How To Make A Million Dollars, Pt. 2

As with all great genius, most of my best ideas come whilst taking a shower.

However, since I do not have enough hot water to work out all the logisitcs of many of these brilliant plans, I leave that to you, with the understanding that you will rightfully give me the credit once you've completed the workload.

• Bathmats with a cutout in the center of one side for the drain. Seriously, how many times have you stepped off the mat onto cold, slippery fiberglass because if you pulled the bathmat back far enough it would cover the drain? We design area rugs for the toilet like this, why not bathmats? You probably wouldn't order this off a "There's got to be a better way!" infomercial, but if it were sitting next to regular, lame, rectangular bathmats, you'd pay the equal amount for the added feature, wouldn't you?

One Direction: Obscurity

I saw this in a checkout line today and just smiled.

So begins the media frenzy waiting for yet another tween celebrity/group to make the mistake of growing up and being real people. Now, MILFs, beer, and sexting are all apart of being a teenager—especially British teens, if the show Skins was any indication—so I'm glad to see these wholesome little shits get smeared for the first time. It's a right of passage. Like when Britney married her possibly gay childhood friend in Vegas, or how Miley smoked salvia, got tattooed, and is trying to turn into Pink.

Good luck, kids. Go get some.

Uncanny Resemblances

I'm not saying we all look alike, but my eye just lazily scurried over an image of Captain Morgan as it perused my Facebook feed, and I immediately mistook it for a picture of my father.

Once my brain almost immediately rejected this possibility (to this day, my father has never apologized for saying, "Fuck you," after I told him I'd unfriended him), my next question was why didn't I recognize this photo of myself.

All my life I had been tol I looked like my mom, but once I grew that goatee I became Fred 2.0.

Hopefully, the Devs managed to work out a few of the bugs from the last version.

I just don't want to go bald.

Celebrity Names and How I Imagine They Are In Bed Based on That

• Blake Lively - Passive and taciturn. You do all the work.
  

• Bruce Springsteen A.K.A. "The Boss" - Actually rather gentle. Enjoys cuddling.
  

• Jane Lynch - Involves asphyxia. Or black men. Since she's gay, I'm going with the former.
  

• Lisa Lampanelli - Fucks lamps.

On Drug Dealers

Part of my job is going around to local school districts and selling them on the magic that is our proprietary tablet computers.

I feel like a pusher.

"Hey, kids, you wanna buy some eReaders??"

Scary stuff.

Which is probably why it feels like I'm really cool. Cool guys do drugs. Rock stars do drugs. It's not cool to sell to little kids, yeah, but I'm not, man. I'm selling to the teachers. It's fantastic.

Get the teachers and soon the students are hooked anyway. I'm building my own market from the top down. They're middlemen and I'm Tony Fuckin Montana up in here, shoving my face in a pile of circuit boards on my desk, inhaling the acrid fumes of heated silicate and wiring, ready to face the day as a king on my own little corner of the tech world.

Say hello to my little friend. He has an 800x600 Pearl eInk display and a frontlight.

An Open Letter to Heroes

Dear Heroes,


I know we don't appreciate you enough, but this time of year, I feel compelled to, if only due to my great experience as one of you.

Black Friday was hell, but we all know it's only going to be a slight dip between now and Valentine's Day. Fellow Retail Workers, it's not your fault. You didn't ask for this burden, I know, but you took the responsibility in return for only minimal salary and the right to bitch about any customer as soon as they are out of earshot.

It's already Holiday Season now, which will lead straight into the Holiday Return Period, and then maybe we'll have a modest few weeks before Valentine's. After that we can relax a little before Mother's Day and Father's Day start up, but right now we're in fiscal hell quarter.

I wish you all luck, my sisters and brothers.

May your sleep schedules remain modest, and may your friends not call panicked and wondering if you've legitimately been killed or otherwise detained from life.

