I buy only organic fruits and vegetables with the money I earn from my job serving hamburgers, and on Earth Day, I walked to the bus stop instead of driving to work, and ended up sitting at the bus stop all day. Around 5 pm, I walked back. When I got home, I turned off the lights. I wrote a letter to my local newspaper about the poor bus services, which was probably filed into the shredder upon reception, if we are being generous (no one wants to have their carefully crafted bitch piece merely thrown in the bin, not even removed from its envelope).
Let me tell you about my problems, just in case that introduction there didn't really give much away. Nothing seems to work out, you know? It's a complete fucking mess. I will start at the beginning.
The Beginning
Rocky and I were driving around, looking for a good time (as is often the daily objective). Rocky was enjoying some ice cream, and I was polishing off my fifth beer, when we happened to come across a very friendly man who was stopping to talk to people in traffic with their windows down. Now, this wasn't just any two-bit schmuck asking for “spare change.” No, this man would become a very important factor in our lives. We just didn't know it yet.
He was willing to sell us ten dollars worth of amphetamines because he was quite desperate to purchase an alcoholic beverage. The desperation in his eyes was endearing to us, so we financed his drinking for the entirety of the evening, noting that ten bucks wasn't going to get us very far, especially since the sun had not even gone down yet. We both like to emphasise our shrewd sense of economic wisdom, and anyone worth their salt knows that making a $10 investment in speed is like going to a bar to drink lemon squash. Needless to say, we felt that we had made the right decision, and continued to drive along, making snarky comments about all of the ugly people in their ugly cars with their even uglier dogs.
Seventy-Two Hours Later (written immediately after the occurrences described)
Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit.
I hate cleaning up blood. Fuck. I asked Randy, who sold us the speed the other day, what to do. But he is not answering his phone. That little fucking prick. He ripped us off, too. Son of a fucking bitch.
Words cannot begin to describe how I feel about the entirety of this episode, except that Rocky looked a lot better before the head amputation. The sort of guy you would feel good about going out to town with, you know? These days, it's kind of a drag. But I don't have the heart to tell him.
I ended up getting to know Randy pretty well, incidentally, because he was in eager need of more cash and I was in need of more stimulants, and like the start of all good friendships, we could do little more than immediately acknowledge the inherent value that we could provide each other. Randy likes to do a lot of cleaning, especially at the beginning of the week, when he picks up litter around our streets. The second half of the week is not quite so dedicated to the public good, because Randy is acutely aware that if he does not smash beer bottles all over the next door cafe, he will not have anything to clean up come Monday. He usually sleeps in the second half of the week, as well.
In between pulling nearly invisible shards of glass out of my pants and cleaning the build-up from the pipe twice daily, I occasionally venture to the kitchen, where I find that Randy has not eaten anything since 1994, except possibly half of a packet of BBQ-flavour instant noodles.
I am in a rut. The vodka is causing me to parse my thoughts with even greater levels of anger and paranoia, but the deceiving sense of coherency only continues to build. It is the feeling one has at the beginning of an evening when they have decided that something terrible is going to happen, but they have not figured out who will instigate the badness. If no one else is willing to do it, then I will have to do it myself.
The kitchen is organised now, probably to a point of tidiness that it may never see again. The matches have been arranged with the intention of great quantity & great distribution. We are looking at something truly outrageous in the making, and the only thing that could possibly stop it would be interference from that conniving, seedy bastard Randall. Where, oh where, have you gone, Randall? It's only a Tuesday, and I know you don't sleep on Tuesdays.
Come out from where you are hiding, Randy. I want to see your facial expression as I extract my revenge on your filthy, hopeless “kitchen.” Never again shall you fancy the thought of boiling some water to make tea, only to keep sitting down, for now you shall not possess a functioning kettle. Eat shit, Randy, and thanks for the drugs.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Perception Damage with Ragin' Bender Jones
I cannot see properly; haven't been able to for four hours at least. The pre-sunrise frantic cleaning operation has begun, and I am not sure what I am doing, entirely, except that I am picking up items with my hands and then putting these items somewhere else, only to forget instantaneously what was just moved and its site of relocation. Completely, utterly useless. I'm quite sure that I knocked over some gigantic variety of potted plant when roaming through the backyard on my way back inside last night. I can't recall the details of all sorts of things on demand, but – well, I've got a hunch about this one. I definitely created a terrible mess. I'll go check.
No, I'm not going crazy (just permanently losing any sense of balance and coordination). I'm going to have to clean that up later, along with the stains in the sink. Do you think I enjoy this? Does this sound like a non-stop barrel of laughs to you? You have no idea how difficult I've got it, man. I didn't choose this. No one does, except those who are malicious and have nothing left to lose. In any other circumstance, saner heads would prevail. No, I definitely did not choose to live like this. Some might describe this decadence as an “anything goes-type situation” (AGTS) but everyone has their limits. Around here, we frown upon martinis before 11 am on Tuesdays, for example (though, admittedly, there is a sort of loophole available through sleeping in).
In moments of reflection I will find myself worrying about my own coherency and sensibility. Here I am, out-drinking all of my friends, and they come to me and start telling me the same story three or four times in the course of a meeting, sometimes with alarming proximity, and I have no idea whether to say anything or not. It's too late in the friendship to suddenly bring up some kind of embarrassing memory problem, but then that sort of honesty is useful because one can never critique their own performance accurately and objectively, and by opening a discourse which is transparent in its communication, one can learn details at a measured pace. This is usually preferable to the rush of information that may be dumped all at once, which can be followed by a stabbing rampage. (“What do you mean I've been forwarding you the exact same chain e-mail every two days since the middle of March, Bob? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?”)
Impulsive decision making can be the cause of further casualties in the AGTS. One moment, I am eight beers deep and passionately arguing for the necessity of stronger antitrust laws, and suddenly we are at a crack den, crushing up ADHD medication and playing the Beatles on vinyl because no one can agree on anything else. Then the host will inevitably announce, with the demeanor with which one might announce a funeral, that we have run out of boxed wine, unless of course you happen to be the host and his girlfriend, who will be retiring to the bedroom shortly to indulge in the treats available to no one else. A group of us may go on a walk to remedy our increasing sense of malaise, in the hope of procuring further intoxicants or maybe just do something stupid (because, hey, “anything goes”). Thirty-six hours later and the face bruises generally serve as a healthy reminder that I have chosen pretty much the worst hobby in the world, and I can't even begin to come up with a good explanation for what happened to my bank account balance.
There was one day last year that I did not consume any alcohol, and it proved to be a heinous decision of epic proportions: I was driving along the highway, maybe 30-40 km over the limit, when I fell asleep and veered off the side of the road, tipping the car over, igniting a fire, which incidentally woke me up again, so I got out of the car, and saved the canary, but did not have time to rescue the trio of puppies (I do not mention this to potential benefactors). To my credit, I was neglecting to answer a phone call at the exact moment of the accident; I hastened to inform the officers of this but they appeared uninterested. If the accident had been caused by drinking, perhaps I would have stable employment in the noble profession of giving patronising lectures to school children about the inevitable consequences of drinking and driving. Why, oh why, did it have to turn out like this?
No, I'm not going crazy (just permanently losing any sense of balance and coordination). I'm going to have to clean that up later, along with the stains in the sink. Do you think I enjoy this? Does this sound like a non-stop barrel of laughs to you? You have no idea how difficult I've got it, man. I didn't choose this. No one does, except those who are malicious and have nothing left to lose. In any other circumstance, saner heads would prevail. No, I definitely did not choose to live like this. Some might describe this decadence as an “anything goes-type situation” (AGTS) but everyone has their limits. Around here, we frown upon martinis before 11 am on Tuesdays, for example (though, admittedly, there is a sort of loophole available through sleeping in).
In moments of reflection I will find myself worrying about my own coherency and sensibility. Here I am, out-drinking all of my friends, and they come to me and start telling me the same story three or four times in the course of a meeting, sometimes with alarming proximity, and I have no idea whether to say anything or not. It's too late in the friendship to suddenly bring up some kind of embarrassing memory problem, but then that sort of honesty is useful because one can never critique their own performance accurately and objectively, and by opening a discourse which is transparent in its communication, one can learn details at a measured pace. This is usually preferable to the rush of information that may be dumped all at once, which can be followed by a stabbing rampage. (“What do you mean I've been forwarding you the exact same chain e-mail every two days since the middle of March, Bob? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?”)
Impulsive decision making can be the cause of further casualties in the AGTS. One moment, I am eight beers deep and passionately arguing for the necessity of stronger antitrust laws, and suddenly we are at a crack den, crushing up ADHD medication and playing the Beatles on vinyl because no one can agree on anything else. Then the host will inevitably announce, with the demeanor with which one might announce a funeral, that we have run out of boxed wine, unless of course you happen to be the host and his girlfriend, who will be retiring to the bedroom shortly to indulge in the treats available to no one else. A group of us may go on a walk to remedy our increasing sense of malaise, in the hope of procuring further intoxicants or maybe just do something stupid (because, hey, “anything goes”). Thirty-six hours later and the face bruises generally serve as a healthy reminder that I have chosen pretty much the worst hobby in the world, and I can't even begin to come up with a good explanation for what happened to my bank account balance.
There was one day last year that I did not consume any alcohol, and it proved to be a heinous decision of epic proportions: I was driving along the highway, maybe 30-40 km over the limit, when I fell asleep and veered off the side of the road, tipping the car over, igniting a fire, which incidentally woke me up again, so I got out of the car, and saved the canary, but did not have time to rescue the trio of puppies (I do not mention this to potential benefactors). To my credit, I was neglecting to answer a phone call at the exact moment of the accident; I hastened to inform the officers of this but they appeared uninterested. If the accident had been caused by drinking, perhaps I would have stable employment in the noble profession of giving patronising lectures to school children about the inevitable consequences of drinking and driving. Why, oh why, did it have to turn out like this?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Passing the Buck (Not My Problem)
Rodgers: What do you expect me to do; sweep and mop the floor? Do I really look like I have time for this?
Ulster: You look like you have all of the time in the world, Rodgers.
Rodgers: Hey, get bent, man. Ain't my fucking problem.
This is the sort of situation that could easily escalate into violence with the help of alcohol. Over here at the Friends & Family of Deceased Alcoholics Association and Preventative Network, where we finance completely unbiased research into methods of tackling the so-called binge drinking epidemic, we have come to a number of startling conclusions.
A.) The number of injuries and deaths related to alcohol could be seriously decreased with a few restrictive measures, like increasing the purchasing age limit, increasing the excise health taxes on alcohol products, and harsher penalties for convictions of violent, drunken behaviour. There are a few caveats, however; for example, though we want to tax alcohol in accordance to its social and medical toll, wine is a major industry over here, so we should probably just leave that completely alone. If we increase the taxes on only beer and spirits, binge drinking should be reduced by 50% in the first year of implementation. (What's missing, you might ask? The graphic photos of bloated livers, oral cancers, fried colons, etc. with simple and direct warnings, such as “DRINKING BEER AND/OR SPIRITS CAUSES LIVER CIRRHOSIS.”)
B.) The number of drunk drivers on our public roads is still far too high to be considered safe by even the most lenient of standards. Clearly, random breath-testing and pulling over reckless drivers is not enough; perhaps the frequency of random breath-testing should be increased, which can be paid for with another increase in beer and spirits taxes. More armed cops on the street, patrolling around to break up any booze-fueled brawls, paid for with yet another brand new vodka tax. Feel a little safer yet?
C.) The number of people who take alcohol consumption as a threat to society seriously is still not high enough to broadly change societal attitudes and habits towards alcohol. This is why we need to apply the immensely successful Tobacco Prevention Agenda, with alterations, to alcohol. Some reports are now saying that the cumulative effect from binge drinking on non-drinkers rivals that of the second-hand smoke emitted by a cigarette smoker fulfilling their hopeless, life-destroying addiction to nicotine. It is socially acceptable to walk up to a smoker and cough; and soon, it shall be quite similar to walk up to a drinker and spit in their filthy beer. People will finally come around to the simple fact that self-medication is not only unethical and dangerous, but also entirely unnecessary in the age of anti-depressants. See your doctor today.
Ulster: You look like you have all of the time in the world, Rodgers.
Rodgers: Hey, get bent, man. Ain't my fucking problem.
This is the sort of situation that could easily escalate into violence with the help of alcohol. Over here at the Friends & Family of Deceased Alcoholics Association and Preventative Network, where we finance completely unbiased research into methods of tackling the so-called binge drinking epidemic, we have come to a number of startling conclusions.
A.) The number of injuries and deaths related to alcohol could be seriously decreased with a few restrictive measures, like increasing the purchasing age limit, increasing the excise health taxes on alcohol products, and harsher penalties for convictions of violent, drunken behaviour. There are a few caveats, however; for example, though we want to tax alcohol in accordance to its social and medical toll, wine is a major industry over here, so we should probably just leave that completely alone. If we increase the taxes on only beer and spirits, binge drinking should be reduced by 50% in the first year of implementation. (What's missing, you might ask? The graphic photos of bloated livers, oral cancers, fried colons, etc. with simple and direct warnings, such as “DRINKING BEER AND/OR SPIRITS CAUSES LIVER CIRRHOSIS.”)
B.) The number of drunk drivers on our public roads is still far too high to be considered safe by even the most lenient of standards. Clearly, random breath-testing and pulling over reckless drivers is not enough; perhaps the frequency of random breath-testing should be increased, which can be paid for with another increase in beer and spirits taxes. More armed cops on the street, patrolling around to break up any booze-fueled brawls, paid for with yet another brand new vodka tax. Feel a little safer yet?
C.) The number of people who take alcohol consumption as a threat to society seriously is still not high enough to broadly change societal attitudes and habits towards alcohol. This is why we need to apply the immensely successful Tobacco Prevention Agenda, with alterations, to alcohol. Some reports are now saying that the cumulative effect from binge drinking on non-drinkers rivals that of the second-hand smoke emitted by a cigarette smoker fulfilling their hopeless, life-destroying addiction to nicotine. It is socially acceptable to walk up to a smoker and cough; and soon, it shall be quite similar to walk up to a drinker and spit in their filthy beer. People will finally come around to the simple fact that self-medication is not only unethical and dangerous, but also entirely unnecessary in the age of anti-depressants. See your doctor today.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Emotionally Independent Self-Empowerment
Nothing gets my goat more than someone becoming unreasonably upset;
Everyone seems to overreact to everything and my patience is limited.
I find no use in calming people and telling them not to fret.
They are all completely full of shit, in the end, and that's what you
Need to remember about them, because after all, nobody is looking
Out for you (they are all really mean jerks) so you should do.
