On Pandering, Part 1

I have just decided, at 2 a.m. no less, that this week's blogging shall all be attempts to pander to my burgeoning readership. This readership includes:

• People looking for information on "the slut" from a State Farm Commercial
• Saudi Arabians (and to a lesser extent Egyptians, as their internet permits)
• Science Nerds
• Local Teenagers
• People just looking for really obscure, gross porn. (And I don't mean hard fetishism or anything, I mean legitimately just disgusting "fat granny ass" search queries.)

Today, I've decided to focus on Saudi Arabia, since I've already slighted the Egyptians for squandering their precious internet usage on me. (Maybe they just decided to view everything they could now that they have the opportunity again.) Anyway, I now present to you:

JOKES FOR SAUDI ARABIANS

"How many Dubawis does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don't know, but it's 80 stories tall and shaped like a sailboat!"

"What's the deal with airline food? I order Iranian beluga caviar and I swear they give me Russian sterlet. Who's nephew do you have to make a prince to get some real food up there? That is what I want to know."

"Take my wife … please! It is alright, I have many more where she came from."

"I tell you, I do not get any respect. My darling wife refuses to adhere to the laws of hajib. Gratefully, she is so homely as that when we drive through town in my armored limousine, the commoners believe I am riding with a shaven bear, of which I actually do own several."

"Lawrence of Arabia? More like Bore-ence of Arabia! Or Way-Too-Long-rence of Arabia! Am I right? Up top."

On Girl Scouts

I don't know if this is an accurate
costume and I really don't care.
Welcome, 300 pervy page views.

An unexpected knock on the door today required me to put pants on. Good thing, too; it was a couple of very small girl scouts. I bought a couple boxes of cookies.

They were really cute little girls. One was completely distracted by the cat in our downstairs neighbor's window. Part of my wanted to reopen the front door and let them meet our cat, but two things stopped me:

1. He would eat their faces off and piss in the wounds, so best I keep them away from such a black cat and focused on the cute, nice white one, and

2. It's pretty sketchy to invite two seven-year old girl scouts inside to pet your kitty, especially when you're only wearing sweatpants and a dark hoody and haven't shaved in two days.…and their dad is really big, standing behind them.

Astrophysics Pick-Up Lines

A friend came across this lovely swimsuit from Black Milk Clothing while looking for something else and the product just struck me.

In the vein of Astrophysics Jokes, it's three sequels, and a series of Nerdy Pick-Up Lines, I know present you with the highly specific "Astrophysics Pick-Up Lines!"

• "Hey, Baby, how'd you like to see my pillar of creation?"
  
  
• "Does the dark matter match the drapes?"
  
  
• "Are your boobs named 'Betelgeuse and VY Canis Majoris?' Because they're super big but kind of asymmetrical."
  
  
• "Do they exert a disproportionate gravitational force, or are your eyes just a Great Attractor?"
  
  
• "I wouldn't normally just walk up to a girl, but you caught my eye from across the room like a type Ia supernova."
  
  
• "Your face lights up like a sun, but it's a Class M and I'd like to turn it into a Class O."
  
  
• "Is it cool if I hit on you while my identical twin goes on an 80-year space voyage at relativistic speeds?"
  
  
• "I think it'd be a daring adventure to be the first man to see inside your black hole."
  
  
• And for that matter, "I'm not good with boundaries. Just tell me if I get to close to your event horizon."
  
  
• "Is that a Dyson Sphere in your pocket, or are you just into ben wa balls?
  
  
• "Remember when Jodi Foster said, 'Should have sent a poet'?…I'm a writer."
  
  
• "When you turned red just now, did I embarrass you or am I seeing the Hubble Effect of you already running away from me?"
  
  
• "I'd like to probe Uranus."

On Dialect

Where I come from, when you pronounce "rout" it sounds like "root."

Which is weird because most of the people who grew up around me actually pronounce it "rout," so I'm guessing it's more like where my family came from back when we were more openly trashy.

It just bothers me. I don't like "rout." It sounds wrong. There's something crass about it. I think it's some weird linguistic affectation I picked up on at  young age. Acoustically, aurally, there is just something hard and Germanic about "rout."