Ever since his sobriety and the cancellation of JACKASS,
Steve-O has been searching for something to fill the hole in his life.
It turns out that thing was vests.

On Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson basically went for the Reverse George Lucas, dropping the weight and the plaid, and if we're all being optimistic: dropped his ego to work with other's.

I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about The Hobbit and there's still going to be two more parts to the damned thing after this year's grand epic.

Still, Peter Jackson is the only director I would trust with the epic world-building necessary for new Star Wars movies, but I just can't shell out the cash for another three trilogies.

The man has become incapable of either original work or translating another's with less than 98% faithfulness and inclusion of the source material.

Even Peter Jackson's tweets are 300 characters long.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Edition "RISK" is the only game that takes longer to play than a normal game of risk.

Peter Jackson's LotR Tic-Tac-Toe: the first person to play an O wins, then goes mad with power and dooms his descendants to redemption through a might quest.

Peter Jackson thought 'Crime and Punishment' was a great short story.

Lord of the Ring "Chutes and Ladders: where you realize on your last turn you could've taken a giant eagle the entire time.

Peter Jackson's Star Wars
would take place "A long, long time ago," all the way up through just a regularly long time ago.

Black Friday

I have no interest in any of the things I just wrote. I have deleted them. The best thing was a joke about trampling old people for $3 off a copy of [multiple adjective clauses] Sister Sister Season 4. That's really the best I came up with. A whole bunch of ranting about wanting shit I don't need, and agonizing over whether it's smarter to buy something I kind of need down the road now for cheaper, or wait until I desperately need it and hope I find a decent price then.


Seriously? The biggest thing I need right now is a new power chord for my printer. $20 online. And I'm sitting here contemplating if I can get out of work at 4 to walk around the corner and see if Walmart's got the newer model printer for less than the regular $100, because OOO IT HAS WIFI.

Really? I'll pay $80 extra to get a new printer because I threw away the cable by accident when I moved my old one? Listen, I'll support the poultry-industrial complex, I'll tacitly gloss over the rape and execution of indigenous lands and peoples, but waiting four days while some asshole mails me a power chord? That's just unacceptable.

Thanksgiving Weekend Movie Round-Up

I saw Skyfall a couple days ago, which was pretty cool. Short version: it was fun, but much smaller in scope, essentially a Bond film to further reset Bond continuity in favor of more Daniel Craig era stuff.

More importantly, I checked out what movies were playing and on the near horizon, and once again I'm massively disappointed in Hollywood's lack of original ideas.

Life of Pi

Based on a book by Yan Martel I read in college.

Skyfall

Based on the long-running property that came out of Iam Flemming novels.

 

Red Dawn

Remake of a 1984 movie about the exact same thing, except it was Russians.
The Chinese are just the only 'communist' nation with financing nowadays.

Argo

Based (at times loosely) on actual events from 1979-1981, including a fake
Hollywood movie.

 

Lincoln

Based on the book "Team of Rivals," itself a biography.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2

Based on a bound collection of pages I still refuse to acknowledge as a "book."

Flight

An original film by Robert Zemeckis.

Weck-It Ralph

Adorable, and an original story, though it relies heavily on

nostalgia and references/appearances by classic video game franchises.

Rise of the Guardians

Original plot, utilizing folk characters.

So yeah, one film that can stand on its own without calling out to previous works for its foundational elements. Great job.

On Gift Giving

"You're sure this was all on his Amazon wishlist, right, Balthazar?"

I have a small problem when it comes to giving gifts of thanks and good cheer around the holidays:

I am too good at it.

I find many of my problems seem to revolve around this concept of the "Humblebrag" I've heard of recently, but in this case, it's an actual problem I legitimately have to consider before engaging others in society. My presents are just too amazing and it infuriates people.

A couple years ago, I got my non-romantical hetero soul mate a print of a unique painting she liked and commented on offhandedly months earlier. I later bought the original myself meaning we now have matching artwork. While I loved the gift she gave me, she was so enamored with her painting that she got angry at me. We had to have a long conversation in which I assured her of my gratefulness and apologized for ruining all other gifts forever.

