Tiny Bug Plays the Skin Flute to World Record

Photo by Jerome Seuer, via BBC.

Sometimes I love the BBC.

Apparently the water boatman bug can make a noise of almost 100 decibels, making it–relative to body size–the noisiest fucking critter alive. GREAT JOB!

How does he achieve this feat?

He rubs his penis against his abdomen.




Are you sufficiently recovered from that mind-blowening? This bug frots himself as a mating call. That's like if I wanted to attract Mila Kunis by going over to wherever the hell Macaulay Culkin lives and jerking off really loudly outside their window. And it worked.

Bravo, little bug guy. Bravo for starting without a woman and just shouting until one comes to help you finish. That is a race against time, my friend. And you've got to have some pretty big balls to try it.

I just don't want to know what sound those make.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon | Michael Bay Makes the Prettiest Spectacles

God damn it, Michael Bay.

You just had to go and make good on your promises of more of the 'good' stuff from Transformers 2 and less of the annoying, overtly racist ball-jokes. Rosie Huntington-Whitely manages to be the hot, damsel-in-distress stereotype Bay always wanted Megan Fox to be, but without all that problematic "I can take care of myself, women are real people, you know" crap. And yes, she does end up looking pretty hot most of the time, even if she looks like a French bull dog.

As a Brit, she's probably more upset that I called her a Frenchie.

I already know I probably have to buy this movie on Blu-Ray when it comes out. I'm even tempted to go back and buy your last travesty just for the coherent narrative, but I think I've got a compromise worked out.

When I read a certain XKCD comic, I sold off my latter two Matrix movies (Matrices?), and assure myself that there was a single great movie with no sequels. After Revenge of the Fallen, I decided to wait and see how awful the third one would be, because as those never-real movies had taught me, the second film's credibility is more dependent on what it leads into than where it came from.

And damn you, you did it. You made a better sequel and actually seem to have learned something from your own mistakes and made the best fanboy summer spectacle you could. It's a visual orgy of scrap metal with a soundtrack that could have been scored by the guy who did The Dark Knight. (Actually it was Steve Joblonsky, but he's worked on Transformers before, plus quite a few high-caliber films and a ton of horror/suspense.)

So here's the deal: I am probably going to own you on disc, Dark Side. I am going to own you, and I am going to put you next to Transformers 1, but I am going to stick a Post-It note on your cover, and that Post-It will have written on it all the little details carried over from Movie 2 and I'll pretend it doesn't exist otherwise.

• A few other Autobots came to Earth.
• Megatron was revived but got his ass handed to him again, and he hurts.
• Sam has a couple of pet mini-bots now.

DONE.

Now I can be happy and watch my giant robots kill each other and not worry about bonehead plot lines or pandering, lowest-common-denominator stereotypes. This movie really just has a trio of British rugby hooligans and a Ferrari that might have been French for some reason.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit fuck fuck shit fuck ass shiiiiiiii-

Actually, that digression comes back to where I wanted to end up anyway:

I will NOT be posting any important spoilers today. For once, and I can't believe I'm typing these words, this is a Michael Bay movie you really need to see.

Some fun things to look for, though:

• At one point, I'm pretty sure Bumblebee gets punched in the robo-junk.
• WE TOTALLY GET TO SEE OPTIMUS' TRAILER DO SOMETHING!
• Another half-dozen B+ List comedians and relatively serious actors making cameos, including Alan "Wash" Tudyk!
• Three different U.S. President impersonators.
• Some of the Decepticon invasion scenes you glimpse in the trailers are pretty intense. I think the whole movie was actually trying to make up for the lack of any human fatalities in the original cartoon. And I think they do it. Lot of implied death with explosions. At least one guy gets shot by a giant bullet unprotected, and there's one shot with a disintegrator ray gun thing that evokes a pretty iconic scene from the Terminator franchise.
• Leonard Nemoy voices a central character, and shares scenes with Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime. The two previously worked together voicing Optimus and Megatron's rebuilt persona "Galvatron" in the original 1985 Transformers: The Movie. (Which incidentally took place in 2005.) Daniel Riordan, Megatron's original voice actor, provided lungs for Bay's series' Starscream. To hear them each interact at various points is wonderful.
• The next Twilight movie had a preview, probably for all the sexy ladies who got dragged to the theater by their explosionally-aroused boyfriends.

