Fallout Themed, I guess.

My mind is completely blown away by the art and writing of the following web 'comic', though perhaps web 'graphic would be a better term.

Romantically Apocalyptic

Have fun, it's a quality trip.

Ideal pad setup for hip cats, you dig?

EDIT: The amazingly hoopy froods at reddit or whomever did this built a webapp that runs everything together for you. Try http://www.comfytube.com/watch?v=aEj-mrwwaxo for example. It allows you to select from several fires, adjust volumes of each video separately, and it's mindbogglingly comfy.

I can't claim to have discovered this, but it's pretty awesome.

1. Open 3 tabs, this one: http://www.rainymood.com/ is good for many reasons.

2. Start awesome music, like so: http://endlessvideo.com/watch?v=HMnrl0tmd3k

3. Fullscreen this: http://endlessvideo.com/watch?v=DIx3aMRDUL4

4. Relax.

Also, if you have recommendations for more smooth cool jazz, let me know.

Masterpiece of ADD Editing

This year in film

Simply amazing.

Abracadabra, a title!

Wheee!

I don't really have any reason to go "Wheee!", but that's likely the best reason to do so, I've decided.

Now that my hand is nicely cramped from writing with a pencil, I shall turn to the keyboard for relief.

So this one time, not so long ago--probably further back than you can remember--lived a small chameleon and his friend, the magician Timothy the Timid.

The chameleon lived an uneventful life, eating whatever he wanted, mostly comfortable in his cozy little home, and only being pulled out of a hat on those rare occasions when Timothy could get a job performing magic for children's parties or corporate retreats*.

The chameleon enjoyed the production quite a bit; once he was out of the hat and his eyes had adjusted to the bright lights, the world became a fantastic place, filled with silk, velvet, smiling faces, and thunderous applause.

Inside of the hat wasn't quite as nice, but chameleons are much more difficult to spot while hiding in hats than rabbits, and he did his job quite well. Besides being produced from the hat at the end of the act, the chameleon sorted through decks of cards looking for the one a volunteer selected earlier in the show**.

One day the chameleon noticed how timid Timothy really was. So he then decided to convince an experienced magic rabbit to take his place in an effort to instill some confidence into our magician Timothy, but the rabbit was a bit sneaky. He stole some magic secrets and sold them to a competing magician down the street with a huge following and a bigger ego.

This started a magicians war which lasted for months, but the upshot was Timothy discovered he had a violent temper and he locked it in a jar because it scared him. The competing magician got locked in an Orb of Everlasting Tedium and Cable TV, but that was on the orders of the magicians guild which Timothy started with his chameleon.

* Timothy the Timid was quite good at exchanging one set of books for another, almost identical, set of books, but with different numbers inside. A trick which doesn't impress at children's parties very much.

** The Queen of Hearts. Timothy was a romantic.

Music Extravaganza!

I suppose not all of you are as wildly entertained by my insipid prose and nonsense as I, and perhaps would rather enjoy some lovely tunes.

To that end I post the following:

Lauren Pritchard on Conan O'Brien

Frontier Psychiatrist (Avalanches)

Since I Left You (Avalanches)

I found these enjoyable.

In other news, it's fairly cold out, being December and all.

Veritable Thingie

It has been remarkably easy for me to sit back, relax, and forget the refulgent myrmidons and their uncouth ilk which make a pretense of enjoying my dingy corner of the digital world.

My dingy little corner

This is arguably unfortunate, but leaves me, quite often, creatively unfulfilled, and with copious amounts, of commas. These, I now foist upon you, my unwitting victims of uncommonly comatose prose.

Ah. To finally unleash the many words I've had rattling about my rotten noggin!

Back to business. Have you ever had the (mis)fortune to tend to the collective egg nursery of the local penguin population? I did, last night. Penguins are apparently avian otters, and quite playful. They enjoy mucking about in the water for hours on end, and may allow you (as they did me) to tend to their giant nest.

Awesome Picture of a Penguin

You see, these particular penguins built one large nest, as they had a slight egg production problem which caused an unusual number of eggs to be produced, and their little cup verily it runneth over. So instead of littering their little corner of the world with eggs, they consolidated to a single egg nursery.

These eggs also had the unique ability to develop a sort of armor. They started a pale robin-egg blue, but if healthy, turned a sort of fuzzy green, like a pea-pod, or a tortoise-shell. This enabled me to sit upon the pile without crushing any eggs.

As I sat upon these eggs, watching the playful penguins cavort and frolic in the foamy sea or rippling creek that floweth therein, several eggs began to turn a deep shade of blue, and their surface changed from an armored vegetable to a glass filled with deep blue liquid.

The glass shattered, and the blue liquid flowed out, forming an unnaturally blue sea upon the ground which flowed away, carrying away oddly shaped beings within which I assumed were baby penguins, but were so far away from resembling their progenitors as to cause me to doubt this assumption.

I stared for a moment at this uncanny vision, before running way to draw the attention of the penguins to this event. When I returned with the excited birds, I realized I was correct in my assumption that these oddly shaped beings were indeed young penguins, as they were now covered in feathers and running around wildly.

However, one of the parents apparently was a large mountain lion, and she was a bit upset that her child had imprinted on me, and thought I was his mommy. I tried to cheer her up, as she was getting angry, and I feared for my very life, but I suspected she'd be content to just tear off an arm. I carefully handed her baby to her, and moseyed the hell away.

Freud once said something and wrote it down, and it might apply to this scenario, but I believe it was a grocery list, and I struggle to comprehend why he brought it up at this juncture. It might have had something to do with eggs or penguins, but he didn't have long to explain it before I sent him on his way.

Neato

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

Again with the updates

Scored a bottle of Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, and am looking forward to enjoying it tonight whilst watching Chuck.

This is of course, the sort of inane 'news' which constitutes a great deal of our modern internet, and which I typically despise and parody. But in this case, it's delightfully snobby* and at the same time, lowbrow, so I think the contrast is fitting for this site, which is at times, horrendously pretentious, and at others**, just stupid and also absurd.

At this point, I will comment on the weather, since it's changing. "Hey, the weather is changing."

And now to leave you all with this little story:

"Greek participles are annoying, especially when you paid no attention to English ones." This was spoken by no other than Cerebron, who you may recall is currently pedaling his way through Chaos in an ornithopter after he fell through the diabolical portal through which the evil Dr. Professor intended to travel in order to beg a favor of the devil.

But you probably already knew that. About participles I mean. Because you paid attention in school and know all about those, don't you, smarty pants.

~~

* If you bought that, you'll buy anything

** Read: All the time

Because you are bored?

Thanks to all you crazy mumzies out there who screamed in deafening tones inaudible to human ears, but really quite piercing and annoying to both muskrats and centipedes—several of which subsequently contacted one of our many famously drunken field agents—I will now regale my personal slice of internet void with another Totally True Tale, stolen once more from other, more qualified and experienced plumbers, each with an English Major.

~~

Yesterday, several events transpired which were barely notable, but which, at this point, serve to do little more than act as a setup to a stupid joke, which I will bury here for you to find.*(Hint: It's in pretty much every single thing I ever wrote.)

~~

So, last time Dan Harbaugh ate a tea cup, it was on account of the fascinating crunch the porcelain made as it shattered with every bite. Little pieces crumbled and flaked to the floor. It wasn't easy to chew, so he tried to make every bite small enough to swallow with as little chewing as possible.

