NEW YORK - Jeshuah Fuller's parents expected him to be born with extra fingers. The extra toes, though, were a surprise.Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve into whether or not the family comes from "circus people."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
...and this little piggy went, "What the hell?"
You've got to love a story that starts out like this:
Asia-related Question
If there were five or six packs of soy sauce which had been, say, sitting in a kitchen drawer for about two years, would that soy sauce turn into some kind of weird alcoholic Chinese and/or Japanese beverage (because they have soy sauce in both types of restaurants)? Because if it does, then I have some drinking experiments to perform.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
I Have Popeye Issues
So I've been watching the Popeye DVD set which came out last month. It's all the Fleischer Black and White Popeye cartoons from 1933-1938, along with two of the lengthier color cartoons from the period. It's a great set, and I'm having a blast chipping away at it a few cartoons at the time (you really shouldn't watch more than two or three Popeye cartoons in one sitting, because they all tend to blend together). I have a few observations, and a few questions:
Popeye is kind of an asshole in these early shorts. Almost every cartoon I've seen so far opens with him sailing somewhere, riding on a boat or a whale or a shark or whatever, singing his theme song. The dude has a theme song which he sings himself. I should do that, just make up my own theme song and sing it wherever I go. Usually Popeye is standing at the bow of a boat, with Olive Oyl in the rear doing all the rowing. So, giant ego and abusive boyfriend. He also walks right past a cop being held up by a robber in one cartoon.
He's also ugly. I don't mean that "Cute-Ugly" that he is in the 1950s cartoons, with his twinkling eye and spotless white sailor suit. No, this Popeye looks like someone backed over his face with a garbage truck, and then dumped the garbage on it.
He's quick to scrap in these. It doesn't take much for Popeye to start swinging those bloated forearms at some hapless schmuck. And the spinach is always a last resort. Popeye fights until he starts losing, then he eats the spinach, so he's sort of an early steroid case who cheats whenever he's in a slump. And he sometimes starts the fights himself. When he was trying to keep it quiet so this baby (Swee Pea, I believe, although not named in the cartoon) would sleep and not bust out bawling, he pretty much beat the sh!t out of the entire town he was in. He even sent a punch through the radio lines and out of the microphone into the face of a guy singing.
You know what? F*ck Olive Oyl. She's clearly Popeye's gal in these first cartoons (later cartoons would almost always center around Popeye and Bluto/Brutus competing for her anorexic charms), but she's quick to dump him for some other dude. Or she'll lead on that stumblebum Bluto for a while, and then when he gives in to his natural impulses she'll start screaming for Popeye, who like an idiot always comes running even though she basically just told him to go f*ck himself not two minutes before.
Am I the only one who feels a little bit sorry for Bluto? I mean, he always - ALWAYS - gets the living crap kicked out of him by Popeye, and most of the time it's because Olive Oyl was just using him to make Popeye jealous. He takes it too far, sure, and he never knows when to just leave sh!t alone, but he's not totally at fault here. Maybe Popeye should be eating some spinach and beating the crap out of Olive Oyl instead for causing all that trouble.
And why is every dude so attracted to Olive Oyl? She's vain, and mean, and jealous, and conniving, and petty, and pretty much a total bitch to everyone she meets - oh, okay, I get it now. Never mind.
So Olive Oyl can eat a dick. Although...considering Popeye makes her row the boat everywhere, maybe I am being too harsh.
Okay, so Popeye eats the spinach and then he gets strong enough to black the world's eyes. Why doesn't he just eat the spinach all the time? I know that if I found out spinach gave me superpowers I'd be chewing a mouthful every waking moment. "Look, there's that weird dude with the spinach always stuck in his teeth. No, wait, don't look. If he sees us staring he'll come over here and knock our faces through the back of our heads." At the very least, why doesn't Popeye eat the spinach at the start of the fight and just get it over with? All Popeye paths lead to the spinach eventually, so why not take the shortcut?
What the hell is up with Wimpy? Where did he come from? Why is he always hungry? Does he have a tapeworm or some alien parasite in there which can only feed on hamburgers and is contantly leeching away all the nutrients deposited in Wimpy's bulging stomach? I would watch that cartoon.