All-in-all, it was a great time. It is three hours long, so make sure you pee just beforehand. Some of the people in my theater also found other ways to amuse themselves; one group of kids entered the theater reeking of weed, so they were going for the "pretty lights in 3D while stoned" approach, and I cannot in any way fault their logic. I bet the movie was even more magical for them than it was for me.

I also found an opened Lifestyles condom wrapper outside the other theater on my way out, so I imagine somebody had the wonderful experience of actually making love to a Transformers movie. That nerd just had the fucking night of his life. Peter Cullen's voice is just so sensuous.

Just wish he'd splurged for a Trojan. We don't need any more little Decepticons running around.

Crif Dogs | An Openly Delicious Secret

Crif Dogs, ("Chris Dogs" as said with a mouthful of meat), is kind of an open secret in The Village.

Secret One: It's a hole-in-the-wall that serves delicious, interesting, reasonably priced hot dogs and assorted sides/drinks and has delightful brick-a-brack on the walls.

Secret Two: The only sign you can really see from the street is a giant hit dog that says "eat me." If you found that, you're probably next to the Chocolate Library and its weed-smoking proprietor.

Secret Three: If you make a reservation after 3pm for any time between 6 and 2am (4 on weekends), you can kind of access a speakeasy-style bar with it's own separate wiener menu, via an old-timey phone booth.

I, however, attended solely for the dogs. I don't care if I'm burying the lead on this, the lead is the freakin' dogs, alright? They've opened a second location in Brooklyn and a few hours after we left Anthony Bourdain was scheduled to come through for his new show. And I'm pretty sure it's a show about food.

Honestly? I'm almost disappointed it was too early in the day to gain admittance to the more interesting establishment quarters, but frankly the franks were so delicious I really just don't care. I would be raving about them either way, that's how good they are.

I ordered the "Tsunami Dog:" an all-beef frank on  regular bun, but deep-fried instead of boiled or grilled, and only after being wrapped in delicious bacon. It is topped with teriyaki sauce, creamy avocado, diced pineapple chunks and green onions. And it looks like this:

Photo by Joey (flickr). I honestly forgot to take my own photo because the dog was
too delicious for me to think properly. I was a sight to see.

A friend of mine got a "Chihuahua Dog," which is bacon-wrapped and covered in avocado and sour cream. We both got some unrealistically sweetened lemonade and split an order of waffle cheese fries. We chatted with the adorable cashier/waitress girl with feather earrings and a love for wizard-heavy "stoner-metal."

I don't know how else to better describe the food than this: It is exactly what it's trying to be. I have worked many generations of sandwich to death trying to cultivate the perfect balance of flavors. I know how difficult that is. I'm not there, but two years in and I'm closer. At Crif Dogs, everything has achieved the very pinnacle of success, the acme of perfection; every morsel has distilled down to the every bite its precise essence of flavor.

I almost didn't get the green onions on mine, but remembering that I tolerate them in my Chinese food and the gut feeling that this was a place whose opinions on food construction I could trust, told me to take the dog as-is. And it was the right thing to do. The bacon adds a smokey salt to the dog, but it's added saltiness is balanced by the pineapple's sweetness and is melded, rather than opposing each other, by the tang of the teriyaki. Those onions? They're the crunch and the breathy, aromatic herbal quality that tells your stomach, "No no, it's okay. There is a vegetable here."

If you have the ability to temporarily, or even permanently, transport yourself into Greenwich Village, do yourself the courtesy of stopping in at Crif Dogs. You're stomach will thank you. It will also then punish you for hours upon hours, but only because you'll have gorged yourself beyond the capacity of a normal human gastrointestinal system. (Hope you're a skinny Japanese man.)


And of course Tea & Sympathy is just a few blocks away in case you were looking for an after-dinner cup, but that's a whole other ballgame. (Actually cricket, I think.)

Blame That Smell On the Cat

I've been seeing cats recently. Honestly, if I haven't been seeing way more raccoons, I'd swear they were my spirit animal following me around, trying to warn me of impending life lessons.