That's a shame, really. "Rowt" makes a hell of a lot more sense for route's spelling, and it'd separate "root" from it's weird neighbor. But then "rout," itself an underused word, would be pretty boned. Route is like the C of the word world. Are you a K or an S, C? Get it together!

But there is one thing I know for sure, and that is this:

Nat King Cole didn't sing shit about Rout 66.

On Short-Term Memory

I've been planning this post for a couple days now, which makes this story all the funnier, right now.

Stopped by the local mall last night to meet some friends for a lazy dinner and, on the way out, Dean couldn't find his car. Seriously, he tried about 5 cars before he, completely sober, found the right dark gray sedan. Add in the fact that there were only about 18 cars in the first four lanes of the parking lot just makes it worse.

That said, I've been trying to come up with some vanity license plates which would be useful in case you too have a car that looks like a dozen other cars. (Though why you can't remember your own license plate is a tough question in the first place.)

• THIS ONE
  
• MINE
  
• I'm sure that last one has been used in most states so let's try MN NT URS
  
• U FND ME
  
• YES ME
  
• GET IN ME

On Game Strategy

Whenever I play little computer games, I've usually got two ways of working things.

If it's a game based on running around achieving goals, well, I'll usually avoid it because I never quite got the hang of First-Person games. (Joysticks do not like me.) But everyone else I know tends towards the normal mode of thinking: achieve the mission objective as quickly as possible, then run around racking up bonus points or something.

Normally, I go the complete ass-backwards route: I either inch my way to the goal achieving every completionist goal along the way, or I get as close to success as possible and then stop, racking up all the bonuses I can and only after total domination complete that original task. You can imagine how well that works out. "Castle Defender" games: usually pretty awesome. Scores are either astronomical or the accidental failure is complete and painful.

Real life? I'm not sure which endgame I'm heading towards. I've already got most of the furnishings for my own apartment, which is really pretty sweet, however I don't have the apartment or, say, a job to pay for it.

But man, every time I spend the money a game gives me to start with on something I think will be useful later, it turns out I should have saved up and gotten the flamethrower later on. I hope a home and job aren't like a flamethrower.

Actually, I really hope a home and job are in no way like a flamethrower.

On Family Day

I hope everyone secured their new mattresses yesterday. That's what I believe President's Day was designed for. Bedroom furniture and not having to give kids or office workers two different days off close together.

And to our Canadian friends who just celebrated Family Day, I would like to say this:

Fuck you, buddies.

I wanted to read the new Dinosaur Comics today and you know what I found? This past Friday's strip.

What the hell, Canada? The 'Merican webcomics didn't take the day off, why should you? Our day was made for combining the inconveniently convergent birthdays of our nation's two greatest presidents. That's a reason to take a half day. What's Family Day celebrating? Family? Do you really need a day to celebrate being stuck together until the younger people are self-sufficient enough to leave and let the old ones go insane?

Face it, Canada, you just realized it would be too sad to admit it's not worth doing business on a day when real Americans have taken off work.

Of Tax Season, Redux

So I got my taxes done yesterday. I don't make enough to really be worth taxing, it seems. In fact, the federal and state governments collectively feel bad about taxing me as much as they already have. They feel $23 bad, in fact. I'm actually kind of relieved I didn't qualify for some other benefits:

"Expenses for donating an organ for human transplant." As opposed to what? I know we put pig parts in people, but have we started putting people parts in pigs? Is this one of of those weird things the government has to throw into a document somewhere so it's not technically a secret that we're conducting crazy genetic tests somewhere? Have we actually captured Osama Bin Laden and transplanted his brain into, like, a parakeet or something?

Surprisingly, that's not the weirdest.

Really? Nazis? Are there really still cases being settled over Nazi cases? I mean I saw that Law & Order episode where a bank was convicted of taking money from Jews they knew were gonna die so they wouldn't have to pay death benefits, but I feel like this isn't necessarily common enough to pop up in Turbo Tax.

Hell, maybe Turbo Tax just really, really hates racists and wants to remind us. It's accounting software. I'm sure a Jew must have worked on it somewhere along the line.