This time, the tea cup was made of an edible sugar-based enamel, and not only tasted better, but lacked the satisfying crunch he found so fascinating. Also, it melted pretty fast, resulting in the handle breaking off and dumping the steaming hot tea all over both Dan and the floor.

The linoleum floor was scarred with age, and curled up in reaction to the hot tea. It was now sticky and stained, which was just about normal for linoleum.

At this point, Dan realized his dream of marketing edible tea cups crumbled with his prototype.

Speaking of dreams, some random girl across the galaxy was recounting one which she had dreamt the previous evening, and the poor sap whose ear she had assaulted with her monotonous droning for the better part of an hour was lulled off into one of his own.

In this dream the girl was recounting, she had met Dan Harbough, tea cup eating genius, and his giant collection of little robots he had purchased with the proceeds of his hugely successful edible tea cup fortune.

His robots were brilliantly coloured and clicked around merrily, and were completely oblivious to the fact that they each had an exactly opposite evil cousin somewhere. They went about their silly little tasks: stacking blocks, posting on internet forums, and an spreading cheese on crackers while Dan watched football and consumed tea cups filled with beer.

Meanwhile, their evil brothers, not quite as brilliant, and not quite as silly, constructed dreams in a giant dirty factory, with smoke billowing from the tops of twisted little smoke stacks.

These dreams were packaged up neatly, and then shot out of a huge cannon in a pretty parabolic arc into the heads of little children while they slept. This, not surprisingly, was designed to make them want to purchase sub-par toys constructed by the world's worst toy company, the Kakos Corporation. All the toys made by this toy company were not only incredibly cheap, but were mostly broken before they even left the factory.

The aforementioned girl, heretofore and thusly etc. shall henceforth be known as "Lottie", after much deliberation, contacted Dan, and discovered that he did not yet have a successful business constructing and selling edible tea cups, and his robot collection was minuscule. Her dream did not reflect reality as it was currently known.

Excepting that those evil robots were actually really busy at work constructing dreams, but that's another story.

~~

* You won't find it down here.

All things go

Someone mashed together some Sufjan Stevens with Coldplay, and the results are quite good.

All credit to the original frood.

Zoom zoom zoom

To soar on the wings of an eagle, or make extreme 10g turns out of a 150mph dive in the guise of a falcon! Or fly twixt the trees as a feathered hawk?

Round 2

Q: How awesome is this?

A: Scary awesome!

Sgt. Jack Ramsay is standing by in case things get out of control

Q&A

Q:How amazing is this?

A: Pretty amazing.

It was a dark and stormy night

When the eccentric Count Rourke disappeared several years ago, the local village hoped for the best, that he had died, and that someone else would take over the Rourke Castle which was rotting way and cast a serious shadow of evil over an otherwise picture-perfect, innocent looking little farm village.

The castle had a number of odd little towers which leaned precariously over the ivy covered walls, and little piles of shattered rocks testified to the incredibly unstable nature of this stone beast.

Rows of huge black birds crenelated the walls, and large black cables snaked around everything like strangling vines, humming with diabolic power.

Unfortunately for the local optimists, the Count returned one dark, stormy day, and it became obvious to all that he had finally gone round the bend, no longer eccentric, he was now fully insane. His typically unkempt hair had gone completely white, and he rode the largest hound any had ever seen.

He rode through the village, returning from parts unknown, and once again, took up residence in his black abode, crumbling though it was.

Rumor was quick to fill the town with gossip, telling fantastic stories about the Count's adventures, each more outlandish than the last, but none of them found any doubters. The Count was just the sort of man one would imagine in such ridiculous exploits as were retold over every pint of foamy beer, or hinted at over every cup of black and boiling tea.

While the town muddled their heads with these tales of high adventure and dark deeds, the Count never once appeared again outside the walls of his castle.

Inside, he began construction on a vast machine which extended from the basement to the highest spire atop the highest tower. None but he knew the purpose for this machine, and none but he ever touched it, those unfortunate few who delivered him his supplies never ventured beyond the entrance, and could learn nothing of value.

One day, late in the fall season, after the harvest, another storm gathered, similar to the one which carried the Count back home not long ago. This storm stopped directly over the castle, and seemed to wait there for something.

Inside, the Count was muttering in an unknown tongue, something written inside an ancient tome, pages and pages of mysterious text and pictures which appeared to move in the dim light which filled the room.

Now the Count poured a vial of a thick red liquid into a glass tube, and the machine rumbled to life.

Most of the village sheltered from the storm, the castle and whatever went on inside were the last things on the minds of the inhabitants, but one. He was driving his sheep to safety from the storm, and noticed that the storm appeared to halt directly above the castle, so after the wooly sheep were taken care of, he returned to his cottage, and ate a loaf of bread with some cheese, while he watched the storm tumble and rage over the castle.

As he watched, fingers of lightning seemed to reach down, and grasp the castle itself. The ground rumbled and shook, and before his very eyes, the castle began to rise into the air, and stand on stony feet.

"What devilry is this?" The shepherd thought, he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and stared. Sure enough, the castle stretched out arms, legs, even stony fingers extended from the structure. Two lights on the top shone like eyes in the darkness. The castle shook several boulders free, with vines and cables dragging, the strange castle walked away into the darkness, and the boiling storm followed.

The next morning, the villagers stood around and stared at the hilltop where the castle should have been, but this bright morn, naught was left but the ancient foundations, surrounded by piles of what had been walls.

When the shepherd told his story, none believed him. The Count may have been the devil himself, but there was no possible way a castle could come to life and simply walk away.

A hundred years passed since that day when the Castle Rourke blew away in that frightful storm, and the Count had no doubt long since given up the ghost, but Rumor has told me stories of huge buildings which appear out of nowhere, and leave just as mysteriously and quickly. They are typically said to haunted, and in one particularly unbelievable story, one stands up and fights off an invading army, as if it were alive.

Woohoo

I'm about to reveal a huge secret, heretofore unknown to the general public.

Wait for it...

I'm a giant nerd. Not hugely giant, mind you, but fairly giant. Thus, I present leaked(?) photos from the upcoming Captain America movie, for which I previously had no expectations.

(source: (and more picses) @DigitalTrends.com)

Bonkers! The fruit that bonks you out

Here's a quick Monty Python-esque short that made me chuckle:

Animated Short no.1 from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

Complain at your leisure

Anonymous wrote:

"I would like to see reviews of ancient greek restaurants, explorations of comparative mythology with a view to relating the roots of Western mythology to the giants of Genesis, maybe Ovid re-told for today's add folks..."

They are clearly insane. Epicurus or Ἐπίκουρος, wrote the definitive guide to ancient Greek restaurants years ago, though I admire Anonymous's ability to spell 'restaurant' correctly, something I cannot do.

As to 'comparative mythology', I can't venture to do more than make things up entirely and post essays from other people and claim them as my own.

I do find it interesting though, that modern man believes everyone in the past to be morons, that we must have evolved from ape-like knuckle-dragging dolts, mouth breathing imbeciles too stupid to do more than hit his own useless fingers with his recently invented hammer, while the ancients believed their predecessors must have been descended from gods.

Whether this is because of insane pride on the part of ancients or modern man is hard to say (it is entirely because of pride), imagine Aristotle and Richard 'The Mouth' Dawkins picking up a fossilized bone and think of the difference in their interpretation. Also, which one is more arrogant?

We, of course, have the 'advantage' of genetic science, so we know that we share a lot of DNA with sea-sponges and thus, must be related to Brillo pads.