Few while driving, one clearly an outdoors-pet, two or three today I named "Dumpster Cat" at a horrible, low-income, ghetto-style apartment complex, which had a propensity for tricycles strewn about the property.

And this:

Yup.

That's a litter box training kit for your cat. If you live in a city, it's inconvenient to have to keep a small box in your tiny apartment. Obviously, the solution is to turn your toilet into a litter box for a few weeks, which you will likely poop in by mistake at least once in the middle of the night, then make it a little dessert oasis with a hole in the middle, such that the cat poop falls into the bowl beneath and you have to clean less, and then finally just have your cat pooping in the toilet like a normal person.

Except it's a cat.

My mom used to have a friend whose cat learned to do this on his own, but didn't figure out how to flush. This friend was terribly distraught at the notion of some weird person sneaking into her home every day, only to poop in the toilet and not flush it. Then she caught her cat doing it and that was that.

But yes, I'm sure it's much more convenient to only have to flush the toilet a dozen more times a day than cleaning a stinky box once.

Plus, it forever ends arguments about who left the seat up.

Apologies

I pretty much missed today. Last night when I should have been blogging I was watching Tangled and realizing I never liked Mandy Moore, but I'm kind of in love with Mandy Moore.

Then today when I should have been blogging I was at the mall waiting for Sears to put $300 in new tires on my car, but I also scheduled a lunch in the city tomorrow with a friend from college, discussed grand philosophies over the phone, and did a little window shopping. So that was nice.

Then when I should have been blogging a few hours ago, I was playing with Legos. For this, I have no regrets.

This Is Not About My Father

Earlier this week my father pointed a coworker of his to my blog, and it just so happened to be the day that a certain entry about him nearly drowning on Father's Day went live. That earned me a shot to the arm. Totally worth it, though.

He then asked if today's (yesterday's, really) entry involved him, to which I replied in the negative. Then I corrected myself because yesterday's blog totally involved him and in fact I put all the blame of the situation squarely on him. I made it very clear that this was a True Fact and not just cracking a joke.

So today I would like to tell a story that is not about my father.


So many years ago, before I was born, my mother kind of shot my father.

With a bullet. From a gun.

She was very opposed to guns. No interest whatsoever. He finally called her a girl (or however it was he convinced her) enough times that she agreed to take the little .22 and squeeze off a shot in the general direction of the set up target.

It hit said target, and ricocheted directly back to strike my father in the leg, falling down into the cuff of his coveralls. My mother was not asked to shoot a gun again.


Later, my mother was asked to shoot a gun again. Or maybe this was before. It really doesn't matter. My grandfather was a runner so he and his neighbor set up a target with a 10" Runner's Digest photo of a guy, running, and proceeded to back away to shoot.

Again, my mother was goaded mercilessly into firing, until she grabbed the gun and squeezed off three shots.

One struck the runner between his eyes, one pierced his heart, and the third made him a eunuch. "Don't ever piss her off," the neighbor said to my father, and after that, my mother really never was asked to shoot a gun again.

On Growing Older

My little brother graduates high school today. I'm getting old.

I don't mean because he's old, I mean because apparently I'm going senile. My dad texted me to ask if I wanted to attend the "moving on ceremony," and I was like, "Nah, I'll do his graduation net year, though." That really confused my dad, who informed me this was it. I forgot how old my brother was. Or that he was going off to college. After discussing various schools with him.

Personally, I'm blaming my father's bizarre word choice, as a "moving on" ceremony is usually for jumping up a grade. Why he couldn't just say "graduation" and not make me feel like a I was differently abled, I don't know.

On Depression and Its Management

Drowning your sorrows is a lot like drowning children in a bathtub.

It'd be easier with a second set of hands.

Falling Skies | "We Actually Know What We're Doing…Promise."

Having watched TNT's new show Falling Skies, set in the aftermath of a brutally effective alien invasion which basically could be a sequel to "District 9" about some very unhappy green people, I've come to the odd conclusion that this show has some surprisingly well-thought out plot points.

