the other hand is confused enough listening to stoners on the McDonald's 24-Hour drive-thru night shift, don't make her job more difficult.

And no sauce? I mean, I only ask because your usual response is, "Can I have all your sauces?"

You literally ask for all the different kinds of sauce they have, even the ones most people don't know about. You get sweet and sour at McDonald's, dude. Did you just decide to do it raw tonight? No throat lubrication; you'll just dip them in your own blood when they make it down to your stomach. You've been secretly grooming an ulcer for months just for this moment.

If this is seriously the worst thing that happens on weed, I'm all for it.

On Memory and Repetative Behavior Behavior

I was hanging out with Dean last night when his girlfriend called. I hear this:

"The clue you give me is, 'The Time I Fell Asleep?!' Do you know me? How often do I fall asleep??"

Well, every night, usually.

"How long have we been dating? Three years! Okay? So there are 365 days in a year … plus I fall asleep a lot more than once a day … 1400? 1500 times??"

Math. This was getting difficult.

"Oh, wait, I figured it out. I know which time you mean. Yeah."

He turned to me when he got off the phone. "You know what she said that made me remember? 'It was recently.'"

On Veterans Day

Photo "Now Strike A Pose" via Fourth Reich Photography, São Paulo, Brasil

David Zucker

New York (SADM) - The 33rd Annual Veterans Day Festival was marred by protest this weekend, as groups demonstrated against historic reenactments being performed in Central Park, heckling and throwing food at performers.

Barry Levinstein, Event Organizer for the past four festivals, spoke to SADM reporters after the incident. "It's a real shame. We started these reenactments twelve years ago to bring a sense of history to New York."

New York, while not the site of any battle during the Civil War, was host to the New York Draft Riots, the largest civil uprising in America short of the Civil War itself.

"It was such a downer. No one wanted to see the Civil War anymore, so we thought we'd update it a little to catch the young peoples' attentions. We thought, 'Hey, my dad's always telling the kids about Poland. Why not bring in some of that?'"

Friday and Saturday reenactments of The Battle of Iwo Jima at Delacorte Theater in the park as well as the defeat and establishment of Vichy France in the East Village were protested peacefully by picketers.

Tensions broke early Sunday afternoon as Neo-Nazi and White Supremesist protesters led by Grand Dragon Eli Heinrich gathered before the weekend's finale, Levinstein's dramatic reading of the Hitler Bunker scene from director Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 film, Downfall.

"It was pretty awful of them," said Levinstein. "Here we'd gone to real trouble to get the details right and build up to this all week, and then they stand out front shouting spoilers at the audience. How many children are never going to see this as a twist ending, now? It's like I'm seeing The Sixth Sense all over again."

Mr Levinstein, who directs and portrays the Fuhrer, attempted to put on the show as planned, but was pelted with meat as he prepared for his final scene.

"We really came together as a group on this one," said Grand Dragon Heinrich. "My group had actually just arrived from a late lunch at Denny's. We had some leftover Grand Slamwiches, but then the Neo-Nazis showed up with Wendy's Baconators and I've got to admit it was pretty inspiring. There we all were just throwing meat at this Jewi- er … Liberal Obscenist, and we all just came together as one. It didn't matter if the guy next to you was white and blond or white and dark blond or whatever."

Pork, as well as meat mixed with dairy, is of course not kosher to those of Mr. Levinstein's faith, but as the delicious aromas wafted off his era-authentic costume the actor was upbeat. "You know my grandfather used to say bacon wasn't kosher, unless it was 'extra crispy!'"

Plans to hold the festival's closing ceremony, "Surrender On the Missouri," and staff after party at Rice Peppermint Patty's Korean Barbecue and Sushi bar continue as planned.

"What's the Deal With Airlines, These Days?"

I heard recently that increased security checks at airports are resulting in pat-downs becoming more like groping.

Honestly, I haven't had a heavy petting session in a while. I'm thinking of booking a trip somewhere just to get to second base.

Can I request a hot, female security officer? I know it's usually guy-on-guy and girl-on-girl, but I'm not so much into that when it's just me and someone else. I saw a female bailiff once who was insanely hot, can I call them up and do an "outcall" security check?

Can I stuff a salami in a rolled up gym sock to get some extra special treatment when I go throw the body scan? Is that how I can get some action? British Airways may take care off you, but Delta gets you there.