I suppose many might say that myths are fairy tales that the uneducated believed, that intelligent ancients didn't believe them anymore than intelligent modern man believes in the tooth fairy. Perhaps. That didn't stop the ancient intelligent minds from giving lip service to these myths at least, showing that they found value in establishing an ideal for society to live up to. It is a useful thing to be able to say 'if granddad fought a hydra once, you can pick up a gecko, dummy.'

Forgot this title thing

While I patiently wait for the imaginary readers or possibly future archaeologists who might stumble across this blog, buried in burnt-out hard drive platters scattered across the post-apocalyptic desert after the great internet flame wars end in a planet scouring explosion of bile and nuclear fission, I thought I'd share the following.

I was recently listening to a little historic background on Vergil's "Aeneid", and a couple of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra's kids were mentioned, Alexander Helios, and Cleopatra Selene. Helios and Selene translate to 'Sun' and 'Moon' respectively. Perhaps slightly hippie sounding at first, I immediately recalled a story by George MacDonald. You can read it here.

George MacDonald plays a few word games of his own in the story: Photogen, Nycteris, Aurora, and Vesper, for instance, have meanings of their own which add color and depth to the story.

Be careful what you ask for

Please submit ideas for publication on this blog, but remember I refuse to stoop to pictures of dancing babies, because I've already gone that low, and it felt dirty.

Das Boot!

I don't know if you are familiar with this sort of argument against alcohol, frequently put forward by baptists, but I think Lewis Carroll in "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded", addressed it fairly neatly when he wrote the following:

"So Lady Muriel took up the cudgels. “Do you hold the theory”, she enquired, “that people can preach teetotalism more effectually by being teetotalers themselves?”

“Certainly I do!” replied the red-faced man. “Now, here is a case in point,” unfolding a newspaper-cutting: “let me read you this letter from a teetotaler. To the Editor. Sir, I was once a moderate drinker, and knew a man who drank to excess. I went to him. ‘Give up this drink,’ I said. ‘It will ruin your health!’ ‘You drink,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I know when to leave off.’ He turned away from me. ‘You drink in your way,’ he said: ‘let me drink in mine. Be off!’ Then I saw that, to do any good with him, I must forswear drink. From that hour l haven’t touched a drop!”

“There! What do you say to that?” He looked round triumphantly, while the cutting was handed round for inspection.

“How very curious!” exclaimed Arthur when it had reached him. “Did you happen to see a letter, last week, about early rising? It was strangely like this one.”

The red-faced man’s curiosity was roused. “Where did it appear?” he asked.

“Let me read it to you,” said Arthur. He took some papers from his pocket, opened one of them, and read as follows. To the Editor. Sir, I was once a moderate sleeper, and knew a man who slept to excess. I pleaded with him. Give up this lying in bed,’ I said. ‘It will ruin your health!’ You go to bed,’ he said: ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, but I know when to get up in the morning.’ He turned away from me. ‘You sleep in your way,’ he said: ‘let me sleep in mine. Be off!’ Then I saw that to do any good with him, I must forswear sleep. From that hour I haven’t been to bed!”

Arthur folded and pocketed his paper, and passed on the newspaper-cutting. None of us dared to laugh, the red-faced man was evidently so angry."

The book is a fascinating fairy tale mixed up with some eloquent and profound moral arguments, and is highly recommended. To the point Batman!

The point is, a grocery store opened nearby with an entire aisle of beer.

This post was sent from the FUTURE!

While you all were wildly entertained with that last post, I'm sure you all are wondering where in the galaxy did all of the educational stuff go?

To put it bluntly, several unidentified species of lizard-y things ran off with our education correspondent, and we've been negotiating a deal for the return of his watch and wallet.

So today, I plan on savagely beating another writer here until he regales us with fantastic tales of educational bent, and wont stop until we learn something.

"The Past, once forgotten and consequently ignored, contains many mysteries and artifacts, hidden from sight and covered with filth. If one were to build a functioning time machine and travel back there, one would presumably die instantly, because the Past is an ethereal dream filled with danger and giant intergalactic existence-eating spiders.

I did it once, with a team of insipid explorers and a magician, but we didn't go back very far, and were too scared to leave the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile."

The author of this interesting fable was fired, but not before surrendering the keys to his Oscar Meyer Weinermobile time machine.

Great jokes and hilarity

Alright, time to apologize for my laziness in only posting the creations of other people, and not my own. I only enjoyed several of those to be quite honest.

So here I am, trying to think of something to say when all I really want to do is anything else.

For starters, what's the difference between βιος and ζωη? Likely nothing at all really, perhaps at one point, lost in time, there was a vast world of difference which required two different words for 'life', perhaps they are born of different dialects, I don't know.

Various sources, each less reputable than the last, offer insights of varying profundity and depth--"βιος," they say, "is physical, temporal life," or "a specific life", while "ζωη is eternal life, or life in general".

The differences seem artificial to me, applied retrospectively to the words, but again, I have no idea. We have words of our own which have this same problem, say 'soul' and 'spirit'. Souls aren't spirits, except when they are. A student of English would have a difficult time discerning the difference twixt the two, though a religious text may help, or not.

I tend to think the same applies to agape, eros, and philo, (here I grow tired of typing in greek) good examples of the frustrating futility of the average person diving to the greek of the bible for a nice esoteric insight into the mysteries of the divine, and the dangers of the foolhardy pastors who lead their flocks blindly into the murky depths of the koine (not my specialty, by any means). The blind leading the blind, as it were.

There are, of course, great things to be found in the ancient texts, but they require you to dig deep through the crust of your familiar and relatively simple native tongue first, before you can scratch the surface of an ancient language, artfully declined and deceitfully conjugated with myriad prepositions and nuances fleeting away on wings of gossamer. Mastering a tiny bit is like catching a rare butterfly in the Amazonian rainforest, a feat that is all your own, meaningless to hoi polloi, but will satisfy the hell out of you and make for fascinating discussion among collectors.

There are great philosophical and theological theories which are beautifully illustrated or even constructed entirely on ancient greek, latin, hebrew, or sanskrit words, few of which do more than use the words as algebraic symbols representing relative ideas apart from etymological history.

I don't mean that anyone and everyone is lying, or even often completely mistaken in the meanings of words, especially not in their own context, but that the great romance is removed by the unwitting, by ripping the words out of the context in which they exist, they are pulling the stars from Van Gogh's starry starry night and divorcing them from the rich tapestry in which they find meaning.

But enough of that nonsense!

Just a little trip

Poets of the Fall-Carnival of Rust:

(I can't help thinking "Are you my mummy?")

And some Massive Attack, paired with scenes from The Fall:

However:

Whoohoo!

Wacky Fun Post!

The Purpose of Copyright

It's an interesting read regarding a subject which is of some debate among various parties I'm familiar with, some stating it's the bane of human existence, while others point out that guaranteed money is cool.

As a wonderfully untalented hack and sporadic scribbler of nonsense and tomfoolery, I'd love money, but I hate that someone might send me an email and complain I stole their art, words, music, car, etc.

Ahaha!

Genius!

I think I read a book like this once, but I couldn't follow it, as it had no plot, intent on changing the world of literature, I swore to only write p

This important message is brought to you by a pressing need to get that damn dancing baby off the front page of this esteemed rag of a blog.