1. Noah Wyle is kind of an embarrassing amalgam of his characters Carter (from E.R.) and … er, well, The Librarian (from The Librarian. It doesn't matter that he had a name). However, I love Noah Wyle spewing historical inanities and looking befuddled when people do not do the 'right' thing automatically. I also love Noah Wyle with a beard, so this is actually more of a selling point than anything else. He plays former U.S. history teacher Tom, second in command to an army guy (played by the shitty dad from Armagedon who gives his kid the toy space shuttle), leading 100 fighters and 200 civilians in an exodus out of South Boston.

"Hey, Weaver! How d'you like them apples!?"

2. There are two types of aliens so far, "Skitters," the actual alien soldiers who seem to be some kind of lizard-insect cross, possessing six segmented legs balanced radially beneath their humanoid torsos, and "mechs," what we currently presume to be robots, since they cannot house a grown Skitter in their chassis. *SPOILER* The aliens also kidnap human children and strap them with organic, millipede-like critters to mind control them for some horrible purpose. A side character, a teacher to the civilian children in the show, says that one girl from his older class raised an interesting point about the mechs when they were discussing the aliens' biology and technology; humans tend to create robots that look like humans, but Skitters are hexapedal and Mechs are bipedal. Noah suggests it's a psychological tactic, but I'm calling it now: it's human kids in the suits. Aliens stole them, put them in walkers suited to their physiology, and now you're blowing up your own children. Aside from the psychological impact of that, I assume it helps dwindle the gene pool and kids are just more susceptible to the brainwashing. One of these kids is Tom's middle son, Ben, and at least the first half of Season 1 looks like it's going to deal with rescuing him and finding a way to detach his painful, parasitic "harness."

3. The CG is surprisingly not so great, but the puppet work makes up for a good bit of it. It seems like a show out of which TNT could milk 3 solid seasons before the plot gets too contrived.

4. Colin Cunningham is a badass outlaw, which is awesome, but he's more a "Whatever is the best option" kind of badass, so he's going to be fun to watch. How many times will he betray people? I'm guessing like twice in this season. He's certainly not that douche from Battlestar Galactica.

He's like some kind of Jamaican hillbilly.
The guy who tried that on SG: Atlantis is now Conan the Barbarian, so it seems a wise career choice.

4. There are two smoking hot blonde girls. One is Jessy Schram as Karen, in military khaki and she rides a motorcycle. The other is Margaret (Sarah Carter), a damaged, possible sociopath with leather and lots of guns. Karen is dating Tom's oldest son Hal, but an annoying 15 year old Catholic is sweet on him, and Maggie is the one who kicks his ass, SO THEN WHO GETS TO HOOK UP AWKWARDLY!?

Karen, the second most badass blonde girl on the show.

5. Human tenacity seems to be the main theme. We respect nature, but fuck these bug things. Even the religious girl isn't super religious. She wants to work for God, but Karen openly mocks her (jealous), right after a scene where a biology teacher explains that we should be thankful for the opportunity to study even the life forms we hate. It's all very secular humanist and I'm completely down for that. It probably helps that TNT is known for its procedural dramas, so viewers are going to want another show that makes them feel like they know a substantial amount about more stuff they didn't major in at college. History, war, guns, explosives, medicine, robots, nukes, spaceships, exobiology, this show has all of it. Even lacrosse. Lacrosse for God's sake. And Rip-Sticks? That's gonna date the show like hell in a few years, but why not, grab the cool thing from last year while you can, TNT.

Religious girl who almost certainly will die horribly, and Moon Bloodgood's Doctor character.
Hot Asian-American lady with a background in ass-kicking roles and the coolest vampire name ever.

Two episodes in and I'm down for the first season. Not like I was doing anything on Sundays anyway.

Survival of The Flippant | A Father's Day Story

My dad almost died in front of me on Sunday.

It was Father's Day and I had brought him a twelve pack of Magic Hat's Summer seasonal variety pack, of which I saw him drink two. Of course he had just finished one I saw as I drove up. A bit later we had some pink lemonade with Absolut in it. It turns out he had also hurt his leg, self-diagnosed as a torn or ruptured ACL (bitch, please, you were walking just fine), and had been on unnamed pain meds for a couple of days already.

This last part I do not find out until he nearly drowns in his pool doing the butterfly.

The butterfly.

In the shallow end.

