Friday, May 30, 2008

And The Lord Spake: OMGWTFXOR! N00BS!!


God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.


For reals, yo. I mean.... holy fucking ass-crackers.

Beef #1 - Sweet, Delicious Jihad

Ok, let's sum this up: Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. 'The kaffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,' Malkin wrote in her syndicated column.

...

I couldn't make up something this retarded if I stayed up all night watching American Idol. She wore a black and white scarf around her neck... which looks an awful lot like an Arab headdress. Ok, fine. Then there's the awesomefuckingtastic leap from that to "murderous Palestinian jihad".

NOTE: Miss Malkin has never expressed anger that the guns and bombs used by terrorists are being shown on cable television every night of the week.

My favorite comment on the story? "Why has no-one gotten mad that such an influential chef is pushing deep-fried sugar-bread on a population that is collapsing under the weight of it's own obesity?"

Beef #2 - Tiny, Elderly Asian Woman Lives In Stranger's Closet

For a YEAR. I mean, that's awesome. He didn't even notice until he started to realize his food was vanishing, so he set up cameras to catch the culprit while he was at work. She's been living in a storage closet, only coming out to eat and bathe and watch TV when he wasn't home.

That right there is almost cool enough to make up for the Jihadonut thing.

Almost.


Thursday, May 29, 2008

Wade For President



Deadpool: Uhm... a little help? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: So... what's new?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Yeah, not much by me either.
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Been thinking about starting up a super hero porn site, whaddyou think?
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: Nothin' too rude, I mean. Tasteful naked shots of Sue Richards - when she's visable, right? 'Cos otherwise, duh...
[Cable doesn't respond]
Deadpool: You know, once the larynx goes, the scintillating conversation goes with it...
[Deadpool liquefies]


I seriously cannot wait for this movie.

Photobucket

Seriously.

Cyclops: Cable is out there -- up there -- fighting the Silver Surfer.
Deadpool: The Silver Surfer.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Cosmic-powered alien from another planet.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Herald of Galactus, the planet-eater, stranded on Earth when he betrayed his boss.
Cyclops: Yes.
Deadpool: Well, that was the coolest expository dialogue
I have ever had!


Hee.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Sequels and Remakes A-go-go!


I had no idea her philosophy was that flawed. She goes, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a kid? To have this fresh, clean slate which we could fill. A little clean spirit, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas."

Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you're so fucking altruistic, why don't you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now? Okay? Horrible act, childbirth. Nightmare. Bringing … I would never bring a kid to this fucking planet.


To my diseased mind, this is a lot like how sequels should be treated. What sequel is ever as good as the imagination of it's existence? Well, obviously, some can be named... some genres lend themselves fully and completely to sequels, if their roots are already serialized. Spiderman --> Spiderman 2. Evil Dead --> Evil Dead 2. Star Trek --> Star Trek 4.

For the most part, though, sequels might as well just be called "We, the studios, are going to bet you $10 that you'll like this movie less than the original," and all the moviegoers take them up on that bet, expecting to be proven wrong. I don't know who to hate more. This goes for remakes (particularly international remakes) and prequels, too.

In the coming year or two, we have Cloverfield 2, live-action Akira, Boondock Saint 2, Rambo V (you heard me), Star Trek (the prequel one with Sylar), two X-Men prequels (one with DEADPOOL! WOO!), Spiderman 4, another Routh-y Superman film (which I liked a LOT more than I thought I would), Batman: The Heath Ledger One That No-one Will Ever Forget, and my personal favorite, Hamlet II.

Is this cool, or what? I can't tell.



Friday, May 23, 2008

Pee-sychology



"I believe the cost of life is Death,
and we will all pay that in full.
Everything else should be a gift.
We paid the cover charge of life,
when we were born"

Ok, I just needed a good quote to go up there, since Wiki has NO QUOTES for psychology. That, I think, is an interesting take on psychology: the largest single repository of human-powered knowledge doesn't have anything to say about the science of the human mind.

But no, this post is about Bill Hicks' favorite psychological topic, advertising. In particular, psychological irrational pricing. I will explain... no, there is too much. I will sum up:

According to a 1997 study published in the Marketing Bulletin, approximately 60% of prices in advertising material ended in the digit 9, 30% ended in the digit 5, 7% ended in the digit 0 and the remaining seven digits combined accounted for only slightly over 3% of prices evaluated.[1] In the UK, before the withdrawal of the half penny coin in 1984, prices often ended in 99½. This is still seen today in petrol (gasoline) pricing ending in 9/10's of the local currency's smallest denomination, for example in the US the price of a gallon of gasoline almost always ending in US$0.009 (i.e. US$3.289).