This summer I gave her an Ewok. She was too happy to be mad this time.

She's just come to accept that I give the perfect presents. She doesn't think she'll ever know me and my tastes as well as I can seemingly know anyone's with a little effort, but she can at least absorb it now without going into a berserker rage.

That is why this year I am endeavoring to give a gift so amazing that she actually loses control of her bodily functions.

Not the excretory functions, mind you, not the gross stuff. I just want her to hyperventilate a little, cry and go into hysterics, maybe get a little nauseated but just a little. I want her to be physically unsettled by the severity and cunning of her gift, such that she will need to remove herself from the room, abscond to the kitchen, and find some type of food to regulate her blood sugar levels.

I don't even care how much she yells at me. I have only my old 'best-times' to beat, and I aim higher now than ever before. Paintings, Ewoks, one-of-a-kind screen-printed underpants emblazoned with the Earl of Rochester, these are bars I have set only for myself, as they remain well out of reach to most others. It's time to leap higher.

So if we do an office secret Santa, what I'm saying is, "Pray to baby Jesus I draw your name."

Things That Are Not A Hat

I came across of copy of Jon Klassen's children's book This Is Not My Hat a few days ago, which resulted in the creation of the following list.

Things That Are Not A Hat: 

A Fish

A fish would make a terrible hat, all flopping around, it would never stay still on your head long enough to be of any value as a headpiece.

Trees

Trees are immobile, heavy and cumbersome, and just downright hard and pointy. They would not be comfortable to wear on your head for any length of time, though they are especially good at keeping what is beneath them dry.

The War of 1812

While many cunning hats were obviously worn, a 32 month international conflict is not a hat. Moreover, a prominent American event in the War was the burning of the President's House in Washington, D.C., resulting in its rebuilding and renaming with a fresh coat of paint as the "White" House. Though pivotal, fire is generally not suitable head attire.

A Multi-National Bank

All the worst things about trees, and it's got ties to organized crime. And not the way fedoras did while still looking cool. No, this is Law & Order crime, not Tommy gun crime.

Socks

Very close. So very close. But it is hard to get socks to fit over your head securely, and in most cases where you do, they'll lose the stretch in their elastic rather quickly.

The 1974 Dallas Cowboys

This is a sports team. Was a sports team. It isn't even a team anymore. I mean the team is, but this team isn't. The point is they are not a hat, which was as true then as it is today. Though Roger Staubach could probably be a hat if he wanted to.

Movember Trivia

First and foremost, let me say that I do not support No-Shave November, and only tentatively approve of "Movember," insofar as I am for raising money for prostate cancer research but against shaving the rest of the year.

I've been running pretty solid with my #MustacheMillennium, having grown a mustache in 2000 and never haven shaven it since. Sure, sideburns lengthen and shorten, full beards come and go, even the connective tissue for the goatee changes for Comic Con, but the mustache never falters. So pardon me, if I resent the implication that growing my mustache out for only a month is predicated on shaving it first. Next year, my mustache can get in to see PG-13 movies by itself. Don't hassle him.

That said, I'm a huge proponent of other people experimenting with mustaches. It's something everyone should try, preferably in a safe environment, supported by friends and loved ones' understanding, and just usually in or soon after college. There's a time and a place for it.

A coworker recently hit his "It's long enough, let's do something fun stage." The result was a mustache connected to a thin line of sideburns, modeled after Lemmy of Motorhead fame, and generally appearing as though he plans to portray General Ambrose Burnside in a school production of Gods and Generals at end of term.

Here's the catch, there really isn't a name for this facial hair. Ostensibly, it's more "sideburns" in the classic sense, though that original style of sideburns itself has long been out of style, so much so that it'd be almost unrecognizable by that name to the General himself, who sported what we would now call muttonchops with a connective mustache. This is much longer than what my coworker currently wears. His is more akin to a handlebar like Hulk Hogan, curving up across his jawline into sideburns. A handlebar a biker might keep.