Dude, Look At My Hand, Dude. It's Like, So Big, Man!

So I got around to reading All Star Superman a few weeks back. I kind of liked it. I'm a fan of the "Elseworlds" CD stories ("What If?" tales and alternate universes and timelines and such. Read Red Son if you never have yet).

It's pretty good, even if you're not a fan of the art style (I'm not). The basic gist is this: Lex Luthor realizes he's getting older but Superman isn't, so he concocts a plan to ultimately kill Supes. Supes then spends a year our however long trying to fix all the major problems he's never been able to solve.

DC and Warner Bros. have been releasing a lot of animated superhero movies lately, and they've actually been pretty good. All Star Superman is their newest title, released this week. They've done a good job of voice casting as per usual, and they've steered clear of the pouty, kissy lips present in Superman/Batman.

All Star actually follows the plot of the comic rather faithfully. Honestly, I'm wondering if they really even bothered to hire a script writer or if they just took the comic transcripts to an editor. The only things to get cut were the slowest, least important elements of the comics and the most fantastic piece of the ending, which actually manages to pull the story back down into the realm of the temporarily believable.

That said, here's a clip of a Lex Luthor all hopped up on super serum and getting all philosophical and junk.

Of Tax Season

My great-great-grandfather used to do this,
except he did it with the racing forms and a
radio in a secret room next to the only telephone
in the neighborhood.

I'm actually excited to do my taxes this year. Why? Because for the first time there isn't some ridiculously complex dealing in the past year which bumps me from one bracket to another despite my usually meager earnings. I've been out of school long enough. There's no tuition, no loans, no cashed-in bond of money market which paid for last semester's schooling. For once, my taxes are going to be "I earned [x]. I have [0] deductions. Business expenses totaled [$64]. I owe [something tiny]."

Hell, maybe I'll even get paid something. Like $5. How great would it be if the government had to pay some bean counter forty grand a year and a mail clerk eight bucks an hour to mail me my check for $5.50? It'd be great.

I am actually going to do my taxes myself this year, and it's going to be kind of fun.

Next year, however, I plan on being rich enough that I need to hire my own accountant, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. I already started a tax shelter, donating $10 to the people trying to extend a moratorium on geo-fracking in the Catskills into a permanent ban. That's called a "charitable donation," kiddos.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

This guy is like a probabilistic singularity.
Things just happen, man.

Dean wanted to hang out tonight. Cool. I don't have to put on real pants for Dean.

"Can Jay come over?" Yeah, sure. I don't need to put on pants for Jay, really.

Twenty minutes later, Murray and his girlfriend just walk into my house.

What the fuck, dudes? I'm not made of pants, but Jesus, I have some. Just gimme a little heads up.

On Piracy (The Real Kind, Not The Fun Kind)

Let's just let the RIAA sue any Somalians who steal from us.
I'm sure that'll be incredibly effective.

So apparently, when you board an American commercial vessel, hold the crew hostage and try to steal all their stuff, we kill your crew and try the lone survivor for piracy. That's a pretty straight-forward, sensical system, I'd say.

Well, apparently, when you try and convict him, you place him in American prison for 33 years.

Yes, he turned to a life of gang-based violence in order to escape the crippling destitution and starvation rampant in his nation. And as punishment for that, we're paying to lock him in a gang-based, violent compound where there is no money but free food and medical treatment.

Man, taking an American hostage is like the Somalian Pirate fucking retirement package. I mean, if you survive and all.

On Law & Order: LA

I saw an article the other day called "How To Make Law & Order: LA Better."

Actually, I have no idea what the article was called, that was just the point of it. The title conveyed this, I just can't remember it verbatim at the moment.

Here's my list of Ways to Make Law & Order: LA Not Suck:

• Bring back Sam Waterson. He was killer in "The Great Gatsby" and he made L&O for 16 years.
  
  
• For that matter, bring back Jerry Orbach. Yes, I know he's dead. I don't care. If George Lucas can buy up the rights to dead actors to digitally insert into "Indiana Jones 5" or some other travesty, L&O can reanimate Lennie Briscoe for one snarky comment made over a fellow corpse each week.
  