You get it? All right, I'm sure everyone gets it.

What I don't get is, why does this still work? There's no psychological or economical reason for this anymore. Why is my gas $1.359 per litre? Why is my cereal $4.89? For that matter, why is the DeWalt kit I want $299.99? Does that extra penny saved by the retailer really mean that they sell 30,001 kits, instead of 30,000? Is there really one person out there who sees the $299.99 and thinks "Wow, that's a good deal! If it was a penny higher, I wouldn't buy it!"

If there is, can we find them and slap the fuck out of them?

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing,
kill yourself.


Advertising is the only productive field of psychology left today, and it's only productive because the average IQ of the nation is being forcefully kept low just so advertising will have someone to work on. The second people start thinking rationally, the moment people start really seeing the world around them, the instant mankind thinks there might be something bigger in the world than television, advertising would cease to be relevant.

Which is why advertising will never die.


Seriously, though. If you are, do. No, really. There's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No, this is not a joke, if you're going: "There's going to be a joke coming." There's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked, and you are fucking us. Kill yourself, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself.

Planting seeds.

I know all the marketing people are going: "He's doing a joke." There's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man. I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags!

"Oh, you know what Bill's doing now? He's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. Lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." God damn it, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!

"Oh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.

"Oh, the trapped dollar. Big dollar, huge dollar. Good market, look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar …" How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?

"What did you do today, honey?"

"Oh, we made arsenic childhood food. Now, good night. Yeah, we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know … yeah, the mums will love it, yeah." Sleep like fucking children, don't you? This is your world, isn't it?


YouTube it, motherfucker.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Fallacious? Outrageous!


Thanks for coming, please stay for the end credits. If you're wondering who the best boy is, it's somebody's nephew, and, um, don't forget to validate your parking, and to all you good people in the Midwest, sorry we said fuck so much.


Go out, and rent this movie. No no, don't stop to argue, don't claim you don't have a DVD player, don't tell me you don't like violent movies. Shut the fuck up, go out, and rent this movie.

Then buy it.

Ok, we got a bunch to cover today. This might take a while to type out, I have to keep pausing to do real work as it rolls in, so if there's big pauses in the text, just sort of skip ahead and assume that it wasn't anything important.

Yeah, like that one just there.

"Work Gets Done In The Time Allotted"

Ok, this little gold-plated platitude is heard around my office every few minutes, spoken by a boss who assumes that if he keeps saying it often enough, it will somehow become true (sort of like the Bible). Unlike the Bible, this gets consistently proven wrong, but that never stops it, or even slows it down. It's got logic-proof armor-plating. It slams into the Walls of Reality, and just ploughs through. Yee-haw. It's like Disneyland.

"The Internet is a waste of time,
and that's exactly what's right about it."


William Gibson said that. The author of Neuromancer, Bladerunner, and pretty much the only decent technological prognosticator since Aasimov and Clarke. I finally think I agree with him, too. I'll sit down at my computer, and reflexively hit the ol' Mozilla icon. I'll bloink around on my Bookmark Bar buttons for a while, read Slashdot, do my Kingdom of Loathing turns, read xkcd and Garfield Minus Garfield... then I'll wonder what the hell I'm doing, shut OFF My laptop, and go do something else.

I'll do this six or seven times a day. I'll habitually sit down and try to waste time, but pretty soon my conscious mind says "And we're doing this, why?" I think I'm going through the DTs, because I actually put time into going to sites I HAVEN'T been to in a while, just to have something to do, then I'll shake my head, and go pick up clothes, or sweet the deck, or paint the cat, or something. Or sometimes, if I'm really at a loss, I'll use my computer for work.

I know!


They want to deliver vast amounts of information
over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not
something you just dump something on.

It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled,
and if they are filled, when you put your message in,
it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone
that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material,
enormous amounts of material.


But that? Still fuckin' funny. YouTube continues to entertain me, but only infrequently. I wait for people to send me the gems.

One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.