Popeye is kind of an asshole in these early shorts. Almost every cartoon I've seen so far opens with him sailing somewhere, riding on a boat or a whale or a shark or whatever, singing his theme song. The dude has a theme song which he sings himself. I should do that, just make up my own theme song and sing it wherever I go. Usually Popeye is standing at the bow of a boat, with Olive Oyl in the rear doing all the rowing. So, giant ego and abusive boyfriend. He also walks right past a cop being held up by a robber in one cartoon.
He's also ugly. I don't mean that "Cute-Ugly" that he is in the 1950s cartoons, with his twinkling eye and spotless white sailor suit. No, this Popeye looks like someone backed over his face with a garbage truck, and then dumped the garbage on it.
He's quick to scrap in these. It doesn't take much for Popeye to start swinging those bloated forearms at some hapless schmuck. And the spinach is always a last resort. Popeye fights until he starts losing, then he eats the spinach, so he's sort of an early steroid case who cheats whenever he's in a slump. And he sometimes starts the fights himself. When he was trying to keep it quiet so this baby (Swee Pea, I believe, although not named in the cartoon) would sleep and not bust out bawling, he pretty much beat the sh!t out of the entire town he was in. He even sent a punch through the radio lines and out of the microphone into the face of a guy singing.
You know what? F*ck Olive Oyl. She's clearly Popeye's gal in these first cartoons (later cartoons would almost always center around Popeye and Bluto/Brutus competing for her anorexic charms), but she's quick to dump him for some other dude. Or she'll lead on that stumblebum Bluto for a while, and then when he gives in to his natural impulses she'll start screaming for Popeye, who like an idiot always comes running even though she basically just told him to go f*ck himself not two minutes before.
Am I the only one who feels a little bit sorry for Bluto? I mean, he always - ALWAYS - gets the living crap kicked out of him by Popeye, and most of the time it's because Olive Oyl was just using him to make Popeye jealous. He takes it too far, sure, and he never knows when to just leave sh!t alone, but he's not totally at fault here. Maybe Popeye should be eating some spinach and beating the crap out of Olive Oyl instead for causing all that trouble.
And why is every dude so attracted to Olive Oyl? She's vain, and mean, and jealous, and conniving, and petty, and pretty much a total bitch to everyone she meets - oh, okay, I get it now. Never mind.
So Olive Oyl can eat a dick. Although...considering Popeye makes her row the boat everywhere, maybe I am being too harsh.
Okay, so Popeye eats the spinach and then he gets strong enough to black the world's eyes. Why doesn't he just eat the spinach all the time? I know that if I found out spinach gave me superpowers I'd be chewing a mouthful every waking moment. "Look, there's that weird dude with the spinach always stuck in his teeth. No, wait, don't look. If he sees us staring he'll come over here and knock our faces through the back of our heads." At the very least, why doesn't Popeye eat the spinach at the start of the fight and just get it over with? All Popeye paths lead to the spinach eventually, so why not take the shortcut?
What the hell is up with Wimpy? Where did he come from? Why is he always hungry? Does he have a tapeworm or some alien parasite in there which can only feed on hamburgers and is contantly leeching away all the nutrients deposited in Wimpy's bulging stomach? I would watch that cartoon.
I Have Popeye Issues
So I've been watching the Popeye DVD set which came out last month. It's all the Fleischer Black and White Popeye cartoons from 1933-1938, along with two of the lengthier color cartoons from the period. It's a great set, and I'm having a blast chipping away at it a few cartoons at the time (your really shouldn't watch more than two or three Popeye cartoons in one sitting, because they all tend to blend together). I have a few observations, and a few questions:
Popeye is kind of an asshole in these early shorts. Almost every cartoon I've seen so far opens with him sailing somewhere, riding on a boat or a whale or a shark or whatever, singing his theme song. The dude has a theme song which he sings himself. I should do that, just make up my own theme song and sing it wherever I go. Usually Popeye is standing at the bow of a boat, with Olive Oyl in the rear doing all the rowing. So, giant ego and abusive boyfriend. He also walks right past a cop being held up by a robber in one cartoon.
He's also ugly. I don't mean that "Cute-Ugly" that he is in the 1950s cartoons, with his twinkling eye and spotless white sailor suit. No, this Popeye looks like someone backed over his face with a garbage truck, and then dumped the garbage on it.
