Prefect Entertainment

Thingies of which are something

2012-01-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

"Something worth writing," he said to himself as he poured a handful of coffee through the cracks in the floorboards. The hot coffee scalded his hand, but the eager mouth down below didn't notice.

Ronald pondered sporadically. The tree on which his house was built swayed in the warm breeze, and the koala underneath noisily lapped up the remains of Ronald's breakfast. When the tree creaked loudly, Ronald's pondering was interrupted by panic.

He had a lot of brilliant ideas, but none of them took shape. They were all rendered grotesque when they reached the ends of his fingers. Faced with his own prose, Ronald was disgusted. Faced with a 4 foot tall ant, he was terrified.

The ant moseyed around the tiny house, feeling its way carefully around the furnishings, searching for whatever an ant may lust.

Of course, the natural reaction of a human to an ant is less than cordial, but in this case, not knowing the capability of an ant of extraordinarily large size, Ronald considered politeness the best course of action. He could use the time to evaluate any weakness, his own odds of survival, and whether this monster had friends. Who knows? maybe the ant was friendly.

Koalas don't normally shower in hot coffee, and neither do they consume it. This koala was slightly unusual in that regard, and also in the regard that he wore pants and drove a golf cart.

Maybe the ant knew the koala, maybe it hitched a ride on the koala's cart. Or maybe it was a some sort of other-worldly ant from another dimension, here to steal all of Ronald's playing cards.

Ronald worked up enough courage to manage a muted "How do you do?", which appeared to have some effect, as the ant paused its aimless meandering for a moment.

"How do you do?" creaked the ant.

2012-01-09T23:56:00.001-08:00

Seeing as how someone managed to stumble across my little (woefully neglected) corner of the Intergalactic Sub-etha Net, I suppose I ought to write something.

I haven't been in the greatest of moods lately, so instead of being creative, I've been destructive.

I will try to actually write something worth reading in the morning.

Who?

2011-07-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

Awesomeshirts!

I needs one!

Awake

2011-06-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

This show looks mindblowing:

I've had dreams a little like this, where I felt I knew something wasn't right, but could not communicate this concept to those who needed to know.

Of course, if it's really good, it'll be cancelled after 4 episodes.

Nylecargssim!

2011-06-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

I've not updated in some time, and refuse to acknowledge this fact.

Instead, how are things with you?

Oh, all right.

So this one time, Greg and Periwinkle St. Flammisham were kite-boarding off the coast of St. Tropez when a huge gust of of wind snatched them both up and carried them far away.

They slept on fluffy clouds, sipped the morning dew, and supped on sweat meats brought to them by the birds. The world was far below, and at night shined like a thousand lightning bugs in a summer's wood.

Zephyr strummed his aeolian harp, and they drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, they awoke to find themselves upon a mountaintop. Warm furs were laid out for their clothes, and a breakfast of fried cakes and wine was set before them.

They feasted in wonder at their surroundings, and spoke excitedly to each other.

"Holy balls!" Greg said. "What happened? Where are we?"

"I don't know." Periwinkle replied. "But you are eating bugs."

Greg glanced around. The world slowly fell apart.

When things settled down, Greg was sitting on a rock on the coast of St. Tropez. His mouth was full of bugs and he was covered in blood and bruises.

"That was a hell of a dream." He choked, before passing out once again.

Premakes!

2011-01-26T19:32:00.000-08:00

How amazing is this?

All credit, of course, to the genius creator.

Story Title.

2011-01-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

"So, anyway," quoth the slithy Bringe, "Everything was on fire, except the oven, so we hid in there until the ship was done crashing into the planet."

Once again, the Bringe was exaggerating at length to an intoxicated audience of space slugs and derelicts in Goe's Space Tavern. This time, he was recounting the time the Good Millennium Blump bloopered into the atmosphere of Boogoo 9.

The much traveled Bringe had stowed away on everything from freighters to race ships, and being locked up in solitude for vast amounts of time bottled everything up inside, and like a fizzy drink, his thoughts exploded all over innocent bystanders as soon as he had a chance to open up.

The actual events as they occurred, became all mixed up and amplified inside his pink little brain, and so the adventures became colored by his imagination to the point where they appeared impossibly unlikely, though hugely entertaining.

As a result, he commanded large audiences of enthralled space refuse in various hotspots across the galaxy with his outrageous tales of adventure and derring do.

This particular story was one of his favorites, he had read it off the back of a cereal box packed in a crate, and memorized it over the several years it took to travel the length of Perseus 6.5.

Judicious application of spirits prompted the appropriate embellishments, and soon, the entire Tavern was hanging on his every word.

Fallout Themed, I guess.

2010-12-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-12-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

This year in film

2010-12-14T01:00:00.001-08:00

Simply amazing.

Abracadabra, a title!

2010-12-09T13:11:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-12-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T00:36:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-14T15:30:00.001-07:00

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

Again with the updates

2010-10-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-09-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

All credit to the original frood.

Zoom zoom zoom

2010-09-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

Q: How awesome is this?

A: Scary awesome!

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

Q&A

2010-09-12T23:25:00.001-07:00

Q:How amazing is this?

A: Pretty amazing.

It was a dark and stormy night

2010-09-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-02T15:13:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-01T21:38:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-08-30T22:36:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-08-19T09:34:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-16T19:42:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-02T12:46:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-31T18:17:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Lego Guys with Tattoos! (via creativeadawards.com)

Good Luck, and see you in the yesterday

2010-07-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

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

Congrats whoever put this together!

Tripping the Light Fantastic

2010-07-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

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

He who reads these words of wit

2010-07-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-07-23T12:05:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

Food for thought during Wimbledon

2010-06-26T10:42:00.001-07:00

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

What's wrong with Alice in Underland

2010-05-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-04-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-03-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

"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

2010-01-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

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.

Google Wave

2009-11-30T19:23:00.000-08:00

Gonna play with Google Wave for awhile, I might attempt to integrate it with this site, but for what purpose?

It's like inventing a pivoting socket wrench before many people have bolts to deal with, it's a fantastic tool for solving an unimportant issue.

Anyway, how should I implement it?

1905 San Francisco

2009-11-29T22:26:00.000-08:00

See ancient San Francisco, and marvel, all ye who look thereupon! The amount of awesome here is palpable.

Jordan Stuart, Spaceman.

2009-11-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

One day, as Peter sighted down the barrel of his 30-30, searching for the most vulnerable part of the slowly advancing zombie, he paused to consider his various life choices that led to this horrible situation.

The monsters had attacked earlier, a sign of the impending apocalypse, but were largely ignored by the smart people, while the simple-minded loaded their rifles and let fly at anything that appeared suspect. Smart people are stupid like that.

Peter's life choices had been generally poor in the past, but deciding to always carry a rifle everywhere had been a spectacularly good one. Not only was it handy for shooting ATF agents and endangered species, it was also good for shooting zombies and monsters.