Alfred Hitchcock, 1966. Man, was he on to something. A conversation at Throkette's 2nd birthday party (obviously not with HER) made me realize that I'm definitely not the only one bored with 99% of TV. Most of my friends rely entirely on DVDs to watch television programming, especially serial shows like Dexter or House. I watch them when they air mostly because I don't have time to rent a season and sit down to watch them, but if a show isn't on at a convenient time, I don't even try to watch it (Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, etc). SOMEDAY I'll get those on DVD, but since I have kids, it ain't anytime soon. I mean, we got Season 2 of The Muppets Tonight (OLD SCHOOL Muppets... ask your parents) and we've only seen Disc 1 of 4. The only show I've liked enough to watch ALL of via the power of the DVD is Farscape, and thats just because it's so good even good shows say "Damn, that's good."

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms. ~ Alan Coren

Hee.

Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe I'm aware of my mortality, and I don't want to look back and admire the piles of timesink I created with my finite existence. Maybe I'm deluding myself into thinking I'm better than the mass media. Maybe the mass media is deluding itself into thinking it's good enough for me. Maybe I don't eat enough cheese. Look, that dog has a puffy tail! SHINY TRINKET!

Also, please watch the below trailer, and then go see this movie.



Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Uniqueness Of Adequatulence



Dave: "Bill McNeil is ...adequate...
I'm sorry Bill."

Bill: "Sorry? Sorry, you weren't
singled out and deemed adequate?"

"...After all adequacy is the hallmark of great journalism."

"What is adequate journalism if not great journalism?"

"We'll finish this later, after I fulfill my duties
with my customary adequaucivity."

"It's one thing, of course, to know you're adequate,
but to have a fellow member of the press stand up
and say 'Yes, you sir are adequate,'
Let me tell you it is a very special feeling."

"Well, I'm off to astonish the world with more
feats of adequataqaticism."

"Very adequately sir, I'm virtually
bursting with adequatulence."


If you Google nearly any of those words, you'll only get one thing... Bill MacNeil's review. That's the sort of uniqueness that is the aspiration of everyone in the literary arts (people in the visual arts often don't get Google'd enough to matter, or referenced in popular culture).

For most of my stories, if you Google the titles, you get a lot of unrelated stuff, but there's typically tons of it. It's hard to come up with anything unique anymore.

But I did it. A story I've been working on for a few days sprang up from the title, which just sort of wandered into my head sometime last week. I've still been sorting out the plot, and the setting (I haven't even started characterisation yet, which is rare for me!) but I've been afraid to punch in the title and see how many people have used it yet.

But I did. Wanna know how many Google hits I got?

Four.

And none were in English.

Now my brain is frantically trying to develop it. It is, without a doubt, the least violent story I've got going on right now (there might not even be bleeding ANYWHERE in the book), and I finally might have an outlet for all the 'funny' stuff I try to write that never fits into my more serious stuff. Whenever I try to write 'funny', it usually comes out as a weak attempt at Discworldian snark, perhaps more akin to Hugh Laurie's books. (I feel nervous even mentioning Discworld in comparison to myself, even to say I suck next to it).

So here goes... the first new story I've been happy with in about two years.

Yay!



Monday, May 12, 2008

NOW I'm Farting Pixie Dust...


My wife was worried that I wouldn't. Well, she needn't worry, and here's why:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Now, this might not SEEM like a big deal, but let's run down a few key, important parts.

Hugh Jackman as Logan / Wolverine - This is important, and a good thing.

Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed / Sabretooth - This is ridiculously awesome.

Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson / Deadpool - This is the single coolest thing that could happen in 2009.

Some of you may recall my review of Blade 3, which was "Holy crap, this movie was fantasically retarded, blah blah blah, holy snapping ass-cakes, except Ryan Reynolds was just awesome." And it's true... Reynolds is a great actor. He's dry, he's hilarious, he's snarky, and he never looks like he's over-reaching.

Some of you may ALSO recall my review of Phantoms, which was fairly glowing (despite what the critics say), but one part in particular should stand out: "Liev Schreiber completely makes this movie, shifting it from 'well-made horror' to 'creepy-assed awesomeness'."

Both of these guys will now be playing two of my favorite Marvel characters of all time.

For those of you who may not be 'in the know' with Deadpool, here's the short version: Weapon X project, same as Wolverine. Given Wolverine's regenerating ability. Has incredibly advanced cancer, which means tumors are constantly spreading and being healed, especially in his brain. Consequently, he is SO INSANE, he actually knows he's in a comic book, and takes advantage of that fact.