Now that the important bit is out of the way, let us move on to the commercials:

"Now with bits of glass inside, Pepsi Blue is really not much worse than before! Aquire at your own peril!"

Thus spake the sage, and as it was written, so it was done, with a feather pen and splotches of ink everywhere, which some interpreted as genitalia, and others

as fighter jets engaged in intense aerial combat with giant mutant butterflies.

"All this and more, for the low, low, price, of one small child and a platinum ring! Offer expires frequently, and no attempt to prove otherwise has proved successful up to this point."

So said the lowly copy writer, the filthy chappy with the broken spellchecker and several gallons of yogurt.

"No amount of whining and complaining can stop this product from achieving it's ultimate goal, and careful cajoling may change the outcome of past events! And it's improved somewhat from our original design which was pure crap as you well know!"

So the passing flamingo on rollerskates. Flamingos are elegant creatures, statuesque and unassuming, they reveal the inherent absurdity we refuse to admit are the building blocks of the universe. Oh, the platypus is ridiculous, but we excuse it as an insect, the hippopotamus is a silly conglomeration of Greek words, which is nothing like the seahorse. But the noble flamingo! God's own bubblegum flavored chuckle!

"Fire randomly into the crowd, let none escape untouched by our new and improved flavor!"

Shouted the Bourgeoisie buffoon to his squadron of naval engineers, pretzel fanciers and domino players, each armed to the teeth with flavorful cannon of pure chocolate and ivory.

And so ended another busy day of working diligently at the Strugg and Blackham Mostly Edible Shoeshine factory.

Magnus Opus via Cocktaila Napkina

I know the vast numbers of spam artists and hamburger architects which frequent competing blogs and fill the gaping void in their life with pictures of cats and animated GIF images of dancing babies don't actually read this blog for any other purpose than to determine my status as a 'mark', 'dupe', 'sucker', or 'escaped mental patient', but I strive for excellence, nonetheless.

First and foremost, disaster struck recently when the internet went down for what seemed like months, there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, books were burnt, and small furry animals where hunted with a pencils and rubber bands, before it switched back on seconds later.

Two employees of the 'Corporation which shall not be named' attempted an escape yesterday and had copious amounts of hallucinogenic drugs reintroduced to their systems before they could return to work on their dissertation on Orpheus and his fabled adventure, which we hereby publish without reimbursement:

"Orpheus was just this guy, you know?"

In light of the perceived brevity of this product, we hired an incompetent team of robots to scour the web in search of a slightly more detailed article, but they went on a killing spree and we were subsequently forced to cobble together the following from notes scrawled on a cocktail napkin during our interrogation of our late employee who was supposed to provide this earlier:

"Orpheus was the greatest bard in ancient history, his music going so far as to enthrall even the beasts and birds.

His young wife, Eurydice, died and, being stricken with grief, he descended to the underworld and there he managed to win the favor of the ruling gods with his lyre and song. They agreed to return his wife so long as he walked before her as they left the underworld, and never turned once to look back at her on his way out.

This he didn't manage very successfully. He felt the need to check on her progress, turned to look, and she reached for him, but only grasping air, slipped back into the netherworld, forever."

Plato's Symposium suggests that the gods thought Orpheus' love wasn't true, if he wasn't a pansy zither player he would have pulled a Romeo and offed himself, thus (and perhaps because the dead have no bodies) the rulers of the underworld could only provide him with a shade of Eurydice.

Achilles, on the other hand, passionately attacked the Trojans for the love of Patrocles, despite knowing this would end in his own death, as per his mother's warning.

I guess there is more to the story, given that the Wikipedia article appears quite lengthy, but the cocktail napkins are pretty small, and the ink ran a lot.

Is Plato's Symposium correct in it's assessment? Perhaps. Though, since Circe refers to Odysseus and his companions as 'twice dying men' in the Aeneid after their descent to Hades, could we also consider Orpheus as having similarly died? Does Plato's Phaidros consider this only a figurative death, and thus the gods returned to Orpheus a likewise figurative shade of Eurydice? Real lovers, like Achilles, really die, but those without true love, love only a shade?

No idea. I'm not paid to think, and I'm almost positive another employee is digging through the wall in the linen closet.

Time Saves Truth, and me from copyright gremlins

So, some very important information has recently come to light via the hidden camera installed on a technologically advanced, slightly mutated, reconnaissance grasshopper, that many of you aren't happy with the level of material published here.

Some have claimed this is all a front, an attempt by aliens to masquerade as human, aliens who are secretly writing an article on this planet to publish in an intergalactic guidebook, perhaps, and must supplement their income by writing innocuous blogposts on some abandoned website using substandard English and a passing attempt at appearing halfway sane.

While I admit beer money can always use supplementing, little of that bears any resemblance to the Truth, as Truth is blond and a little pudgy.

Instead, Time flies, as the eagle swims, and the biscuit moseys. Thus, a great deal of effort is expended in the attempt to not only entertain the world, but to contribute to the insane amount of useless blabber that permeates our wonderful internet.

So, here you will find only pastoral bucolics and pseudointellectual nonsense that I dug up from one specific Scientific American issue, circa 1968, and several back issues of Highlights for Awkward Teen Adolescents.

These magazines found their way to a box I picked up from a garage sale a week or two ago, and I found their theory on Dark Matter vaguely unsettling, like when you eat french fries a little too fast, or just when you realize that, no matter how good a Root Beer Float is, you shouldn't have made one in a pitcher.

Danged if I can figure out captions. Once I do, this will all make sense, excepting the bits with text and some of the pictures.

Tough Guy, Eh?

Lego Guys with Tattoos! (via creativeadawards.com)

Good Luck, and see you in the yesterday

One thing I've noticed during my brief moments of insincere study has shown me, is that no matter what rules have been established for writing, great writers do what they must to produce a desired result.

I tend to do whatever I want; I spread semicolons around like fertilizer, because a million commas, though they are useful, just bother me, like a handful of ants crawling around the text, I prefer to eradicate them via parentheses, and semicolons.

Thus, I've found this article interesting (thanks knicely). Not that I've ever read that thing. Oh, no, I can't remember a word of it. I'm sure I've got it around, and had been told to read it, but I've been to busy reading Great Works of Literary Genius, like King Solomon's Mines, The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Cat in the Hat.

And now (as previously mentioned) I've made a pretense of studying, as superficially as possible, the great ancients, and generally, when a rule is explained, a subsequent note is added to point out that poets did whatever they wanted, and the rules aren't reliable guideposts in their world. They typically made their own.

Now I'm not saying we should launch ourselves into anarchy (though that would be incredible), all I'm saying that is that that Grammar Nazis Must Die, and If I feel the need, I will tip it generously.

A thingie or something

Well, I liked Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, so why not another parody?

Congrats whoever put this together!

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Love this, reminds me of the Hippie Blood option for Serious Sam:

He who reads these words of wit

"George Stalmos Plato was a rugged individual of ordinary vices, but few thought that he would rob a bank and shoot a handful of policemen during his daring escape, and they were quite right, he didn't.

Instead, he played Parcheesi all day in an underground Chinese gambling den, filled with smoke and the aroma of countless people reenacting pivotal scenes from 'The Deer Hunter'. He played for keeps, and had a huge collection of Parcheesi pieces hidden under the floorboards in his second story walkup outside of Hoboken, Wisconsin.

There, he spent most of his nights sleeping off the whiskey he stole from the other kids desks at Mrs. Henderson's 4th grade class that he attended daily.