  

  

  Dick Wolf already owns Jerry's soul, as far as I know. Briscoe retired in 2002, but returned two years later in Law & Order: Trial By Jury, which died a horrible death soon after Orbach passed peacefully.

• You know, just go ahead and set it back in New York. That's what we want to see.

On Glee

Here's my overview of FOX's "hit show" Glee:

• It's about a high school choral group of unreasonably attractive ragtag players.
• It is half musical, half "the making of" for that music.
• Drama can only surround singing or the functionality of the group. Legitimately dramatic, life-altering events must be glossed over or resolved within a single episode. Maybe two.
• Rachel Barry is a tremendous prima donna, raised the Jewish-American princess of a Broadway-happy gay couple. She has zero depth of character.
• Kurt is the only openly gay kid at his high school, therefor his only scenes are about him being gay. All his songs are traditionally for female leads, except the one time he questioned his sexuality and sang John Mellancamp. He and Rachel are basically the same character, except Kurt cares about hurting others and being likable. Were they to fight to the death, Rachel would rip his throat out.
• RThe only mature characters are Puck the badass and Quinn, the girl who got knocked up in season 1. The rest are as reasonably stupid and self-centered as children should be, but so are the adults.
• Season 1 was about babies. Season 2 is about … actually, no one has figured that out yet.
• If they have not ruined your favorite song yet, either they'll get to it or you're lucky enough to like speed metal.

Here's the thing, though: Lea Michele is pretty sexy. Her character is a frumpy frigid priss I'd like to strangle with a Miss Congeniality sash, but the 24 year old actress is pretty decently attractive, especially considering we're both Jewish and as such have a habit of putting down our own attractive women.

See? Super Jewish-cute. It's the Sephardi.

In fact, a few nights back I had a rather provocative dream with Lea Michele coming onto me, which is weird because I rarely have dreams that awesome and also because I don't dream about celebrities. (Of course, two days later I dreamt of Kevin Corrigan's eyes exploding because the South Pacific tranny in a yellow sundress and one shoe he was photographing at my grandmother's house tore a teddy bear, the resulting eye-goo littering the yard and driveway being something my brain decided was "Corpus Christi" like "corpus collosum" but actually it's a city in Texas.)

ANYWAY, my personal, self-hating Jewish opinion of Lea Michele was somewhat quickly overpowered by a celebrity in a schoolgirl outfit trying to mack with me, and the only thing I can tell you is Lea Michele's neck-nuzzling boob-area has the exact same texture as a blanket draped haphazardly over your sleeping face.

This is why I can't have nice dreams.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sorry it took so long to post this, but this was actually a surprise for a friend of mine with a little bit of a literary chubby for the Earl of Rochester. (The good one, not the first one.)

If you're a tremendous literary nerd, this is hilarious. Otherwise, go re-enjoy my lame V-Day last year.

What would John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester do? Personally, I believe he would say, "Fuck it," and by that I mean he wouldn't tell you to blow something off, but rather to drop your pants and have sex. A lot of it. Always.

Since the Valentine's surprise today was the line drawing of this on a pair of underpants, I'm going to say if anyone else is seeing it, you're following his advice already.

PLACE HOLDER

I promised you something really geeky for today, but it's still a surprise until late this afternoon, so until then, just be content with this very classy old pimping man.

On "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark"

I haven't seen many Broadway shows in my time, though I'm aware of the classics and a few amusements here and there.

We studied Phantom in elementary school and the main plot and themes stuck with me. I think we even got to see a matinee of that on a field trip. There were a few dinner shows scattered about, a couple evenings at Jekyll & Hyde's in The City, then I think a class trip which included seeing a dress rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast. In college I got invited to see Wicked, mostly because the girl's grandma couldn't make it and the guy didn't want the day to turn into a date which would have certainly been rather awkward. Oh, and last Summer I got to see American Idiot which was amazing in a wonderfully not-classical-Broadway sense.

Well, I've been following the Spider-Man musical, mostly with the curiosity born from sheer revulsion. I've never been a U2 fan and, honestly, I really really like that making fun of Bono is a standard of cheep comedy. I also hate the idea of "Them" screwing up a decent superhero character in the public eye yet again, but that's like saying, "I hate the idea of getting wet when it rains." You just learn to accept certain things.