Now that we have that little poem out of the way – it came to me as I was tending to the vegetable garden this morning, just a brisk stroke of literary, emotionally in-depth brilliance, and it would go really nicely with a good guitar riff, now that I think about it – it's time to focus on self-improvement, and more specifically, direct and measurable results from your efforts. You want results! You want action; you want change; you want hope; you want reform. You don't just want these things. You need them.
The first thing to always keep in mind is that the negative opinions of other people are irrelevant. Self-empowerment mandates that you ignore the criticisms of your friends and foes alike, who almost never have your best interests at heart. Through dedication and practice, you can succeed at whatever you want, and the detractions of others are entirely meaningless. As long as you believe in yourself, you will see results. Dedicated readers will appreciate that this has already been demonstrated thoroughly by a friend of mine named Rodney, whose emotionally independent self-empowerment techniques have allowed him to discard the insulting views of everyone around him, including those of law enforcement. “The law is just their opinion,” Rodney tells me.
People appreciate confidence. Even if they continue to insult you, mock you, and generally treat you poorly, when you exert confidence in all of your encounters they will eventually respect you. You can always gain someone's respect by being better than them. Always be the bigger man. You are what you act, and in the end, everyone is really acting, so act to be the best you can be. Of course, you need to practice. For example: you want to ask out someone on a date. The age-old advice of self-help gurus to “bang a bunch of other people with whom you feel no emotional attachment to instead to gear up your confidence” is still useful today. If someone rejects your offer, ignore their rejection through persistence (people appreciate persistence). If they do not find you attractive, they are lying to themselves; make sure they are aware of the truth.
Another key component in self-empowerment is to constantly try new things. Test your limits: date people twice your age; quadruple the number of days you wear underwear without washing it; eat cat food for lunch on a gloomy Wednesday; seek out to actually be informed before voting, etc. People will appreciate your open mindedness and ability to immerse yourself in different hobbies and cultures with a practiced sense of comfort. Most importantly, they will envy you, which will in turn possess them to attempt to seek a closer line of dialogue with you. If they are worth their salt, you can continue to keep the relationship going.
It is vital that you are conscious at all times of your status with other people, particularly those you value, but also others who you may need to use as pawns ('pawns' being those who one vaguely knows, enough to invite to a party, but not to stop and say hello on the street in daylight), so that you may manipulate the living shit out of people to suit your own needs. Tricking the masses is easy; spread hatred and/or misinformation, engaging in smear tactics (a lie need only repeated so many times to become truth, and sometimes insinuations are just as effective as outright lies, since they can be harder to deny). Lyndon B. Johnson once spread a rumor at the very end of a notorious congressional campaign that his primary opponent was sexually active with livestock, and the conversation with the adviser goes roughly like this: “We can't say that, there isn't even an ounce of evidence.” “Yes, but let's make the fucker deny it.” This is the sort of thing we are talking about (Johnson won the election, incidentally, and not without the help of some friendly county commissioners), or perhaps getting the many branches of the gigantic conglomeration of media outlets that you own to repeatedly report an otherwise barely existent flurry of controversy among the climatology community regarding the validity of modern climate change theory.
It is also possible to manipulate people individually. Let us suppose that you are hoping to forge a positive relationship, or enhance an existing one, with someone who seems to at first be non responsive. It is thus essential to create an aura of indispensability to surround your character. Slowly, as you become more and more essential to the daily function of the other person's life, they will be left no choice but to do exactly what you want them to do. If they show resistance of any kind, delay plans to increase the assertion of your authority until you can lull them back into a false sense of security. More about this fascinating topic, and just what how you can get exactly what you want, all of the time, is available whenever you come to my conferences, where I give you lectures accompanied with PowerPoint presentations. You will be absolutely blown away by the barrels of knowledge you will abandon the snazzy hotel function room keeping all for yourself. Now is the time to make the move, and treat yourself right – after all, who else is looking out for number one?
Everyone seems to overreact to everything and my patience is limited.
I find no use in calming people and telling them not to fret.
They are all completely full of shit, in the end, and that's what you
Need to remember about them, because after all, nobody is looking
Out for you (they are all really mean jerks) so you should do.
Now that we have that little poem out of the way – it came to me as I was tending to the vegetable garden this morning, just a brisk stroke of literary, emotionally in-depth brilliance, and it would go really nicely with a good guitar riff, now that I think about it – it's time to focus on self-improvement, and more specifically, direct and measurable results from your efforts. You want results! You want action; you want change; you want hope; you want reform. You don't just want these things. You need them.
The first thing to always keep in mind is that the negative opinions of other people are irrelevant. Self-empowerment mandates that you ignore the criticisms of your friends and foes alike, who almost never have your best interests at heart. Through dedication and practice, you can succeed at whatever you want, and the detractions of others are entirely meaningless. As long as you believe in yourself, you will see results. Dedicated readers will appreciate that this has already been demonstrated thoroughly by a friend of mine named Rodney, whose emotionally independent self-empowerment techniques have allowed him to discard the insulting views of everyone around him, including those of law enforcement. “The law is just their opinion,” Rodney tells me.
People appreciate confidence. Even if they continue to insult you, mock you, and generally treat you poorly, when you exert confidence in all of your encounters they will eventually respect you. You can always gain someone's respect by being better than them. Always be the bigger man. You are what you act, and in the end, everyone is really acting, so act to be the best you can be. Of course, you need to practice. For example: you want to ask out someone on a date. The age-old advice of self-help gurus to “bang a bunch of other people with whom you feel no emotional attachment to instead to gear up your confidence” is still useful today. If someone rejects your offer, ignore their rejection through persistence (people appreciate persistence). If they do not find you attractive, they are lying to themselves; make sure they are aware of the truth.
Another key component in self-empowerment is to constantly try new things. Test your limits: date people twice your age; quadruple the number of days you wear underwear without washing it; eat cat food for lunch on a gloomy Wednesday; seek out to actually be informed before voting, etc. People will appreciate your open mindedness and ability to immerse yourself in different hobbies and cultures with a practiced sense of comfort. Most importantly, they will envy you, which will in turn possess them to attempt to seek a closer line of dialogue with you. If they are worth their salt, you can continue to keep the relationship going.
It is vital that you are conscious at all times of your status with other people, particularly those you value, but also others who you may need to use as pawns ('pawns' being those who one vaguely knows, enough to invite to a party, but not to stop and say hello on the street in daylight), so that you may manipulate the living shit out of people to suit your own needs. Tricking the masses is easy; spread hatred and/or misinformation, engaging in smear tactics (a lie need only repeated so many times to become truth, and sometimes insinuations are just as effective as outright lies, since they can be harder to deny). Lyndon B. Johnson once spread a rumor at the very end of a notorious congressional campaign that his primary opponent was sexually active with livestock, and the conversation with the adviser goes roughly like this: “We can't say that, there isn't even an ounce of evidence.” “Yes, but let's make the fucker deny it.” This is the sort of thing we are talking about (Johnson won the election, incidentally, and not without the help of some friendly county commissioners), or perhaps getting the many branches of the gigantic conglomeration of media outlets that you own to repeatedly report an otherwise barely existent flurry of controversy among the climatology community regarding the validity of modern climate change theory.
It is also possible to manipulate people individually. Let us suppose that you are hoping to forge a positive relationship, or enhance an existing one, with someone who seems to at first be non responsive. It is thus essential to create an aura of indispensability to surround your character. Slowly, as you become more and more essential to the daily function of the other person's life, they will be left no choice but to do exactly what you want them to do. If they show resistance of any kind, delay plans to increase the assertion of your authority until you can lull them back into a false sense of security. More about this fascinating topic, and just what how you can get exactly what you want, all of the time, is available whenever you come to my conferences, where I give you lectures accompanied with PowerPoint presentations. You will be absolutely blown away by the barrels of knowledge you will abandon the snazzy hotel function room keeping all for yourself. Now is the time to make the move, and treat yourself right – after all, who else is looking out for number one?
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Throwing Wild Parties
When all is said and done, and you are rotting away in a retirement home, long since forgotten by all but your closest friends (and not even they are a safe bet), one thing you will be able to look back on is how, at the peak of your life, you were known for throwing a hell of a party. If people still remembered you, they would be constantly bothering you with solicitations for advice on how to ensure people have the wildly good times that you were once known for facilitating.
Sadly, though your once legendary parties are now a forever buried remnant of your spent past, future generations still have much to learn from your indulgent, hedonistic ways. I have taken the liberty of compiling some of your key strategies for partying in the hope that the obnoxious alcoholics of tomorrow will not be confused as to what to do in going about their chosen lifestyle path.
STEP ONE: FINANCIAL BACKING
Generally, when people inform you that having a good time does not necessarily cost money, they are hoping to deflect attention away from their empty wallets. If you have no cash, you should start looking to your friends immediately, either for direct financial support (which is preferable) or assistance in providing required items: beer, wine, spirits, chips, a glass pipe, and petroleum. The guests you invite to your party should hopefully also aid in the valiant effort by bringing their own alcohol supplies as well as illicit drugs.
STEP TWO: DECORATING
Many people tend to assume that decorating your home in preparation for a party can be quickly and easily accomplished. If you find this step to be particularly stress-free, you are certainly doing it incorrectly. Decorating does not merely mean covering the entire carpet in wine-resistant coating and putting up colourful banners and posters on random parts of your wall. You must also remember to hide all of your valuables (pro tip: no one ever checks the front yard, especially if it's raining). Experienced party throwers always know to lock up the fridge and pantry, and obscure the plentiful supply of toilet paper so that guests are more frugal with their wiping. You will also want to hide your towels.
STEP THREE: INVITATIONS
Invitations are often a complicated business, as you can never be entirely sure who of your average seeming acquaintances deserves to be invited into your humble abode. If you get extra selective in your invitation process, and the party turns out to be a flop, you feel like a total idiot; if you invite everyone you've ever had a thirty second conversation with, there's a great chance that those people will show up while your closer acquaintances will be busy exchanging bodily fluids in the privacy of a crumbling share house. You don't want either of these things to happen.
You will end up needing to go through your list of potential invitees individually, asking yourself the same question for each person: “How upset would I be if I found this person passed out naked on my couch in a pile of vomit just before I leave for work?” If the answer is “very upset,” you will want to reconsider what value this person will add to the intended atmosphere of your wild party.
STEP FOUR: FOOD
People who stand around drinking enormous amounts of alcohol rapidly while apparently engaging in conversation often experience a phenomenon known as 'munchies,' where their drunkenness leaves them with a voracious appetite that can only be cured by easy to prepare, popular, and generally unhealthy snack foods. People get more drunk if they have had less to eat prior to the commencement of their binge, so you will definitely want to hide any foodstuffs until a couple of hours into the party, in order to better facilitate the social comfortableness of those around you. You should probably stay ahead of the pack, on the other hand, and eat as filling and nourishing a meal as you possibly can. This gives you an enormous advantage much later in the evening when the frightening reality of sunrise occurring in a matter of mere hours begins to make everyone feel great amounts of sedated pain and despair.
STEP FIVE: DRINKING GAMES YOU'LL LOVE
The way to win over the populist sentiment at your gathering once a suitable number of players have arrived, of course, is to engage in heinous drinking games which force everyone to get ridiculously intoxicated. Here are a few classics:
* Wait until there is a long queue outside your bathroom door. Get a small group of people (5-7) and stand around the queue. Everyone takes a drink when you hear a flush. Everyone takes a drink when you hear the faucet being turned, implying that someone has just washed their hands. If someone does not wash their hands, the entire group gets to jump on the person in question as they exit the bathroom. This game encourages good hygiene and has the added benefit of being right next to the bathroom, where you and your friends will be spending a lot of quality time.
* Look for a group of smokers, probably situated in your backyard, and ask them for a cigarette. Tear up the cigarette and empty the tobacco into a bottle of vodka and let sit for two hours. Strain the tobacco from the vodka, mix it with soft drink, and serve it to anyone who looks like they have stayed inside for the entirety of the party. This is not so much a drinking game as it is a fun chance to watch people get very sick (remember, you get to clean up the mess later!).
* This game is an individual one, which you get to play on your own. Take a big swig of whatever alcoholic beverage of your choosing every time someone you have never seen before in your life comes up to you and says, “Dude, great party.” You may be able to get drunk simply playing this game and not drinking at other times. (If this is achievable, you have definitely “won.”)
STEP SIX: KICKING THESE ASSHOLES OUT
It's three in the morning. The police have already told you to stop making noise and start getting people home, and you are getting a little bit sick of all this bullshit, too, if you are being entirely honest with yourself. This is where a wondrous transition occurs: in one moment, you are friends with practically everyone who has invaded your home, and in the next, you are yelling at them all to get the fuck out right now or you'll start throwing broken bottles at them.
No matter how thorough your late-night purge, there will be stragglers. People will be found in all sorts of odd places, sleeping in highly amusing positions and making objectionable noises which prevent you from going close enough to them to check if they are still breathing. Occasionally you will find a completely silent body, and you will lean up to it to not only find that it is alive but also smells worse than your bathroom, which has had an incredible stench of projectile red wine vomit for about two hours now. The best strategy for your stragglers is to wait until you rise the next day – the chances are they will feel embarrassed and either leave without saying anything or stick around and help clean up.
STEP SEVEN: THE PROPAGANDA WAR
Finally, you need to win the propaganda war. A party is only as fun and exciting as it is made to seem on Facebook, and to win this particular social game you will need a camera as well as a willingness to take literally hundreds of mostly uninteresting photos. From this collection of photos you will remove the blurry, hopelessly mundane, and personally embarrassing, and subsequently upload the rest of them to your profile page, where you must then go through each photo and tag every single person in every single photo. This ensures that your party photos show up on a large number of other people's profiles, and people simply browsing a friend's profile will take note of their friend's attendance at this seemingly wild party where he features in half a dozen totally wacky photos. Everyone loves proof of shenanigans and hijinks, and more importantly, when your brain begins to finally show noticeable memory impairment due to years of heavy chronic alcohol abuse, you will still have your photos to remind you of what a great party you were capable of hosting.
And so, to all of those in tomorrow's generations who are preparing for a long livelihood of barely making ends meet while not actually doing anything productive, I hope you have found this advice helpful. One day you, too, will be rotting away in a retirement home and lamenting on your inability to steer society's youth in the wrong direction. Godspeed and God bless!
Sadly, though your once legendary parties are now a forever buried remnant of your spent past, future generations still have much to learn from your indulgent, hedonistic ways. I have taken the liberty of compiling some of your key strategies for partying in the hope that the obnoxious alcoholics of tomorrow will not be confused as to what to do in going about their chosen lifestyle path.
