Huh. Maybe I AM Ignorant.

So, I’m reading a review of Speed Racer in the local alt-rag, LA Weekly, and it occurs to me I have no fucking clue what the reviewer is talking about.  A lot of made up words, obscure references & excessively showy language to basically say that he didn’t recommend the film.  This paragraph in particular was awesome:

The futuristic, multihued skyscrapers seem a figment of Kenny Scharf’s imagination[I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS]; the glazed female leads might be Jeff Koons sculptures [I'VE HEARD OF HIM.  IS HE A SCULPTER?  I DON'T GET THIS REFERENCE.  DOES HE GLAZE HIS SCULPTURES A LOT?] sporting Takashi Murakami [WHO?] accessories. And that’s just the “Sunday Styles” stuff. Once the various gizmobiles accelerate to warp speed on roller-coaster racetracks seemingly conceived by Dr. Seuss [YES!!!!], the screen reconstitutes as a Bridgett Riley vortex [SHE MAKES VORTEXES, I ASSUME] or a mad geometric abstraction of Kenneth Noland [NOPE, SORRY.] racing stripes.

Thanks, J. Hoberman of the L.A. Weekly.  I never knew how little I knew until you came along.  I will say this for you - after diligent analysis, I was able to discern whether you liked the movie or not:

But love, hate or ignore it, The Matrix proposed a social mythology. (Just ask Slavoj Zizek. [SERIOUSLY NOW, WHAT THE FUCK?]) Speed Racer is simply a mishmash that, among other things, intermittently parodies the earlier film’s pretensions.

You go to hell, J. Hoberman.  You go straight to hell.

My Dinner With Barack

So over here, it turns out that if you donate $5 or more (up to the $2300 max) you get entered into a drawing to have a dinner with Barack Obama & three other winners, just the five of you talking about whatever you feel like discussing.  Needless to say, I entered, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to win (because I have a system when it comes to games of chance!).  Which means I better start thinking about what I’m going to discuss with Barack over dinner.

I figure the other three chumps are going to want to have their say, all “blah blah blah health care blah special interests blah” but I’m going to seize control of the conversation with my hard hitting issues & find out where the candidate really stands. 

First topic: Is it socially unacceptable to use the term Mulatto?  A female friend used that term in reference to Jason Taylor from the Miami Dolphins, while describing how attractive he was.  Up until now I hadn’t thought the term was offensive (and yet, Octaroon seems very clearly wrong…).  Then the friend followed it up with “I’m not usually attracted to black people,” and I was forced to cast everything she had previously said through my PC filter.  Was this closet racist attempting to reintroduce a taboo phrase into my vocabulary?  Wikipedia was less than helpful, so I’m pretty sure the only place to go for an answer to this question is by asking the most famous Mulatto in America.

Topic the Second: Five years ago, on a walk around my neighborhood, my pug puppy Oscar barked at a tiny infant whose parents were pushing him in the stroller.  I jokingly told the parents “He HATES babies!” as a light ice-breaker kind of joke, to get around the awkward situation of my dog having startled their toddler.  To this day, the Missus contends that this was not an appropriate response to the situation, and made us look like we raised our pug to hate tiny adorable babies.  I disagree, naturally, and will rely on the judgment of Mr Obama to settle the issue once and for all.

Finally (I’m not sure how long this dinner is going to run, but I feel like more than three topics of discussion will be pushing it), I want to see where Barack stands on my favorite conundrum, namely if you’d were going to have a one night stand with a person missing an arm or leg or what have you, wouldn’t you rather have sex with a person missing ALL their arms & legs?  I’m very interested in what Obama has to say about this topic, as I see it becoming a wedge issue in the swing states like Florida & Ohio.

I’ll keep you posted as to the inevitable results of the contest.

Fuck You, Brain

Thanks to the lab rat quantities of Nutrasweet I’ve consumed over the years, I can’t remember simple facts, like my daughter’s birthday, or if I have a daughter.  My terrible memory is one of the reasons I started writing this blog. I go back and re-read the older entries and I have no memory of writing them at all; it’s literally as though a stranger with my exact sense of humor wrote a bunch of stories that only I would find funny.

However, for whatever reason, it turns out that if the event occurred prior to 1990, I can’t seem to forget it, no matter how much I want to.  I was talking with a friend last night, when we realized that we could both vividly conjure up the poster for the movie April Fool’s Day, an utter piece of crap slasher from the 1980s.  For some reason, I will always readily know my childhood friend Michael’s phone number, even though I’ve not dialed it since I lived in England in 8th grade, yet the missus will ask me if I remembered to run some errand on the way home and my only response is “who are you, you strange woman? We should totally do it before my wife gets here.” 