He spit a wad of chew into the bushes and squeezed off another shot, blasting a fountain of gore into the air.

"Eat that, ya dirty zombie" he quipped.

* * *

Above the burning apocalypse hovered a lonely spacecraft, a classic rocketship with big fins and lots of chrome, the kind that cool people fly. This little baby went completely unnoticed, as most of the people and institutions responsible for noticing these things were either zombified or on fire.

Inside was a really cool cat, the man who had stolen this sexy spacecraft from Ferris Aeronautics himself, Jordan Stuart. He chomped on a cigar, poured another shot of whiskey, and stared at the amber Earth below through his sunglasses.

"Dunno," he said to his amazingly beautiful girlfriend who sat next to him, "Think we should stick around?"

"Blow this joint." She responded. He flipped a switch, grasped the controls in his big manly hands, and stomped on something on the floor which sent them hurtling into the nether.

* * *

Below them, the Earth consumed itself. Ragtag teams of misfits and solitary heroes fought bravely, a few big budget explosions wiped out major cities, but the survivors didn't have a chance.

* * *

Aboard the Earth's only known rocketship, Jordan and his girlfriend Zoe poured over a bunch of charts and shopping catalogs. They sipped the drinks they poured, and relaxed in comfy chairs when they weren't in the control room pushing buttons and reading control screens. The life support systems would last indefinitely, and the chances of getting bit by a zombie were slim to none. Infomercials were a thing of the past.

Day after whatever you could call a day in space passed, as they rocketed through the empty night. Through the chaos, and past the edges of our known solar system, Earth's coolest couple flew. Where, they knew not. But they didn't care. Anywhere was better than the hell-hole they had left.

* * *

Ping.

* * *

While Jordan and Zoe slept, the ships computer recorded a signal emanating from a standard galactic navigational beacon. These were installed throughout the galaxy when super-high speed travel hit the mainstream, as normal dead reckoning methods were obsoleted, and new methods were required.

With no way to know this, our heroes continued to shoot through space, leaving the beacon far behind them.

Their passage was not completely without incident however, as the beacon relayed all relevant information regarding their passage to the Galaxy Travel Board (a now defunct agency), and a small device taped to the side of the beacon sent the same information to a dark and jagged ship orbiting a large asteroid nearby.

The jagged ship was crewed by a nasty band of outlaws, escaped convicts, tax collectors, the flotsam and jetsam of the criminal world, and general riff-raff of space. These turned to piracy as their main revenue source, and hid from the authorities in the far reaches of the galaxy, waiting on the signal from a hijacked beacon to launch them into action.

* * *

The Pirate Captain leered into his readout screen and tugged his beard thoughtfully.

"Unknown craft, probably a small private vessel." A nearby crewman read out, his tentacles waving around, pushing buttons and moving food in and out his various food orifices.

The Captain nodded, "We need the practice anyway."

He gave the order to attack.

Sir Lord John Fritzlebald's Adventure Journal

2009-11-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

11/2/09 My last adventure was cut short as I had urgent business at home to which I was forced to attend, and after a great deal of thought and consideration, I have decided to embark once again on the Great Adventure. Having learned the harsh lessons the last failed adventure had to teach, I made absolutely certain that the booze would not run out.

11/4/09 I picked up some more Ovaltine, just in case, and stowed it among the boxes of fedoras and crates of alcohol already aboard the steamer Poseidon's Nipple, and set about a devious scheme to cheat the sailors at cards.

11/19/09 Sick, extremely sick. Most of the booze was lost in a card game which I pretty much won, but some sailors convinced me that sharing the booze was more advisable than getting stabbed for cheating at cards. I've been drinking water for 2 days and mal de mer is unbearable.

11/22/09 We stopped in some port or another, and stocked up on the local beer and wine, which is pretty vile, but it beats the bilge water I've been forced to consume. Also, the captain owns part of my estate back home, on account of a straight flush.

11/23/09 First mate Something Smith is now captain of this d____ boat, as the original captain left for home, probably to take command of my house and servants, which I hope murder him in his sleep, the cheating b_____.

11/25/09 Stock of beer is gone, we are reduced to drinking the local wines like savages. Several of the men have lit a fire on the deck and are roasting an animal or something over it, but as the leader of this expedition, I must attend to the important things, like building a still in the hold so we don't die.

11/27/09 Most of the ship was destroyed in a fire, but we've fortunately found a hotel here in Portsmouth and I've sent back home for more supplies. While the ship burned, the still failed catastrophically and I was unable to salvage it. Also, many of the men are dangerously angry for some reason. I hope their stupid hut they constructed out of charred boat pieces falls on their ugly heads.

11/28/09 Hotel is quite nice, I think I'll recuperate here before launching into another harrowing adventure, my supplies have arrived, and I'm quite content with the lodgings. I shall remain here until these supplies run dry and then will set out on the hazardous journey home where I shall confront said captain. This adventure is over for now.

2009-11-26T00:17:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand, I will appease my teeming masses of fans with yet another, shockingly terse and devastatingly hilarious postarooni.

I may have set the bar a little high there, so forget I wrote that last bit, and pretend that you aren't sure whether this will be a depressing look into refrigerator maintenance and repair , or possibly an erotic Mario Bros. fan fic.

You are know in the proper mood to enjoy the rest of this literary delight which I hereby present to you, the gullible little mook who has been tricked into visiting this page.

Ahem. Drum roll please!

And begin.

Whoops, had to close another window I was looking at which was Twilight related, and did not want polluting my above average mind which is rapidly filling with nonsense faster than I can spew it out of my fingers.

So now my mind is clear.

Begin.

Aeons ago, in a foggy grey land,

Sat a small village with a lonely kirk,

And a tavern, some sheep and a mule.

But deep in the woods, the foggy grey woods,

Lay two robots, silent and rusty.

Their eyes were stuck shut,

So they could not see the foggy grey land,

Nor the small village with the lonely kirk,

Nor tavern, the sheep or the mule, not each other.

Yet a high frequency blip echoed through the wood.

Oh, the Automaton sighed (for the blip was a voice),

Where am I? And where is my darling?

Where is my Android I've lost in the wood?

She shed a tear and and she sighed.

This is conducive to oxidation.

Another voice wanders through the fog,

In answer and sorrow.

It is quiet, and lost in the wood,

Without anyone to hear it or notice.

The mourning cry of the Android.

Though when the wind changes,

And the North Wind blows,

The Android's cry rides on the wind,

Carried across the water,

He cries for his Automaton.

Rusty and still, the Android sits,

His eyes swollen shut, his head in his lap,

And his heart in a thousand pieces.

His Automaton sits not a foot from his grasp,

But neither one knows this.

If ever you are in the foggy grey woods,

Past the old kirk and tavern,

Listen with care and with kindness

To find the two robots who are lost in the wood,

And oil their joints so I can sleep.