STEP ONE: FINANCIAL BACKING
Generally, when people inform you that having a good time does not necessarily cost money, they are hoping to deflect attention away from their empty wallets. If you have no cash, you should start looking to your friends immediately, either for direct financial support (which is preferable) or assistance in providing required items: beer, wine, spirits, chips, a glass pipe, and petroleum. The guests you invite to your party should hopefully also aid in the valiant effort by bringing their own alcohol supplies as well as illicit drugs.
STEP TWO: DECORATING
Many people tend to assume that decorating your home in preparation for a party can be quickly and easily accomplished. If you find this step to be particularly stress-free, you are certainly doing it incorrectly. Decorating does not merely mean covering the entire carpet in wine-resistant coating and putting up colourful banners and posters on random parts of your wall. You must also remember to hide all of your valuables (pro tip: no one ever checks the front yard, especially if it's raining). Experienced party throwers always know to lock up the fridge and pantry, and obscure the plentiful supply of toilet paper so that guests are more frugal with their wiping. You will also want to hide your towels.
STEP THREE: INVITATIONS
Invitations are often a complicated business, as you can never be entirely sure who of your average seeming acquaintances deserves to be invited into your humble abode. If you get extra selective in your invitation process, and the party turns out to be a flop, you feel like a total idiot; if you invite everyone you've ever had a thirty second conversation with, there's a great chance that those people will show up while your closer acquaintances will be busy exchanging bodily fluids in the privacy of a crumbling share house. You don't want either of these things to happen.
You will end up needing to go through your list of potential invitees individually, asking yourself the same question for each person: “How upset would I be if I found this person passed out naked on my couch in a pile of vomit just before I leave for work?” If the answer is “very upset,” you will want to reconsider what value this person will add to the intended atmosphere of your wild party.
STEP FOUR: FOOD
People who stand around drinking enormous amounts of alcohol rapidly while apparently engaging in conversation often experience a phenomenon known as 'munchies,' where their drunkenness leaves them with a voracious appetite that can only be cured by easy to prepare, popular, and generally unhealthy snack foods. People get more drunk if they have had less to eat prior to the commencement of their binge, so you will definitely want to hide any foodstuffs until a couple of hours into the party, in order to better facilitate the social comfortableness of those around you. You should probably stay ahead of the pack, on the other hand, and eat as filling and nourishing a meal as you possibly can. This gives you an enormous advantage much later in the evening when the frightening reality of sunrise occurring in a matter of mere hours begins to make everyone feel great amounts of sedated pain and despair.
STEP FIVE: DRINKING GAMES YOU'LL LOVE
The way to win over the populist sentiment at your gathering once a suitable number of players have arrived, of course, is to engage in heinous drinking games which force everyone to get ridiculously intoxicated. Here are a few classics:
* Wait until there is a long queue outside your bathroom door. Get a small group of people (5-7) and stand around the queue. Everyone takes a drink when you hear a flush. Everyone takes a drink when you hear the faucet being turned, implying that someone has just washed their hands. If someone does not wash their hands, the entire group gets to jump on the person in question as they exit the bathroom. This game encourages good hygiene and has the added benefit of being right next to the bathroom, where you and your friends will be spending a lot of quality time.
* Look for a group of smokers, probably situated in your backyard, and ask them for a cigarette. Tear up the cigarette and empty the tobacco into a bottle of vodka and let sit for two hours. Strain the tobacco from the vodka, mix it with soft drink, and serve it to anyone who looks like they have stayed inside for the entirety of the party. This is not so much a drinking game as it is a fun chance to watch people get very sick (remember, you get to clean up the mess later!).
* This game is an individual one, which you get to play on your own. Take a big swig of whatever alcoholic beverage of your choosing every time someone you have never seen before in your life comes up to you and says, “Dude, great party.” You may be able to get drunk simply playing this game and not drinking at other times. (If this is achievable, you have definitely “won.”)
STEP SIX: KICKING THESE ASSHOLES OUT
It's three in the morning. The police have already told you to stop making noise and start getting people home, and you are getting a little bit sick of all this bullshit, too, if you are being entirely honest with yourself. This is where a wondrous transition occurs: in one moment, you are friends with practically everyone who has invaded your home, and in the next, you are yelling at them all to get the fuck out right now or you'll start throwing broken bottles at them.
No matter how thorough your late-night purge, there will be stragglers. People will be found in all sorts of odd places, sleeping in highly amusing positions and making objectionable noises which prevent you from going close enough to them to check if they are still breathing. Occasionally you will find a completely silent body, and you will lean up to it to not only find that it is alive but also smells worse than your bathroom, which has had an incredible stench of projectile red wine vomit for about two hours now. The best strategy for your stragglers is to wait until you rise the next day – the chances are they will feel embarrassed and either leave without saying anything or stick around and help clean up.
STEP SEVEN: THE PROPAGANDA WAR
Finally, you need to win the propaganda war. A party is only as fun and exciting as it is made to seem on Facebook, and to win this particular social game you will need a camera as well as a willingness to take literally hundreds of mostly uninteresting photos. From this collection of photos you will remove the blurry, hopelessly mundane, and personally embarrassing, and subsequently upload the rest of them to your profile page, where you must then go through each photo and tag every single person in every single photo. This ensures that your party photos show up on a large number of other people's profiles, and people simply browsing a friend's profile will take note of their friend's attendance at this seemingly wild party where he features in half a dozen totally wacky photos. Everyone loves proof of shenanigans and hijinks, and more importantly, when your brain begins to finally show noticeable memory impairment due to years of heavy chronic alcohol abuse, you will still have your photos to remind you of what a great party you were capable of hosting.
And so, to all of those in tomorrow's generations who are preparing for a long livelihood of barely making ends meet while not actually doing anything productive, I hope you have found this advice helpful. One day you, too, will be rotting away in a retirement home and lamenting on your inability to steer society's youth in the wrong direction. Godspeed and God bless!
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Should Jesus Return in the Next Six Hours, I'll Endorse the Coalition
If I can garner anything from the campaigns for the Australian election being held later today, it's that nobody is voting for anybody, but against someone else. Also, even if Jesus Christ returned in the next six hours (in his chocolate lathered chariot, which experienced terrible melting problems during transportation due to the ridiculous inadequacy of the elves employed to build the chariot) and wrought ultimate destruction on all of the world's greatest socialist utopias (Iceland, Greece, Cuba, Venezuela, Vermont, etc.), I would have to admit that the title for this little spiel is entirely false. It is difficult to measure the anger that persists over the dumping of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, which the Liberal Party is doing its best to exploit, Queensland and elsewhere. There is also disappointment about Labor's perceived shift to the right under the recent leadership of Julia Gillard. If the following conclusion from these grievances is to then vote for the Liberal Party, then clearly there is a question of either priorities or political awareness.
Tony Abbott can rule out banning abortion to address concerns of underpopulation, fortunately, though his actions as Health Minister would indicate otherwise. He can also rule out bringing back WorkChoices back “under any name.” It sounds like conservatives have very good reasons to throw their weight behind this architect of political mastery; after all, Abbott is standing by their side on all of the things that really matter, like stopping a couple thousand people legitimately seeking refuge from persecution or violence from immigrating to the country, and treating the pollution of coal and petroleum companies as irrelevant even in the repeated presentation of scientific evidence. The fact that “boat people” were ever brought into the political discourse makes a farce out of the entire election, and it is reprehensible that politicians from any party think it is reasonable to detain asylum seekers on international grounds for processing. The use of “stop the boats and help families” as a Liberal slogan is either an indicator of a horrible blunder on the Liberal public relations folks, or heaven forbid, massive stupidity among the community who cannot immediately locate the inherent paradox in this conveniently ambiguous duo of policies.
In the spirit of this election, I will not give you reasons to vote Labor. I will instead give you some “reasons” to consider the Liberals: if you believe homosexuals are degenerates and/or that homosexuality is a choice; if you believe that women should focus on child rearing and parenting to the detriment of their careers; if you find it disturbing that children are born out of wedlock, or that areas of the country have legal pornography and prostitution; if you feel that the richest in society simply aren't paying their fair share in taxation while the lowest income class gets a free ride in a wildly unregulated welfare system that pretty much just hands out free money to totally worthless pieces of shit like students, old people, parents, the unemployed, children, the disabled, etc.; if you feel that the earth was created roughly six-thousand years ago, and/or you don't rule out geocentricity; if you believe that major national priorities should include the criminalisation of flag burning, sodomy, and video games depicting graphic violence and sex; if you feel that the best way to respond to a potential recession is to cut taxes for the rich to the detriment of the public deficit, all while ignoring social investments; and maybe you just happen to feel that people who are only just learning to speak English as of three years ago are not only a threat to the safety of your community but a threat to a way of your life.
And remember, “this election is extremely important,” “your vote actually matters,” and “this is all about building a positive bridge to the future.”
Tony Abbott can rule out banning abortion to address concerns of underpopulation, fortunately, though his actions as Health Minister would indicate otherwise. He can also rule out bringing back WorkChoices back “under any name.” It sounds like conservatives have very good reasons to throw their weight behind this architect of political mastery; after all, Abbott is standing by their side on all of the things that really matter, like stopping a couple thousand people legitimately seeking refuge from persecution or violence from immigrating to the country, and treating the pollution of coal and petroleum companies as irrelevant even in the repeated presentation of scientific evidence. The fact that “boat people” were ever brought into the political discourse makes a farce out of the entire election, and it is reprehensible that politicians from any party think it is reasonable to detain asylum seekers on international grounds for processing. The use of “stop the boats and help families” as a Liberal slogan is either an indicator of a horrible blunder on the Liberal public relations folks, or heaven forbid, massive stupidity among the community who cannot immediately locate the inherent paradox in this conveniently ambiguous duo of policies.
In the spirit of this election, I will not give you reasons to vote Labor. I will instead give you some “reasons” to consider the Liberals: if you believe homosexuals are degenerates and/or that homosexuality is a choice; if you believe that women should focus on child rearing and parenting to the detriment of their careers; if you find it disturbing that children are born out of wedlock, or that areas of the country have legal pornography and prostitution; if you feel that the richest in society simply aren't paying their fair share in taxation while the lowest income class gets a free ride in a wildly unregulated welfare system that pretty much just hands out free money to totally worthless pieces of shit like students, old people, parents, the unemployed, children, the disabled, etc.; if you feel that the earth was created roughly six-thousand years ago, and/or you don't rule out geocentricity; if you believe that major national priorities should include the criminalisation of flag burning, sodomy, and video games depicting graphic violence and sex; if you feel that the best way to respond to a potential recession is to cut taxes for the rich to the detriment of the public deficit, all while ignoring social investments; and maybe you just happen to feel that people who are only just learning to speak English as of three years ago are not only a threat to the safety of your community but a threat to a way of your life.
And remember, “this election is extremely important,” “your vote actually matters,” and “this is all about building a positive bridge to the future.”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Ending Your Career on a High Note
I am a volcano waiting to erupt. The sordid acts I wish to commit are a plague upon those around me like they would never believe only waiting to happen. Here are a few of the things I am going to do in the next couple of days, right after I finish vacuuming the kitchen and alphebetising my bookshelf:
1. Storing terrible things in the freezer equipment at my place of employment. I don't normally have a good excuse to go fox hunting, so I am relishing this opportunity. Nobody wants to consume something that has been in the vicinity of a fox corpse, stored improperly to boot. I am exploiting natural fears among the population while also creating an atmosphere that is disgusting and unsanitary, which has psychological consequences for the people who must tolerate such conditions.
2. Leaving snarky notes for my coworkers to be insulted by. I maintain healthy relationships with the people that I have to interact with each toiling day, and now I can finally inject a healthy dose of honesty into the way that I handle these unpleasant conversations of necessity, perhaps in a way which will make these people question their solicitation of my companionship and approval in the first place. Everyone will be made aware of who is saying these slanderous things; yours truly.
3. Doing absolutely inexplicable, juvenile, and unethical things. It is truly fascinating what one can get away with in the short period of time where your once respectable reputation is rapidly diminishing in waves as you unleash the maniacal behaviour. The best acts of this kind are usually spontaneous, but to give you a general idea of what I'm feeling, I'd defecate in a place where people walk, maybe get some gloves and get a little smear pattern going, or spell out a carefully chosen word (yet to be determined) if the deposit is especially fruitful. The consumption of outrageous amounts of junk food at breakneck speed would be one possible way to aid this goal, and of course performed in an obscene manner in the public square (wearing only a tie and differently coloured socks, eating Chinese take-out with my hands, and using a fork for a Snickers bar, Costanza style).
Join us next week to learn how to get a new job (first hint: do not mention your previous employer as a reference), although the newspaper periodicals are full of helpful offers that will tide you over till we meet again (second hint: avoid the ads which lack any description of what the job actually entails).
1. Storing terrible things in the freezer equipment at my place of employment. I don't normally have a good excuse to go fox hunting, so I am relishing this opportunity. Nobody wants to consume something that has been in the vicinity of a fox corpse, stored improperly to boot. I am exploiting natural fears among the population while also creating an atmosphere that is disgusting and unsanitary, which has psychological consequences for the people who must tolerate such conditions.
2. Leaving snarky notes for my coworkers to be insulted by. I maintain healthy relationships with the people that I have to interact with each toiling day, and now I can finally inject a healthy dose of honesty into the way that I handle these unpleasant conversations of necessity, perhaps in a way which will make these people question their solicitation of my companionship and approval in the first place. Everyone will be made aware of who is saying these slanderous things; yours truly.
3. Doing absolutely inexplicable, juvenile, and unethical things. It is truly fascinating what one can get away with in the short period of time where your once respectable reputation is rapidly diminishing in waves as you unleash the maniacal behaviour. The best acts of this kind are usually spontaneous, but to give you a general idea of what I'm feeling, I'd defecate in a place where people walk, maybe get some gloves and get a little smear pattern going, or spell out a carefully chosen word (yet to be determined) if the deposit is especially fruitful. The consumption of outrageous amounts of junk food at breakneck speed would be one possible way to aid this goal, and of course performed in an obscene manner in the public square (wearing only a tie and differently coloured socks, eating Chinese take-out with my hands, and using a fork for a Snickers bar, Costanza style).
Join us next week to learn how to get a new job (first hint: do not mention your previous employer as a reference), although the newspaper periodicals are full of helpful offers that will tide you over till we meet again (second hint: avoid the ads which lack any description of what the job actually entails).