The man is not allowed to swim with his contacts in, since his vision and astigmatism are so bad that he is legally blind without them and cannot even see out of one eye wearing glasses. So obviously, he was swimming with his eyes closed. Drunk. And hopped up on pills. Wundebar.

He just came up for air and missed the waterline by about minus one inch. Took a huge lungfull of air and just started spasming in the water. I thought it was pretty pathetic to plea for attention by feigning a seizure, in poor taste and, frankly, stupid to do so on his stomach, as he could accidentally begin to drown.

After a few seconds of this my brothers and I start commenting on it. I ask, "Are you okay? Are you serious?"

His silent convulsions were a bit unsettling, but when he managed to croak out, "Hep mah … hep meh … [gurgle],"everything became serious but at least manageable. All three of us were inches away from pulling a Baywatch when dad realized he was in the shallow end, so if he just stretched his legs he'd rise to the surface and be able to walk to the pool's edge. Which he did.

He then proceeded to cough up a little water and belch what I presume to be chlorine gas for 10 minutes. As soon as he was done couching and hacking and surviving, he decided to spite the pool by doing one more lap.

I will say this for my father:

There is a tenacity to narrowly avoiding natural selection and spitting in the face of it.

Hipster Conan | Conan the Librarian

This is what happens when of of my friends reads "Conan the Librarian" in the weird, proprietary font in the new Conan (2011) trailers:

And of course, then, this had to happen:

(Hipster/Black Activist Thulsa Doom)

Make your own at memegenerator.net/Hipster-Conan!

Happy Father's Day!

"Well I don't care if you feel like you never had a father.
Jimmy Peterson has two dads and he still can't throw a football!
…Now go watch T.V. until you know how to ride a bike."

Green Lantern - In Brightest Glowing Suit, In Darkest Bitter Review

I'd still have preferred Nathan Fillion, but I said the same thing for Captain
America, and he's admittedly too old to play these characters live, now.

I saw Green Lantern last night. Originally I had a wonderful idea to tear down all the terrible things about it, starting with the line, "In brightest lens flare, in darkest…" something. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Here are all the lousy things about Green Lantern:

• The score's main theme sounds a little like the vintage Superman music, which is to say it's a grand, sweeping fanfare on some horns, or a traditional fanfare, really.
• The suit was a little weird. It could have easily been CG less often, but it wouldn't have glowed as much, so I get it. (I'm sorry, did you want the glowy man and all of his space alien friends flying around an alien planet to by a bunch of puppets? My deepest apologies.)
• The last fight could have been a little longer and involved a few weirder ring constructs.
• They mention some flashbacks happened in 1993, and young Hal looks about 9 or 10, which means Green Lantern is only like 3 years older than me and that means my life is already wasted. At best, I can hope to be Kyle Rayner and find my girlfriend dead in a fridge a few years from now.

That's. About. It.

The pacing was good, the characters were all fairly well enacted, Ryan Reynolds did not turn Hal Jordan into some ridiculous caricature of Van Wilder, and there were tons of great fan nods. Of no importance:

• Carol Ferris' callsign as a pilot is "Sapphire." (She later becomes the character "Star Sapphire.")
• Explanations for there being multiple emotion-color-powers in the universe
• Guardians mention that they did not always rely on green lantern power to enforce peace (manhunters!)
• Specific green lanterns in crowd scenes included B'Zzz or whatever (the bee) and a few others
• Angela Bassett cameos as a certain Project Cadmus bitch
• There is in fact a teaser at the end of the film, and it's incredibly important

Here's the thing, though. I cannot for the life of me figure out why even now Rotten Tomatoes has it at a twenty-three percent freshness rating. Twenty-three! That's twenty point below "My. Popper's Penguins." Really? I don't see how that's possible.

Maybe they're judging it by the seven people who were judging this as a stand-alone movie? People who had no interest in the character or story and were just looking for a good time? Maybe. They probably would have hated all the little blue guys and the big green guys and the weird yellow cloud thing and the pink guy and Tim Robbins.

Which raises an interesting point: we're at a point where comic book movies are actually getting made for people who read the comic books and not casual fans who want to see a good guy in a cape.