Polaroid Psycho Psanalysis

2009-10-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

Polaroid photos make you look like a murderer. This is a fact. If you manage to scrounge up the now-discontinued-once-ubiquitous camera from the photographic netherworld, snap a picture of your sweetest little kitten or even a prairie dog, and prepare to cringe in an instinctual defense posture as the terrifying face of a psychotic killer stares back at you with cold, beady little eyes.

If you still have a box of old photos lying around somewhere, collecting dust, or have managed to slap those suckers into a photo album (like some sort of crazy person would put polaroids into a nice photo album,) you can dig those up and take a quick peek at your sad embarrassing past.

Done? Ok, are you surprised none of the subjects have murdered and raped their way into a mental institution? If not, you might have had a regular camera, better look a little longer. Polaroids have big white borders, an extra layer, and the image of the very devil captured in every one.

I have a few theories. One is that the polarizing effect only filters out whatever good is present in the world, and only captures the malignant and horrible.

The other theory is that the quality is shit and the lighting is pathetic, and the photographer has the skills of a manatee.

Neither theory is completely supported by the evidence, nor is completely thought out by anyone qualified to make that judgement.

Another theory is that the world is truly evil, and that the camera merely captures the truth of the matter; some have even posited that the mechanism of the camera works on an occult principle, using some sort of demonic imp inside the physical camera itself, sketching the world as seen through it's twisted little eye, but those people are nuts, one should treat their theories with caution.

2009-05-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in some place or another, a tiny village sat. Partly because of the steep and dangerous mountains that surrounded it, and partly because of the fierce dragon that guards it, this village escaped both the detrimental and beneficial effects of time that changed the world around it.

Inside this village, life is simple, vowels are frequent, fairies are benign, and the greatest mind the world has never known works diligently away in a dark and musty study.

Ancient tomes, bubbling concoctions, and whirling contraptions littered the already cramped study, reducing it from cramped to claustrophobic nightmare dimensions with just enough room for one man to navigate the gargantuan piles of books and oddities from cluttered desk to cluttered desk.

The wiry man behind the madness appears to work very hard translating an ancient document of some sort, surrounded by the appropriate paraphernalia related to such a pursuit, but instead he is about half way through a crossword puzzle that sits on his lap. He taps a pencil idly on his chair, and in a moment, reaches behind him to place a phonograph needle back on track before leaning back and taking a sip from a glass sitting on the desk beside him.

This is the lair of one of the great heroes belonging to this village, the Mechanic. The other two are the Captain and the Governor. The Captain spends his days drilling and marching out of doors with his handful of deputies, and the Governor hosts parties every night. Everyone else has a normal job, farming, shepherding, blacksmithing, keeping an eye on the dragon, or mining the mountains for sugar and precious metals.

Everyone in the village knows the Captain and the Governor very well, their hero status is unassailable, but the Mechanic is rarely seen. A few people believe he is a normal villager, perhaps somewhat invalid, or a nut perpetuating a few myths, but he is, indeed, a hero.

All of the Captain's war machines (both of them) were designed by the Mechanic, the Governor's parties are powered by rumbling machines designed by the Mechanic, and oddly enough, the pretty pictures on the wall, and the dazzling coloured light displays are also designed by the Mechanic.

2009-03-09T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sir Lord John Fritzlebald's Adventure Journal

2/1/08 I joined the Intrepid Explorers League, and my first assignment was to explore Lost South American Dinosaur Mesas. I packed up my belongings, and sold them at a slight loss, and then swapped assignments with the tall gentleman from Nice, and then stole the assignment back when he wasn't looking, because looking for Dinosaurs is much safer than exploring Detroit's sewers.

2/2/08 I headed out to Abercrombie & Fitch, American Outfitters, and Hot Topic to load up on supplies, and grabbed a pile of gummy bears and some pretzels for substinence. My canteen was full of Ovaltine, and my heart was full of courage.

2/3/08 The aeroplane I chartered was a rickety old contraption built before the great war, and the pilot seemed about the same age. I had my equipment and unconcious companions were stowed in the back, along with a years supply of booze and sunblock. I entered a drunken stupor at 900 hours, and the flight left at 901 hours.

3/1/08 My drunken stupor has worn off, and I'm surprised to find South America is full of desert, and my mouth is full of blood. I have no idea where the pilot went with the aeroplane, and I believe he absconded with all of my supplies and companions. I have no hope of survival, no booze or women, I may as well sit here and die.

3/2/08 Praise the Heavens! I have constructed a still and am distilling my own liquor from local cacti and crushed insects. Now to do some exploring!

3/3/o8 Crickey, I'm plum done in, right knackered I am, best to sit here and drink a little moonshine.

3/10/08 I've run out of moonshine, and have decided to explore a bit further, perhaps I'll make it to that large house on the hilltop that has been haunting my dreams and hosting loud parties which give me wildly painful headaches.

3/11/08 Just my luck, the the gentleman that owns this house on the hill is an avid hunter, he desires to hunt the 'most dangerous game' in the world, and but I've seen that film before, so I've just bludgeoned him with a crudgel, and stuffed him in a wardrobe while I assault his wine cellar.

3/20/08 Wine cellar depleted, back to the adventure. I crammed my pockets full of port and brandy, and my pack is full of various cheeses and a couple of tongues. My canteen of Ovaltine is still untouched. I swiped a map of the area from a filling station, but I can't read this silly colonial dialect.

3/21/08 Deadly ill, must have eaten something bad, perhaps accidentally drank water?

4/4/08 Pretty tired of all this damned adventuring, I never expected life to be this hard, a couple bottles of the port are corked, and I have to carry all this crap myself. I've been dragging all of my supplies behind me, and I'm exhausted.

4/5/08 Hallejulah, I've been picked up by a kindly gentleman on his way to make a profitable business deal somewhere to the south, I'm well on my way now!

2009-03-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

I didn't really have anything to write today, so I'm posting a few bits of my dreams I had written down not too long ago. This one I had a tough time remembering, but it started with a journey through a enigmatic and eccentric building filled with odd bits buried in the cornerse of my mind somewhere.

The comforting reward room is packed with jokes and neat gimmicks, but somehow, it collapses into a disaster area, a pop-culture poster comes alive and suggests you take a random length of duct to a fabrication machine for some reason, but you can't find it, you notice things along the way that weren't there before, or are now ominous, in the way, or malfunctioning.

Screwing lightbulbs into a skull, in order to make the whole room descend like an elevator, can only tell that might happen from outside the room. The increasingly evil looking skull begins to snap at your fingers, and a bulb breaks.

The sky, seen from the backdoor is at the end of a beautiful sunset. Stars are visible, but there is a storm on the way.

One of the rooms you come across is now inhabited by odd fantasy-type characters, like toys come to life, they ignore you, and just do their own thing.

This one started differently, but I barely remember it, so it basically starts here, inside my bedroom.