On Dane Cook

I tried to sell back a Dane Cook CD to f.y.e. today.

Why do I have it? It was a gift. Yes, I asked for it, but I was in college. Every heterosexual American male who goes to college is required to own at least one Dane Cook CD. It's part of the state tuition and inoculation requirements.

Dude at the counter scans my "Retaliation" deluxe set and what price comes up? $0.01, the price for "We don't want it."

Really? I thought everybody loved that asshole. I mean yeah, I know he's not so much funny as he is loud, and he's not so much original as a convenient adapter of potentially public-domain material, but still, I figured he'd be worth three bucks.

Nope. Still not worth $3.

On the Kia Soul

Unapologetically, I love this Kia Souls hamster commercial:



Which is hilarious, because the song seems to imply I could drive a whole bunch of terrible things or I could drive a Kia Soul. But see, as non-utilitarian as it is, I'd probably really enjoy riding around town in a giant toaster. It might not be good in the rain, but I'm pretty sure I could get some fun out of it before throwing up the listing on eBay Autos.

And a cardboard box bus? How is that not something you would love to do with a cute girl? Do it! It's fun has hell and I'm positive she'll think a hell of a lot of you for doing something so ridiculous in public. I've seen less work out very well for men of even mediocre import.

But I get it, I can have things that aren't awesome cars or I can have a Kia Soul.

Honestly? I'd rather take pretty much any other car over a Kia Soul. It's like they purposefully marketed towards pretentious irony whores. Hip-hop? That's a black guy thing. Cute pets? Teen girls. Black guy things and teen girls? Well, it's either some very exploitative porn or it's marketing aimed at rich, suburban white kids. You know, pretentious irony whores.

But I'm getting off-track. The point is the Kia Soul is ugly as hell. In fact, if I were given one as a prize or a gift, I'd try everything in my power to trade it in for its cash equivalent or a car of equal or lesser value. I mean holy hell, Kia doesn't even make terribly ugly cars in general, just, like, that one.

Is pretentiousness really worth looking like an idiot?

Judging by the popularity of Animal Collective, I'm guessing yeah.

On Growing Older

I've been saying this for a while and it makes more and more sense the closer I get to my birthday each year:

It's completely not fair that I should be out of my mom's house by the age of 25. I'm the oldest of all my friends, but we graduated in the same year. I've got 11 months on some of these kids, but it still just sounds awful to say I'd be living at home at 25.

Now if I'm still living at home by 25 and 11 months, then yeah, mock me unmercifully. I'll officially deserve that.

On Dave & Busters

Last night my friends went to Dave & Busters, the Chuck E. Cheese for adults where you play more expensive arcade games for fewer tickets but can cash them in for slightly more useful prizes. Also, there's booze.

Combine those two things and the result is apparently my friend Mike walking in with some old D&B cards and finding out he had about 8,500 tickets stored on them. Dude walked into D&B and got a mo-fo'in' blender fo' free.

Like twenty minutes later I explained it'd be a good idea to give it away as a present and save himself the cash. So, yeah, I think his sister's getting a blender for her birthday tomorrow.  Awesome.

On the McRib

It was innocent enough, the Facebook status of a friend simply reading, "… is about to eat a McRib for the first time in 15 years."

"What kind of fucking parent lets a 7 year old have a McRib?" I commented, adding the face-saving "(No offense.)"

I figured the joke stood, but as soon as someone came out in favor of the McRib (or my friend's parents), which they did, I could add some B.S. about clarifying my point and that a 7 year old cannot appreciate all that is McRib, which I did.

But it gave me an idea. I needed to get food. I needed a log. The McRib could solve everything.

I got dressed and drove out at 12:30 a.m. to get a McRib from the 24-hour McDonald's. The traffic lights were just blinking yellow in every direction and the roads were slick as a cold mist fell in the dark.

Full disclosure: I haven't had fast food or soda in about two weeks, due chiefly to not eating like a fat fuck and simply relying on a high metabolism anymore. That said, I'm writing this with what I assume is an MSG/Trans Fat/caffeine migraine.

Thoughts

1. I hop it doesn't come with onions. (It does.)
2. God, it's taking a long time. At least I guess that means the food's all fresh. (As fresh as it comes, I guess.)
3. I wonder if I can toss the rolled up straw wrapper back through the window? (Totally.)