Whenever I’m confronted with this kind of mental breakdown, not only do I curse my lack of memory, but somewhat involuntarily my brain throws in a useless fact as an almost deliberate taunt.  The other day the missus asked if I remembered to deliver a Thank You note she had written and while I had to admit that I hadn’t, I was pleased to remember that the tagline for 1988’s Maniac Cop was “You have the right to remain silent - FOREVER!”

Do Not Go To Calico Ghost Town

My friend Patrick & I went on another road trip last weekend, this time to the Eastern borders of Southern California.  Originally, we were going to break into the abandoned water park on the way to Vegas, but it turns out you have to have balls to do that, since it’s guarded by dogs & men with guns, and I’m not sure we met the minimum ball requirement.  So instead we went to Calico Ghost Town, a crappy ass themed old timey western experience. 

It was not awesome.  The place had been an actual silver mining town in the 1880s, but disappeared to near nothing a half century later.  Eventually Walter Knott, of SoCal theme park Knott’s Berry Farm purchased the place & had it very very very cheaply restored to its former shabby condition. 

 

I do!  I do enjoy music & gunfights!  The highlight of the trip was the fact that it was “Civil War Days” at Knotts Ghost Town, in honor of President’s Day Weekend.  I know, I know, what does the Civil War have to do with a mining town founded fifteen years after the end of the civil war?  Moreover, what does the Civil War have to do with any city in Southern California?  Your guess is as good as mine, but nonetheless, there were about 50 people dressed up as Rebels & Yankees, all staging a giant mock war.  It was, without a doubt, the whitest thing I’ve ever been to.  Now, normally (according to the official list, at least), I generally am into stuff white people like, but I was not at all into civil war re-enacting.  I would have sooner gone to a Ren Faire or Trek Convention, or a Ren Faire AT a Trek Convention than knowingly attended a Civil War re-enactment.

However.  In that, I was definitely in the minority.  Calico was crazy busy, with a metric assload of my white kin there to see the South prevail at last.  And hey, speaking of minorities, Patrick & I immediately made a bet that the first one of us to spot an African-American would win five dollars. 

 

I won.  Yes, that’s right. There was a black person at the ghost town.  Yes, that’s right.  He was a Civil War re-enactor.  Yes, that’s right.  He was fighting for the South.  I’m not sure what promises his recruiter made, but this ugly display of re-enactor’s Stockholm Syndrome was good for a crisp Lincoln from my wager with Patrick.  And hey, speaking of Lincoln, guess who Patrick & I ran into on the outskirts of Calico?

Heavy is the head that wears the fake crown.  Ficticious Lincoln was resting up for his big afternoon of freeing the slaves & signing autographs.  We didn’t stick around, so I’m not sure who they were planning on having play the role of “the slaves,” but my money is on a certain Confederate soldier, once the battle ends.  Patrick wasn’t a fan of fake Lincoln, and lamented the fact that Calico didn’t spring for a Robot Lincoln like they have at Disneyland.

Please note: all photos taken by Patrick.

Do Not Borrow A Pen From Me

Sometimes the inside of my ear itches.  Not a ton, but just a tiny bit.  A while ago, like a year or so ago, I absentmindedly used the cap from a ballpoint pen to poke in my ear canal & scratch, which is totally gross, but felt awesome.  In fact, it sort of made me realize how much I enjoyed poking in my ears with pen caps, like this whole world of adventurous ear based delight that I had previously been denying myself.  Now that I can easily scratch the inside of my ears, I find that I want to scratch the inside of my ears way more often.

It worked out pretty well for a while, since the office manager at our work had purchased a TON of Bic “round stic” pens, little colored ballpoint pens with plastic caps.  Unfortunately, a couple months ago, when it came time to resupply the office, she switched to the kind of capless pens that you click on top with your thumb & the pen point retracts.  Those pens may be good for writing with, but clearly they suck ass when it comes to poking my ears.

As my own supply of pens dwindles, or the pen caps get lost, I’ve started going around to my co-workers & stealing their Bic round stics.  It’s like an office version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and pen caps are like canned food supplies.  I just hope none of them have been using their pens for equally unsavory purposes.

Now. How do I get my soul back?

As my friends are no doubt aware, I have been in the process of actively shopping my soul to any demon powerful enough to prevent a Patriots victory in the Superbowl.  Good news, friends, a deal was brokered in the 11th hour.

So now I’m faced with the conundrum of how to reclaim my soul.  I believe the devil to be like a spiritual pawn broker of sorts, so perhaps if I offered him two souls in exhange for my own, he’d see the inherent value and just give mine back.  So far, the best advice I’ve received involves contacting Charlie Daniels & asking that he bring his fiddle with me to the crossroads at midnight.

Ayudame, es una situation muy peligroso!!!