His parents, of course, objected strenuously to these audacious undertakings, but the job of a mortician payed well, and there was plenty of time to finish his homework, the clients weren't going anywhere in a hurry.

One time George attempted to skydive, but gravity wouldn't allow it. Because you can only fall down, not up, he discovered. I'm pretty sure he wrote that down, but he was pretty woozy from the serious head injuries he had sustained during this ill fated adventure, and was lucky to make it home in time for his brother's bar mitzvahs the following day.

So, anyway, I'm sure there was a point to this, but my doctor tells me that, due to court order, I'm no longer able to steal his psychiatric files and must resort to merely repeating what Wikileaks posted, which was very little, considering that he lives inside my thumb."

The preceding paragraphs were found scrawled on a bathroom wall at the McDonald's down the street from our corporate headquarters here on the Moon, and we figured it beat the pants off most of the articles we steal here at Prefect Entertainment "Your Unending Source for Edufuntainment, Where Fun is Always Crammed in to Every Damn Thing" (PUYUSEWFACEDT on the NYSE Ticker).

Recent News of Note

So, one of my minions hell-bent on your entertainment, hacked into your webcam and internet browsing history. He spent an hour trying to decipher your ridiculous attempt at organizing files, took some snapshots of you in your undies eating a pile of little chocolate doughnuts (the breakfast of champions), and finally sent in his report to our inept marketing team to use as coasters on their endless drinking binge.

One of those reports (internet browsing history and list of of illegal music downloads, H through Q) wound up in a hotel room next to a dead hooker with a phone number on it (the report). I sent someone in to steal the report back from the police lockup, but apparently it was stolen by a copper with comedic aspirations, and was being used as material for his stand-up routine.

Fortunately, I don't think there is any evidence of our involvement in the matter, but I thought I'd let you all know.

On an unrelated matter, carefully constructed homing humor missiles are at a record low this year, Yakov Smirnoff had this to say "Let me go, I've done nothing! Who are you? I'm calling the police!"

More seriously, why are dead hookers and hobos so funny? People always laugh uncomfortably when they find I've left a few in their apartments, but it should be disturbing and horrible. Go figure.

Have you ever listened to 'Rhapsody in Blue' by Gershwin? It's a masterpiece of musical storytelling. It's the pure emotion of an adventure, raw experience without leaving your brain.

I find the great music I love similar perhaps, in that way, that, while Johnny Cash or Neil Young can sing a fantastic ballad using words to guide us, some composers or artists can create an experience in your mind without any conscious details, an experience of auditory impressionism, as it were, in which your mind constructs an imaginary world, guided only by the flow of music.

Perhaps this could be called 'subconscious', but that's just pretentious psychobabble those left wing elitists use when they call our catering staff in for another round of 'guess the bipolar sou chef'. I prefer my own interpretation of a misunderstood Blakian 'poetic genius', that our souls (our poetic genii) are touched directly by music, like a cat is touched by an electric spark when you rub it against a car battery.

I've been told by our legal department that they are actually 'not lawyers, stop bothering us' but I wonder what would happen if I fired off another nasty letter to the Tallahassee Police Department about their unfavorable portrayal of wallpaper thieves and hobo murderers, but still signed it in the Klingon script favored by my law firm of 'Taco Bell Manager Steve and Guy Who Sells Weed Behind the Gap, LLC, DLC, ACL, RBI'? Would they continue to send undercover bounty hunters and vice squad femme fatales into our corporate headquarters then? Huh, would they? WOULD THEY?

I think not.

Our last lawsuit worked out fine, and our lifetime supply of horse shoes is still going strong, but oddly, our horse shoe store we opened at the Promenade is failing miserably. I attribute that to the underwhelming success of our 'stick horses heads into peoples beds while they sleep' marketing scheme our drunk marketing team scrawled on a napkin for me after I paid them their monthly per diem.

That's it for the news from Lake Woebegonorillshootthisbunnyintheface, where the men are pretty neatly plastered, the women all have Spanish accents, and the children work in coal mines.

Just a few inches to the right

I sat here for a while, desperately waiting for a response to my last post, which was completely educational and sane, but got to thinking.

There is a toilet plunger (a plumber's helper) sitting adjacent my commode, and every time I walk in there, I imagine a scenario in which I completely miss the pot, and descend with full force onto the dry wood handle of the plunger, and accidentally find it rammed several feet into my rectum.

What sort of agony would follow? How much friction would be involved in the removal of said plunger? Would I need to see a doctor, could I face him? Could I come up with a good joke to use in the emergency room to distract everyone from my theoretical predicament?

I don't know.

Oh, and please don't over-analyze this.

YAAAAAARRRRR! Thar she blows!

As a favor to all of you scam artists and spammers who frequent my blog for mindless entertainment and easy money, I've decided to vomit forth a bit of educational sludge for your consumption and perhaps draw you out from your dead end jobs writing bots and spiders to crawl the web looking for morons like us.

To that end, and forthwith, heretofore, and et cetera, et cetera, to wit:

1. Facts are your friends. Feed them well, but not after midnight.

I had a Fact once, but with medication, it cleared up after a day or two.

2. Always spread goodwill and cheer everywhere you go. Nutella might work, but is messy.

I once knew a guy called Cheer Goodwill, but he overdosed on bullets, and his name was Stanley Vermicelli.

3. This space reserved.

4. This space is really number 3.

5. All things are ultimately educational, but not all educational things are really ultimately things, unless you count what isn't really being a thing which isn't.

6. Make sure you edit for clarity, because stuff in your mind is clear to you, but may be useless gibberish to the rest of the world.

I once wrote useless gibberish, but then the New York Times hired me full time and I got writer's block.

Good night everybody!

Sing Merrily

When Helios was high in the heavens, and the earth bore the fury of summer heat, near a quiet, glassy lake, sat a young shepherd, throwing stones into the lake.

He sat on the sandy shore and watched a few geese meander towards a laughing stream that fed the thirsty lake. The stream flowed down from the snowy mountains, and through a dark wood, until it reached the life giving lake, where sat the young man with his flock, and friendly geese.

But soon the curious laughing song of the river lured him away, to follow the bubbling stream, to find the source from which it sprung, to see the voice that sang the song. He left his work behind, and entered the dark wood.

Quickly, the soft mossy shores vanished, and the boy was left to climb on boulders and sharp rocks, and still he followed the voice that now echoed on the rocks, in harmonious song.

Soon the water turned white with rage, threating to dash the careless to pieces in it's angry froth. The voice was faint, nearly drowned by the sound of the violent tempest below, but the boy cautiously continued along, ignored the warning of the friendly stream, in search of the neverending song:

Sing merrily, we rush along,

come and dance with me!

Sing merrily, we'll rush away,

and find the crashing sea!

Dance endlessly, come dance with me!

And we will cross the sea.

Dance and sing,

Laugh merrily,

And we can forever be.

Now the flowing stream gave up it's warning, and revealed a deep blue pool, in the misty mountain. The siren song was now only whispered from the deep, but was overwhelming to the ears of the enchanted lad, who stared into the darkening gloom, hoping to catch a glimpse of the source of the song which had drawn him here.

Night had fallen and Helios' chariot had crossed the sky, the glassy surface of the deepening pool mirrored the refulgent stars above, and the moon illumined the sparkling eyes of a beautiful naiad with her sisters down below. Overcome, the young man hurled himself in, and descended to it's murky depths to join them.