A "sissy bar."



Let's make this a thing.

It's a Thanksgiving Day Miracle

That brunette kid on the left looks a disturbing amount like Christian Bale.
Our Thanksgiving Day marathon will now include last night's Reign of Fire and
the first two Nolan Batman films, followed by American Psycho right when I carve the turkey.

So for another year in a row, my family's plans for Thanksgiving just became sadder and sadder. This year's endeavor would be to visit with grandpa in the nursing home, as grandma attempts to keep him awake through an entire meal of mashed, almost liquified turkey and gravy and potatoes and yams and milk and coffee (mostly mixed together). After that, the plan was to go to the diner for our thanksgiving meal, because Grandma realized that her sister, at whose or whose daughter's house everyone tends to congregate, is morose and depressing. This, after 70 years of it being pretty obvious. So, we're not going there.

This also means I will get no leftovers.


Screw that noise, I want my gourmet turkey sandwich.

So, in the span of about five minutes, I went from telling my mom to watch out for a coupon so I can get a cheesecake for a little less, to hosting my mother and to a lesser extent grandmother for a full thanksgiving dinner at my apartment.

Turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potato casserole with pecans and those little marshmallows on top, green beans with almond slivers, creamed corn, cranberry sauce straight from the can just like my family loves, with those little striation rings on the side of the tart Jell-o substitute. And yeah, cheesecake I guess. Mom will bring deviled eggs and maybe stuffed mushrooms, and then enough hard cider to drown out the sound of her mother being morose and depressing. And possibly crazy chocolate cake from this little place by her house.

Somewhere this turned into a food porn blog.

Listen, the point is, I'm tired of my family being lame and not cooking the food I like so I can have the leftovers I want. I'm an adult and if I want to have a nice turkey sandwich for lunch on Black Friday, I'm gonna cook my own goddam bird and if they promise to be good my friends and family can join in the festivities. You wanna watch the parade on T.V.? Go ahead, but I'm going to be blaring The Avengers or something else depicting the destruction of commercial property in my room. I'm gonna blast "Alice's Restaurant" out of my speakers and anyone who mentions watching a Christmas movie is getting a wishbone to the temple. This is my Thanksgiving, ladies and gentlemen, and it is going to be perfect.

So if Grandma is naughty I'm making her wait out in the car.

Idle Thoughts While Watching "Reign of Fire"

• Why isn't Li'l Jon ever concerned with WHY?

• Gerard Butler and Christian Bale should just fist fight in real life.
  

• For that matter, I want to see a movie where, through a cooky misunderstanding, Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford come to believe the other has taken their family.

• All you need to kill a dragon is incendiary rounds. Hell, I'm sure even phosphorus tracer rounds could do some damage in the right places, though their low velocity might hinder their stopping force enough to prevent penetration of the dragon's hide.

• I love that 20 years into the apocalypse, Britons are still reenacting The Empire Strikes Back for children. Gotta keep the classics alive.

• So Christian Bale is the first man to have seen a dragon alive in hundreds of years, understands their entire history, but Matthew McConaughey and the Americans are infinitely more badass and refuse to lay down and die. Yup, sounds about right for bi-continentals.

• This movie is stupid.

Reasons I'm An Asshole

• I apparently threw out, misplaced, or donated the power chord to my printer when I moved back in September, and only now realized it when I need desperately t print a could things.

That's really it. I'm absolutely positive that there are a multitude of reasons why I'm an asshole, but right now I'm focusing more on the one that's inconveniencing me.

Emotional issues crippling love life? Nope, don't bother me, I need to print. I try out a rehearsed joke and it bombs like Chechnya? Still can't print. I'm a writer for god's sake. I should have noticed my inability to put printed words to paper long ago!