Here he is, happily reunited with his thought bubbles:


And here he is, performing Street Fighter II moves onto teenaged girls:


Fuck yeah.

Friday, May 9, 2008

We Now Return You To...



... your regularly scheduled randomosity.

How's THAT?!

Also, I'm back all up in the Kingdom of Loathing. I've got a Seal Clubber, a Turtle Tamer and a Sauceror. So far, the Seal Clubber is BY FAR the deadliest one... for now. Then again, he drank four bottles of used vampire blood (which means it's actually third-hand blood, not second-hand) and that made him strong! STRONG! Strong, and gross.

Seriously, join this game. Fight Goblins at Cobb's Knob and collect Knob Gobblers... fight Grassy Gnolls at Degrassi Knoll... and kick Wolfmen in the nards. That's right. Wolfmen's got nards.


Thursday, May 8, 2008

It's Just A Ride...



The world is like a ride at an amusement park.
And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real,
because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride
goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and
chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud
and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride
for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real,
or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered,
and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry,
don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.'

And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha.

'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP!
Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account,
and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride.
But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that,
you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it
doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change
it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work,
no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between
fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks
on your doors, buy guns, and close yourselves off.

The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what
you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.
Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence
each year, and instead we spend it feeding, clothing and
educating the poor of the world, which it would many times
over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space
together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.


I think I forgot something yesterday.

*looks down at yesterday's post, arches his eyebrows, and frowns ashamedly*

Yup, definitely forgot something.

See, this is what makes me think I AM bipolar. Right now, looking back a scant 24 hours, I can NOT truly recall how rough I felt yesterday. I can remember DESCRIBING how it felt, because I always take notes on that sort of thing, but it's a lot like the verbal description of REALLY good food... unless you experience it, it's just so much printed text, functional and useless.

Today? I feel good. I feel pretty good. I have to go try to explain to a complete stranger that he bought my car, and it's now his problem, which means being confrontational, and if any of my dear readers know me, they know I'm somewhere at the Newtonian opposite of confrontationalism. Then I have to go walk for an hour in a big circle with an open wound on the bottom of one foot and a gimped ankle on the other side. Then I have to go home and somehow get all my kids into bed before 8:30 so that I can uphold a promise to some friends to get some Stars turns out of the way, which means I have to be online about an hour and a half earlier than normal.

But I feel good.

Who knows, maybe I'll feel like putting my foot through someone tomorrow, and I'll feel like farting pixie-dust on Saturday.

Sleep tight.


I have been a comedian for a long time,
so forgive me while I plaster on a fake smile
and plough through this shit one more time.







Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Sine Wave Of Happines



Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow
is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
~ L. M. Montgomery


There's the 'peak' sine optimism there... tomorrow is perfect, because it has no mistakes. Sadly, that fails to take into account the sum accumulation of all the mistakes in life up UNTIL that point. It's rather like sitting in a little rowboat, facing away from a tidal wave, and looking at the placid water and thinking "Boy, it's pretty."



See, the top of the sine wave can be considered "good", and the bottom of the sine wave can be considered "bad". As is the natural order of things, everything waffles back and forth between varying amplitudes of good and bad, happy and sad, happy and angry, happy and depressed. It's rather unfair that the top of the sine wave only has "happy", while the troughs have everything else conceivable. If you're happy, you're happy, but if you're NOT happy, there's LOTS of things you could be.



Now, there's nothing in math that says the baseline HAS to be equidistant from the peaks and troughs. y=0 might very well be A/4 below peak, or A/8, which means that the bulk of the system is well below baseline. I call this the "reality dip". It's composed of sour cream, garlic powder, lemon juice, basil, and blind hopelessness, and it goes well with Ruffles.

Unfortunately, it seems I have no picture for that.

Now, a friend of mine has suggested that I try to figure out the pattern, and then plan happy things for the peaks, to take advantage of them, since doing happy things in a trough doesn't even cancel out. Throwing happy into a trough is like throwing coins into a pond... it's the thought that counts.

Spongebob Squarepants - The Best Day Ever just came on Winamp.

Hee.