Too tired to go on, must sleep

So I recently watched Repo Man, and I was struck by it's similarities to Donnie Darko. A somewhat angsty fantasy that not only makes a profound comment on society, but leaves you wondering what the hell is going on.

That both of these masterpieces managed to exist despite their respective creators provides me with a conundrum. I don't know if you've seen Southland Tales, or anything else created by the nutjob responsible for Donnie Darko, but they are really insane, as if the dude was given way too much freedom just because of his previous success.

Now I don't know what the hell else Alex Cox, the Repo Man creator did, but I think that proves my point. One burst of creative genius, and that seems to have been it.

Some guys keep doing the same thing over and over, capitalizing on their success, but ultimately driving the world to boredom in a great big monotonous bus. Tim Burton's is painted like a damn mime, and really creepy.

In conclusion, some things just appear to be stuck in a man's brain. Is there a way to escape this creative doldrum? Do escape attempts become monotonous and boring in and of themselves?

Did you know Jim Carrey plays a drugged out rocker in a Dirty Harry movie?

Randy Greenman's Completely True Tale

Greetings, boys and girls!

This message is brought to you by "Sasquatch" brand deodorant, because smelling like a mysterious hairy ape is sexy as snotballs.

I don't remember when it started, it could have been after Aunt Judy fried up a pair of gym socks and served them for supper, but I think it may have been earlier, perhaps when Grandma Fitzburger got caught breaking into the City Zoo again.

Somewhere around then, aliens stole Grandma's house, and the whole family all climbed aboard the Winnebago to get her back.

We hit the freeway a little after 3 in the afternoon, and before you could say "You must be kidding me!" we were airborne over the Piggly Wiggly.

Before long, we passed over the City Zoo, and my little brother pointed out where Grandma got busted a few days ago by where the zebras were kept, and we noticed that the zebras strips were all gone.

We drove and drove, and it grew increasingly difficult to spot the road signs through the many clouds below us, but we didn't worry much about making a wrong turn, because we could just follow the stream of geese flying away from the giant alien ship steaming through the stratosphere.

Anyway, we soon landed on the ship, climbed through a broken window, and, faster than you can say "Windows on a spaceship?" we had located a computer terminal with which to find Grandma.

We punched in a lot of random buttons, because alien languages are, um, alien and weird, and soon found where Grandma was held.

That's where it all fell apart. Apparently, using the computer terminal alerted the aliens to our presence, because they all rushed in and tried to arrest us. Thus began the first giant battle.

Dad got wounded a little, because we didn't know that alien guns can shoot through plastic, and he was hiding behind a plastic chair at the time.

When the battle slowed down a little, we made a break for the door, and ran around shooting aliens and looking for the room in which Grandma was being held.

Mom found finally found Grandma, and she had a big bag of zebra stripes with her!

We grabbed her and the bag, and ran back out the window of the ship and climbed aboard the Winnebago. It was pretty messy now after driving for so long, so she had to sit on a pile of dirty clothes and empty cans of Pringles.

But we made it back, and I think that's when the adventure really began.

Glorious Like Dreaming

Food for thought during Wimbledon

Anyone notice that John McEnroe sounds a lot like Bill Murry, or possibly Carl Spackler?

What's wrong with Alice in Underland

Why is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland terrible?

Let's take a close look at this awful movie, and find out.

First, let me stop and say that I really enjoy the art design, and there is actually a lot to like about this, but altogether, it betrays a terrible misunderstanding of Wonderland as a whole.

Burton apparently didn't ever really "feel an emotional connection" to the original, so he found Linda Woolverton and used her story instead. Why? To refresh an aged and worn story we are all tired of? If we are tired of an old overplayed story, then why would another movie version be marketable at all? I don't think that's it. I think the problem is that Burton just doesn't care about the source material, and was never really a fan in the first place.

Carroll's Alice is a masterpiece of absurdity, instead of slipping a pill of a sermon to the audience by wrapping it in a worthless sugar-coated story (as Burton's Woolverton story does), Lewis served up a fantastic masterpiece that turned that little subterfuge on it's head.

While Burton feels the need to have Alice grow as a person and learn about herself (and her role as savior of "Underland" as it's been renamed, giving you an idea of how little Burton thinks of the source) , Carroll shows us an insane world of nonsense to revel in and enjoy.

So, given that Burton's version isn't anything like the original and Burton misunderstands and apparently cares nothing for it, how does his movie stand on it's own merits?

It's an ok movie set in a fantastic world which perfectly captures Carroll's Wonderland, but which completely misses the point and ultimately falls short of being anything other than a cliched mess. If I wanted to watch another gangly misfit find out they are destined to save the world and become a successful assertive adult, I could go watch pretty much any other movie.

Burton has a great eye for design, he's a great artist, and can spin a great tale when he wants to, his interpretation of Alice and earlier, his Willy Wonka, betray his complete inability to connected with, enjoy, or understand timeless classics. There is nothing wrong with adding your own spin on an old standby, but there is no point in stealing titles and themes to sell your own crap.

Listen to the wind rush through the trees, watch it ripple over the water.

Soon the big red robot steams through the wood, to the mossy shore, and sits. He casts a weary eye at the water and motionless remains.

As the big red robot watches the water, a purple iris nearby opens, and out peeks a little winged fairy. While the robot is motionless still, the fairy climbs atop his ruddy head, laughing, dances a little jig.

Dance and laugh, little fairy, and sit, big red robot, along the shores of the Lethe!

Poseidon's Non-Adventure

I guess it all started when Captain Winterbottomsmythe murdered Lady Fitzmattering on the Southern croquet court one nice day in May.

It all went downhill from there. The butcher when belly-up, the green-grocer was chased from town for being a commie sympathizer, and the newspaper (only one in town) was deep in the red.

Soon our little village was a wreck, and everyone treated everyone else with suspicion and little whispered threats under their breath.

The Winterbottomsmythes loomed bitterly over the whole shebang, unaware of the many ghosts that were on their way to haunt the joint.

* * *

From his point of vantage above the lonely village, Gerald tossed another paper airplane into a gust of wind. The wind picked it up and hurled it clumsily back over Gerald's head and over behind him somewhere. Gerald took spoonful of soup and began folding another.

* * *

Underneath the ocean, Poseidon puffed on a bubble pipe, and scratched his beard.

Guide of Guides.

Prefect Travel Guide

Survival Kit:

• Always remember to bring an egg of Silly Putty, because you never know when you'll need to copy a Bazooka Joe comic strip.
• You need a compass so you can draw perfect circles.
• A deck of cards to while away the time and make some money
• Bazooka Bubble gum for an adhesive and comics to read
• A real survival kit

Clothes:

Clothes are important because they keep you warm and keep spiders off of you. I recommend a hat; either a Fedora or a Bowler, depending on how British you are.

Pants are a good idea, and some gloves for when you need to pull a pizza out of an oven and you don't want to burn your fingers.

Shoes are important, as your feet are a large percentage of the end of your legs.

Kung Fu:

You will need several varieties of kung fu, as different places have different styles. Kung fu is banned in several places, so don't advertise your skills.

Food:

Always bring a snack. Ideally one that fits in your pockets, like jelly beans or club sandwiches. I usually recommend cleaning the lint out of your pockets before a journey to keep your jelly beans nice and lint-free, but some lint may come in handy on the rare occasion you need a good distraction or lint. You never know what you'll find to eat in an alien world.