Now my Japanese ukiyoe-inspired Candyland pin-up sketch is going to have to wait until I get all this sorted out. And here I was all eager to look up traditional Asian skanks for a legitimate art project for once.

Ah well, such are the ways of skanks. They always come at a price.

Ways To Tell If You Are Not Being Challenged At Work

"I call it 'Smith's Theory of Office Productivity.'"

This is a compilation of myself and several friends. So, bosses, in case you are reading this, I'm not actually slacking off every day at work. I mean that'd be so unprofessional.

• You routinely solve Rubik's Cubes and other assorted puzzles in between minor tasks.

• You finish your work for the week by 3 p.m. Wednesday.

•  You have time to balance your finances on a daily basis.

• You routinely take time off to write plot treatments for films or children's picture books.

• You have the high score on every arcade machine in the lobby.

• You are routinely yelled at for asking if there is more work you can do.

• When someone asks you if you can do something for them, you excitedly answer in the affirmative.

• You use company time to research the evolution of the letter Z.

• You sit around hoping something goes wrong so you will have something fun to do.

• You draw a really sweet picture of a cat.

• You start and subsequently finish and entire BBC original series while filing paperwork.

• You have a measurable IQ over 130.

How to Make $1 Million - Books

Here's hopefully the first in a long series where I give you fantastic ideas that make you money, and then you give me some of that money because I came up with it and am just too lazy to follow through on any of them.


It occurred to me today that you can write a profitable genre-mystery by appending the word "Murder" to any pre-existing book title. No? Anything. Either it's descriptive of the event or just sounds awesome on its face:

• "The Iliad Murder"

• "The Jewish Mother Cookbook Murder"

• What to Expect When You're Expecting … Murder"

Write a long, winding tale of tragedy and political assassination; a funny yet self-effacing death at a high-society kitchen; a story of a pregnant mother/former double agent trying to uncover the whereabouts of her captured baby-daddy/ex-partner/traitorous enemy.

Then make the royalty checks payable to Dave.

Elmo Probably Didn't Mollest That Kid

"I am eating your child. Pray I don't eat him any further."

Listen, we've all know the jokes about Elmo's puppeteer being a large black man named Kevin. At least those of us that knew Elmo's puppeteer was a large black man. But right now there are more pressing concerns.

Kevin Clash–and more importantly Elmo–is taking a leave of absence from Sesame Street to better fight (with the support of producers) the allegation that he had a sexual relationship with a 16 year old boy.

That's serious for Kevin, and unless they reveal the accuser is attempting to extort money after failing to successfully accuse Michael Jackson's corpse, Elmo may go the way of the Snuffleupagus. However, in the face of all that we as a society are going to have to wade through in the coming months, I am imploring everyone from men on the street to politically themed fake news hosts to avoid making "Tickle-Me Elmo" jokes.

It's just low rent humor at this point.

• Make a joke about the Count teaching Elmo how to count to 18.

• Make some tasteless reference to all the toddlers on the show skewing Kevin's perspective of age.

• Steal my Snuffleupagus joke, it's cool. (No, seriously though, I want credit for that even though Snuffie's back in action after his long absence.)

Just please don't make the same stupid joke for the eight umpteenth time.

I was just on television

Now that it's aired I can say it: I was on cable T.V.

I'm still not honestly sure I can say what or why, because of that whole "in perpetuity throughout the universe" clause that always creeps me out, but I think I can post the official video when it goes live, so long as it was non-monetary.

In commemoration of this momentous day, I'm slacking off and going to sleep instead of writing a real blog entry. Because screw you, what have you done today?

Fucking Dutch

There's not a single thing in this image that isn't a stereotype.
Just like any picture of the Wu-Tang Clan.

So my friend recently had a less than perfect sexual encounter with a citizen of The Netherlands, and this was the result:

• Close the boarders, and institute a double-bag customs check for all foreigners from now on.