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Putting in the Bare Minimum
Tell your friends and foe alike of this wonderful news, for a tale of this magnitude should be spared from no one. Now, I had a terrible condition that meant I would bruise, and my easily disgraced exterior would restrict my fun. One fateful day I met a chap named Ricardo aboard a cruise, and he encouraged me to relax, to sit around in the sun.
Boy, did I sure take him up on that advice! These days I collect unemployment checks for exercise and the most important decision of the day is usually what flavor potato crisps I will be consuming for lunch. For more info, give one of my buddies in Shelbyville a buzz (he hangs out at the library), or send me a line, further down the line. This is an example of something you can cook up with all of this free time if you have the ideological inclination to do so:
POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY AS APPLIED TO CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS
Maxine Waters (D-CA) is accused of wrongly intervening on behalf of a minority-owned bank during the 2008 bank crisis, on which her husband serves as a member of the board. Maxine Waters has always been a supporter of minority-owned banks, however, and she is a liberal firebrand. Revelations that her highly capable grandson serves as her chief of staff are not pertinent.
Roland Burris (D-IL) is accused of wrongly attempting to solicit benefits as part of a deal between himself and ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the financial competition to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat as part of the Governor's “pay-to-play” tactics. Roland Burris, who named his son Roland II and his daughter Rolanda (look it up), claims only to have expressed interest in the seat following the exposion of the Governor's corruption, and would not have been stupid enough to agree to contribute money to the Governor in return for a Senate seat. Right?
Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is accused of wrongly accepting gifts from lobbyists, driving an unregistered vehicle without a House parking permit for several years, using government money for recreational trips, and a whole bunch of other stupid bullshit (would you turn down a free vacation? Of course not. It's rude).
Boy, did I sure take him up on that advice! These days I collect unemployment checks for exercise and the most important decision of the day is usually what flavor potato crisps I will be consuming for lunch. For more info, give one of my buddies in Shelbyville a buzz (he hangs out at the library), or send me a line, further down the line. This is an example of something you can cook up with all of this free time if you have the ideological inclination to do so:
POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY AS APPLIED TO CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS
Maxine Waters (D-CA) is accused of wrongly intervening on behalf of a minority-owned bank during the 2008 bank crisis, on which her husband serves as a member of the board. Maxine Waters has always been a supporter of minority-owned banks, however, and she is a liberal firebrand. Revelations that her highly capable grandson serves as her chief of staff are not pertinent.
Roland Burris (D-IL) is accused of wrongly attempting to solicit benefits as part of a deal between himself and ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the financial competition to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat as part of the Governor's “pay-to-play” tactics. Roland Burris, who named his son Roland II and his daughter Rolanda (look it up), claims only to have expressed interest in the seat following the exposion of the Governor's corruption, and would not have been stupid enough to agree to contribute money to the Governor in return for a Senate seat. Right?
Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is accused of wrongly accepting gifts from lobbyists, driving an unregistered vehicle without a House parking permit for several years, using government money for recreational trips, and a whole bunch of other stupid bullshit (would you turn down a free vacation? Of course not. It's rude).
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Overlooking a Four Leaf Clover, and I Just Might Need Contacts
Every so often, I “give gambling a go,” in the sense that I may be willing to invest a highly minimal amount of income ($1-3) on gambling machine games, usually to get nothing back and to experience a highly underwhelming, anti-climactic sense of disappointment from playing the game and observing the players around me, who are either outwardly disgusting or, for all intents and purposes, entirely normal looking, and yet this is how they vent, getting back at their stupid kids for asking for too many treats at the supermarket, or maybe to get back at their boss for making them work an extra two hours on a Thursday. I cannot help but feel a deep sense of loss for these people, who clearly have misplaced priorities if they are willing to slip twenties into their “lucky machine” for discrete little encounters in innocuous looking drinking establishments. These are the very people who are supposedly the fabric of society; the glue that holds our families together, but they are wasting all of their money – their children's education, for God's sake – on their chemical imbalance that is only alleviated by these mindless games and their financial connotations. At least crack smokers have a more thoroughly embedded sense of family and community (in some cases).
This is not about stereotyping anyone, nor is it about casting unfair judgments. Making patently exaggerated generalisations about people is exactly what got us into trouble in the first place (well, depending on who you ask), and only leads to deeply ingrained social class barriers which essentially damn a fixed percentage of the population only because of the accident of birth. Bearing all of this in mind, however, we have examined this issue a little bit more closely and have come to the stunning conclusion that we are able to learn all sorts of things about people if we just know a few simple details about their life background, education status, income, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, and intelligence level. These simple, basic details – which anyone would be willing to answer on a census form, or something similar – are exactly the sort of thing that obscenely wealthy corporations would benefit from if they were to compile all of them into a computerised database. (The exciting potentials of information-based marketing are already being tested, to your annoyance, all across the Internet.) What is the difference, one might ask, between designating separate public toilets for whites and blacks, and a company sending you advertisements on the basis of your past purchases of bright green flip-flops, Family Guy Season 4, The Faith Based Purpose Driven Life, and double Oreo fudge Domino's microwavable pizza? (The company in question has unfortunately already classified you in its 'Lower Middle Class' and 'Gullible Doctrinal Adherent' databases.)
The difference is simple: your choices remain the same, just like everyone else! You can entirely ignore the carefully tailor selected for your own interests advertisements, if it is your prerogative. The corporations, after all, are just utilising their sacrosanct right to freedom of speech. They could be doing just about anything and it would fall under that good old umbrella. Anyway, it's nothing for any of you lot to worry about. Questions to which the answer is No: 'Are we being slowly and meticulously brainwashed to the point of total surrender to global conglomerates?'
This is not about stereotyping anyone, nor is it about casting unfair judgments. Making patently exaggerated generalisations about people is exactly what got us into trouble in the first place (well, depending on who you ask), and only leads to deeply ingrained social class barriers which essentially damn a fixed percentage of the population only because of the accident of birth. Bearing all of this in mind, however, we have examined this issue a little bit more closely and have come to the stunning conclusion that we are able to learn all sorts of things about people if we just know a few simple details about their life background, education status, income, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, and intelligence level. These simple, basic details – which anyone would be willing to answer on a census form, or something similar – are exactly the sort of thing that obscenely wealthy corporations would benefit from if they were to compile all of them into a computerised database. (The exciting potentials of information-based marketing are already being tested, to your annoyance, all across the Internet.) What is the difference, one might ask, between designating separate public toilets for whites and blacks, and a company sending you advertisements on the basis of your past purchases of bright green flip-flops, Family Guy Season 4, The Faith Based Purpose Driven Life, and double Oreo fudge Domino's microwavable pizza? (The company in question has unfortunately already classified you in its 'Lower Middle Class' and 'Gullible Doctrinal Adherent' databases.)
The difference is simple: your choices remain the same, just like everyone else! You can entirely ignore the carefully tailor selected for your own interests advertisements, if it is your prerogative. The corporations, after all, are just utilising their sacrosanct right to freedom of speech. They could be doing just about anything and it would fall under that good old umbrella. Anyway, it's nothing for any of you lot to worry about. Questions to which the answer is No: 'Are we being slowly and meticulously brainwashed to the point of total surrender to global conglomerates?'
Monday, August 16, 2010
Freeing Fred's Fried Fish (An Exercise in Futility)
Shane on you, say I, for having the audacity to name your child something so pretentious as 'Austere Rice Jones.' You should be placed in a mental institution and your child confiscated by protective services. Shane on you, say I, for having the misplaced intrepidity to name your second child something so inherently distasteful as 'Salmonella Gloria-Alyse Jones.' You are a disgrace to your community and to the human species.
I raise my glass of champagne in honor of the idea that you and your newly renamed children never see each other again. Having observed striking photographs from official tabloid websites, the living conditions of your offspring leave me shocked and appalled at your disgusting lack of parental skill and astounding deficit in common sense. Have you no decency, that you could refrain from requiring your children to use litter trays in lieu of toilet training? Have you no basic intelligence, that you would understand not to douse your children in toxic paint as part of some incomprehensible talent show dance routine endeavor?
I have bigger fish to fry, though, and I'm not suggesting that we ban people from naming their children stupid things; after all, it helps us catch the crazies faster. And my Lord, are these people absolutely off the wall nuts. These people believe that you can actually improve your individual circumstances in a meaningful way if you adapt your perspective with a positive attitude. They then go on to reproduce. This scares many informed readers, who are dreading the prospect of the bourgeois, meditating yuppies with electric hedge-trimmers and carbon-neutral swimming pools assimilating into the mainstream and having an influence in business administration and even worse, public policy and the ideological tilt of the government. Some people claim that this has already happened, and they may very well be correct.
Of course, enough people have been distracted and bought off by special interests – either directly through government subsidy (and there is an endless number of people who have been bought off in this area), or indirectly through their own mindless capitulation to the capitalist system, investing in fancy gadgets and over sized automobiles until the banks collapse and they rethink their budget strategy for the first time since graduating from college. Everyone's got it pretty rough, of course, and so there is a lot of discontent, which is rife for stirring by any number of patronizing hotheads with an agenda to push and an ego to cater to. This is allowing us to lose focus of the hijacking that seems to be taking place here (no one seems to be worried that profanity appears to be in the regular discourse of the President, the Vice President, and their aides, who are prone to swearing almost as though they were real people). A pleasant side effect, however, is that people are learning to save more of their money, and keep some of it stashed away for 'rainy day' funds. Other people are partying like there is no tomorrow, especially those lucky souls who got filthy rich by betting on house foreclosures. (“I'm just trying to put my kids through college and pay for my wife's anxiety pills,” said one anonymous benefactor of the string of bank collapses in late 2008. He declined comment regarding the description that his mega-yacht was “vomit caked from all of the partying going on,” instead claiming that he was now trying to focus on his community service.)
Shane on you, Beet Lemon Ragland Jr., for naming your son Kelly Rectum Ragland, and then propping him up to be a tap dancer as a child when he clearly aspired to be a pianist. Shane on you, Lloyd Todd Krugman, for naming your daughter Farcelena Guava Sands-Krugman, and for inciting in her the capacity to create a frenzy of vampire activity at her public school, only for your own godless amusement. Armageddon is right around the corner, and something tells me that pseudo hippies with high-definition televisions don't stand a chance against the mighty chocolate and feather covered chariot of the Divine Lord and Savior as He rides down with reindeer and sweeps away all of the believers in His final act of protection against the soon to be battered earth. And people worry about melting glaciers?
I raise my glass of champagne in honor of the idea that you and your newly renamed children never see each other again. Having observed striking photographs from official tabloid websites, the living conditions of your offspring leave me shocked and appalled at your disgusting lack of parental skill and astounding deficit in common sense. Have you no decency, that you could refrain from requiring your children to use litter trays in lieu of toilet training? Have you no basic intelligence, that you would understand not to douse your children in toxic paint as part of some incomprehensible talent show dance routine endeavor?
I have bigger fish to fry, though, and I'm not suggesting that we ban people from naming their children stupid things; after all, it helps us catch the crazies faster. And my Lord, are these people absolutely off the wall nuts. These people believe that you can actually improve your individual circumstances in a meaningful way if you adapt your perspective with a positive attitude. They then go on to reproduce. This scares many informed readers, who are dreading the prospect of the bourgeois, meditating yuppies with electric hedge-trimmers and carbon-neutral swimming pools assimilating into the mainstream and having an influence in business administration and even worse, public policy and the ideological tilt of the government. Some people claim that this has already happened, and they may very well be correct.
Of course, enough people have been distracted and bought off by special interests – either directly through government subsidy (and there is an endless number of people who have been bought off in this area), or indirectly through their own mindless capitulation to the capitalist system, investing in fancy gadgets and over sized automobiles until the banks collapse and they rethink their budget strategy for the first time since graduating from college. Everyone's got it pretty rough, of course, and so there is a lot of discontent, which is rife for stirring by any number of patronizing hotheads with an agenda to push and an ego to cater to. This is allowing us to lose focus of the hijacking that seems to be taking place here (no one seems to be worried that profanity appears to be in the regular discourse of the President, the Vice President, and their aides, who are prone to swearing almost as though they were real people). A pleasant side effect, however, is that people are learning to save more of their money, and keep some of it stashed away for 'rainy day' funds. Other people are partying like there is no tomorrow, especially those lucky souls who got filthy rich by betting on house foreclosures. (“I'm just trying to put my kids through college and pay for my wife's anxiety pills,” said one anonymous benefactor of the string of bank collapses in late 2008. He declined comment regarding the description that his mega-yacht was “vomit caked from all of the partying going on,” instead claiming that he was now trying to focus on his community service.)
Shane on you, Beet Lemon Ragland Jr., for naming your son Kelly Rectum Ragland, and then propping him up to be a tap dancer as a child when he clearly aspired to be a pianist. Shane on you, Lloyd Todd Krugman, for naming your daughter Farcelena Guava Sands-Krugman, and for inciting in her the capacity to create a frenzy of vampire activity at her public school, only for your own godless amusement. Armageddon is right around the corner, and something tells me that pseudo hippies with high-definition televisions don't stand a chance against the mighty chocolate and feather covered chariot of the Divine Lord and Savior as He rides down with reindeer and sweeps away all of the believers in His final act of protection against the soon to be battered earth. And people worry about melting glaciers?
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Amazingly Short Stories or a Day in the Life
Kindest regards and our warmest welcome to the third issue of Amazingly Short Stories, which aims to provide a look into a day in the life of a certain Mr. H. N. Anderson, whose cynical outlook on life probably began shortly after his house burned down when he was 15 years old. He has held a very unforgiving attitude towards the world ever since.
Fuck You Guys, I'm Leaving
I ripped open the package, loaded the batteries into my cassette player, and then discarded the packaging on my floor. My guests observed this and began to ash their cigarettes on my bed and proceed to butt them on the carpet. I figured there would be a similar sense of comfort when I would go to visit their own dwellings individually, but my assumptions were quite wrong. The thing that really got to me about this, though, was that my battery garbage was totally harmless; the sort of thing I could pick up later when I was in the mood. Instead I had to clean these horrendous burns and stains out of the carpet. Those ungrateful little fucks.
I was cleaning the dog shit out of the carpet last night and I came across a fresh cigarette burn, and by God did I get fucking furious. I work hard for my things, all day long, toiling for meager payment in return for what sort of treatment? To constantly be applying obnoxious chemicals to my carpet and getting scrubbing fingers from spending a little bit too much quality time with the sponge?
This is getting out of hand. I can tolerate it no longer. I know which guest is the culprit, because the other is presently out of town. I head over to his place and light up a smoke. “Dude, you can't smoke inside here...” So I start pissing on the carpet. Boy, is he getting angry now. That man does not look happy at all. He looks downright shocked. He is giving me a very concerned expression. I butt out the cigarette on his carpet, and then finish up urinating to put out the remnants of smoke. “I hope you have learned a valuable lesson,” I say as I exit.