Outside the window, something mysterious inexplicably grabs your attention. Your find yourself outside, where the horizon fills your view with the dark shapes of trees and nearby buildings, dimly lit by the night, until you look up at the sky, where a silently growing symphony accompanies your every glance, where all that are nearby are drawn, where the moon sits serenely, the quiet source of the curious music.

Lunar eclipse sends the world into chaos, surrounding clouds explode into reddish colored plumes overhead, framing the eclipse in wild shapes, growing shapes inside of which entire worlds of contrasting hues and shades seem to exist, until you are watching universes burst into being and then crash wildly into each other, sending galaxies of color swirling away together. Galaxies are filled with people and planets interacting, fantastic beasts and familiar memories of your past whirl together in the clouds, seeming to originate from the glowing lunar eclipse.

Is reaching this lunar spectacle possible? You feel as if it is close, as if you could climb a small stair and step inside this chaotic realm, where matters of divine importance call for your attention.

2009-01-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

Dr. Pierce McWiggle scratched a writhing tenticle across his brow and tasted some of the charred honeydew melon.

"Interesting."

Honeydew melon does not grow on this planet, though several varieties of vegetable and one animal are somewhat similar. None of them travel at very high velocities, and few get charred on their own.

"Fruit may be extraterrestrial in orgin." He jotted down with a serpentine finger a few more notes, and then got to work.

Dr. McWiggle consumed the entire Corpus Delicti with gusto and vinegar, and carefully filed away the report.

2009-01-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

Little spherical bits of frozen vomit drifted aimlessly through space, clinked off a passing asteroid, and smashed into the atmosphere of a large pink planet. The portions of scotch burst into flame, but the honeydew melon survived the journey, making landfall in several charred chunks.

The medical examiner dusted off his tenticles, and scribbled on a chart.

"Cause of death appears to be high-velocity impact of charred fruit of some sort, smashing the skull into itty bitty pieces."

2009-01-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

Not wanting to fill his airsick bag yet again, Race Lardjaugh unrolled the window to his Xtireme fighter ship and vomited explosively out into the vaccum of space, the moist chunks of freezedried honeydew melon embraced in little orbs of bile and scotch got caught in the ships gravity well and began a revolting orbit around it.

Race rolled his window back up, and wiped his mouth.

"Burp"

2008-12-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

I've decided to shoehorn another post into this annual journey around the sun we've titled a 'year'.

This post won't be as morbidly introspective and incoherent as those previous, but hopefully, it will be slightly more pointless and wandering than usual. Assembled at my fingertips before me are the keys to the universe, lit up with a soothing blue glow from the LEDs in my logitech G15 keyboard. What a nice looking five!

Gotta assemble some magic for a party later. I'm a nervous wreck when asked to perform magic. The problem, is that I always know how the magic works, and am not impressed at all, why should anyone else?

2008-12-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

"Awwwwww" hollered whatshisface, referring to something that had previously occurred, and of which you were not yet cognizant. However, you soon discovered the reason for this outburst.

"I was used as a springboard into another one of these silly stories!" He muttered, and wandered away into the distance, disappearing over the horizon, the curvature of the earth swallowing him up and erasing him from your view. You then sat down, and began typing on your IBM electric typewriter:

"Awwwwww" hollered whatshisface...

This time paradox feels familiar, you think, but your paper flutters to the floor on top of the pile of crumbs that had slowly built up over the hours you spend consuming mass quantities of corn chips and Chip's Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies. Bending down to pick up the sheet of paper, you find a window into the unending depths of the universe on the floor, the entire cosmos spinning away obliviously into eternity to the strains of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Mesmerized by the sight, you sit in your chair, lost in your thoughts, unable to remember the ones before, never knowing what the next may be, completely fascinated by the intricate ballet beneath your feet, until your sheet of unreadable text slips into the void, and sails away into the distance.

Without hesitation, without a care, you follow it.

Completely motionless, the universe falls around you, all reason is lost behind, you are a mere spectator as the play unfolds, the ballet continues around you and you are numb to all but sight.

This is the place. All things can now be easily understood, but nothing needs to be. Nothing is important, you need not do anthing, and you are now capable of accomplishing any feat; but something needs you, something is calling desperately for you, but you aren't yet aware of it.

A passing planetary orb is torn asunder. Its flaming guts spill into the inky blackness and its several majestic moons wander off to find another home. The planet rotates slowly, first nearly blinding you with the heat at its core, its flaming heart beating away under a cloud of magma, then rotating away, metamorphing into the face of a clock, ticking away the minutes.

"Time moves slowly like a hunter stalking its prey, but as soon as it realizes it has drawn attention to itself, sprints madly away at a pace unmatched."

The clacking of typewriter keys snaps you out of your reverie, and you begin typing anew.

"Awwwwww"

2008-12-03T16:06:00.000-08:00

Aha! Caught you on your way to forward chain emails again? Stop. Please stop, it's pure torture. I don't even read them, I just abandon the email accound and create another one that I wont share with you, until a moment of weakness down the road ruins everything and I have to create another one.

As usual, I refuse to stoop to conventional humor tactics and use dirty words or fart jokes to produce a nervous laugh or embarrassed chuckle. Instead, damn butt boobies heiny poopoop fart.

Haha. Slightly more creative maneuver there, with a setup and a punchline and all. Fart.

That bit was the kicker.

2008-11-24T14:09:00.000-08:00

The new Star Trek trailer has been out for a while, and I thought some opinions from a bona fide nerd would be in order. I compiled my thoughts thusly:

Corvettes are cool. There was a brief period during which they were hideous, but at that time, everything was. Mechanically, older cars are more beautiful than the Enterprise, which is full of wingdings, widgets, and magics. Nobody uses that crap anymore. Magic went out with the wizards years ago, and while widgets are fine for things like books and blogs, it would be silly to run a spaceship with them.

Why does everyone get so emotional and dramatic in Star Trek? Real spaceships are filled with alcohol and boredom, puctuated with card games and depressing introspection. The results are a lot of forced jokes, drunken stupors, fist fights, and lazy doodling. (In that order.) I usually spend the time reading or playing video games, not having heated discussions with the crew as to whether our course is right or our crystal magic is running dry. That's what computers and other people are for.

Now, for my money, the sexiest new tech in spaceships is Improbability. It's often unstable, but boy howdy, is it fast.

In all honesty, yes, I am the masked vigilante gluing your jenga blocks together

2008-11-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to set the record straight concerning a few popular misconceptions running around and nipping the ankles of good sensible citizens of our Sub etha net.

First: yes, several advertising planets have exploded without warning into vast galactic confetti drifting aimlessly into space, and it was one of the greatest adverts a soft drink corporation could have asked for.