Our new copy room at work was built over the weekend, complete with “DANGER” tape in Spanish for some reason.  Best of all, the tape faced IN, towards the copy room, as though the Spanish speaking entity was being kept in the breakroom.  I suspect it is El Chupacabra, the Devil Cat!  He has been known to Xerox hundreds of copies of his devilish kittybutt and leave them in our inboxes.

When I came in this morning, this was the scene.  I can only assume El Chupacabra grew restless with his confinement in our dark, cavelike breakroom and is now freely roaming the halls of our company.  I hope no one (that I like) gets hurt!

Revisiting Some Theories

When I first started out in business, I wasn’t the titan of industry I am now.  But there were inklings of my genius, even in the formative stages.  I would come to my bosses with various productivity enhancing theories, none of which were ever enacted but I think they helped distinguish my capacity for outside the box thinking.  Looking back on it, from my lofty perch, it may be time to better understand the nuggets of wisdom that I had wrapped in my nougat of youthful optimism.

Idea #1: Too many office supplies.  This idea was prompted by the game of musical chairs.  Early on in business I realized that not every desk needed a stapler & tape, etc.  But how do you know which desks need the office supplies, and which desks merely want them there for the appearance of doing work?  The solution?  Let the market sort itself out.  Randomly distribute office supplies to 80% of the desks.  Those who really genuinely need to staple will go steal the staplers from their neighbors.  Those who don’t want their tape stolen will hide it where only they can find.  Eventually, everyone has what they need & the office supply budget goes down by 20%, of which 10% goes to me as a commission on the idea.

Evaluation: Is it GENIUS? Yes.  I can’t understand why this isn’t a common practice in every office in America today.

Idea #2: Public rumor mill.  Nothing is more typical of corporate America than having to hear about stuff through the grapevine, like “hey, Gloria just quit” or “I think Sally & Jeff are sleeping together.”  What this situation needs is a publicly accessible gossip board (like on an extranet or something), with anonymous posting, so that people could more quickly & efficiently keep up on who is quitting/fondling/suing whom within the company. 

Evaluation: Is it GENIUS? Yes, although the one refinement I’ve come up with in the years since I first thought of this idea is to add the concept of “blind items” a la gossip pages that are afraid of getting sued.  So the posts would read like “which Chief Executive Officer of a local firm was recently seen walking around the restroom with his pants completely off?” and “rumor has it a certain up & coming star of the art department may have purchased her fantastic (and newly gigantic) boobs over the Christmas break.”

Idea #3: Employee popularity meter.  This one is essentially like Digg.com, only account membership is restricted to employees (one account per employee) and instead of voting on submitted stories, you just vote on your coworkers.  Bonuses at the end of the year are awarded accordingly.  This system financially rewards the more likable and helpful employees, punishing the meaner more callous employees.

Evaluation: Is it GENIUS? I’m not so sure.  When I was young, likable & helpful, this idea sure seemed like GENIUS.  But now that I’m older, meaner & more callous, I’m kinda glad management had the foresight to kill this baby in utero.

So, there you have it.  A 66% GENIUS rating.  My work here is done.  Ta-Da!!

I could not help myself. It is my nature.

I was reminded of the tale of the frog & the scorpion today as I needed to get onto a web forum to look up some information.  My co-worker had already registered for the forum, which he told me was a laborious process.  I asked for his login/pw combo, as I didn’t need to type anything, just look up some info, but the boards were viewing restricted to login only.  He hesitated for the briefest moment, then gave me the info.  The hesitation made me think “what, does he think I’ll post something inappropriate in his name?  Hey wait, that’s a great idea.”  Seconds later, I’m in the General Info section of the forums and the following new post is up:

Who Here Likes Cock?

I can’t get enough of it, personally. Normally I like it in my mouth, but sometimes it’s fun to have it smeared around my face.  Oh well, thanks for sharing!

 Sincerely, Nathan.

Then, I hit Submit, but not before clicking the “email me with any responses to this topic.”  After all, a joke’s not funny if the recipient never finds out.  Twenty minutes later I get the ranting phone call from his extension.  Apparently he was banned from the forum, and he found out about the thread when someone responded with “This guy is 100% correct!”

It occurs to me that it may be difficult earning his trust in the future.  Our discussion of the incident ended with him saying “The fault lies with me.  I trusted you & I shouldn’t have and I knew better.”  Clearly next time I will need to sit down at his desk while he’s out.  Thank god for persistent cookies.

Fraternal Wisdom

My Brother: Have you seen the video of the fat kid falling off the diving board?

Me: No, I haven’t.

Brother: It’s hilarious - have you seen the video of the fat kid crossing the stream, and his friend kicks the plank out from under him?

Me: I haven’t seen that one either.

Brother: Oh man, you really should, it’s awesome.  [PAUSE] You know, just going to YouTube and typing in “fat kid” in the search box is like a recipe for instant comedy that never gets old.