• Batman x3
• Superman reboot
• Green Lantern
• Spiderman reboot
• 3x Iron Man, 2x Thor, a Hulk reboot, 2x Captain America and an Avengers extravaganza
• Kick-Ass
• An X-Men prequel and and new Wolverine

Superhero films are starting to rely more heavily on the established fan base, also the ones from earlier movies, but predominantly comic book nerds who are going to all pay for a ticket at least once, even if they think they'll hate the product. There's suddenly this sense of treating the source material as something more than just a jumping-off point for explosions and insufferable drama. The fact that DC is trying to rebrand its Superman to fit more in line with The Dark Knight and axed that god awful Ally McBeal-style Wonder Woman television series proves this.

For some reason, it is no longer okay to screw with time-honored and beloved characters.

You know, unless you're their comic writers.

On Rosie Huntington-Whitely

Aside from having the whitest name ever, I think I finally figured out what bothers me about the chick who ended up replacing Meagan Fox in Transformers 3. Fox wasn't exactly the best actress, and apparently she had a lousy attitude, but this girl looks like a shitty, squinty-eyed actress whose only redeeming feature is that she's by all appearances cool with being directed by Michael Bay to be a glorified masturbatory aid in a brutishly chauvinistic, testosterone-fueled explosion fantasy.

Here are a bunch of things I think Rosie Huntington-Whitely looks like:

A dumb bimbo doing a MySpace profile pic.














(Or a regular girl making fun of dumb bimbos.)















A douchebag.

A baby who has just eaten orange for the first time.











An actual orange.













 An exotic shorthair, just before it falls asleep.

Say Anything and Say Anything: Lloyd Dobler vs Max Bemis

I always imagine the song he was playing in this scene was
"Baby Got Back."

I'm pretty sure Lloyd Dobler ruined romance for an entire generation of men by upping ladies' expectations of them, but Chuck Klosterman already covered that concept pretty well, so here's something else:

I think Max Bemis has the right idea about how to get with ladies. I'm not talking about the weird way he sings that makes it sound as if every vocal inflection is literally causing him pain like a sharp jab to the side. More it's just the lyrics of "Crushd."



Yeah, it's a little tame compared to other Say Anything hits, certainly not as loud or complex as even "A Walk Through Hell," but if you listen to the original performance he debuted the song at–some acoustic solo set he did live in-studio–it's mostly supposed to be that stripped-down piece, just him and his guitar but primarily his insane fixation with extra syllables and a bouncy meter.

It's a song about being kind of a rock star, then falling a little bit in love with a good girl who wants her life and work to mean something, so through sheer desire to be a better person for this woman, Max Bemis becomes less of a pompous player douchebag.

I get the feeling that's what all girls want: to not necessarily save the prince, but to be the girl for whom a good guy with a bad-boy facade stops dicking around and gets his shit together. "I'm sorry I'm kind of a mess, stylistically speaking, but I really like you, so could you forgive my hair and totally less-meaningful-than-yours work? Because I think we could actually be a great couple, which is weird for me to say but, again, I've generally been a dickbag of late, but I promise to try harder not to be."

And that's the hitch: "Respect to your work; you're an artist, I'm a silly jerk. I think this dynamic can work." That's it. That's all you have to be. Go ahead and act like a silly jerk, dudes. Where is the sense in being openly and earnestly nice to a girl who wants to feel like she accomplished something by turning the bad boy? Who at the very least wants to see that you made an effort to be with her more substantial than, "Hey, we hang out in the same places often, would you like to sleep together to make transportation between said places less costly? Neat, thanks."

So yeah, don't be a complete d-bag. That's not cool. But go ahead and be kind of an ass. Just enough like you're not censoring yourself around a girl you like, even if your first inclination is to be on your best behavior.

Because no girl wants you on your best behavior. They want you, silliness included.



Next week (unlikely) I will pit Monique Powell of Save Ferris against Matthew Broderick. Tune in!

Car Insurrance Spokespersons I Would Rail Out and Why

1. Top of the list, the strung out bimbo from the Allstate ad "with a hot guy," portrayed by Angela Sarafyan of The Good Guys.

Why I Would Rail Her Out: Hot, strung out girl in a slutty dress and affinity for "dark" men. Had a one-episode spot on Buffy and grabbed sexy librarian geek cred with The Good Guys. So a hot girl with daddy issues and low self esteem. Pretty much a dream girl.