Weapons:

While the bigger the better usually applies--on a trip, big weapons are exhausting to carry around, and attract the attention of gendarmes and golems, so I stick with the basics: knives, poisons, little beetles with machetes, and universal computer viruses.

Books:

Always bring a cookbook, a copy of "How to win friends and disembowel people", and a couple of really big books to impress people and flowers.

Top 10 myths about lawncare

1. Garden Gnomes keep evil spirits away.

This is a myth, Garden Gnomes, while fairly benign, are powerless against the elder spirits, bad or good. They do promote a healthy garden, but are likely to be vandalized, and the little imps are apt to play practical jokes and steal things. They really aren't worth it.

Theoretically, they do make good allies against the forces of evil, but are so amazingly fickle and troublesome, I recommend leaving them be.

2. Fire ants eat invisible parasitic organisms known as 'bacteria'.

Science hasn't yet convinced anyone that 'bacteria' exist, let alone what fire ants eat, other than chili peppers. Oddly enough, this myth is fairly widespread.

3. Cutting grass destroys precious fairy habitat.

While technically possible, most fairies prefer flowers over grass. Fairies are also happy enough living anywhere above ground really.

4. Lawncare professionals are stupid liars.

Nonsense.

5. Using chemicals will help my lawn.

Contrary to all recognized good sense and science, using harsh chemicals will only upset the delicate balance of magic present in the world. It's a waste of money, and may poison dryads and hot-air balloon aficionados. Experts instead recommend using the following nature friendly substitutes:

Beer - Fertilizer

Treacle - Pesticide

Lemon Curd - pH balance

6. Gas Powered machinery is alien to our world.

Internal Combustion Engines were developed here on earth, though the source of their original designs is unknown. I believe there is sufficient evidence to prove conclusively that these engines are purely terrestrial. Jet engines, of course, are advanced devilry from another planet.

7. Croquet may damage my lawn.

Croquet is ancient sport of kings and queens which most grass finds agreeable, though certain types of grass (crab grass, astro-turf, mercury spats, devil grass) may react violently or die without warning. Some grass has been trained to cheat visiting players at the game, so offer it some sweet wine before playing to make sure it's on your side.

8. If I leave my home, the grass stays there.

This is actually true, except in extremely rare cases, your grass should remain firmly rooted to the ground.

9. Scarecrows will keep pesky crows away from my lawn.

Scarecrows actually do little in the way of scaring crows. The only reliable method is to install peacocks or flamingos.

10. People will think less of me for having a sub-par lawn.

While there are a lot of jerks out there, the condition of your lawn is mostly a reflection of the condition of your soil than your soul.

Several cults originating in France found their way to suburban areas of the US, where people worship the gods of grass, instead of merely observing them in amusement. Members of such cults may turn up their noses at unkempt lawns, but they are snobby insecure little prats.

Monster

So anyway, Robert put the finishing touch on his new robot, and with a moment's hesitation, pressed the big red button and threw a giant switch, causing a shower of sparks to leap from the contacts.

The big red monstronsity before him shuddered and groaned, it resembled a collapsed scaffold with a few pieces of heavy machinery buried in the twisted beams of steel and iron. Big puffs of smoke spewed from the rusty behemoth's innards and sat fixed above like a dark omen.

A big red screen lit up and a few roman numerals flashed in sequence. Robert scrawled down the numbers on a notepad, and tossed another switch.

This time the monstrosity rose a few shakey feet into the air, accompanied by the screams of tortured metal and earth.

'OK so far,' Robert commented.

'Hurrrrrrrr' the robot said.

twitterschmitter

Almost forgot to say that our dear friend Cerebron has started a twitter account, because firing off updates in the middle of high-flying kung fu action is easier that way.

Twitter.com/CerebronIX (I believe) is the url at which you can find our favorite nut.

Smackadoo

Just thought I'd share with the tiny fragment of our demented world that is oddly curious about what an intergalactic journalist for the galaxy's foremost publisher of tripe and deceitful advertising has to say about essentially nothing, my latest creative epiphany of epic proportions.

Then I got to thinking about how I typically, and without warning—unless you are familiar with my fantastic and wonderfully predicable style—change the subject and radically dismiss everything I convinced you was important.

So I changed my mind and wrote something vitally important instead. I sent it off the the New York Times, and received a scathing letter of reprimand in return, rebuking my attempt to sully the good name of Benedict de Spinoza, and to please not use so many semi-colons and scatological epithets when referring to the Duke of Plaza-Toro's solicitors.

Nonsense, of course. My literary accomplishments have earned me the right to say whatever I want to say about whatever it is that strikes my fancy at the time, whether or not I forgot where I was going at this particular junction.

In this sense, one must understand that Achilles was not only a great and honorable warrior, but a true revolutionary in his re-evaluation of the honor system by which the Greek warrior lived his life.

One may be somewhat curious as to the state of mind of the author capable of writing like this, but one must not wear one's hat on one's nose, unless it's a very small beret or possibly a deerstalker and one is really ugly or perhaps one of the despicable crusty clown types.

This is of course, a proverb from the Zoroastrian guru, Mikhail Kittybottom. I've stolen it and have it locked up in a safety deposit box, lest the Zoroastrian religion once again spread across the land and consume all of our Tropicana Orange Juice, as it once did in the time of great cheese and rotten TV.

Take that you bastards.

Ok, wise guys, who's the hoppiest frood this side of Hawaii 5-0's Jack Lord?

You guessed it, it's me--Ford "the Cuticle" Prefect, posting one of my ever-popular Q&A sessions, and utilizing the lazy man's em dash.

Without further adieu (because goodbyes are so hard), let us begin at the beginning, where all good things start, unless you count epic poetry, which sometimes starts just before the middle begins.

Q. How you be so crazy?

A. Never you mind. This isn't the time, nor the place, Dr. Trussman. I know it's you, with your psychoanalysis, and your court orders, but this is a fun place for me to escape the misery of everyday life, to find release from crippling guilt over... nothing. I refuse to play your little game.

Q. How many strawberries does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. A house.

Q. What's the fun in stealing a car and driving it off a cliff?

A. I REFUSE TO PLAY YOUR LITTLE GAMES.

Q. What's your inspiration for writing?

A. The cast of Ghostwriter

A. 5th Element

Q. What's your favorite movie?

Q. Why would anyone leave spam comments on an otherwise unpolluted and awesome bloggomat?

A. They are nozzles of the highest odor.

Q. What convinced you that anyone would read this tripe, mildly entertaining though it may be?

A. I'll start cutting up these hostages man.

Q. So what would you say is a healthy level of exuberance in an average post-potty celebration?

A. I believe it's based on the amount of relief you experienced, times the density of the BM, minus the odor and only a fraction of a point for sticking the landing.

A. I heard you were a word nerd?

A. I tire of your insolence.

Q. Who would win in a battle to the death; Batman, or the Blob?

A. This is a trick question. Batman can't kill anyone, it's his only flaw. And the Blob may not even be alive.

Q. So, Donatello or Brunelleschi?

A. I think I prefer Bruneslleshi's simplicity over the complexity of Donatello. Turtle jokes aside.

Q. Seriously though, do you think the planet Hoth's gravity would have made the Empire's walking things impractical to use in the snow?