But as much as I dislike the idea, I was told a way to look at this debacle that I have to admit has my interest piqued.

Would you, fanboy, like to see Spider-Man fight the Green Goblin directly over your head? Would it entice you further knowing that there is a rather large possibility that the entire car wreck go up like a real NASCAR rally in a conflagration of shattered bones and cricking arms writhing out of the orchestra pit?

Of course you do. See? Doesn't sound to bad anymore, does it?

On Geometry

Not my bedroom, but I'd totes live there.
Totes McGoat.

Looking around my room in the dead of night, a deeply telling, almost disturbingly so character trait emerges from my furnishings. The least secure part of me believes it must be a horrible flaw to my personality, an obvious tell, it seems. A lighter part of me hopes it is simply indicative of order and a firm knowledge of what I want out of life, but this part still is worried by how obvious this observations seems now, and how until just moments ago I was completely unaware of it on a conscious level. The great middle-ground of my mind has no idea what to think, because at the very least it has never uncovered such a self-referential truth.

Man, there sure are a lot of rectangles in my room.

On Vegans

Natalie Portman apparently has a vegan shoe
line. If you really have a problem with what we
do to animals, there are plenty of resources on-
line to help you ease into veggie lifestyles.

I've made some pretty good points about vegetarianism, but in all honestly, every vegetarian I've ever met is a wonderful person who–save my aunt–is totally not at all annoying about it.

But vegans, man, vegans. Those guys just get me all miffed. Unless you're a willing vegetarian with a massive gluten intolerance, I don't want to hear from you.

Why do we even have a word, "Vegan?" It's not it's own thing. "Vegetarian" I kind of get, they eat more vegetables instead of meat. It's like saying "pro-life" instead of "anti-abortion;" define yourself by what you're for, not what you're against. "Antimeat" just sounds like some horrible, negative-zone world of meat. Maybe it just comes from animals with little, evil goatees, I don't know.

But "vegan" doesn't really make sense any more than "vegetabler" or "vegian" or "vegite." More worrisome, there's already a word for something that doesn't eat anything that came out of an animal. It's called an herbivore. You know, like a cow. They eat herb-type things. Fruits and leaves and stems and roots and seeds and even some flowers (candied hibiscus flowers are delicious, actually).

Frankly, the only explanation for this type of behavior is the first person to coin the word "vegan" really was a pompous little ass.

On Cute Animals

I don't know how I didn't see it before, it seems so obvious in hindsight. The clues, the emails, the links I'd get sent at three in the morning….

Every corner of the internet that isn't reserved for porn is designed to cater to a person's every need for adorable, furry animals. (And in some cases, even the parts of the internet that are also for porn.)

Photo Blogs - Obviously design to showcase pictures of adorable animals.

Flickr - Designed so you can show me your photos of adorable animals.

Facebook - So we can learn more about each other's adorable animals. (And give them their own pages.)

Livejournal - To blog about our animals. Hell, they even have "LiveGerbil." It's adorable.

Twitter - Tell me about the adorable thing an animal did.

FourSquare - Where did you see an adorable animal?

BBC/(lesser news services) - Who was recently saved by an adorable animal?

eBay - I would like to buy toys for my adorable animal.

Craigslist - Has anybody seen my…?/I would like to adopt a…/Where can I go to have sex with … an adorable animal.

4chan - Can someone draw me a picture of myself as an adorable animal?

Honestly, that all just makes LOLcats the most derivative and yet somehow also most direct and honest thing on the internet. Let's just imitate it shot-for-shot with hipster, call it LOLpeoples and go meta as hell and call it a night?

On Topher Grace

I saw this trailer for "Take Me Home Tonight" last night and as I'm watching it I'm thinking that it's an '80s period comedy, but I honestly can't tell. It might just be about a bunch of douchy neo-yuppies.

But if it is and '80s piece, that means something, you guys.

Topher Grace is moving one decade forward in time. Like every 15 years.

Time travel is hard.

Actually, the full trailer looks fairly sweet. Check it here.)