He's quick to scrap in these. It doesn't take much for Popeye to start swinging those bloated forearms at some hapless schmuck. And the spinach is always a last resort. Popeye fights until he starts losing, then he eats the spinach, so he's sort of an early steroid case who cheats whenever he's in a slump. And he sometimes starts the fights himself. When he was trying to keep it quiet so this baby (Swee Pea, I believe, although not named in the cartoon) would sleep and not bust out bawling, he pretty much beat the sh!t out of the entire town he was in. He even sent a punch through the radio lines and out of the microphone into the face of a guy singing.
You know what? F*ck Olive Oyl. She's clearly Popeye's gal in these first cartoons (later cartoons would almost always center around Popeye and Bluto/Brutus competing for her anorexic charms), but she's quick to dump him for some other dude. Or she'll lead on that stumblebum Bluto for a while, and then when he gives in to his natural impulses she'll start screaming for Popeye, who like an idiot always comes running even though she basically just told him to go f*ck himself not two minutes before.
Am I the only one who feels a little bit sorry for Bluto? I mean, he always - ALWAYS - gets the living crap kicked out of him by Popeye, and most of the time it's because Olive Oyl was just using him to make Popeye jealous. He takes it too far, sure, and he never knows when to just leave sh!t alone, but he's not totally at fault here. Maybe Popeye should be eating some spinach and beating the crap out of Olive Oyl instead for causing all that trouble.
And why is every dude so attracted to Olive Oyl? She's vain, and mean, and jealous, and conniving, and petty, and pretty much a total bitch to everyone she meets - oh, okay, I get it now. Never mind.
So Olive Oyl can eat a dick. Although...considering Popeye makes her row the boat everywhere, maybe I am being too harsh.
Okay, so Popeye eats the spinach and then he gets strong enough to black the world's eyes. Why doesn't he just eat the spinach all the time? I know that if I found out spinach gave me superpowers I'd be chewing a mouthful every waking moment. "Look, there's that weird dude with the spinach always stuck in his teeth. No, wait, don't look. If he sees us staring he'll come over here and knock our faces through the back of our heads." At the very least, why doesn't Popeye eat the spinach at the start of the fight and just get it over with? All Popeye paths lead to the spinach eventually, so why not take the shortcut?
What the hell is up with Wimpy? Where did he come from? Why is he always hungry? Does he have a tapeworm or some alien parasite in there which can only feed on hamburgers and is contantly leeching away all the nutrients deposited in Wimpy's bulging stomach? I would watch that cartoon.
Popeye is kind of an asshole in these early shorts. Almost every cartoon I've seen so far opens with him sailing somewhere, riding on a boat or a whale or a shark or whatever, singing his theme song. The dude has a theme song which he sings himself. I should do that, just make up my own theme song and sing it wherever I go. Usually Popeye is standing at the bow of a boat, with Olive Oyl in the rear doing all the rowing. So, giant ego and abusive boyfriend. He also walks right past a cop being held up by a robber in one cartoon.
He's also ugly. I don't mean that "Cute-Ugly" that he is in the 1950s cartoons, with his twinkling eye and spotless white sailor suit. No, this Popeye looks like someone backed over his face with a garbage truck, and then dumped the garbage on it.
He's quick to scrap in these. It doesn't take much for Popeye to start swinging those bloated forearms at some hapless schmuck. And the spinach is always a last resort. Popeye fights until he starts losing, then he eats the spinach, so he's sort of an early steroid case who cheats whenever he's in a slump. And he sometimes starts the fights himself. When he was trying to keep it quiet so this baby (Swee Pea, I believe, although not named in the cartoon) would sleep and not bust out bawling, he pretty much beat the sh!t out of the entire town he was in. He even sent a punch through the radio lines and out of the microphone into the face of a guy singing.
You know what? F*ck Olive Oyl. She's clearly Popeye's gal in these first cartoons (later cartoons would almost always center around Popeye and Bluto/Brutus competing for her anorexic charms), but she's quick to dump him for some other dude. Or she'll lead on that stumblebum Bluto for a while, and then when he gives in to his natural impulses she'll start screaming for Popeye, who like an idiot always comes running even though she basically just told him to go f*ck himself not two minutes before.