Nothing Compares to Your Company
I feel ridiculous. Here I am, standing in the rain without an umbrella. My hair is getting wet. I look like a fucking asshole.
James “Jelly” Sucrose is idling up to me with his flashy umbrella, casually eying my figure while feeding his own sense of pity for my miserable condition as he inches closer to my presence.
“Do you want some shelter?” I look at Jelly and I ask one simple question of myself: 'What would this man do if he were dictator of the world?' I imagined a world that Jelly would rule with an iron fist: nobody would be allowed to wear clothes, except those that Jelly deemed unattractive; and Jelly would likely demand to be called by some outrageous title like 'Most Gracious Global Emperor of Sucrose' and make everyone swear allegiance to his likeness before eating breakfast.
“Fuck no, Jelly Sucrose.”
My Job Sucks
I'm not really sure what I sell anymore, but I definitely know that I've sold out.
Today I was given the task of writing a new advertising slogan for a product being released by the assholes I work for, Maconnaise™ (Macaroni & Cheese-Flavored Mayonnaise). I sat at my desk, drinking cup of filter coffee after another until my tongue began to go black and my heart was beating faster than was comfortable for me – at all. I started to lose my sense of focus and concentration, and a raft of suppressed memories were all rushing to my head in the same moment. I fixated on one which earned me a criminal record.
One fateful November day, I was taking a bag of trash to the garbage can in the backyard when I needed to go to the bathroom. I dropped the bag of disposables and fled next door to the McRae’s, where I came across the Mrs.’ famed garden, displaying strawberries, tomatoes and cucumbers. Mrs. McRae, a 63-year-old widow whose college drop-out son was currently living in the same residence, was preparing dinner—turkey and mashed potatoes, a classic Thanksgiving meal—in the kitchen. The garden was viewable from the kitchen assuming the curtains were up, which they were. There I was, pissing all over the roots of a tomato plant, when Mrs. McRae stormed outside, very upset, asking me what I had done.
That's when it came to me: Maconnaise: It's Not Even Fresh™. This is one way to earn $11,500.
Fuck You Guys, I'm Leaving
I ripped open the package, loaded the batteries into my cassette player, and then discarded the packaging on my floor. My guests observed this and began to ash their cigarettes on my bed and proceed to butt them on the carpet. I figured there would be a similar sense of comfort when I would go to visit their own dwellings individually, but my assumptions were quite wrong. The thing that really got to me about this, though, was that my battery garbage was totally harmless; the sort of thing I could pick up later when I was in the mood. Instead I had to clean these horrendous burns and stains out of the carpet. Those ungrateful little fucks.
I was cleaning the dog shit out of the carpet last night and I came across a fresh cigarette burn, and by God did I get fucking furious. I work hard for my things, all day long, toiling for meager payment in return for what sort of treatment? To constantly be applying obnoxious chemicals to my carpet and getting scrubbing fingers from spending a little bit too much quality time with the sponge?
This is getting out of hand. I can tolerate it no longer. I know which guest is the culprit, because the other is presently out of town. I head over to his place and light up a smoke. “Dude, you can't smoke inside here...” So I start pissing on the carpet. Boy, is he getting angry now. That man does not look happy at all. He looks downright shocked. He is giving me a very concerned expression. I butt out the cigarette on his carpet, and then finish up urinating to put out the remnants of smoke. “I hope you have learned a valuable lesson,” I say as I exit.
Nothing Compares to Your Company
I feel ridiculous. Here I am, standing in the rain without an umbrella. My hair is getting wet. I look like a fucking asshole.
James “Jelly” Sucrose is idling up to me with his flashy umbrella, casually eying my figure while feeding his own sense of pity for my miserable condition as he inches closer to my presence.
“Do you want some shelter?” I look at Jelly and I ask one simple question of myself: 'What would this man do if he were dictator of the world?' I imagined a world that Jelly would rule with an iron fist: nobody would be allowed to wear clothes, except those that Jelly deemed unattractive; and Jelly would likely demand to be called by some outrageous title like 'Most Gracious Global Emperor of Sucrose' and make everyone swear allegiance to his likeness before eating breakfast.
“Fuck no, Jelly Sucrose.”
My Job Sucks
I'm not really sure what I sell anymore, but I definitely know that I've sold out.
Today I was given the task of writing a new advertising slogan for a product being released by the assholes I work for, Maconnaise™ (Macaroni & Cheese-Flavored Mayonnaise). I sat at my desk, drinking cup of filter coffee after another until my tongue began to go black and my heart was beating faster than was comfortable for me – at all. I started to lose my sense of focus and concentration, and a raft of suppressed memories were all rushing to my head in the same moment. I fixated on one which earned me a criminal record.
One fateful November day, I was taking a bag of trash to the garbage can in the backyard when I needed to go to the bathroom. I dropped the bag of disposables and fled next door to the McRae’s, where I came across the Mrs.’ famed garden, displaying strawberries, tomatoes and cucumbers. Mrs. McRae, a 63-year-old widow whose college drop-out son was currently living in the same residence, was preparing dinner—turkey and mashed potatoes, a classic Thanksgiving meal—in the kitchen. The garden was viewable from the kitchen assuming the curtains were up, which they were. There I was, pissing all over the roots of a tomato plant, when Mrs. McRae stormed outside, very upset, asking me what I had done.
That's when it came to me: Maconnaise: It's Not Even Fresh™. This is one way to earn $11,500.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Praise Jesus: An Evangelical’s Not-So-Weekly Advice Column (#3)
Greetings, heathens! Today I received an exciting letter of testimonials from St. Peter’s Church of the Assembly of Christ in Shelbyville, West Virginia. Labeled “That’s a Fact!: Startling Testimonials from the Hell-bound,” this tract explains clearly and bluntly why so many people are going to meet eternal damnation. If I may quote from it directly:
“Sometimes your hatred of God really comes back to haunt you at the most inconvenient times, such as when I was fornicating with a young married woman, enjoying our unified and mutual denial—no, outright hatred—of God the Father. Some days later, I learned that I had been given gonorrhea by that woman; later that month, she learned that she was pregnant, but she had not had sexual intercourse with her husband for a considerable period of time. She decided to wait until she was eight months pregnant to get the abortion, and she forced me to come along with her. The doctors induced a premature birth and then took the little baby, put him, crying, on a table and chopped him to little bits with an axe. It made me want to commit suicide, but the woman told me that this was how we were going to do things if we wanted to worship Satan. Be wary of women who fornicate; most of them are like this.”
It truly is shocking the amount of deception nonbelievers have in their hearts. People living for today think they can get away with all sorts of sins, but the truth is that they will pay the price come Judgment Day. Fortunately, I am here to help. Today I will again be answering the letters of people across the nation in an effort to save some of God’s precious children from the dark sulfuric undergrounds of hell.
Dear John:
My mother is a terminal cancer patient who claims that using marijuana on a regular basis significantly reduces the amount of pain she experiences. When I told her that God opposes drug use, she told me that the pain was too immense without the marijuana. How do I handle this situation?
Mike H., Alabama
Dear Mike, your mother is the devil himself. There is no credible scientific research to show that marijuana has any practical uses as pain relief. However, research does show that marijuana causes schizophrenia, lung cancer, and chemical imbalances that may trigger sympathies towards Satanism, communism, and Zionism. Old people, who are often possessed by demons, have an agenda to legalize marijuana because of the profit they will make from their cannabis farms. God isn’t fooled by their wise tricks, and neither should you.
Dear John:
I was recently sent a compact disc album of a child choir performing songs with titles such as “The Holy Spirit Touched Me (And I Called Social Services)”, “I Fucked Jesus (On the Cross)”, and “Eating Shellfish and Pork for Personal Enjoyment.” I was shocked to see in the liner notes that my very own eleven-year-old boy was among those performing in the choir. What am I going to do? Regards,
Chris T., South Carolina
Dear Chris, a Wikipedia search for the Charleston Choir revealed that their eponymous debut album, which features the songs that you mentioned, has become a huge hit among young adults, and is gaining quickly on radio airplay charts. For example, they have scored three top 40 hits already: “The American Civil Liberties Union Should be a Cabinet Department”, “The Holy Spirit Touched Me…”, and “I’d Rather Worship Zeus.” I can’t say what the appeal of this garbage is, exactly, but I can certainly say that you should obtain all copies of the album in your vicinity and bulldoze them. As for your eleven-year-old boy, the appropriate punishment for blasphemy is a community stoning. You know that!
Hi John,
I recently came across a collection of jokes about famed Western movie actor Chuck Norris. Most of these “jokes,” with which I found no humor in whatsoever, gave Mr. Norris some sort of supernatural quality. If these jokes are meant as parody, why does Chuck Norris not exhibit any supernatural qualities whatsoever? Either I have a misunderstanding of the definition of supernatural, or the writer of these jokes doesn’t know anything about Chuck Norris! It goes without saying that this is libel, and I have informed my Congressman about it. I was hoping you would give more publicity towards my cause.
Collie D., Minnesota
Thanks for your letter, Collie. I was not aware of these so-called jokes about Chuck Norris, but they strike me as defamation of the worst sort. Only in a society where we have relaxed our morals and family values so much like in modern day America would such vile slander be allowed to exist. This is yet more proof that the end times are upon us, probably about three weeks from now.
Dear John,
I was watching a special on PBS about prehistoric times and dinosaurs and the like. I am confused as to why there were no humans in this so-called documentary.
William C., Nebraska
The answer is simple, William! People who make these documentaries—who, need I remind my readers, were not around when they claim these things happened, so they have no way of knowing what they say is true—use computer generated effects to give the illusion of reality in their films. No actual footage of dinosaurs exists, though the oldest human record of a dinosaur is of course the biblical book of Job. When scientists ignore God’s word and rely on the planted fossils, the result is moral chaos.
“Sometimes your hatred of God really comes back to haunt you at the most inconvenient times, such as when I was fornicating with a young married woman, enjoying our unified and mutual denial—no, outright hatred—of God the Father. Some days later, I learned that I had been given gonorrhea by that woman; later that month, she learned that she was pregnant, but she had not had sexual intercourse with her husband for a considerable period of time. She decided to wait until she was eight months pregnant to get the abortion, and she forced me to come along with her. The doctors induced a premature birth and then took the little baby, put him, crying, on a table and chopped him to little bits with an axe. It made me want to commit suicide, but the woman told me that this was how we were going to do things if we wanted to worship Satan. Be wary of women who fornicate; most of them are like this.”
It truly is shocking the amount of deception nonbelievers have in their hearts. People living for today think they can get away with all sorts of sins, but the truth is that they will pay the price come Judgment Day. Fortunately, I am here to help. Today I will again be answering the letters of people across the nation in an effort to save some of God’s precious children from the dark sulfuric undergrounds of hell.
Dear John:
My mother is a terminal cancer patient who claims that using marijuana on a regular basis significantly reduces the amount of pain she experiences. When I told her that God opposes drug use, she told me that the pain was too immense without the marijuana. How do I handle this situation?
Mike H., Alabama
Dear Mike, your mother is the devil himself. There is no credible scientific research to show that marijuana has any practical uses as pain relief. However, research does show that marijuana causes schizophrenia, lung cancer, and chemical imbalances that may trigger sympathies towards Satanism, communism, and Zionism. Old people, who are often possessed by demons, have an agenda to legalize marijuana because of the profit they will make from their cannabis farms. God isn’t fooled by their wise tricks, and neither should you.
Dear John:
I was recently sent a compact disc album of a child choir performing songs with titles such as “The Holy Spirit Touched Me (And I Called Social Services)”, “I Fucked Jesus (On the Cross)”, and “Eating Shellfish and Pork for Personal Enjoyment.” I was shocked to see in the liner notes that my very own eleven-year-old boy was among those performing in the choir. What am I going to do? Regards,
Chris T., South Carolina
Dear Chris, a Wikipedia search for the Charleston Choir revealed that their eponymous debut album, which features the songs that you mentioned, has become a huge hit among young adults, and is gaining quickly on radio airplay charts. For example, they have scored three top 40 hits already: “The American Civil Liberties Union Should be a Cabinet Department”, “The Holy Spirit Touched Me…”, and “I’d Rather Worship Zeus.” I can’t say what the appeal of this garbage is, exactly, but I can certainly say that you should obtain all copies of the album in your vicinity and bulldoze them. As for your eleven-year-old boy, the appropriate punishment for blasphemy is a community stoning. You know that!
Hi John,
I recently came across a collection of jokes about famed Western movie actor Chuck Norris. Most of these “jokes,” with which I found no humor in whatsoever, gave Mr. Norris some sort of supernatural quality. If these jokes are meant as parody, why does Chuck Norris not exhibit any supernatural qualities whatsoever? Either I have a misunderstanding of the definition of supernatural, or the writer of these jokes doesn’t know anything about Chuck Norris! It goes without saying that this is libel, and I have informed my Congressman about it. I was hoping you would give more publicity towards my cause.
Collie D., Minnesota
Thanks for your letter, Collie. I was not aware of these so-called jokes about Chuck Norris, but they strike me as defamation of the worst sort. Only in a society where we have relaxed our morals and family values so much like in modern day America would such vile slander be allowed to exist. This is yet more proof that the end times are upon us, probably about three weeks from now.
Dear John,
I was watching a special on PBS about prehistoric times and dinosaurs and the like. I am confused as to why there were no humans in this so-called documentary.
William C., Nebraska
The answer is simple, William! People who make these documentaries—who, need I remind my readers, were not around when they claim these things happened, so they have no way of knowing what they say is true—use computer generated effects to give the illusion of reality in their films. No actual footage of dinosaurs exists, though the oldest human record of a dinosaur is of course the biblical book of Job. When scientists ignore God’s word and rely on the planted fossils, the result is moral chaos.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
A Smörgåsbord of Utter Hazarai
In lieu of the customary bullshit coleslaw served in generous portions at this fine establishment, the following is simply a list of titles. We expect to revert to the classic formulation shortly, but for now...