A. Wait, I've got a Ninja Turtle joke somewhere

Q. Do you think that my starter might be going?

A. Hold on, I've got an answer to that Star Wars thing

Q. I'm serious about my starter

A. I'm serious about my damn Ninja Turtle joke

Q. Moving on, I thought you were witty and had quick comebacks, like those people on the TV.

A. I'm doing my best. Wait, Donatello was the one with the stick right? Leonardo had the sword, am I right?

Q. Answer the question about my starter, then I have one more, and you can go back to playing video games.

A. Ok, does it click when you turn the key?

Q. What's the proper way to end an interview?

Video Game Review! Oh noes!

"Army of TWO: 40th Day" is an ambitious mess of a game. It opens with a bang, as an entire city explodes all around the player, but the game ultimately cascades down around the player in much the same way.

Ok. So it's actually really fun, especially with a friend. Customizing weapons and thinking out battlefield tactics, such as flanking maneuvers, cover fire, etc. are the main draw in this game, which is presented with an entertaining cinematic flair. The game is a fun experience with a friend along, and in fact, if you haven't got one, would seem to have lots of weird design decisions, like playing "rock paper scissors" with your teammate. Wait. That is still a weird design, why is that even in this game?

The game is plagued with horrible design; unskippable cutscenes abound, and if you want to play Versus, you have to load up a Versus menu (and load times are unbearably long).

I played with a friend, and--playing on a high difficulty because we aren't pussies, and we are slaves to the Achievement trap--we attempted a tough level over and over until we passed it, and then the game once disconnected us, and once just bugged out so no further progress was possible. At that point, the game was a chore and subject to much cursing.

Weapon customization is pretty fun, lots of crazy ideas can be played with there, do you want a polka dot sniper rifle, or a shotgun with a shield on the front? Go ahead, go nuts! But make sure you pass the next checkpoint afterwards, because if you don't, you will have to customize your weapon all over again, wasting even more time through loading screens, etc.

This game is actually pretty frustrating. Maybe if you've got a buddy and something to take the edge off, you'll enjoy it, but it's actually not a good game. It's an ok game, if this was 1998, it might be a phenomenal game, but why bother with a subpar mess of a game with horrible controls and terrible programming in this day and age? Or any?

Screw it. This game is pretty bad.

Jordan Stuart, Spaceman. Part II

Jordan Stuart peeked around the corner at the four grimy space pirates fumbling around with a large Pulse Repeater 3000, and, noticing that the Repeater's charge cannister had fallen on the floor, clicked the lever on his blaster over burst fire mode. He listened for the slight hum, and felt for the barely noticeable vibrations in the handle of the blaster that indicated a full charge.

Then, very coolly, and without pause, he raised the blaster to the ready position, and spun around the corner, fired four shots in rapid succession, and felled all four disgusting space pirates, three scaly, and one incredibly hairy.

This sort of thing had been going on ever since he and his incredibly beautiful and intelligent girlfriend, Zoe, and abandoned the Earth in the midst of a horrific zombification. Now their lives where filled with more adventure than a normal earthling could handle.

Not long ago, they had barely out-maneuvered a jagged and lumpy pirate ship through an asteroid field, stopped at a damp rest-planet to catch a game of space cricket. There, the pirates caught up to them, and they somehow ticked off the Glastic Royal Guards of Remly 9, and thoroughly riled the population of parasitic ice slugs orbiting Station Phi outside of Theta Quadrant.

Of course, all of this, new and confusing as it would be to any human, was taken in stride and handled professionally and with scathing wit and a great deal of exciting chases and sarcasm by Jordan and Zoe, and they zipped through the galaxy in their Silver Dart, the sexiest space-craft Earthman had ever devised, the first and only one capable of such adventures.

Right now, Zoe had fallen victim to the oldest scam in the galaxy, and been enslaved to some sort of tyrannical space bean, and once again, Jordan launched another hair-brained scheme to rescue her. Most of his schemes were too wild to work, but somehow all came together in the end to the benefit of the good guys.

This scheme mostly consisted of charging straight into the lion's den, and punching everyone in his way, shooting the odd alien who was either impossible to punch, or brandished some sort of weapon.

After dispatching the aforementioned pirates, Jordan made his way further into the pulsating moss-covered lair of the Evil King Bean, and found Zoe working her way out behind a hostage she was using to shield herself from various lasers, particle beams, and pesticides that were fired in her direction.

Jordan provided accurate cover fire, and they both edged out of the wide open foyer, and down into a random hallway where they could control the advance of their enemy, and enjoy the holographic artwork hanging on the walls.

Zoe kicked her hostage into an incidental table covered in knickknacks, and together, our fantastic couple backpedaled down the hallway, firing the odd shot at whatever alien was foolhardy enough to stick his head or whatever appendage had an eye on it around the corner.

Soon, they found themselves in the shiny metal shipbay area--a nice change of scenery from the creepy mold structure that made up the rest of the palace--and climbed aboard a small, round little contraption that hovered them out through the main gate, and they sailed away, back to the Silver Dart carefully hidden in a cave.

Caractacus

Sun set, that fiery chariot dove into the briny deep. Night fell, and the world plunged into darkness. The moon hid her face, and the world was still.

Swiftly through the night our hero ran, though the darkness hid his way. His feet well knew the way he trod, and truly kept the path.

One by one the stars winked out, and the way grew rough and wild. Yet on our hero went, slower now, and slower.

Why you ask, why this rush? Why at night this bold, courageous hurry? I'll tell you now, lend an ear, rest your head, and hear this song I sing.

The story of Caractacus, our hero brave, and Lily White, his love so true and fair; began so long ago, when first they met, at court one summer's day.

Their love was pure and fast, though doomed so soon by trouble. An evil sign, a bird flew by, and those who saw they shuddered.

The summer past, and their ways too soon were parted. Lily White was spirited away, across the mountains and sea.

So now our hero, Caractacus, has sailed off to find her. Across the sea, to foreign lands, wherever the wind did lead him.

Almost there, the darkness falls, and again, his love he loses. But when the stars come out, and in the night, of Lily White, a glimpse again he catches.

Regaining strength, his wits he gathers, and off again he flies. Forever lost, and yet so close, you'll find the hero, Caractacus.

His endless search throughout the world will never end, but sometimes at night, when the stars go out, you'll catch a glimpse of white.

And that, my friend, is prize he seeks, his love so true and fair. And sometimes at night, if the light's just right, you'll see the hero Caractacus.

Indeed.

Bah. The holidays are thingie and whatnot, leading to the whatsits and something, and a severe shortage of the various bits that make reading interesting.

However cobbled together these bits were, Todd continued wrenching them from the ether, in an effort to create what used to be described as 'stories'. These had disappeared over the years, in either the greatest, most devastating robbery ever, or perhaps just through apathy and a general miscarriage of justice.

Either way, Todd had no idea what he was doing, and after a few failed attempts, just started stringing together names of breakfast cereals and soft drinks.

This worked quite well, and established a good base for further attempts, using names of print shops and convenience stores. These latter attempts grew slightly more depressing as time went on, though several works were pure genius, and a few were hilariously bad.

Todd made a fortune from these works, mostly from large corporations paying for advertising. So, Todd's income depended primarily on large corporations, which unfortunately where destroyed in the 3rd Great Marketing Wars, leaving things a bit worse off, (notably, Todd.) However, the end of these monstrous corporations signaled the beginning of true creativity, hobbled though it may be by the lack of cereal boxes to riff off of.

Creativity, then, struck without warning, and with the triumphant decline of marketing organizations. Creativity blazed away with both barrels for a time, leaving people like Todd riddled with bullets and crippling holes in their chests.