Am I the only one who feels a little bit sorry for Bluto? I mean, he always - ALWAYS - gets the living crap kicked out of him by Popeye, and most of the time it's because Olive Oyl was just using him to make Popeye jealous. He takes it too far, sure, and he never knows when to just leave sh!t alone, but he's not totally at fault here. Maybe Popeye should be eating some spinach and beating the crap out of Olive Oyl instead for causing all that trouble.
And why is every dude so attracted to Olive Oyl? She's vain, and mean, and jealous, and conniving, and petty, and pretty much a total bitch to everyone she meets - oh, okay, I get it now. Never mind.
So Olive Oyl can eat a dick. Although...considering Popeye makes her row the boat everywhere, maybe I am being too harsh.
Okay, so Popeye eats the spinach and then he gets strong enough to black the world's eyes. Why doesn't he just eat the spinach all the time? I know that if I found out spinach gave me superpowers I'd be chewing a mouthful every waking moment. "Look, there's that weird dude with the spinach always stuck in his teeth. No, wait, don't look. If he sees us staring he'll come over here and knock our faces through the back of our heads." At the very least, why doesn't Popeye eat the spinach at the start of the fight and just get it over with? All Popeye paths lead to the spinach eventually, so why not take the shortcut?
What the hell is up with Wimpy? Where did he come from? Why is he always hungry? Does he have a tapeworm or some alien parasite in there which can only feed on hamburgers and is contantly leeching away all the nutrients deposited in Wimpy's bulging stomach? I would watch that cartoon.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Shopping With the Devil
Some Van Halen cover band out there should change the lyrics up one night and see how many puzzled looks they get.
So yeah, I don't like shopping for clothes. If the clothes had surprise video games sewn into the pockets I would probably like it a lot better. But as it stands right now, I've lost a lot of weight, it isn't Christmas, and I don't have a girlfriend, so I had to go shopping for clothes.
I went to this store called Kohl's. They're your standard department store, and apparently they're the flavor of the spending public around here right now, because that's all I heard. "OH I LOVE KOHL'S" they wailed, "YOU SHOULD BUY ALL YOUR CLOTHES THERE."
As luck would have it, we're in the middle of August, so all the Summer clothes were on clearance, because it makes perfect sense to discount all your warm weather clothing when there's two months of it left. I'm not complaining about being able to buy $40 shirts for $7, though. No, I have many other things to complain about instead.
Like clothing sizes. See, I wasn't exactly sure what size pants I wear now when I went into Kohl's, and now that I have been there twice I am still not sure. The lady told me they lost their measuring tape, and you would think that in a department store if they lost the measuring tape they would just walk over to where they sell the measuring tapes and get another one, but apparently it's this whole big thing so I didn't get to use one. So I grabbed up a bunch of different sizes of jeans that were on sale for $20 a pair. They're called Urban Pipeline, and I don't know if at my age I should be wearing anything with the word "Urban" on it, but $20.
They're pre-beaten. By that I mean they were placed in some sort of mechanized beating contraption, which then proceeded to beat the Holy Hell out of them for hours so that they would look like someone has been wearing them for years. So you save a little time in getting your jeans to that Goodwill look that's so popular amongst the urban youngsters nowadays.
Maybe I should just get some regular jeans, I thought. Regular old Levi's jeans were around $40 a pair. So it's basically half price to buy jeans someone has already beaten the sh!t out of for you. And I wanted some boot cut jeans, because I have taken a liking to boots, and regular jeans just scrunch up at the bottom over boots. Plus I am on a budget, but I needed some new clothes because I was getting tired of everyone asking me if I've been sick or something.
Anyway, I grabbed a few different sizes and headed to the dressing room. I hate the dressing room because I always think someone is behind that mirror taking pictures and I'm going to end up on the intenet photoshopped into some goatse-type deal. Don't Google that, seriously. I tried on two pairs of 32 jeans, a pair of 31 jeans, and two pairs of 30 jeans. The two pairs of 32 jeans varied wildly in size. One fit okay, and one I could cram my balled-up fist in it was so loose around the waist. The pair of 31s fit all right, but the legs and ass were so baggy that you could've probably gotten three or four more legs into them. I don't want to walk around looking like I'm crapping my pants all day long (just in the mornings) so those went into the DO NOT BUY pile. One of the 30s fit perfectly, and was boot cut to just the right amount, but had these feathery-looking patches on the back pockets that I didn't see when I picked them up and which made me think about Vito in that Sopranos episode so DO NOT BUY. The other 30 was too loose.