“I Was Thinking Today, I Should Really Get Into Gambling”
“Catching a Cheating Spouse with Hypnosis and Waterboarding”
“Three Ways to Gut a Nun (My Trip to Wisconsin)”
“Choose Life, Unless You Can't Afford It”
“I Worship You Aqua Buddha, I Worship You”
“Low-Calorie Cola Addiction Ruined My Family”
“Elimination of Gregorian Chanting through Lobotomy”
“There Is Nothing You Can Do About Crime In Your Ghetto”
“Friendly Ways to Intimidate Your Neighbour”
“Making Women Think You Are Actually a Lot Better at Everything Than You Really Are”
“Drowning Eskimos and Environmental Impact of Related Methane Emissions”
“Urban Legends: Food Poisoning May Require Hospitalisation”
“This Particular Article is the Result of Five Hours with a Thesaurus”
“Thirty Years of Water Polo and I've Never Felt Better”
“My Optometrist Looks Up My Shorts Because He Thinks I Can't See”
“Put the Kazoo Down Before I Kill Your Dog”
“Just for Being Without Sin and Throwing the First Stone, I Burned Down Your Hut”
“The Fucking Pricks I Work For Don't Cover Dental, So I'm Mugging Strangers”
“Cleaning Your Own Shit from a Public Bench (Without Leaving a Trace)”
“My Membership at This Gymnasium Makes Me Feel Like a Total Douchebag”
“Confronting Second Cousins Regarding Domestic Legal Disputes”
“I Lost My Keys on the Bus and I'm Pretty Sure My Life is Worthless Now”
“Unsettling New Information Proves Coriander Products from Saskatoon Contain Asbestos”
“If There is Anything Worse than Natural Disasters, Please Demonstrate Now”
“The Tale of Rockwell Francesco, A Man Who Never Follows Bad Directions”
“I Was Thinking Today, I Should Really Get Into Gambling”
“Catching a Cheating Spouse with Hypnosis and Waterboarding”
“Three Ways to Gut a Nun (My Trip to Wisconsin)”
“Choose Life, Unless You Can't Afford It”
“I Worship You Aqua Buddha, I Worship You”
“Low-Calorie Cola Addiction Ruined My Family”
“Elimination of Gregorian Chanting through Lobotomy”
“There Is Nothing You Can Do About Crime In Your Ghetto”
“Friendly Ways to Intimidate Your Neighbour”
“Making Women Think You Are Actually a Lot Better at Everything Than You Really Are”
“Drowning Eskimos and Environmental Impact of Related Methane Emissions”
“Urban Legends: Food Poisoning May Require Hospitalisation”
“This Particular Article is the Result of Five Hours with a Thesaurus”
“Thirty Years of Water Polo and I've Never Felt Better”
“My Optometrist Looks Up My Shorts Because He Thinks I Can't See”
“Put the Kazoo Down Before I Kill Your Dog”
“Just for Being Without Sin and Throwing the First Stone, I Burned Down Your Hut”
“The Fucking Pricks I Work For Don't Cover Dental, So I'm Mugging Strangers”
“Cleaning Your Own Shit from a Public Bench (Without Leaving a Trace)”
“My Membership at This Gymnasium Makes Me Feel Like a Total Douchebag”
“Confronting Second Cousins Regarding Domestic Legal Disputes”
“I Lost My Keys on the Bus and I'm Pretty Sure My Life is Worthless Now”
“Unsettling New Information Proves Coriander Products from Saskatoon Contain Asbestos”
“If There is Anything Worse than Natural Disasters, Please Demonstrate Now”
“The Tale of Rockwell Francesco, A Man Who Never Follows Bad Directions”
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
It's Just the Little Things
Here are a few little things you probably don't know about me:
1. I collect dead bees. As I've never been stung, I have maintained a lifelong interest in preserving my dominance over these bloodthirsty creatures. Something tells me that bees tend to stay away from that guy with the dead bee collection. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking this. Whatever. Let's move on.
2. I am a tornado survivor. (Don't ask for further details.)
3. As a high school honour student, I was entitled to free pizza on a quarterly basis. I was happy with this reward; after all, delicious, steaming and fresh pizza is the ultimate culmination of a couple months of devoted schoolwork. However (and I have felt guilty about this for all of my days) I was encouraged by a certain family member to 'hold on' to the free pizza certificate so that I could re-use it, therefore getting more than the one free pizza I was entitled to. It is folks like me, who have been cheating the market for decades, who ruin it for everyone else. (I don't believe the particular pizza store in question, however, was affected by the recession. Thank goodness.)
4. At some point, the collection of litter and compost on my carpet grew to be such a cumbersome mountain of trash to clean that I had to put a rug over it. It ties the room together, but it looks a little uneven. Sometimes I worry there are rats under the rug.
5. I'm allergic to zucchini, if you trust my doctor at least, and I certainly don't; the prick. I eat the goddamn stuff every day of the week. Feel great.
6. Once at 4 in the morning, I sat at a stop sign for the better part of an hour, waiting for it to turn green. The officer was very understanding and told me to get moving.
7. Unlike most other people, I can actually simultaneously sneeze while urinating, however I restrict this to when I am outside.
8. The second time I fell through the roof of a three-story home was also the last. What followed was an epiphany of sorts which allowed me to break from the strangling hold of what kept bringing me back to that wretched house: the only way I could get my life together, once and for all, was if I stopped hunting for ghosts in abandoned houses. Though the impact has been less great than I had imagined, cessation is definitely an improvement.
1. I collect dead bees. As I've never been stung, I have maintained a lifelong interest in preserving my dominance over these bloodthirsty creatures. Something tells me that bees tend to stay away from that guy with the dead bee collection. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking this. Whatever. Let's move on.
2. I am a tornado survivor. (Don't ask for further details.)
3. As a high school honour student, I was entitled to free pizza on a quarterly basis. I was happy with this reward; after all, delicious, steaming and fresh pizza is the ultimate culmination of a couple months of devoted schoolwork. However (and I have felt guilty about this for all of my days) I was encouraged by a certain family member to 'hold on' to the free pizza certificate so that I could re-use it, therefore getting more than the one free pizza I was entitled to. It is folks like me, who have been cheating the market for decades, who ruin it for everyone else. (I don't believe the particular pizza store in question, however, was affected by the recession. Thank goodness.)
4. At some point, the collection of litter and compost on my carpet grew to be such a cumbersome mountain of trash to clean that I had to put a rug over it. It ties the room together, but it looks a little uneven. Sometimes I worry there are rats under the rug.
5. I'm allergic to zucchini, if you trust my doctor at least, and I certainly don't; the prick. I eat the goddamn stuff every day of the week. Feel great.
6. Once at 4 in the morning, I sat at a stop sign for the better part of an hour, waiting for it to turn green. The officer was very understanding and told me to get moving.
7. Unlike most other people, I can actually simultaneously sneeze while urinating, however I restrict this to when I am outside.
8. The second time I fell through the roof of a three-story home was also the last. What followed was an epiphany of sorts which allowed me to break from the strangling hold of what kept bringing me back to that wretched house: the only way I could get my life together, once and for all, was if I stopped hunting for ghosts in abandoned houses. Though the impact has been less great than I had imagined, cessation is definitely an improvement.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Reason #52 to Never Visit Kansas
The Setting: We are on a tax-deductible, educational investigation to determine just what makes the writers tick over at the Kansas Funny Factory, a world-renowned source of comedic books and columns, headed by the successful entrepreneur Mr. Manfred R. Martinez, III.
It is advertised as a lean operation, where only the most quality talent are recruited to blend their creative juices and anyone who is not making a serious contribution to the writing is fired, and often consequentially blacklisted in the writing industry. You walk in and the atmosphere automatically strikes you as odd: the security guard is clearly junked out, and the receptionist has not been seen since February (no one asks questions about this). All of the offices are empty, except one which is used as a coffee room, and one which is used as the writing office. The main attraction for us will be the writing office.
At the far end corner of the writing office, you will see the cloud of smoke continuously blowing from that direction, with the writers rarely getting up except to go to the bathroom. Occasionally writers are engaged in such intense creative brainstorming that they keep a jar in the office so that they can continue working without interruptions for the release of bodily fluids. Said one staffer who was clearly wearing a wig, “it is pretty common to go two days without sleeping here, pass out in an exhausted daze in a hallway and then wake up and start drinking scotch straight from the bottle.” What's the project today? “We have to come up with novel yet hilarious ways to mock the political and cultural conventional wisdom surrounding illegal immigration, and the status of asylum seekers. It's all very dry, and we do our best to take our assignments as seriously as possible.” And the pay? “Worse than every other job I've had, easily, especially given the full time hours. They won't let me out of here until I've provided 5,000 words of comedic gold each day. Can you even imagine that kind of pressure?”
In conducting our investigation, we promised full transparency with the authority figure of the office, an intimidating Mr. Manfred Martinez, who immediately asked for the name of the staffer who had made the disparaging comments regarding his wage and working environment. Regrettably, having signed a document which we really did not read carefully enough, we had to turn over the young Arnold N. Watt over to Mr. Martinez, who then proceeded to cornhole Mr. Watt with a broomstick while explaining calmly that though his service to the company had been highly appreciated, he would not be receiving his last fortnightly paycheck. We later observed that Mr. Watt's name had been removed from the credits of any of the publications, including work which he later confirmed to be his writing. (“Yeah, the thing on how to best eradicate herpes in South Dakota – I'll be damned if anyone has ever written as biting a diatribe on that topic as I did” was one such piece, among others.) Mr. Watt never sought to press charges of sexual assault or workplace mistreatment against Mr. Martinez, who is clearly a very powerful man. In fact, we cut short our investigation of his little factory – not just out of disgust for the redundancy of the hellishly sweet bacon pecan pie being served for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner – but more so out of fear that he would catch us in one of his monstrous bear traps and then begin removing our fingernails one by one while explaining his meek desire that our report look upon him with only the most generous spirit of fairness.
We shiver at the very thought.
It is advertised as a lean operation, where only the most quality talent are recruited to blend their creative juices and anyone who is not making a serious contribution to the writing is fired, and often consequentially blacklisted in the writing industry. You walk in and the atmosphere automatically strikes you as odd: the security guard is clearly junked out, and the receptionist has not been seen since February (no one asks questions about this). All of the offices are empty, except one which is used as a coffee room, and one which is used as the writing office. The main attraction for us will be the writing office.
At the far end corner of the writing office, you will see the cloud of smoke continuously blowing from that direction, with the writers rarely getting up except to go to the bathroom. Occasionally writers are engaged in such intense creative brainstorming that they keep a jar in the office so that they can continue working without interruptions for the release of bodily fluids. Said one staffer who was clearly wearing a wig, “it is pretty common to go two days without sleeping here, pass out in an exhausted daze in a hallway and then wake up and start drinking scotch straight from the bottle.” What's the project today? “We have to come up with novel yet hilarious ways to mock the political and cultural conventional wisdom surrounding illegal immigration, and the status of asylum seekers. It's all very dry, and we do our best to take our assignments as seriously as possible.” And the pay? “Worse than every other job I've had, easily, especially given the full time hours. They won't let me out of here until I've provided 5,000 words of comedic gold each day. Can you even imagine that kind of pressure?”
In conducting our investigation, we promised full transparency with the authority figure of the office, an intimidating Mr. Manfred Martinez, who immediately asked for the name of the staffer who had made the disparaging comments regarding his wage and working environment. Regrettably, having signed a document which we really did not read carefully enough, we had to turn over the young Arnold N. Watt over to Mr. Martinez, who then proceeded to cornhole Mr. Watt with a broomstick while explaining calmly that though his service to the company had been highly appreciated, he would not be receiving his last fortnightly paycheck. We later observed that Mr. Watt's name had been removed from the credits of any of the publications, including work which he later confirmed to be his writing. (“Yeah, the thing on how to best eradicate herpes in South Dakota – I'll be damned if anyone has ever written as biting a diatribe on that topic as I did” was one such piece, among others.) Mr. Watt never sought to press charges of sexual assault or workplace mistreatment against Mr. Martinez, who is clearly a very powerful man. In fact, we cut short our investigation of his little factory – not just out of disgust for the redundancy of the hellishly sweet bacon pecan pie being served for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner – but more so out of fear that he would catch us in one of his monstrous bear traps and then begin removing our fingernails one by one while explaining his meek desire that our report look upon him with only the most generous spirit of fairness.
We shiver at the very thought.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
A Brief Dissertation Exploring the Efficacy of Dream-Based Prediction
Some of you (and you know exactly who you are) may be wondering that same all-engrossing question I often find myself asking: can we gain insight into the events of the future from our dreams? I have devoted the previous six months to studying this project in depth, and I will share a selection of my findings here. In sum, however, I would have to conclude that the answer is yes. We can predict all sorts of wacky shit from our dreams! (I am required here to include a disclaimer to meekly note that as the entirety of this dissertation relies on personal anecdotal evidence, it has no academic merit whatsoever, but please don't let that stop you from agreeing with the premise.)
Any truly intellectual analysis of this issue, which divides scientists and philosophers alike, must take into account the accuracy of the dreams of its author(s). As such, I will describe a few of my own dreams and determine whether they correctly predicted anything about my future.
Dream #1: The Best Day of My Life
I woke up bright and early one morning (except not actually, because I was dreaming) to find a package left at my doorstep with my name on it. No return address... very suspicious. I weighed my options and decided that I was probably not famous enough to have someone send me anthrax, so I opened it. It contained $500 in cash in an envelope that was hidden by those little styrofoam things (which are almost as great as money!). I was quite elated and tried to figure out who my lovely benefactor was, until my thought process came back to the fact that I had just scored a free five hundred big ones, and I realised that whoever this fellow was probably wished to remain anonymous, so the wisest course of action was to go out and spend it. After a rather exhausting walk around town, I noted that it was beginning to get dark and I was starting to run low on cocaine. It wasn't long after that I noted that I was now completely out of free money, and if I wished to continue gallivanting around town like the rich coke-addled big shot that I had always hoped to be, I would have to begin financing it myself. Unwilling to make this sacrifice, I walked home, made instant noodles, and went to bed.
Verdict: This particular dream has not, technically, manifested itself to be true in any way (except for the part about making instant noodles and going to bed, which is a pretty good description of mid-2008). It also does not disprove the hypothesis, and some of us around here are crossing our fingers for a box containing free money that should arrive any day now.
Dream #2: The Worst Day of My Life
This dream had no beginning. I only remember it because of its sheer horror: I was locked up in all these horrible chains, and some jerk wearing a black suit and a ski mask kept throwing this crap at me (which I eventually realised were highly rotten mashed potatoes - right around the time that he hit me in the face with it). After he had run out of mash, he dragged me by my chains (I'm assuming they weren't actually attached to anything) to the hood of his truck and beat me over the head with a two-by-four repeatedly until I lost consciousness. The dream continues in the hospital, where the doctor tells me that I remarkably haven't sustained any injuries from the savage beating, but while checking up on things they noticed a tumor the size of a grapefruit growing in my pancreas. Finding all of this just a tad difficult to process at once, I asked if the tumor was benign, at which point he began laughing hysterically. After he had calmed down a little, he told me that I probably had three weeks, tops, to live. There was an upside, though. I think the doc felt sort of guilty about the way he reacted to my question, so he went out and bought me a chocolate cake.