• The little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dyke? Yeah, he's not welcome at that bar anymore.

• Knocking wooden boots.

• If you go Dutch, you both pay for it.

• "He came in my Holland now I'm regretting it."

• Keep the Netherlands out of your nether lands.

•  You should have given him one of their rudders instead.

•  Never bang a Dutchman. Bang a Dutchman, be careful of the Finnish.

• Vermeer painted a portrait of you and he called it "Girl With A Pearl Necklace."

•  I'm gonna have to van Gogh to the pharmacy.

Oh, and he was a drummer so this also happened:

•  You'd think he'd be better at using his stick.

•  Yeah, I'd hit that skin. 

• For someone who's supposed to keep time, he sure finished early.

•  I SHOULD HAVE NEVER TRUSTED THE RHYTHM METHOD.

On Turning 26

Considering all the tech in my room, I guess I never really outgrew my nightlight, huh?


Router, tv, cable box, BluRay, Roku box … yup, no monsters getting in here.

On Slim Jims

I'm told by a commercial that if I am suddenly lousy at video games, eating Slim Jims will make me better. Theoretically, if I ate perhaps 400 Slim Jims I would become maybe passable. I could survive. My family has a high tolerance for decidedly deadly sodium, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. My doctor might have a stroke, but I should be fine long enough to learn how to work dual thumbsticks without nauseating myself.

Don't get me wrong, though, I still greatly miss those commercials where an anthropomorphic meat stick man single handedly tears up my insides like the riot scene in any college movie made before 1987. That was massively appetizing.

But now there's a message I can get behind:

Slime Jims: "Our product isn't good enough on its merits, but we'll give you superpowers for that other thing you like to do more."

Hallowsmas

This guy is awesome. I have no idea who he is, but he got this right and 'real' cartoonists suck.

The Halloween table at work has been replaced by a Christmas display. Thanksgiving was never even given a chance. In all honesty, if it hadn't snowed violently all afternoon and evening yesterday, I'd have felt more conflicted about this. Alright, I was significantly upset by this until the snow, at which point I was enraged in the opposite direction. I said 'fuck it' and put on my holiday playlist.


But I find once the idea was in my head, I could not banish it: everything about Thanksgiving could easily be folded into either Halloween or Christmas without much fuss or complaint.

Celebration of Autumn? Halloween. Leaves? Same. Cornucopia? Jack-o-lantern. Huge meal and giving thanks with loved ones? Jesus Day. Christians in funny shoes? Nativity play. Parade? Please, everyone just watches that for Santa Claus. Football? Either, really.

It's all there. Just make sure you eat a turkey and everything really works out just fine. Hell, if you're Italian you could probably get away with a stock family Sunday dinner.

Masturbatory Self-Congratulations

All I'm saying, is this guy looks cocky as shit and I love it.

Supersize that image to look at Romney's "I'm getting photographed" sad smile, too.

I'm going to sleep now. I'll try to catch up on those 300 mutual facebook congrats notices tomorrow. After that, I plan on paying my taxes, enjoying my health care, and buying my multiple, bisexual, atheist lovers buy-one/get-one abortion gift cards.

If you think he was too liberal before, you have no idea what kind of Jed Bartlet shit Barry's gonna pull now that he's got nothing to lose.

On Wearing Your Pink

5-Hour Energy: "You don't need to like us, just buy this and make us pay for breast cancer research. We know you like that better than us."




Listen, I'm going to buy one of your energy shots. Because I work eight hours and I'd still like the ability to go out and get drunk once in a while after a snack and a brief shower. Energy shots are good for this.

After, I'm going to find a cancer researcher, and I'm going to hand her $4.25. Because I want a cure for cancer. Or a fully-reversing treatment. Or therapy. Not just a stopgap, but a real, solid end to it as a concerning threat. Maybe she'll use it to buy lunch. Maybe she pays for parking. Maybe she leaves it on the counter and oesn't touch it out of confusion and moderate trepidation until she's 35¢ short of a Pop-Tart from the lab vending machine.