WHAT. THE HELL? So, am I correct in assuming that nowadays the sizes printed on pants are just arbitrary numbers which have no bearing whatsoever on an actual system of measurement? That they just eyeball each pair of jeans and say "Looks like a 32 to me. Look like a 32 to you? 32 it is, then." And slap that tag on the back?
Look, I've always sucked at numbers. But 32 inches is 32 inches, and that is sort of a hard and fast rule. There's really no leeway when it comes to units of measurement, otherwise we'd all be living in houses which look like Dali paintings. "Relaxed fit." That means if you buy a pair of jeans that say 32 on the tag, you are really buying size 34 or 36 jeans. They just put that number on there so you don't feel like a fatass.
I guess that's sort of like the way I tell people I am five feet nine inches tall, even though I am only just a little bit over five feet eight inches tall, because that way I don't feel like so much of a shrimp.
When I walked into Kohl's, I could pull the size 34 jeans I used to wear (and which were way tight) off at night without unbuckling them. I now own a pair of size 32 jeans I can do that with. I own another pair of 32s which fit okay, a little loose, but whatever. I took the third pair of 32s back for exchange because I made the mistake of picking out a different pair of 32s without trying them on when I didn't like the color and the beating pattern on the pair I did try on, and I'd assumed they'd be the same size 32 as the first pair since they were in the same stack but they weren't. They were a totally different size 32, which no amount of belt could hold up. I exchanged those for a pair of size 30 boot cut jeans which fit perfectly and don't have that feathery pattern all over the ass part. I will probably go to my grave not knowing what size jeans I really wear.
I ended up getting 6 shirts and 3 pairs of jeans for $100, which is not a bad deal at all. I had no such trouble with the shirts, by the way. Evidently shirts don't fall under the rules of the New Math.
So yeah, I don't like shopping for clothes. If the clothes had surprise video games sewn into the pockets I would probably like it a lot better. But as it stands right now, I've lost a lot of weight, it isn't Christmas, and I don't have a girlfriend, so I had to go shopping for clothes.
I went to this store called Kohl's. They're your standard department store, and apparently they're the flavor of the spending public around here right now, because that's all I heard. "OH I LOVE KOHL'S" they wailed, "YOU SHOULD BUY ALL YOUR CLOTHES THERE."
As luck would have it, we're in the middle of August, so all the Summer clothes were on clearance, because it makes perfect sense to discount all your warm weather clothing when there's two months of it left. I'm not complaining about being able to buy $40 shirts for $7, though. No, I have many other things to complain about instead.
Like clothing sizes. See, I wasn't exactly sure what size pants I wear now when I went into Kohl's, and now that I have been there twice I am still not sure. The lady told me they lost their measuring tape, and you would think that in a department store if they lost the measuring tape they would just walk over to where they sell the measuring tapes and get another one, but apparently it's this whole big thing so I didn't get to use one. So I grabbed up a bunch of different sizes of jeans that were on sale for $20 a pair. They're called Urban Pipeline, and I don't know if at my age I should be wearing anything with the word "Urban" on it, but $20.
They're pre-beaten. By that I mean they were placed in some sort of mechanized beating contraption, which then proceeded to beat the Holy Hell out of them for hours so that they would look like someone has been wearing them for years. So you save a little time in getting your jeans to that Goodwill look that's so popular amongst the urban youngsters nowadays.
Maybe I should just get some regular jeans, I thought. Regular old Levi's jeans were around $40 a pair. So it's basically half price to buy jeans someone has already beaten the sh!t out of for you. And I wanted some boot cut jeans, because I have taken a liking to boots, and regular jeans just scrunch up at the bottom over boots. Plus I am on a budget, but I needed some new clothes because I was getting tired of everyone asking me if I've been sick or something.