On Timing

Sometimes this blog is really fun. Last week I came up with an idea while I was actually staring at my computer with nothing to do and nowhere to be. I churned out a whole entry, copied into my book's Office file and reedited the thing into a whole new, five-page in-between chapter. It was great. And all this happened ten hours before the blog would even post, so I had the entire night to myself to see friends and relax when normally I'd be mining conversations for material to slap together between 12 and 3 in the morning (like–er–now, I guess).

And other times, yeah, it's like pulling teeth, but I kind of love those hateful nights the way you love your weird uncle or a really whorish sister.

But sometimes I encounter a really annoying, really fun problem. Sometimes I'm just too awesome. I can come up with an idea so wonderful I can't pull it off to my own satisfaction. Those get locked up in the brain vault or, like, a notepad until one of my friends tries to make another internet video. Other times I think of a joke so perfect it doesn't even have words, just a series of flashed images and ethereal concepts.

And then sometimes I just have a really good idea for something and I can't fucking show you. Yeah, sometimes I repurpose ideas which were originally used in other projects. So sue me; I've done this every night for two years now. If I've got good material somewhere you haven't seen it I'm reusing it so you can see it.

…

I'm getting off track. Look, just check back in in a week and I promise you something pretty awesome if you're a huge nerd.

But I mean check back every day in between too, because there could also totally be awesome crap in the interim, I just haven't made it yet.

On the Super Bowl

Most of my thoughts on the Super Bowl revolved around a terrible halftime show, even as far as halftime shows go. Since my state wasn't in it none of my friends were stoked (except my cousin's husband who is from the South and is a huge Steelers fan). And since none of my friends were very interested in the game this year, I didn't go out to see it, didn't bet money on it and thus didn't understand football for the all of 3 hours my brain will allow me for the sake of properly betting on the outcome.

The one thought I did have after it all, though? I'm terrified that this viking guy lost.

He just looked so happy before the Packers won. I've seen viking movies. I don't want to see him angry. I'd normally make a "raping and pillaging" joke, but Ben Roethlisberger really ruined that for me.

On Young Adulthood

Biologically speaking, there are six stages in the human life cycle:

1. Prenatal
2. Baby/Infant/Todler/thing
3. Child
4. Adolescent
5. Adult
6. Geriatric/Aged/Pre-Dead

Each of those has a definable gear-up period, a dominant characteristic in homeostasis and a definable transition to the next phase. You are a fetus which isn't yet a separate person (geographically speaking), then it's born and it is suddenly a baby.

Babies aren't real people. They don't do much of anything, really, besides absorb as much nourishment as they can and expend most of their energy trying to metamorphose into a tiny thing capable of replicating Real Person behavior. When they can communicate with others and start to interact of their own accord, moving about under their own power, they have gradually managed to become a child.

Children are basically Tiny Dumb People. They are not stupid (yet), they are merely uneducated. Their purpose is to learn the ways of the world so that they will be capable of surviving to adulthood and reproducing. They spend most of their time in school and pretending that they are already grownups.

Then puberty hits and suddenly we have teenagers. Adolescence is a bitch, but it's the cocoon phase, an apt analogy considering how many times the average teen will vow something to the effect of, "I'm never leaving my room ever again!" Luckily, puberty ends and we're left with, naturally speaking now, a viable adult. The body is not going to grow in weird ways again for a few decades, eyesight will stabilize for a time and hair stops growing in places you didn't already need to keep warmer.

Adults are just the longest period of homeostasis wherein you are expected to pass on your genetics as much as possible until your body starts to fail. Old Age then, is more the process by which Adulthood transitions into Death, but considering how long it takes and that an individual can have a long, productive existence after their genitals stop working effectively, I would consider this a separate stage in life development. The ultimate, usually gradual failure of various body functions is what inevitably kills the Old As Dirt.


I now propose a seventh stage of human development, to be recognized between the transition to biological adulthood and what would societally be recognized as functional adulthood. It's the period where, yeah, you could, I suppose, have kids and make a living for yourselves and them, but it'd really be better for everyone in your genetic line to just wait, accrue some financial security and some business acumen before making the well-pondered decision to add a twenty-year burden to your own existence.