Verdict: This one was not entirely accurate on a few details, but essentially got it right in the end, namely that I have eaten chocolate cake many times. Needless to say, it is certainly a part of the conventional wisdom that chocolate cake functions as a comfort food for situations following extreme physical torture.
Dream #3: A Fairly Average Day
So I'm driving around in my orange minivan, eating Oreos and chatting on my phone to my all of my swell buds as I cruise around town, looking for a good time. Probably on account of all that attention I was paying to my phone, I ran over either a deer or a person; I can't be sure, because I was drunk, and I didn't stop.
Verdict: Well, okay, this one is pretty stupid. I don't even have an orange minivan. Alas, every successful venue of prediction and prophecy has its errors, so it should come as no surprise.
Dream #4: Every Other Dream I've Ever Had
Some people have recurring nightmares, but I tend to get a recurring mundane bore. These dreams invariably consist of me just sitting around, eating expired food or, worst of all, checking Facebook.
Verdict: Perhaps the most excellent indicator of my future that I have been able to find, or will ever find.
Any truly intellectual analysis of this issue, which divides scientists and philosophers alike, must take into account the accuracy of the dreams of its author(s). As such, I will describe a few of my own dreams and determine whether they correctly predicted anything about my future.
Dream #1: The Best Day of My Life
I woke up bright and early one morning (except not actually, because I was dreaming) to find a package left at my doorstep with my name on it. No return address... very suspicious. I weighed my options and decided that I was probably not famous enough to have someone send me anthrax, so I opened it. It contained $500 in cash in an envelope that was hidden by those little styrofoam things (which are almost as great as money!). I was quite elated and tried to figure out who my lovely benefactor was, until my thought process came back to the fact that I had just scored a free five hundred big ones, and I realised that whoever this fellow was probably wished to remain anonymous, so the wisest course of action was to go out and spend it. After a rather exhausting walk around town, I noted that it was beginning to get dark and I was starting to run low on cocaine. It wasn't long after that I noted that I was now completely out of free money, and if I wished to continue gallivanting around town like the rich coke-addled big shot that I had always hoped to be, I would have to begin financing it myself. Unwilling to make this sacrifice, I walked home, made instant noodles, and went to bed.
Verdict: This particular dream has not, technically, manifested itself to be true in any way (except for the part about making instant noodles and going to bed, which is a pretty good description of mid-2008). It also does not disprove the hypothesis, and some of us around here are crossing our fingers for a box containing free money that should arrive any day now.
Dream #2: The Worst Day of My Life
This dream had no beginning. I only remember it because of its sheer horror: I was locked up in all these horrible chains, and some jerk wearing a black suit and a ski mask kept throwing this crap at me (which I eventually realised were highly rotten mashed potatoes - right around the time that he hit me in the face with it). After he had run out of mash, he dragged me by my chains (I'm assuming they weren't actually attached to anything) to the hood of his truck and beat me over the head with a two-by-four repeatedly until I lost consciousness. The dream continues in the hospital, where the doctor tells me that I remarkably haven't sustained any injuries from the savage beating, but while checking up on things they noticed a tumor the size of a grapefruit growing in my pancreas. Finding all of this just a tad difficult to process at once, I asked if the tumor was benign, at which point he began laughing hysterically. After he had calmed down a little, he told me that I probably had three weeks, tops, to live. There was an upside, though. I think the doc felt sort of guilty about the way he reacted to my question, so he went out and bought me a chocolate cake.
Verdict: This one was not entirely accurate on a few details, but essentially got it right in the end, namely that I have eaten chocolate cake many times. Needless to say, it is certainly a part of the conventional wisdom that chocolate cake functions as a comfort food for situations following extreme physical torture.
Dream #3: A Fairly Average Day
So I'm driving around in my orange minivan, eating Oreos and chatting on my phone to my all of my swell buds as I cruise around town, looking for a good time. Probably on account of all that attention I was paying to my phone, I ran over either a deer or a person; I can't be sure, because I was drunk, and I didn't stop.
Verdict: Well, okay, this one is pretty stupid. I don't even have an orange minivan. Alas, every successful venue of prediction and prophecy has its errors, so it should come as no surprise.
Dream #4: Every Other Dream I've Ever Had
Some people have recurring nightmares, but I tend to get a recurring mundane bore. These dreams invariably consist of me just sitting around, eating expired food or, worst of all, checking Facebook.
Verdict: Perhaps the most excellent indicator of my future that I have been able to find, or will ever find.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Good Ideas & Good Vibrations
Don't say we never provide you with useful insider tips on how to ride to success in an increasingly perilous economy. Get in on these marketing opportunities while you still have the chance!
Advanced Medical Care for a New Millennium
Requirements: baseball bat.
This philosophy of health care is based on the notion that any existing pain can be numbed with the introduction of new pain. The new, controllable pains are then ceased at the point of payment. For example:
Sick Kid: Hello, doc, I've got a sprained ankle and it hurts like crazy!
I proceed to hit Sick Kid over the head with a baseball bat.
Me: Would you like to feel better?
Sick Kid: Yes!
Me: That will be $50, thank you.
If, alternatively, Sick Kid says 'no', I must continue to hit him with the baseball bat until he succumbs to my generous and inexpensive health care offer.
Selling Your Own Things at Insanely Deflated Prices
Requirements: all of your shit.
This particular marketing opportunity is based around the assumption that you are broke, have no prospects and/or don't wish to be employed, and are not comfortable with performing armed robberies. Unfortunately, this opportunity only lasts as long as you have valuable assets, and in hindsight, you may regret selling all of your prized possessions so that you could buy boxed wine that week.
If you have an especially compulsive personality, it may be useful before you begin this project to compile a list of items which you are absolutely not willing to sell. You should also space out the most valuable items so that you can keep a steady stream of income for as long as possible; otherwise, two weeks and an ounce of cocaine later, you will be reduced to hocking 'ABBA's Greatest Hits' and similar items from the CD rack at $1 apiece. People who are experienced with this game know to visit multiple stores on a regular basis, lest they be cut off by someone at a shop who feels that they have made one too many visits to sell some more of their worthless media. The look of disgust in their eyes when they tell you “no” (and that snarky “go finance your addiction to drugs somewhere else” expression of hatred coming from their lips) almost makes you want to get a job.
There is a pleasant alternative to this, which is to sell your own things at insanely inflated prices instead. This generally only tends to work if you have a product which is only available at even higher prices elsewhere. Not that we are suggesting that you go into the illicit homegrown tobacco business, but it would certainly be a lucrative field, don't you think?
Doing People's Homework
Requirements: spare time.
Does twenty bucks for a 1,500 word essay sound good? Maybe fifteen bucks and a beer? We can work something out. What's it about, anyway?
'You are an academic adviser for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano and have been directed to write a paper that assesses the politics of irregular immigration in the US and outlines a program for comprehensive reform.'
Well, shit, I'll do this one for $20. First of all, if I was an academic adviser for the fucking Department of Homeland Security, I would probably need some awfully generous health benefits considering all of the insomnia, binge drinking, chain smoking... being powerlessly complicit in all of their acts of crime and incompetence sounds just fantastic!
And here we are with this 'comprehensive reform' nonsense again. I'm starting to think that reform is some kind of jargon which literally means politicians and big business lobbyists having a big old circle jerk, know what I mean? There are all sorts of things in this essay question that are pissing me off, and I haven't even sat down to look for a bunch of mostly unrelated books to cite as references. In fact, I am going to need to be completely wasted in order to write anything on this topic without being a total asshole. $30 and a bottle of Jager sound okay?
Food Safety Committee
Requirements: payment of a nominal fee.
For a nominal fee, our Food Safety Committee will attempt to determine whatever it is that you need to know about whatever dish ails you. We have a man in Room C who is willing to eat anything and will hope to decipher if a certain sample of product contains any meat with his hyper sensitive taste buds for any vegetarians who just aren't certain if their grandmother's quiche contains any bacon or not. Regarding concerns of poison, we keep rats in the basement who double as guinea pigs for any potentially dangerous foodstuffs. Of course, we take the greatest care not to harm animals, except when we step on giant spiders with our boots and consume meat twice daily.
If your food is of a reasonable safety quality, adhering to our strict standards, we will even give you our coveted Food Safety Committee Seal of Approval, which values at a minimum of $74 on the black market. (Beware of counterfeit Seals of Approval – though, technically, there is no discernible difference between our Seal and the counterfeit, we intend to sue the living shit out of anyone caught with a fake one. Really.)
Advanced Medical Care for a New Millennium
Requirements: baseball bat.
This philosophy of health care is based on the notion that any existing pain can be numbed with the introduction of new pain. The new, controllable pains are then ceased at the point of payment. For example:
Sick Kid: Hello, doc, I've got a sprained ankle and it hurts like crazy!
I proceed to hit Sick Kid over the head with a baseball bat.
Me: Would you like to feel better?
Sick Kid: Yes!
Me: That will be $50, thank you.
If, alternatively, Sick Kid says 'no', I must continue to hit him with the baseball bat until he succumbs to my generous and inexpensive health care offer.
Selling Your Own Things at Insanely Deflated Prices
Requirements: all of your shit.
This particular marketing opportunity is based around the assumption that you are broke, have no prospects and/or don't wish to be employed, and are not comfortable with performing armed robberies. Unfortunately, this opportunity only lasts as long as you have valuable assets, and in hindsight, you may regret selling all of your prized possessions so that you could buy boxed wine that week.
If you have an especially compulsive personality, it may be useful before you begin this project to compile a list of items which you are absolutely not willing to sell. You should also space out the most valuable items so that you can keep a steady stream of income for as long as possible; otherwise, two weeks and an ounce of cocaine later, you will be reduced to hocking 'ABBA's Greatest Hits' and similar items from the CD rack at $1 apiece. People who are experienced with this game know to visit multiple stores on a regular basis, lest they be cut off by someone at a shop who feels that they have made one too many visits to sell some more of their worthless media. The look of disgust in their eyes when they tell you “no” (and that snarky “go finance your addiction to drugs somewhere else” expression of hatred coming from their lips) almost makes you want to get a job.
There is a pleasant alternative to this, which is to sell your own things at insanely inflated prices instead. This generally only tends to work if you have a product which is only available at even higher prices elsewhere. Not that we are suggesting that you go into the illicit homegrown tobacco business, but it would certainly be a lucrative field, don't you think?
Doing People's Homework
Requirements: spare time.
Does twenty bucks for a 1,500 word essay sound good? Maybe fifteen bucks and a beer? We can work something out. What's it about, anyway?
'You are an academic adviser for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano and have been directed to write a paper that assesses the politics of irregular immigration in the US and outlines a program for comprehensive reform.'
Well, shit, I'll do this one for $20. First of all, if I was an academic adviser for the fucking Department of Homeland Security, I would probably need some awfully generous health benefits considering all of the insomnia, binge drinking, chain smoking... being powerlessly complicit in all of their acts of crime and incompetence sounds just fantastic!
And here we are with this 'comprehensive reform' nonsense again. I'm starting to think that reform is some kind of jargon which literally means politicians and big business lobbyists having a big old circle jerk, know what I mean? There are all sorts of things in this essay question that are pissing me off, and I haven't even sat down to look for a bunch of mostly unrelated books to cite as references. In fact, I am going to need to be completely wasted in order to write anything on this topic without being a total asshole. $30 and a bottle of Jager sound okay?
Food Safety Committee
Requirements: payment of a nominal fee.
For a nominal fee, our Food Safety Committee will attempt to determine whatever it is that you need to know about whatever dish ails you. We have a man in Room C who is willing to eat anything and will hope to decipher if a certain sample of product contains any meat with his hyper sensitive taste buds for any vegetarians who just aren't certain if their grandmother's quiche contains any bacon or not. Regarding concerns of poison, we keep rats in the basement who double as guinea pigs for any potentially dangerous foodstuffs. Of course, we take the greatest care not to harm animals, except when we step on giant spiders with our boots and consume meat twice daily.
If your food is of a reasonable safety quality, adhering to our strict standards, we will even give you our coveted Food Safety Committee Seal of Approval, which values at a minimum of $74 on the black market. (Beware of counterfeit Seals of Approval – though, technically, there is no discernible difference between our Seal and the counterfeit, we intend to sue the living shit out of anyone caught with a fake one. Really.)
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Hey, What Do You Think of Justin Bieber?
The House narrowly approved a sweeping plan to crack down on offshore drilling Friday, despite objections from Gulf Coast lawmakers and oil industry advocates who said the measure would slash U.S. jobs and curb domestic energy production. – The Houston Chronicle, July 30
Color me flabbergasted that advocates for the petroleum industry weren't pleased with the political fall-out for their little embarrassment of an environmental disaster. I had to read that opening sentence four or five times just to comprehend it. The scumbags that make millions off of ignoring safety regulations and approving drilling proposals as though they were birth control prescriptions are somehow not happy with the crack down on their industry!
Maybe the pesky Obama administration should have worked just a little bit harder to cater to their interests; after all, before and after the advent of this most recent catastrophe, Obama was stubbornly pushing through the largest expansion of offshore drilling in American history in combination with other measures designed to help achieve the goal of “energy independence.” People wondering why Obama was going back on his leftist campaign rhetoric should look no further than the stimulus package and the health care bill, both of which were watered down and compromised to ridiculous levels only to gain virtually no Republican support whatsoever. For example, the stimulus consisted nearly half of tax cuts, which despite the questionable logic of cutting taxes when the deficit is supposedly such a paramount concern, was hoped to entice Republicans into supporting the bill. Instead, they attacked it as an unjustified expansion of the government.
Despite the recent indicators that their lone GOP hold-out for energy and climate change reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was no longer willing to play ball, Obama continued to insist on expanding offshore drilling as part of a larger energy package. Some speculated that Obama's closest advisers were keeping him in the dark regarding the size and scope of the oil spill, and this may well be true, but what this shows is that Obama's political style of “winning” depends less on adhering to campaign promises and ideological principles and more on passing something, anything, which at best can be spun as “laying the groundwork” for future, more sweeping reforms. I'm not here to spin for the Obama administration, however, and every so often I think about the fact that he managed to get the entirety of the American left on board with a proposal which essentially mandates that everyone purchase health insurance, which until 2009 was a suggestion floated by right wing politicians who sensed a winning corporatist solution to the health care problem.