Brought it home. Soda tasted weird at first. Think it was lack of familiarity. Got over that real fast. Then I open the box and see this:

Basically, that meat patty's way too big for the bun. The bun's pretty good, though. It's almost like whole-grain on the outside, but then it's still white, processed crap inside. The meat itself, well, it's basically the same generic meat as the hamburger, pressed into a longer shape and dowsed in enough barbecue sauce that you don't notice. Oh, and there are pickles on it.

Final verdict: I am too classy for the McRib. My taste buds have acclimated to healthy food and they never really liked BBQ sauce to begin with.

Still better than if I had spent the day running and doing sit-ups. I tried something new and I'm happy. The only real downside is they never gave me a receipt, so I can't write this off on my taxes as a $6.27 business expense (filed under blog research).

On Skin Color

According to Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, she will sometimes list her nationality on job applications as "Tan."

Now, I'm not exactly sure how this occurred to me, all I know is I suddenly felt overcome by the urge to see what these people must naturally look like. (Well, not including the steroids, I mean.)

Some of them are almost attractive!

On Carboard Tubes

Scott has started selling tube-free toilet paper.

I get it. Eco-friendly. Fine. But you know what? It's a bad idea.

I actually have proof. Last week I needed a cardboard tube because I wanted to duct tape two 10-lb weights together to make a 20-lb weight, but I found it would work better if the part under my palm could rotate and allow for a constant center of gravity. Don't judge me.

The point was I needed a cardboard tube and I didn't have a free one. So, I took it out of the new T.P. roll I'd just put out the day before. I pulled it out of the roll like a brown paper gooey cinnamon roll center. And the roll survived.

Well I ran that roll down and you know what? The last squares clumped pitifully to one side of the center pin. It was mournful. The only real up-shot was that I didn't have another roll to throw into the garbage when I put the new on on. Really, we just need that little extra support to keep the last sheets alive.

But obviously that isn't the point.

The point is kids need their cardboard tubes. What will they make little binoculars and lightsaber handles out of? How will Cardboard Tube Samurai duel?

Kids need their cardboard tubes, and so do we.

On The Voting Process

So I went out and voted today.

1. They mark your name and ballot number, so it will be entirely possible for the electoral commission to know who voted for which candidates.
   
2. However, the lady actually marking these notes is clearly some combination of nearsighted, dyslexic and senile, so no real worries there.
   
3. My mother and I are registered to two different addresses, even though we live in the same house. I guess it doesn't matter if your information is seven years out of date, as long as they sign off on whatever address you registered under.
   
4. I felt a little bad about voting along straight party lines, so when it came to family court judges I threw a pity vote to the Green Party. Hell, New York's been a blue state for longer than we've divided red and blue.

I always try to remember that when we vote we are not as often voting for the candidate we want, but rather against the one we don't. Always vote the lesser of two evils.

Unless it's a monster-fight movie. Then you wanna vote for Godzilla or the most human-looking evil in the room.

On Dumb Teenagers

"If only I'd had my iPhone!"

You know, the more I watch older movies and T.V. shows, the more I'm confronted by the notion that technology is both ruining and evolving horror plots.

On the one hand, teenagers used to be pretty easy to kill. They'd run into the woods, get lost, and then it's just a matter of tracking them over land you're much more familiar with. Then they die.

But now? Kids have GPS all up and down their iPads and cellular mobile modular banana phones. One 12 year old girl even scared off a would-be kidnapper by pretending her iPod was an iPhone and saying she'd dialed 911.

Do you know what I saw in a T.V. show from only 6 years ago? Naked girl slaughters an industrial facility full of armed guards with telekinesis, gets shot, loses her memory and washes up on a beach somewhere. Two college kids find her and what do they do? They put a shirt on her and take her back to their place. Do they call the police? No. Do they take what looks to be an obvious rape/trauma victim to the goddam hospital? Nope. Take her home and feed her rice balls.

But you know, there's something to be said for losing this technology now that we have it. When a kid loses his cell phone in a horror movie now, he's really boned. He might know four useful phone numbers off the top of his head. He won't know where he's driving. He can't easily snap pictures of the hulking, machete-wielding lunatic that's been killing his friends and evading police custody due to lack of living witnesses.

It's real easy to make an audience feel like the protagonist has been stripped of his societal power and must survive on his own. Just take away his damned cell phone.