I was listening to music in the car when Ke$ha came on and asked if I wanted to have a slumber party in her basement. You are twenty-three years old, Kesha. And you have millions of dollars, not including the ones you format your name with. (Aside: Are those her dollars? I wonder if she's actually quite poor because every time someone actually writes her name with the little dollar symbol she has to pay for it. It must be so, because I can't imagine anyone willingly doing this on their own.)

Now, I'm twenty-four, and I still live in my mother's house, but I'm a poor starving artiste. I don't have money. I don't even have a basement. Granted, I have very nice things, but I'm a year older than Kesha and my endeavors aren't the kind that pay a salary until I've finished and sold them. Ostensibly, Kesha has her own basement. I don't understand why we have to sleep down there? Can't we just boink in her room? I'm sure she has a very nice bed. I'm pretty sure I've even seen it in music videos. It looks quite comfortable after a wicked bender.

Ke$ha, sweetie, most of the time we sleep in bathtubs because
we're too poor to afford a hotel room with more than two beds
and a couch. It's okay to go home to your mansion at night.

And that brings it back to my point: Kesha is a role model, sadly, and she is younger than I am. More than that, she's societally recognized as a commercially successful person who is biologically speaking an adult. Even considering the percentage of her life that is acting irresponsibly, she's still making the conscious choice to be irresponsible. I'm not saying that's invalid, actually, it's a wonderful, hedonistic existence with few consequences when you get to be that level of rich and famous. Frankly, it's what everyone our age strives for. And if you succeed, well, you just netted a boat load of cash for you and your future family, didn't you? It's a low-stakes gamble with tremendous pay-offs for the winners. It's a lotto for meteoric rises in the world of famous douchery.

I think we can all agree this is not responsible adult behavior, whether or not it has its own validity and charm. This is why we need a newly recognized stage in human development, with a name that acknowledges the optimistic and idyllic attempts at actively being a beautiful and unique snowflake, before conservative judgment and normality overtake the hope and crush it into a tidy fear of failure.

Since it stopped being acceptable to use the word "retarded," I vote we use that.

On Mash-Ups

I'm not sure what my subconscious has been trying to tell me recently, but I think it's got something to do with combining two great things into an even better thing.

A few days ago I dreamt up an episode of The Venture Bros which was basically Brock Sampson being awoken from a cryogenic sleep after being infected by an Alien facehugger and having gestating ova in his gullet. Great show, great movie, insanely badass to watch, especially since I was dreaming in the more recent animation styles from the bigger budget episodes.

Before that? I dreamed of an SNL mash-up of Andy Samberg's new The Lonely Island song, "I Just Had Sex," featuring Akon and that really cool instrumental piece written for the movie The Social Network. Great funny song with a legitimately good beat, good, critically acclaimed movie, awesome juxtaposition. That kid from Zombieland was rocking out to Akon, I can tell you that much.

Guys, I'm not sure … but I think I'm destined to do something important very, very soon.

I think I'm supposed to go back in time and invent the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

The Difference Between Men and Women

I don't know how I've never blogged this before. Actually, I've got a fairly reasonable guess: I spout this bit of sensical nonsense rather frequently and in person. I try to teach it like Jesus taught Buddhism with parables. Shepherds don't understand Buddhism, but they understand sheep. Men and women don't understand the subtly nuanced interactions they experience on a day-by-day basis because, frankly, no one understands them. The people with the best guesses are trained relationship counselors and sociologists and psychotherapists and I have it on very good authority that none of them ever agree on much of anything. Truthfully, if anyone anywhere were suddenly able to explain men and women to each other, religion would disappear overnight. That said, I suppose this is my own small attempt at heresy.

The truth of the species is this: Men are dumb. Women are simply crazy.

That's it. That's all there is. Now, you can expand on that, but it's just fleshing the idea out to make it more palatable. Men aren't necessarily dumb. In fact, most of history's greatest geniuses were men, though I suspect this statistic is in large part weighted by the fact that educating women hasn't been in vogue until very recently, at least on a sociological scale.