Perhaps that is what 'Health Care Reform' may turn out to be, and it is certainly far preferable to the status quo it replaces, but now that it has been accomplished, does that mean that substantial health care reform is not going to happen? These are the sorts of questions that universal, single payer advocates might be asking. One unfortunate consequence may be that in passing HCR, it could become even more difficult to legislate truly monumental changes to the system. It is worth considering, from this perspective, just how much damage the Obama administration may be capable of doing – by halfheartedly tackling a number of liberal agenda issues and then “taking them off the table.” Expect to see some wonderfully inadequate, corporatist “solutions” to energy, immigration, even campaign finance.
It is tempting to say that all of this is better than doing nothing, but that is a difficult pill to swallow when one considers the billions in profits that every health insurance giant will make now that another forty million people have been mandated to purchase their product.
Incidentally, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced recently that though he would vote for cloture, he would vote against Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court – despite voting in favor of Samuel Alito in 2006. Perhaps I should attempt to convince Sen. Nelson of the righteousness of my Food for Lions Assistance Reform (FLA Reform) proposal, which recognizes the plight of lions across the United States who are denied the basic right to feast on the flesh of hypocrites. So far, I have not had too much luck getting this one into the mainstream, but all noble pursuits require dedication.
Color me flabbergasted that advocates for the petroleum industry weren't pleased with the political fall-out for their little embarrassment of an environmental disaster. I had to read that opening sentence four or five times just to comprehend it. The scumbags that make millions off of ignoring safety regulations and approving drilling proposals as though they were birth control prescriptions are somehow not happy with the crack down on their industry!
Maybe the pesky Obama administration should have worked just a little bit harder to cater to their interests; after all, before and after the advent of this most recent catastrophe, Obama was stubbornly pushing through the largest expansion of offshore drilling in American history in combination with other measures designed to help achieve the goal of “energy independence.” People wondering why Obama was going back on his leftist campaign rhetoric should look no further than the stimulus package and the health care bill, both of which were watered down and compromised to ridiculous levels only to gain virtually no Republican support whatsoever. For example, the stimulus consisted nearly half of tax cuts, which despite the questionable logic of cutting taxes when the deficit is supposedly such a paramount concern, was hoped to entice Republicans into supporting the bill. Instead, they attacked it as an unjustified expansion of the government.
Despite the recent indicators that their lone GOP hold-out for energy and climate change reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was no longer willing to play ball, Obama continued to insist on expanding offshore drilling as part of a larger energy package. Some speculated that Obama's closest advisers were keeping him in the dark regarding the size and scope of the oil spill, and this may well be true, but what this shows is that Obama's political style of “winning” depends less on adhering to campaign promises and ideological principles and more on passing something, anything, which at best can be spun as “laying the groundwork” for future, more sweeping reforms. I'm not here to spin for the Obama administration, however, and every so often I think about the fact that he managed to get the entirety of the American left on board with a proposal which essentially mandates that everyone purchase health insurance, which until 2009 was a suggestion floated by right wing politicians who sensed a winning corporatist solution to the health care problem.
Perhaps that is what 'Health Care Reform' may turn out to be, and it is certainly far preferable to the status quo it replaces, but now that it has been accomplished, does that mean that substantial health care reform is not going to happen? These are the sorts of questions that universal, single payer advocates might be asking. One unfortunate consequence may be that in passing HCR, it could become even more difficult to legislate truly monumental changes to the system. It is worth considering, from this perspective, just how much damage the Obama administration may be capable of doing – by halfheartedly tackling a number of liberal agenda issues and then “taking them off the table.” Expect to see some wonderfully inadequate, corporatist “solutions” to energy, immigration, even campaign finance.
It is tempting to say that all of this is better than doing nothing, but that is a difficult pill to swallow when one considers the billions in profits that every health insurance giant will make now that another forty million people have been mandated to purchase their product.
Incidentally, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced recently that though he would vote for cloture, he would vote against Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court – despite voting in favor of Samuel Alito in 2006. Perhaps I should attempt to convince Sen. Nelson of the righteousness of my Food for Lions Assistance Reform (FLA Reform) proposal, which recognizes the plight of lions across the United States who are denied the basic right to feast on the flesh of hypocrites. So far, I have not had too much luck getting this one into the mainstream, but all noble pursuits require dedication.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Stop the Boats, Help a Child in Need
Not only am I lovingly married with children, I happen to believe very strongly that we are the unique creation of an invisible man who resides in the clouds. I also happen to know a great deal about welfare abuse, and I'm eager to reform the system to really cull those money grubbing little pieces of shit once and for all. – Tony Abbott, while having a beer with reporters, 27/07/10
What is the most efficient thing you, personally, can do to make the world a better place? You could buy an electric car and power your house with sewage, and even consider requiring everyone else around you to do the same thing. But maybe instead, you could donate some of your income to charities which help those who are truly in need. Think about the logistics of a renewable sewage energy plan, and all of the jobs in other industries that will be cut while your taxes go up to pay for these programs. Your hard earned money shouldn't be subjected to such outrageous taxes in the first place, right? The time has come to entirely abolish the government safety net which keeps the poor stuck in a dependency to welfare.
Now that you have all of that money back, go on; sponsor a child through World Vision, and you can buy that electric car if you really want, even though it looks ridiculous. Maybe cut the meat out of your diet too, stop littering, leaving all of your appliances turned on and plugged in all of the time, and, finally, give all of your spare income to the church for its urban dwelling programs. Doesn't it feel nice to be saving all of that money and making a difference at the same time?
Compassion is a virtue; never forget this. Forcing everyone to show compassion through taxation defeats the entire purpose of the concept. If every member of the population is guaranteed access to basic things like water, food, housing, and medical care, you lose all of your rights and the government controls every aspect of your life. You may as well have anarchy for the good that this does you. Are you really comfortable with having fluoride in your drinking water? The dentists say that this is a great way to combat tooth decay, but the dentists were probably bought out by the powerful Fluoride Industry. Those guys will do just about anything to get what they want; their tactics are brutal, and in their view, the end justifies the means.
Now, one might interject, it seems hypocritical to take this attitude towards health and safety regulations but not other areas of civil life, such as in the provision of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Anyone who makes this argument lacks perspective, for the importance of retaining valuable social traditions cannot be overstated. The basic structure of our society and its nuclear family, some of which is indeed framed from religious doctrine, is what retains the balance of order in what could otherwise decay into a hopeless world. We are seeing this already as the societal importance of marriage and child rearing is being openly mocked and ignored in lieu of selfish, greedy and hedonistic pursuits. Traditionalism is the all-important part of the trifecta which completes the perfection of limited governing along with capitalism and democracy. These three terms may as well be synonymous for the good that they can do when used in conjunction with each other by a ruling class.
It is pertinent to consider the damage wrought upon society by those who wish to alter these vital components of the ruling structure in significant ways. The mere presence of self described leftists in all areas of government is proof that we are being overrun by people who have sickening plans to transform us into a communist dictatorship. Should revolution be out of the question? As with most sanctimonious calls to conservative action, this one has no action to back up its words. The only surefire way to win the heart and soul of a nation is through stirring up hatred against a voiceless, powerless minority. One may consider it irresponsible to generate such spiteful rhetoric without any interest in the potential negative outcomes (including acts of violence), but when you don't have much of a leg to stand on intellectually, it's one of the easiest, most revered ways to win.
What is the most efficient thing you, personally, can do to make the world a better place? You could buy an electric car and power your house with sewage, and even consider requiring everyone else around you to do the same thing. But maybe instead, you could donate some of your income to charities which help those who are truly in need. Think about the logistics of a renewable sewage energy plan, and all of the jobs in other industries that will be cut while your taxes go up to pay for these programs. Your hard earned money shouldn't be subjected to such outrageous taxes in the first place, right? The time has come to entirely abolish the government safety net which keeps the poor stuck in a dependency to welfare.
Now that you have all of that money back, go on; sponsor a child through World Vision, and you can buy that electric car if you really want, even though it looks ridiculous. Maybe cut the meat out of your diet too, stop littering, leaving all of your appliances turned on and plugged in all of the time, and, finally, give all of your spare income to the church for its urban dwelling programs. Doesn't it feel nice to be saving all of that money and making a difference at the same time?
Compassion is a virtue; never forget this. Forcing everyone to show compassion through taxation defeats the entire purpose of the concept. If every member of the population is guaranteed access to basic things like water, food, housing, and medical care, you lose all of your rights and the government controls every aspect of your life. You may as well have anarchy for the good that this does you. Are you really comfortable with having fluoride in your drinking water? The dentists say that this is a great way to combat tooth decay, but the dentists were probably bought out by the powerful Fluoride Industry. Those guys will do just about anything to get what they want; their tactics are brutal, and in their view, the end justifies the means.
Now, one might interject, it seems hypocritical to take this attitude towards health and safety regulations but not other areas of civil life, such as in the provision of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Anyone who makes this argument lacks perspective, for the importance of retaining valuable social traditions cannot be overstated. The basic structure of our society and its nuclear family, some of which is indeed framed from religious doctrine, is what retains the balance of order in what could otherwise decay into a hopeless world. We are seeing this already as the societal importance of marriage and child rearing is being openly mocked and ignored in lieu of selfish, greedy and hedonistic pursuits. Traditionalism is the all-important part of the trifecta which completes the perfection of limited governing along with capitalism and democracy. These three terms may as well be synonymous for the good that they can do when used in conjunction with each other by a ruling class.
It is pertinent to consider the damage wrought upon society by those who wish to alter these vital components of the ruling structure in significant ways. The mere presence of self described leftists in all areas of government is proof that we are being overrun by people who have sickening plans to transform us into a communist dictatorship. Should revolution be out of the question? As with most sanctimonious calls to conservative action, this one has no action to back up its words. The only surefire way to win the heart and soul of a nation is through stirring up hatred against a voiceless, powerless minority. One may consider it irresponsible to generate such spiteful rhetoric without any interest in the potential negative outcomes (including acts of violence), but when you don't have much of a leg to stand on intellectually, it's one of the easiest, most revered ways to win.
Monday, August 2, 2010
We Were Looking for Something Better to Do
It is definitely not the best feeling in the universe, what I have right now. Physically, I am somewhere between constipation and diarrhea. My breath is somewhere between vomit and chewing gum. My appearance is hastily assembled from the remains of a serious trashing. I am only just keeping myself together; I am hanging by the barest thread.
We were merely looking for a good time: watching Seinfeld and nibbling on salted peanuts each day till sunset can only keep me going for so long, and I was yearning for something exciting to occur. Accordingly, we ventured out of the house, aided with a bottle of rum (only the cheapest, nastiest shit), and began approaching people who looked uncomfortable. I took a really huge swig of rum and walked up to a man who appeared to be a public servant of some kind. “Hello sir, could I interest you in some amateur pornography?” He walked away looking like I had freaked him out.
I drank some more rum and went up to an elderly woman with a walking stick. “Hello dear, can I interest you in some very potent morphine?” She said that she was satisfied with her present painkiller prescription cocktail and was in no need of the hope and change that I was able to offer. “How about I renovate your purse?” I made off with $160. I tried this again on another old lady but she caught on to what I was doing and slapped me on the wrist before grabbing her bag back and walking off in a self-important hurry. Some people just know what to look for, I guess.
Another sipsies of rum, and to the teenage boy holding onto a skateboard and sporting a pair of over sized headphones. “Hey bro, wanna buy some bud?” He said yes, so I asked him for ten dollars and walked off. I enjoyed how easy this was, so I attempted it again on a bunch of other kids and then went to another park to find new victims. (By this point I had finished the bottle of rum and sent off my assistant, Bobert Reighnor, to fetch a litre of vodka from the shops.) The children had grown wise to my tricks and had teamed up to reprimand me; a group of them followed me from my previous location, walked up to me and demanded all of their money back or they would fight me as a gang. They weren't even bullshitting.
Now I am looking for some aspirin, or at least some more vodka, because the little fuckers made off with the bottle when I was only half way through. It's days like these that make me wonder why I ever bother getting up in the mornings. Well, the morning usually starts around 2 pm, possibly earlier if we are lucky and I drank a lot of water the night before. Who needs to keep track of things like that, anyway? In this modern era of progress, the wonders of medical advances and technology promise recovery from even the most ridiculous, short-sighted mistakes and wasteful behaviour. So, have I learned a valuable lesson to not approach random strangers with malicious intent? I'll get back to you after I finish verifying the factual authenticity of these horoscopes I came across in the paper, but the prognosis is looking excellent.
We were merely looking for a good time: watching Seinfeld and nibbling on salted peanuts each day till sunset can only keep me going for so long, and I was yearning for something exciting to occur. Accordingly, we ventured out of the house, aided with a bottle of rum (only the cheapest, nastiest shit), and began approaching people who looked uncomfortable. I took a really huge swig of rum and walked up to a man who appeared to be a public servant of some kind. “Hello sir, could I interest you in some amateur pornography?” He walked away looking like I had freaked him out.
I drank some more rum and went up to an elderly woman with a walking stick. “Hello dear, can I interest you in some very potent morphine?” She said that she was satisfied with her present painkiller prescription cocktail and was in no need of the hope and change that I was able to offer. “How about I renovate your purse?” I made off with $160. I tried this again on another old lady but she caught on to what I was doing and slapped me on the wrist before grabbing her bag back and walking off in a self-important hurry. Some people just know what to look for, I guess.
Another sipsies of rum, and to the teenage boy holding onto a skateboard and sporting a pair of over sized headphones. “Hey bro, wanna buy some bud?” He said yes, so I asked him for ten dollars and walked off. I enjoyed how easy this was, so I attempted it again on a bunch of other kids and then went to another park to find new victims. (By this point I had finished the bottle of rum and sent off my assistant, Bobert Reighnor, to fetch a litre of vodka from the shops.) The children had grown wise to my tricks and had teamed up to reprimand me; a group of them followed me from my previous location, walked up to me and demanded all of their money back or they would fight me as a gang. They weren't even bullshitting.
Now I am looking for some aspirin, or at least some more vodka, because the little fuckers made off with the bottle when I was only half way through. It's days like these that make me wonder why I ever bother getting up in the mornings. Well, the morning usually starts around 2 pm, possibly earlier if we are lucky and I drank a lot of water the night before. Who needs to keep track of things like that, anyway? In this modern era of progress, the wonders of medical advances and technology promise recovery from even the most ridiculous, short-sighted mistakes and wasteful behaviour. So, have I learned a valuable lesson to not approach random strangers with malicious intent? I'll get back to you after I finish verifying the factual authenticity of these horoscopes I came across in the paper, but the prognosis is looking excellent.
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