Second: no, I didn't post naked pictures of the star of the hit POI network dramedy "Zeali, the Vegelian Sea Creature Who is also a Police Detective!" packaged with a credit card stealing computer virus. All of the naked pictures of Vegelian Sea Creatures posted here are virus free, completely unlike the actual star of the hit dramedy "Zeali, the Vegelian Sea Creature Who is also a Police Detective!" who has a great number of sea viruses living in a puddle of sea water pooled up in its ear scale.

Third: I have no idea who took a Flightbeam Instant Aero Transporter on a joy ride on Monday. Whoever did was a fantastic pilot though, and should get a lucrative advertising deal with a soft drink corporation where he pilots one through several loop the loops and into space holding a bottle of soft drink in his hand.

Fifth: For tax purposes, the fourth point is donated to charity.

Sixth: A gang of super hackers are actually running around the Sub etha net starting silly rumors about obscure mathematical functions and congressmen best ignored. These rumors serve no purpose other than to rile up politicians, and--who are we kidding? Fire away hackers!

Seventh: This is the actual end of this post, don't be fooled by the following advertisements.

"Please, please, please, purchase copious amounts of JaqueSuet Soda before we destroy more planets you ungrateful buggers!"

"Lonely? Looking for love? Try Sub Etha Net Harmony.Commercialsite.sub.lotsamoolah for carbon based lifeforms that are not likely to attempt to gnaw your arms off. I did, and now I have a symbiotic parastite living in my skull!"

"Parajoy soda is planet destroyingly good!"

2008-11-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

One dark day in the middle of a sentence,

two bad adverbs to fight got up,

back to back, each other they faced,

their swords they drew, and each other they modified.

Large & Small.

2008-11-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

While the world is cold and the north wind blows,

I've lost my train of thought.

I looked everywhere, in the station and the depot,

It's not where I thought.

Cats perhaps, or leaves maybe rode there upon,

That's not what I thought.

It was fascinating, perplexing, and whatnot,

That's what I thought.

But I've misplaced it, it's gone and that's that.

So now I've got a new thought.

Or have I?

The Elusive 'Jump'

2008-08-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

Notice: This is a rant, however, I have cleverly disguised it as an informative and slightly humorous blogopost.

How many times have you been reading an article, maybe a blogopost, or whathaveyou, and the article said:

More after the jump!

or

Find out, after the jump!

Well, I have news for you. Find out after the jump.

Did you see any jump? DID YOU?! HUH? No? Maybe? Don't know what a jump is?

I'll tell you.

Many, many years ago, there was only one screen resolution, 800x600, anything over that was only for stupid rich people, and anything less was probably what you had, because you suck, and are poor.

Webpages can scroll down many miles, some going into the center of the earth where they can get infected with demonic spyware and explicit hardcore donkey sex ads. After the Stockholm Conventions, where web developers decided to only scroll down to the earth's crust, someone got scared and, not underestimating the stupidity of the human race, worried that maybe humans are so incredibly stupid that they would not realize that the rest of the webpage scrolled down the screen. So they started leaving clues, like making sure a giant picture dribbled down the screen, forcing a scroll, or leaving the helpful:

More, after the jump.

HOWEVER, today is the future, and we have at least 100 resomolutions, and mine is pretty big, the screen is 22 inches for the love of all things sweet and sour. AND YET, never once, has that damn line break, that elusive jump, been at the bottom of the screen where it belongs, nor has it been even on the first screen. I always have to scroll down the page several paragraphs to find a completely useless and somewhat cryptic:

Find out more, after the break.

What the Care Bear screen size do they expect everyone to have? If I had the oh so common 800x600 or even a nice 1024x786, I would have to scroll a good 6 inches to find that stupid and useless misplaced insult to my intelligence.

So just stop, ok? Nobody uses that stupid crap resolution you think they do, nobody is so incredibly stupid that they can't scroll down the screen, and even if they were, you didn't put that 'helpful' hint in the right place, and you wrote it in web developer code, you stupid sqid ink.

Novel IIII

2008-07-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

Swinging from the rafters was a DeVinci-esque gyroplane; fabricated out of wood and waxed paper, it appeared both heavy and fragile at the same time. Dr. Spaulding manipulated an array of pulleys and levers, and the gyroplane eased down to the floor.

Brick peered inside, and found a number of dials and levers, switches and buttons.

"What's this for?" He asked.

"I figured it would be safest to travel, um, not on the ground. That's why I built this, based on some ancient designs, it should keep us out of the reach of those beasts out there." Dr. Saulding jerked his thumb at the door.

"Ok, but I still prefer my bike."

I forgot

2008-06-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

because Pandora is playing Bjork.

But other than that, everything is ok, nevermind the rabid wolves that are building an oil derrick in my neighbor's oatmeal.

Bjork. Honestly.

Anyhow, on to today's narrative explosion of epic tonality! Rawr! Bjork, Bjork!

Yosemite Thermite Johnson was a man, a big man, a man of unquestionable poise and unsatisfactory bearing. This posed no problem at all, except when he assailed an oil derrick held hostage by poor engineering and design.

Don Quixote once said something which is immaterial at this junction; however, Yosemite used semi-colons at every opportunity, even when unsure of success. For this purpose he carried an assortment of pens and Sharpies, and corrected grammatical errors to his own satisfaction, and not that of Gregg, nor even e.b. white.

Yosemite deftly shot apostrophe's and dashes at advertisments-things like posters or playbills-as well as a few decimal points for good measure.

The oil derrick in question appeared in a copy of 'Space and Ancient Greece', barely a month had passed before the derrick was assaulted by a hyphenating psycophath like some sort of raping serial editor, and woke up in a hospital a shadow of it's former self, an oi-derrick.

Yosemite scrawled a moustache and glasses on a Calvin Klein underwear model and yodeled away in his black Fiat Spider, scanning for unvandalized and uncivilized, unaesthetic and unironic text to 'correct'...

Until next-time; never "fear", for unecessary character may (or may~not) be "near".

Piracy their dreadful trade is

2008-03-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

I want to start an internet website that is devoted to pirating Disney pirate movies. Why? You foolishly ask, knowing it will result in a long, and impossibly unfunny monologue?

Because it's possibly ironic, depending on how you understand the concept! I'd also like to see the lawsuit.

"Stop pirating our pirate movies, you dirty thief!"

"What? The movies that encouraged me to steal, rape, and plunder and rob, not to mention thieve and noddle and cob? Make up your mind! Is it good or bad to be a pirate!? Lolzz!1!"

I will call it "Captain Long John Jack Sparrow's Treasury of Pirate Fun and Disney Movies" and I will use their logos without permission. Also, I will include pirate recordings from Gilbert and Sullivan's productions, but not the filthy crudola that isn't Disney or D'Oyly Carte.

The lengthy legal proceedings will make for good watching, and that's how I'll make my fortune. If you pirate that, I will hunt you to the ends of the world, where we might fall off into upside-down neverland, if sources are to be trusted, AND WHY NOT, DISNEY IS HONEST AND TRUSTWORTHY, right? If they aren't, then their legal standing will be shaky, to say the least, and goofy, to make a painful and pointless, but perfectly played pun.