But here's the kicker: Men are logical, but they're very dumb in how they go about it. If something doesn't make sense, a man will stop and stare at it for hours if not days, until finally he reasons out its very atomic nature. That's how Einstein did it. Anything that isn't capable of being solved is an object of intense scrutiny, followed by either subjugation or blinding, seething rage.

Women? They're brilliant. They don't have to think linearly in time or space. They can see every facet of a situation and immediately weight priorities by non-logical intuition. They understand parables while men are the shepherds or, more often, the sheep. When any man demands in an argument, "How can you say that?!" He actually wants an answer. He wants to reason out where the logical error lies and prays to the club-meat-fire Man Gods that it isn't his. To the same thought a woman would more likely demand, "WHY would you say that?!" She has no interest in your logic, at least not yet. She is more concerned with what you think and feel that would cause you to phrase your point in the way you did, because she found it needlessly hurtful.

Men argue the facts, women argue how those make them feel.

And as much as you may already disagree with all of this, here's the part that will win back most of the men I lost and cast off any women left in my camp, but that's not how it should be.

Women, it is all your fault.

I'll wait. Okay.

The trouble is Men are too rational. They're typically not in touch with their emotions and anything they don't understand is likely to be confronted by logic, not deep, emotional introspection. Women, are phenomenal at that. They're are amazing. And because they're just as smart as men they can understand Men's small chimp-logic. They can understand even if it pisses them off, and if they don't try than they're just being dumb too.

So here's the deal: Crazy people can understand stupid people if they're smart enough, but dumb people can never understand crazy people because, well, they're too dumb for that.

Women, you have to be the ones to make the effort, because at least you have a friggin' shot at it.

On Food Industry Propaganda

I usually don't feel much for food industry commercials. Of course I'm not including fast-food, packaged products or any of the usual edibles you'd consider when someone says "food industry." I just mean the produce people.

Wisconsin Cheese? Horrible. California Cheese? Much better, usually pretty good. High fructose corn syrup (I mean, "corn-sugar")? Atrocious. But suddenly, something less terrible appears.

Eggs.

Yes, the American Egg Board developed this commercial and, I'll be honest, I had no idea what it was for until I got to the end. The kid is cute, the dad is cute in that way little round Asian men never really stop looking like little Asian children. Plus he obviously loves his fake-son. They're adorable together. Then the company tells me to buy eggs.

That's the best way to do it, as long as they don't look like that's the idea wile simultaneously sucking, of course. Target tends towards those commercials. Target ads are awful. Eggs did it classy. They made me nostalgic for eggs and I never stopped eating eggs. I had an egg with breakfast. Yet suddenly eggs have found a little niche in my heart reserved just for them.

You go, eggs. Bravo.

On Cabin Fever

I got through this whole post without making one
Rider Strong joke. I should win a date with Topanga.
…Damn it.

I haven't gotten into work for a week now. No, I've not been barricaded in behind steel doors fending off dreaded ice zombies of the snowpocalypse. It just keeps snowing the night before all the days I'm scheduled to work. Store's not open, I can't go in.

I've filled my time fairly well. I worked on my book, I took notes whenever a new episode of Jersey Shore was on, I even got out to the grocery store a couple times and saw friends before the weather got too rough. But I went into this most recent snow storm basically being done. I finished everything. Now I've got very little that needs doing and precious little that I'd be interested in doing after spending the last week indoors.

Of course, most of my friends are stuck driving into work anyway at the crack of dawn and sitting around doing nothing all day, so I suppose sleeping in and only being bothered by too much free time isn't all that bad. In fact, it kind of makes me the asshole of the group. Awesome.

On the Egyptian Revolution

I'm not really sure if what's happening in Egypt right now is a proper revolution. I mean I suppose it is because it is demanding change and I assume by the end of this the leader of the past 30 years is going to be in pretty rough shape, but I guess I'm just used to revolutions involving more civil war and beheadings. Call it my Eurocentric view of history. What I do know is that I have had nothing but a running series of Egypt-themed Internet meme jokes circling through my brain all night.

God Kitten was pretty much made for this.

Honestly, the only Rules of the Internet to follow
are 1 & 2, 34, 34 and 42 as a fallback.