Now, you'd think that by adding more energy to the system, the application of stress and circumstance, would change the sine, and it does. However, it decreases the baseline for periodic sections of the curve, so even the peaks don't even broach the baseline (which is now about A/16 above peak). If the amplitude doesn't increase, the frequency decreases, so the peaks get farther apart. I know I spent a couple weeks in a trough a while ago. then I peaked for about four or five days (in time to go see a movie) and then troughed again, and peaked long enough to see Ironman, get a raise, and sell my car.

But the car came back, the very next day (ha ha ha, fucking funny, I know) and it's apparently broken. The guy's pissed, and might want his money back, which means I traded a fully functional 1991 Taurus for a BROKEN Taurus, which will go back to sitting idle on my front lawn. I've gotten a buddy of mine to agree to look at it tomorrow, after I go look at it today and get some information about what's wrong (battery, starter, ignition, or my personal theory, he'S FUCKING OUT OF GAS). Coupled with the loss of the desperately needed $900, two sick kids, and who knows that the fuck else, this trough looks big enough for me to actually move all of my stuff into, and maybe start paying rent. At least it's shady during the day.





EDITED TO ADD:

See, I don't think I'm bipolar or anything. Bipolarism, also known as 'manic-depression' or 'the wandering happy-sad whackies', is characterized by alternating periods of hypomania, or elevated moods (elevated good and bad ones). I know I'm not bipolar, because my doctor said I wasn't after ten seconds of me describing my symptoms. He must be a very good doctor, to know so quickly. I'm lucky to have him.

Irregardless, bipolarism is like ADD... often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Perhaps I'm just overly reactive. Perhaps I'm too emotional for the world as it exists, or too unemotional for the world as it should exist. Perhaps the constant, unending thoughts of anger and violence are extremely common, and I'm just really bad at dealing with it (most guys I know like violent movies just as much as me, so that's actually pretty likely).

Metal ductility is a funny thing. A softer steel is better for construction, because of the stress/strain diagram.



There is very little strain for quite a large amount of stress, until it hits the first limit. Then the strain accumulates quite quickly. Strain actually decreases as the load is further increased, as the internal structure of the material fails. If I suddenly don't feel strained anymore, I'm going to seek medical help.

I was raised a very particular way. It was a sort of laissez-faire childhood, with neither post-divorce parents really regarding me as much more than someone who ate all the food and didn't do the laundry. Sometimes they'd speak to me. I remember those days. If I was hurt, I was told to walk it off. If I was upset, I was told to tough it out. If I was lonely, I was told to... well, I wasn't told anything, because I was lonely. Who the fuck was I going to tell? My mettle was tested, and my metal was tempered (man, I kick ass at puns). Instead of the soft, ductile, flexible, and ultimately useful steel that's most commonly used, I because quench-hardened steel. The stress-strain diagram is almost a perfectly vertical line, with a little 'tick' at the top, indicating where the steel does not bend, but in fact shatters in what is known as "catastrophic failure" in engineering circles. Look it up, kids... it's cool. It's why sometimes man's buildings say "No more!" and then lay down for a nap.

Still, that's just a metaphor. My brain isn't made of 350W beam-grade steel (if it was, I couldn't balance). And it certainly isn't made of 800T. For all I know, I'm still on the way up, the steel creaking but not deforming by any really measurable degree. Every steel building has steel somewhere on that first slope, enduring, maintaining.

After I wrote the above part, I went to get a bagel and a donut (someone brought them to the break room today), and I felt a little bit better. I don't know if it was from the catharsicide of typing out a bunch of random psychobabble bullshit or the promise of baked goods. I'm going to go get more baked goods and see if it happens again (though not the donuts... Tim Hortons uses some sort of frosting sugar that really REALLY hurts my teeth). Stupid Timmies.

This is probably my longest non-review blog post. I started writing this every couple of days for the past few months, then I realized that I was just whining, and I erased it. Then I'd post something happy. Then a few days later I'd post something deep and confession-y, then I'd erase it and talk about something else. Right now, I know I'm in a trough, so writing this seems perfectly reasonable. In a few hours, I might be in a post-lunch happy-plateau (which I call a hapeau) and this whole post will seem attention-getting and retarded, and maybe I'll be right. I think I'm right now. I'll think something else is right later. I'll think completely opposite things when I go to bed and when I wake up. Most of the time I go to bed happy and comforted that, when I wake up, whatever I was mad about suddenly won't matter.