Yo ho ho and a bootleg DVD or two!

Novel III

2008-03-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

"No need," Dr. Spaulding pointed out, "sensors indicate the intruders are retreating. Isn't that right girl?"

Dr. Spaulding's dog nodded in agreement, her ears twitching, searching for the sound of intruders.

"I've got a pile of new gadgets for you to test on your next run."

Brick eyed the pile with some interest, but nothing beat the security of his .45 revolver and his trusted damascus blade. Dr. Spaulding's inventions sometimes came in handy, but they weren't terribly reliable in 'real world' situations when hostiles were closing in hard and fast and you had no time to read the labeling.

The hum of the dog food can opening laser perked the dog's ears up, and she trotted over, her nails clicking on the flagstone floor. She nuzzled Brick's hand briefly, and then sneezed slightly when the scent of gun oil reached her brain.

Dr. Spaulding shifted a number of levers, and an array of pulleys and ropes leapt to life above their heads.

Princess Dairies

2008-02-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

There, I finally got around to putting this review together. Death Race 2000 stars some really funky cars, like Hanna Barbara's Wacky Races or some such. They have teeth and knives and guns, or caricatures thereof. These are used to run over people in the cross-country (LA to LA, judging from the scenery) race. On purpose, for points.

We get some commentary from goofy TV personalities, like Old Guy, Overly Friendly Female, and Scary Druggie. They provide a lot of exposition, like how many points babies are worth, how Frankenstein is a "close, personal friend of mine", and which racer just drove off a cliff through a giant ridiculous fake tunnel entrance. Scary Druggie is fun to watch, because he is like a 70's clown, and is always incredibly excited by the slightest thing, if he found a penny on the floor, he would explode like a bucket of sheep filled with TNT.

Our hero (I guess) is David Carradine, played by Frankenstein, a mish-mash of human parts cobbled together after a gazillion accidents he's accrued through the years of racing. His experience and fan base is enormous, and so was the simile I was cooking up. That's his car, it's kinda cool. Is he a bad guy? A good guy? I don't really care if you ever watch this movie, but I won't ruin his story line for you, just in case you smoke a lot of pot and want to watch this movie while dropping acid and shooting up reefer. (I guarantee everyone in the movie production was, except Stallone, he hadn't even started on steroids yet.)

See?

His character's name is too stupid for me to remember, but he's a thug, or perhaps a hood. I forget. He slaps his girl around a little, and shoots a tommy gun blindly into a cheering crowd. A little like Rambo, I guess. He may be second favorite to Frankenstein, but he's a bigger star. Also, he has guns. I'm not talking about his arm muscles there, because I'm not sure he had them there.

The President of the United States lives on a pyramid, I guess, and nobody knows where. This may indicate a post-apocalyptic setting, but I can't tell the difference between the setting here, and really early Rockford Files. He acts kind of religiously, like the Death Race is a rite or something. He provides some exposition again, and some a plot point, but don't expect this to be clever like Ultraviolet!

The gaps between legs of the races is filled with horrible, horribleness. Oompa Loompa cameramen run around with toaster ovens strapped to their backs, and David Carradine stomps around like a leathery Darth Vader, and the female racers take their tops off gratuitously.

They have the complexion of Miss Piggy.

Thank God Miss Thomasina Whatsit does not remove a single article of clothing! She leads the resistance, which is comical, and attempts to sabotage the race by killing racers and airing her Weirdness on TV in protest. She makes speeches and eventually becomes the fascist she pretended to fight against. Just like Republicans.

The crescendo, if you will, is when the resistance brings in awesome air support in the form of this here aeroplane. It's pretty badass, except the whole scene put me right to sleep. I'm pretty sure an ambulance was there to for some reason. The president blamed the aeroplane on the French to conceal the fact that the resistance somehow got an aeroplane past security and is trying to kill people by boring them to death.

There is a bunch of plot, like Thomasina's daughter is in there, David Carradine has a handgrenade, and the twist ending which hits you really fast and gives you no time to savor what the hell just happened.

It's a great idea, just hampered by such things as the 70's, no budget, and thinking gratuitous nudity and gore can make up for not knowing how to make talkies. And probably drugs.

2008-01-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

I managed to install linux mint on my mom's oldish notebook computer, and so far, she is happy with it. It eliminates a lot of the slow down (spyware?) and now I know for sure what is running on it, and what is not.

Installation is a breeze, unless you have low memory, and then it's a bit awkward. But it includes support for nearly everything, so it's an easy switch from Windows.

I've got Death Race 2000 on it's way now, and hope to have
a review for you soon.

While I try to install linux on this old POS

2008-01-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!
~Stanislaw Lem 'Cyberiad'

?

2008-01-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

So, once upon a time, in a far away place, in New Jersey, a simple crocus bloomed auspiciously.

This wasn't unusual. However, Ted vomited as a result. I assume you know Ted? He's an ass.

Seriously. He's no fun at parties, unless you enjoy laughing awkwardly as someone pours his drink on his date's head and spews profanity in every direction like a particularly offensive malfunctioning septic tank. Anyway, this crocus was genetically modified to release noxious fumes when it bloomed.

The alien invasion had all sorts of trickery up it's figurative sleeves just like that. They spent a lot of time making sure we replaced all of our metal objects with low-quality plastics to ensure our defenselessness, and then resorted to petty pranks.

The latest of which was that damn crocus. The crocus spent it's childhood various schools, getting chewed on and starved by negligent children and pitied by poor teachers. Then an alien by the name of 'X'hcccrtryblax'tch teleported in one night and rescued it, along with some tadpoles and a lot of staples.

Ted was an ass, did I mention that? Oh, right. So this crocus gets modified with some standard DNA replication and some Whoopiematic Laughspew. Then 'X'hcccrtryblax'tch, disguised as a lilac dragon buzzed in and placed in on Ted's counter.

Ted didn't notice it, on account of all of the detritus and debris accumulated on his countertops, which mysteriously aided the growth of our crocus, and it bloomed.

I actually don't think the Laughspew was needed, that kitchen was nasty to begin with, and Gordy nearly tossed her cookies in there on a daily basis anyway.

Novel, II

2008-01-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

Brick rubbed his eyes, and squinted at the martini glasses on the table before him. They shook a bit, and the room spun around them. He rubbed his eyes once again, and the room steadied. It was just the glasses moving.

"Um.." He was about to ask a question, but Dr. Spaulding beat him to it.

"That's my latest invention. It's an automechanical waiter!"

"Ah."

The glasses disappeared into the cavernous recesses of the machine, and a faint shattering noise resulted. Several fresh martinis were produced from another mysterious orifice, and were set down on the table.