2. Erin Esurance.

Why I Would Rail Her Out: Sexy spy(?) with a leather fetish and an interest in saving money? She's like a Jewish James Bond heroine. Also, If there's anything I learned from Brad Pitt in "Cool World," it's that if I bang a cartoon, I'll become an immortal doodle myself.

3. Flo, from Progressive Insurance.

Why I Would Rail Her Out: Killer hair, crazy eyes, and at least in this picture it looks like she has a thing for singing along to Elvis. Plus, we went to the same college, so there's my ice-breaker.


And on a completely heteronormative side note, I would love to go out drinking with Flo and Angela's male counterparts, The Messenger, Mayhem, Black Guy Baritone, and I think Geico's Mad Men Man. Maybe the Gecko. He seems like a partier.

I hated "The Hangover," but this is absolutely the crew I would want with me
if I had to go through something like that.

Who Wants Laser Eyes? - Extremely focused scientists unaware of awesome research applications

A science team has discovered a way of inserting fluorescent jellyfish genes into human liver cells which, when bombarded with blue light, causes the cell to radiate laser light.

Their interpretation is that a living creature engineered to have this trait in its cells, suitably filled with nano-scale metallic particles for reflectance, could discharge lasers from its every cell, which would be great for medical diagnostics. Like an inside-out x-ray. Neat.

Guys.

Guys.

Did you just say that we can selectively introduce to human cells, locally–say, in an eye?–the ability to discharge certain EM light frequencies which, when their oscillation is amplified by a semi-transparent mirror system–er, ruby-quartz glasses perhaps?–they shoot out fucking lasers?

Did you just honestly explain a possible, functional analogue to X-Men's Cyclops and not notice it? How do you not notice it? You're a nerd. You're a fucking laser nerd. How did you not notice it? Like 90% of what you do all day is probably covered by Superman/X-Men laser eye jokes. How did you not see this?

"It's fucking SCIENCE!"

The only explanation is you're keeping a tight lid on this so you can give yourself laser eyes before anyone else gets wind of it. Awesome.

But realistically, it'll still look like a nerd at a Star Trek convention….
Sadface.

 

On Creative Accounting

I recently realized, since I am a professional writer, pretty much anything I purchase specifically to be blogged about here is a business expense. That's pretty sweet, say, any time I want to see a new movie and then come home and bitch about it here anyway. It just seemed like that would be something kind of hard to sneak past my accountant.

Oh wait, I use Turbo Tax.

And I do it myself. Because I don't earn enough to need an accountant. Honestly, I'm a pretty strict guy. I really stick it to myself and make sure I spent at least as long composing my responses to X-Mens and variously colored lanterns and elaborate foodstuffs as I did watching/reading/eating said "business expenses." I'm really kind of an asshole. I'm sure if I remembered what it was like to be my age, I'd let myself write off all kinds of drugs and hookers, and call them "writing aides" and "creative consultants."

But my accountant is a cranky old man who never likes to have any fun.

High Finances

This is how much money I made today:





70¢. 25 off the floor at my friends' house, 26 at Stop & Shop, 19 change fro the same. Got an extra nickel somewhere, but lost one of them.

I also got a dollar back as change and maybe a penny from my blog ads, do today's net was probably $1.71.

Friend encouraged me to go to the bar with him while he made it "rain." it was suggested that perhaps I could throw my change at people while shouting "MAKE IT HAIL!"

I think my friends might be wonderful assholes. Just, you know, financially irresponsible asshole.

Location:Old Yorktown Rd,Yorktown Heights,United States

On Dreams XII: I'm Running Out of Subtitles

I dream about being chased by enthralled masses quite often. I think my brain decided zombies were too easy to put down, being already dead. The brainwashed living, though, those I have reservations about, and often I'll wait too long and be close to real danger for want of not harming them, even from a legal standpoint.

This time I was with others. The stabbing is pretty common in my dreams now, but that might change if I learn how to fire a gun, and I'm always very hesitant to do it. This was the first time my knives were big or sharp enough to do real damage anyway, and the first time I had to stab more or less normal, feeling people.