That stopped happening about a month ago. Maybe I'm gaining better perspective, or maybe the things I worry about really ARE getting more important. Who knows?

I'll probably erase this this afternoon.

EDITED TO ADD EVEN FURTHER:

And here is, an hour later, and I hit the 'fear' stage. This is always the stage where I've calmed down a little bit, had a bite to eat, rinsed out some things, and have come full circle to 'thinking'. I have an overwhelming desire to erase this post, and just put something clever, like "See?" in it's place. I PARTICULARLY want to erase it before Throkky reads it, which is where most of the fear comes from. I run on fear. Fear, and unleaded Cheerios.

I did feel a little better when I went for my walk (that is to say, it felt like my insides were churning) and I tried some primal scream therapy in the privacy of my head (it's fairly soundproof in there). Then I went and bought a couple bucks worth of lunch from Shoppers Drug Mart (where some things are 50% off, and some are on sale for MORE THAN THEIR REGULAR PRICE! Math! It's what's for dinner!) Now I have my pink apple soda and my rice cakes, and I want to hit ctrl-A --> delete --> publish. I really, really do.

I'm not going to this time. Fuck YOU, Mr Brain Chemistry! Fuck YOU!

EDITED YET MORE: (I know, I know, stop it)

And the fear is gone. Throkky called, she's in town, so I have LOTS of time to erase this. I'm already rationalizing. I could do it, no-one would know, since very few people read this (and with the possible exception of Sleeping Kyle, none regularly). Even so.

I looked into it, and I'm not responsible for the car. He took it for a test drive, he pronounced it sound (and in fact talked me down because he suspected it might have problems). We both signed all the doccy-ments that say that it belongs to him now, and money has exchanged hands. The fact that I'm taking two damn days and calling in favors with mechanics is just proof that I'm a nice fucking guy.

So outside it's the rainy apocalypse. My fondest wish right now is to just go outside, and lay on the hood of my car with my iPod safely protected inside a plastic baggie, and just... enjoy the rain and the wind. Instead, I have to produce site plan drawings for a fictional development for our senile architect.

Life is sweet.

EDITED TO ADD:

There. Upbeat.

Not bipolar at all.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Well, I Think It's A Good Quote...



Architects know that some kinds of
design problems are more personal
than others. One of the cleanest,
most abstract design problems is
designing bridges. There your job
is largely a matter of spanning
a given distance with the least material.

The other end of the spectrum is
designing chairs. Chair designers
have to spend their time thinking
about your butt.

~ Paul Graham

Monday, May 5, 2008

I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen...



Can you believe Christopher McQuarrie didn't win any awards for Way Of The Gun? That's just a fucking sick joke, to me. He won an Academy Award for The Usual Suspects, and then when he wants to do another movie with total creative control, he is told by every single studio "Hell, no." So, Benicio Del Toro convinces him to do a crime film again, because that way he'll have the most creative control it's possible to get, and he makes one of the only truly criminal crime films of the last two DECADES, and it just gets canned by critics who say it wasn't like The Usual Suspects.

NO SHIT!!

Morons...

...

Not money, 15 million dollars.
Fifteen million dollars is not money,
its a motive with a universal adaptor on it. ~ Sarno

To tell you the truth,
I don't think this is a brains type of operation. ~ Longbaugh

I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen. ~ Parker

Longbaugh: Why is that a big deal?
Employee: Because nobody brings up sex with dead people!
Longbaugh: Course they don't, it's sick.
Employee: You brought it up....
Longbaugh: To say I never did it.
Employee: I didn't ask that....
Longbaugh: You should.


This is probably why my wife thinks that my little mental health breaks on the weekend aren't good for me.

Ok, let's see, what's in the news today?

Why my wife doesn't let me buy bacon.

Cheer up, retard!

Inappropriate!

There, you happy now?

One last great conversation.

Longbaugh: Nightstick, flashlight, bulletproof vest.
Joe Sarno: Fuckin' utility belts, right?
Longbaugh: Fuckin' sign on his head reading "Why Bother?"
Joe Sarno: Hey, they love to say shit like "ascertain".
Longbaugh: "Surveillance."
Joe Sarno: "Affirmative."
Longbaugh: "I need backup."
Joe Sarno: "Adjudicate."
Longbaugh: "Adjudicate"?
Joe Sarno: Yeah, well...