"I think that's enough for me, actually," Brick said. He tossed another down to steady the room once again, and drew his firearm. He field-stripped it, and gave it a good once over. Once he had put it all back together, he fired a round through the window at a horrible face that vanished as quickly as it appeared.

"Maybe we should order some Molotov's." He quipped.

2007-12-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

I have no idea what happened to the fonts.

Hit This!

2007-12-13T13:22:00.001-08:00

HITMAN

I actually went and saw this movie, and it isn't too bad--if you played the game the movie is loosely based on. If not, then it isn't too bad.

The premise is that Mr. Agent 47 kills people and is really stiff and unconvincing in public due to some radical upbringing which turned him into the ultimate killer, and also makes him really stiff and unnatural in public. In the game, this is kind of hilarious, being bald and scary while delivering flowers to a sick perverted Jabba the Hutt guy draws absolutely no attention. It makes you kind of nervous, wondering why nobody just shoots you in the face as a natural reaction to your scariness. This is very odd on the big screen.

Also, the movie hitman spares the life of some hooker chick. I don't know if you play video games, but if you do, you would know how ridiculous that is. Typically, you kill everyone. (I know I do.)

It's kind of disappointing that the hero only changes clothes a couple times, unlike the video game version, where you wear tons of silly disguises.

Also, why do the soldiers dress like samurai from the future? Maybe the costume designer played the wrong game?

Don't expect much from this movie, and you wont be disappointed.

I actually only played the 2nd Hitman game, and didn't finish it, but I did watch my brother some of the other ones, and I can say that watching the movie was a lot like watching him play the game, except there weren't any angry rampages after failing multiple times to sneak past guards.

2007-11-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a long time, but that was just to keep you desperate introverted internet dwellers in suspense. I also played a LOT of video games.

Why read blogs in the first place? I don't have a whole lot to say, I don't bore you with details of my toenail clippings (unless they are shaped like the virgin Mary. She probably got some later though, so she shall henceforth be known as Mary, virgin mother of Jesus, and later not virgin at all on account of her husband Joseph, who, in all likelihood, hit that, abbreviated as: MVMOJALNVAAOAOHHJWIALHT, because that's easier to say, which just makes sense.)

I shall instead, endeavor to entertain, which is pretty hard, on account of me being pretty damn lazy.

Today's entertainment is a Video Game Review. I am (to my knowledge) the only person to think of this type of review, and deserve to be honoured with much honouring, and especially honouring with a 'u', 'cause honour is worthless without it.

I played a game called 'Assassin's Creed' which was really fun, but didn't really have a lot of assassinating. Mostly it was looking for mines in a big mine field. I didn't understand why, of all things, an assassin would waste his time looking for mines, but it was really addictive. What if you were wrong, and clicked the wrong square? You might get blown to bits, or just have to start over with another grid.

A lot of hype was spread around with a spade or trowel, or whatever manure spreader kids are using nowadays about the A.I. and the graphical resomolutions and pixelatonomy there is in the game, and frankly, I was disappointed. I assume the game was written in Visual Basic, (which is really complicated, but far easier to master than say--Pharsi) and that probably limited the graphics somewhat, but they did look spectacular on my nVidia 8800GTS 640MB from evga, purveyors of fine electronics on an internet near you.

I tried to purposely click on the little landmines, thinking I was supposed to assassinate them, believing they were targets, like little ant-like soldiers, or political figures my ant-queen was conspiring against, but I'm just gonna have to accept the designers did a horrible job with the art design of the characters, and play as if they are landmines. It's more fun that way.

I believe the little smiley face on the top of the screen is the ultimate baddy, the bossus magnus, if you will. Maybe if I played for more than 10 seconds, I would be able to reach it and assassinate it's stupid mocking smirking face, but my computer reminded me it was time for tea, and I concurred.

I give 'Assassin's Creed' a 8.9 out of an old shoe.

*note, all images in this post are stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia, unless otherwise noted. If you squeal, I will blame you for it and hack your ip address which is 127.0.0.1. Go ahead, check it out. I was right, wasn't I? I hope that scared you, you backstabbing little shrew.

Novel Part I

2007-09-04T20:58:00.000-07:00

Dr. Spaulding put the finishing touch on his latest invention, an automechanical dinner server. He fired it up, and activated it. "Waiter, I'd like a cocktail". The dinner server picked up a tumbler, and and dropped several pieces of ice next to it. Then it sprayed several types of liquor into the air.

Dr. Spaulding sighed, and went back to work.

* * * * *

Brick sped through the night, partially lit by the waning moon, his steam powered motorbike belched black smoke behind him. The road twisted and turned through the dark forest, the dark trees cast finger like shadows that seem to reach out for him. The night blasted by, his fog lantern attempted vainly to cut the thick darkness. His googles began to fog up. He slid them back up over his leather helmet, and squinted into the darkness.

Behind him, an unearthly scream stabbed the night, and tickled the hair on Brick's spine, which stood on end. He opened the throttle, and took the next turn far to fast to be considered safe.

Brick's motorbike wobbled a bit, and then lurched forward from a violent blow from the rear. Brick drew his revolver, and fired blindly behind him, while wrestling with the controls of his bike.

Just when he ran out of ammo, Dr. Spaulding's lab lit up the night. Brick leaned forward, and with one last burst of speed, launched out of the dark woods, and crashed into Dr. Spaulding's barn.

He holstered his weapon, brushed the hay off his shoulder, and sauntered into the lab.

"Vampire werewolf monster things are getting out of control."

"Ah, yes," Dr. Spauldings replied, without looking up. "Almost done here, just one moment."

He handed Brick a cocktail, and they both tossed a few back.

Blue Helmets With Red Spots

2007-08-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

"Cheese and Bacon," said the Dodo.

"That's a poor defense." Replied the magistrate. He slapped the gavel against another walnut, and fired another round into the lifeless paratrooper carcass hanging from a tree branch.

NATO paratroopers had been dropping through the trees since dawn, and the tall, dark, and feathery Dodo bird had been hunting them with knives and aplomb since about five minutes after dawn.

The magistrate twirled his shotgun, and dropped it in the mud.

"Damn."

Another paratrooper crashed through the trees, only to be dispatched by a volley of incendiary rounds from the Dodo's GE minigun.

"Of course, Cheese and Bacon, as a defense, hasn't been used since 1823, in Jim's Big Boy vs Kramer, not with any success, anyway. My version is slightly more advanced."

"I hope so," the magistrate commented, wiping his shotgun clean with a lark and a frown. "By the way, I heard Kramer was sacked recently."

Sirens wailed, and sailors listened drunkenly, only to crash into the rocks. More paratroopers landed, their knees making grisly crunching noises as they snapped like kindergarten teachers at Red Bull and Firearms day at school.

The magistrate, recently dewigged, took a hit from a hipflask, and scrawled a memorandum on the importance of firearm cleanliness. The sound of a GE minigun exploded and echoed through his skull like a crappy Britney Spears tune.