They still wanted to kill us and I had people to protect, so after the first stab-and-run it got easier to accept as a necessity, but still not easy to do.

Then I was captured and had to confront the cult leader, Robin Williams in a high school of brainwashed students. I gave a speech to the cult of kids and told them to be nice to each other and try new things, and I misquoted the lead singer of the defunct local band Brunswick, saying, "Do sex, do drugs, do rock and roll."

They cheered when I yelled to just be nice to each other.

On King Kong

"Jack Black, stop making MOVIES!"

I think King Kong is perhaps the worst possible way to react to a giant monkey getting loose in New York.

I'm sure at any other point in history there would have been animal rights activists nearby, covered in fake blood and dressed as giant bananas. The police would have so many gasses and tranquilizers on hand that they'd start passing them out to children on the street after finally getting to use them. Hell, the military would launch a small cruise missile from a sub in the harbor for Fleet Week and it'd fly straight down the ape's esophagus.

Now, I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it'd make for a great movie climax too. Really, the only better (slash-worse?) story would be if Kong had been found by the Nazis and rescued by Captain American and a very effeminate Bucky.

'Fuck' - A Critical Deconstruction

 I wrote this on a napkin on my lunch break when I was maybe 20:

Sitting in the food court, I wondered, "Would they really throw me out of the mall if I were to shout 'Fuck!' at the top of my lungs? I mean, I work here." And at first I thought, "Yes, they would," but I asked myself why. I had, for the moment, entirely forgotten why one would not say ‘fuck’ in public.

I ran a simulation in my head: If I shouted "Fuck!" and no one did anything, then the adorable little girl walking past me could say "Fuck!" and I knew this to be funny and wrong, but I still couldn’t remember why.

I idly thought the word to myself, how everyone says it, how if everyone uses it–most often without any meaning–how then could such a word be bad? I thought the word again, and in one golden moment it was entirely without meaning or power, and everything made sense. I had deconstructed the word and removed its center, separating signifier and signified.

Then I imagined a 19 year-old brunette, mid-coitus exclaiming, “Fuck my fucking cunt!” and reality snapped back into place, and ‘fuck’ was dirty again.

On the upside, that brunette had a fabulous body.

Spam Subject Lines That Are Worth Your Time

Ever since I found out a Mac's email client has a 'bounce' feature to delete spam mail and send a delivery failure, no known address message to the bot server, I've been pretty excited to get me some spam. However, I've been using Gmail as my primary for years now, so the old POP3 ID doesn't get much play these days. Even if I have to manually delete from the spam folder, knowing I can't stop them from arriving, Gmail has left me a few gems here and there:


Exotic Oriental Fetish

"You might be thinking to yourself, how come an exotic Oriental fetish such as bukkake could..."
– From Lew

I am overwhelmed what can people do with females!

"I came by this website..."
– From rofl penelope

Is this a male or female? I cannot tell. Can you?

"Take a look at the picture..."
– From Paulina Eliot

I learned what females do on a farm. NEVER leave them there unattended!

"Never leave your madam on a farm lone..."
– From Rosamond Lolly

Separation Grounds. Creatures Involved.

"That is the argument Cameron launched the divorce of his spouse. She not..."
– From Harry

Prepare your left hand.

"Make your left hand and a tissue available. Send your gal away. Come forward to...
– From Rudolf Tobias

Beakup Justifications. Animals Involved.

– From Lucas

Of Strong Women

Saw this little number at the movie theater a couple days ago. I like to think the rider and I were star-crossed lovers who just narrowly avoided meeting during our showing of X-Men: First Class.




My compatriots wet straight to the gay jokes about the bike, but I immediately thought of the rider. This was ablest I wanted to meet and then shortly thereafter bed. I mean I've had a thing for strong women since Jessica Alba was all cute-and-deadly (and kid of a catgirl) in "Dark Angel." then it was Buffy and Summer Glau's River Tam/Terminator hot-killer-girl-in-boots duo of awesome. What can I say? I've hot a thing for small women who can kick my ass. Ask my high school buddies.

The "Legion of Doom" gang logo just kind of cinched it for me. I want this bike's rider.

Fuck. Unless it was this guy.