I have no illusions that my money would be less than a molecule in a drop in a bucket in an ocean, but maybe that $4.25 means the petty cash drawer lasts longer, and someone gets more money left in their budget at the end of the year. Maybe the excess gets blown on a party where someone has an epiphany and scrawls a formula on the wall still wearing their lampshade as a helmet.

Or maybe everyone just agrees to hand money to scientists and let them do their jobs because 13% of us are slated to die from it. In fact, if I can fund a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's, I'm going to be handsome, vivacious, and ornery until I'm 135.

I want to be 135.

And I don't need a pink magnet on my energy shot to guilt me into it.

Disney Princess Leia Pt 1

Last week, the day after a part of my soul gave up hope with the news that Disney had purchased Star Wars and all of LucasFilm, I read the joke apparently everyone but me had bee thinking nonstop:

Leia is now a Disney Princess.

This actually beefs up their street cred quite considerably, in my estimate. Few princesses have such high personal body counts, and borderline incest usually gets edited out of the stories some time between Hand Christen Anderson and box office.

So, here's the second joke I came up with about this. (The first will be twice as difficult to draw, as I am unfamiliar with drawing chibi anatomy.)

Tabloid Journalistic Integrity

"Kourtney stuns everyone by agreeing to marry out of control Scott. Choosing ratings over love, she makes the same mistake Kim made.

"DOES MARRIAGE MEAN NOTHING TO THIS FAMILY?"


That's got to be the only time InTouch magazine has ever been even remotely "in touch" with the thoughts of a sensible human being. Also, it's the closest any Kardashian has ever gotten to one as well.

Too bad it was probably just the layout girl using filler text instead of Lorem ipsum and someone's getting fired for not placing the intended "Private wedding photos here!" in that field.

On Saddling Your Children with Names That Control Their Future

Naming your child "Lucky" is going to ruin him. "Princess" and "Honey Boo-boo" are likewise fucked.

Today I add a new one: Never name a young black boy "Kenyan."

That's like naming a little Jewish boy "Israel." Like the guy running the Pakistani Deli down the block from your apartment telling you his name really is "John Paki."

You're essentially just guaranteeing that your kid is going to chased continuously throughout his life, first by bullies on the playground, then by about 40,000 white people trying to make it to the tape at the 2012 2013 New York City Marathon.

Well at least he'll have great cardio strength. That might just be enough to combat his genetic predisposition for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

New York Comic Con Summation

This is part of a fan survey I filled out this year, suggesting ways to improve New York Comic Con for next year, specifically the celebrity guest part. For the most, I really didn't have many criticisms. I was happy with the con, even if I was snubbed for a press pass and had to pay the blisteringly pocket-scorching $65 for a three-day pass.

However, I may have had one suggestion that I felt strongly about.

Of Those Who Can't Failing to Teach

A family asked me yesterday for a book that would teach their son–for homework that night I learned–the similarities between the branches of government. "Branches" being a word I supplied; they went with "sections" and "parts."

Keep in mind, they also did not understand when I explained thrice that there was nothing in the store and it would have to be ordered, taking longer than 20 minutes to arrive.

The branches are, for those who don't remember 7th grade history class, the Legislative branch (Congress), the Executive branch (the President), and the Judicial branch (the courts). When these two wunderelterns attempted to list them, mom got "Parliamentary" and "Prime Ministreal," which isn't even a word. Dad fared no better with "Communist" in place of Congress and "President," which is actually more horrifying, because in between his wife's attempt and his own, I said them all. To them. They were there. And still, neither one of them even remotely got "Judiciary." I would have taken any variation on "courts." Nothin'.

God help that poor child. If his parents teach him that "Communist" is a branch of American government, we're going to have a little Young Republican on our hands fairly quickly.