Standard issue brain-gnomes clubbed the echoing sound with a spatula, and poured it out the magistrates ears with an inordinate amount of blood.

The Dodo released the trigger, and scratched his head.

"Is NATO good or bad?" He asked.

"What?" The magistrate was holding his bleeding ears and crying a little bit.

"Is NATO the good guy, or bad?"

"Oh, um... Bad?"

"Ok."

The Universe

2007-07-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

Almost all of my vacation was spent playing video games and killing terrorists, and now I'm back at work.

CRAP.

Today's story goes a little like this:

Sing O Muse, the song of Vergilus,
Droid of amusing stature, and first
To travel the length and breadth
Of the Universe.

Starting at One End, and young,
Vergilus donned his Shining Armour
Engraved with ones and zeros.
He was ready to go.

On his cybernetic chariot he
Flew into the darkness of space.
The light of a thousand suns
Shine reflected in his Shining Armour.

As a falling star in spring, brilliant in the sky
Vergilus shot through the nether
Through Chaos he left a shining trail
Of ordered integers in Fibinacci.

Night awoke, and suprised "Who is this
That dares through Chaos? Who interrupts
My sleep? What Light is this? Has Dawn
Lost her way?" So, Night.

Vergilus escapes Chaos, and enters
Our heavens. The Twins and the Bear
Which some call the Plough stare in
Shock. Orion stops his Hunt.

The Dragon nips at his heels, Cancer
Stings in vain at the chariot as it
Flies past our terrestrial home.
The Virgin blushes at the sight.

As a bright comet, as a passing sun,
Greater than Jupiter in Brilliance,
Shaming Sol, and dwarfing Luna,
Vergilus in his chariot shines.

This is the midpoint of the Universe,
There is much to travel still, so
Much time to cover and space
to fill.

Into Oblivion, Vergilus speeds, out
Of our sight. There he meets monsters
Of Nightmare and Doom. His chariot
Sparks light and he Laughs.

Teeth and Talon, Tooth and Claw, clutch
And slash, but his Shining Armour deflects
It all. Demons scream at the light that
Still radiates from his car.

Out of Oblivion he shoots! Into Brave
New Worlds, unexplored, and young, he
Emerges, aflame, and unweary. Outstripping
Dawn, and even Rumor.

Our Tin Hero is nearly done, but what
Dangers lie ahead? What is the Other End
Of Space? Adamantine and warped. Sadly,
Vergilus arrives.

Silicone and tin drift through our galaxy,
Meteors and Asteroids, Comets and Debris
Are all that is left, as Vergilus' chariot
is smashed to bits.

Sing O Muse, of the Charioteer of Tin, Vergilus.
The first to travel the breadth of the Universe,
Who drifts in amorphous silicone through
the Heavens.

All work and no play...

2007-06-26T20:54:00.000-07:00

My sister just emailed me the following letter I composed at my grandmother's house whilst testing her electric typewriter. It makes more sense than many of my more recent blog posts---

"Dear Sirs:

Why do you torment me with your bills and strong arm men? I am a sensitive individual. I cannot abide such mean and worldly pursuits.

If you must persist in this cowardly persecution, I may be forced to pay you in old fish heads and used lightbulbs. We neither of us want that to happen, do we?

Please do not send that man named "Roscoe" again. He is a frightening, beastly man. I cannot understand why you would employ such riff-raff. I had thought you were more verflavian than that.

Also, I wonder if you would mind returning my dog you repossessed on Friday. he is quite nice, and I am afriad of what Roscoe may do to him. The dog's name is "Baskin Robbins" but he will respond to "TCBY" as well. DO NOT FEED HIM MONKEY WRENCHES! This is a Bad Idea. I did it once, but it was an accident. He is really too small to properly digest such things. Use smaller hardware if you must.

Thank you for your kind attention, and remember to smell the buttercups as they are loving caresses by the light of the moon in June with a spoon in your buffoon.

You will not find me at my previous address, so don't bother."

---You might not think it as funny as I do...

Spaced!

2007-06-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite shows!

If you like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, then you'll love this show. It's fantastic.

Nine times out of ten...

2007-06-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

"Soooooooooooo

ooooooooooooS"

Thusly did the radio transmitter on the dashboard squawk. Little lights blinked randomly.

Mike's head snapped up, and he rubbed his eyes.

"Shouldn't have been sleeping on the job, Mike." He told himself.

He glanced at the dashboard, and fell asleep again.

====================

"French Fries?"

"Yes." Captain von Rickenheimer slapped the princess.

8888888888888888888

"Which one do you like best?" Mary Darling asked her pet flamingo, George.

"The red one does not suit your complexion." He said, matter of factly. He took a puff from his ivory tobacco pipe, and squinted.

"Are those electric, or gas?"

"I wish!" I still have use my imagination to make them go."

Mary pouted, and fired a few rounds at the wall.

"Nearly finished my second name there" She commented, before holstering her weapon, and spitting on the floor.

George flapped his wings, and soothed his ruffled feathers.

"At least you don't have to turn one of those damn cranks."

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Four Prizonshiv cruise missiles cruised towards a large bulbous city that crept across the horizon. They were large, massively large. They had to be, to carry all of that cranberry jelly.

On radar, they were little bigger than the period at the end of this sentence

qrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqrqr

Mike slapped at an imaginary fly that tickled the hair on his hand, and continued to dream of walruses and Spanish Guitar.

"Sooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooS"

"Blink"

"Blink"

99999999999999999999999999999

In the corner, a wily cockroach scanned the readout on his wrist computer.

"All systems are functionals" He clicked, harshly.

"Durkha, Durkha!"

.......................................................:.........

The princess sneezed. Captain von Rickenheimer wiped his nose and drew meaningless little designs on the cocktail napkin.

Two shots rang out, and a third grabbed his jacket and ran.

"Damn you." The princess muttered under her breath, and stabbed the Captain in his face.

Her decorative sandwich toothpick snapped in two, leaving her holding the decorative spleen portion, while the pointy business end jutted painfully out of the cheek of the Captain.

He fell to the floor screaming.

"Horseradish! Not Horseradish!"

The waiter cleared the table.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

"Well, if you already liked that one, then why bother me?" George swallowed his whiskey awkwardly, as only a bird, or possibly a baby human can.

Mary Darling shot a glance at him and selected the one she secretly wanted all along, and inserted it into her clothing emitter. Instantly, the world exploded into a ball of cranberry jelly.

oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

The vast army of cockroaches approached the creeping mass of cranberry jelly in lockstep. They brandished marlin spikes and turnpikes.

"I say," quoth the soaring beetle-hawk,"lets eat them cockroaches, eh?" His wings closed tight against his body, and he dove down, like a hockey player. The roach army disappeared in a puff of feathers, and nine times out of ten, that sort of thing will happen.