Anyway, I grabbed a few different sizes and headed to the dressing room. I hate the dressing room because I always think someone is behind that mirror taking pictures and I'm going to end up on the intenet photoshopped into some goatse-type deal. Don't Google that, seriously. I tried on two pairs of 32 jeans, a pair of 31 jeans, and two pairs of 30 jeans. The two pairs of 32 jeans varied wildly in size. One fit okay, and one I could cram my balled-up fist in it was so loose around the waist. The pair of 31s fit all right, but the legs and ass were so baggy that you could've probably gotten three or four more legs into them. I don't want to walk around looking like I'm crapping my pants all day long (just in the mornings) so those went into the DO NOT BUY pile. One of the 30s fit perfectly, and was boot cut to just the right amount, but had these feathery-looking patches on the back pockets that I didn't see when I picked them up and which made me think about Vito in that Sopranos episode so DO NOT BUY. The other 30 was too loose.
WHAT. THE HELL? So, am I correct in assuming that nowadays the sizes printed on pants are just arbitrary numbers which have no bearing whatsoever on an actual system of measurement? That they just eyeball each pair of jeans and say "Looks like a 32 to me. Look like a 32 to you? 32 it is, then." And slap that tag on the back?
Look, I've always sucked at numbers. But 32 inches is 32 inches, and that is sort of a hard and fast rule. There's really no leeway when it comes to units of measurement, otherwise we'd all be living in houses which look like Dali paintings. "Relaxed fit." That means if you buy a pair of jeans that say 32 on the tag, you are really buying size 34 or 36 jeans. They just put that number on there so you don't feel like a fatass.
I guess that's sort of like the way I tell people I am five feet nine inches tall, even though I am only just a little bit over five feet eight inches tall, because that way I don't feel like so much of a shrimp.
When I walked into Kohl's, I could pull the size 34 jeans I used to wear (and which were way tight) off at night without unbuckling them. I now own a pair of size 32 jeans I can do that with. I own another pair of 32s which fit okay, a little loose, but whatever. I took the third pair of 32s back for exchange because I made the mistake of picking out a different pair of 32s without trying them on when I didn't like the color and the beating pattern on the pair I did try on, and I'd assumed they'd be the same size 32 as the first pair since they were in the same stack but they weren't. They were a totally different size 32, which no amount of belt could hold up. I exchanged those for a pair of size 30 boot cut jeans which fit perfectly and don't have that feathery pattern all over the ass part. I will probably go to my grave not knowing what size jeans I really wear.
I ended up getting 6 shirts and 3 pairs of jeans for $100, which is not a bad deal at all. I had no such trouble with the shirts, by the way. Evidently shirts don't fall under the rules of the New Math.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Yes, I'm an April Winchell fanboy. Wanna fight about it?
My favoritest source of funny in the world, April Winchell, has just updated her site and stepped into the 20th Century. As a special treat, she also decided to update her mp3 library with a bunch of new crap and better quality versions of old crap.
I won't link any of the audio here, so you can suck down her bandwidth directly (um, yeah, moving along). But she's got things organized into piles like:
* Teen Spirit Covers (Polka!!)
* Corporate Music (Dryclean When You Care)
* TV Theme Covers (Sammy Davis, Jr., you're gonna make it after all!)
* Spoken Word (Just when you thought you'd never find that bedwetting hypnosis tape.)
* Audio Collage and Mash-Ups (I will pull down a copy of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Dictionaraoke on my site.)
* Celebrities Who Insist On Singing (no further description necessary)
* Celebrities Who Can't Sing, So They Talk To Music
* Things You Probably Weren't Supposed To Hear (I love the Jim Backus one.)
* Beatles Covers
* Stairway to Heaven
* Learn Italian with Fabio
* Chicken Songs
* Terrifying Christian Recordings ("Menstruation is God's Plan")
* Bizarre Covers ("Black Hole Sun" by Steve and Eydie gave me this brain tumor!)
* And sooooo much more!
Anywho, with categories like these, how can you resist wallowing in the April freshness?
I won't link any of the audio here, so you can suck down her bandwidth directly (um, yeah, moving along). But she's got things organized into piles like:
* Teen Spirit Covers (Polka!!)
* Corporate Music (Dryclean When You Care)
* TV Theme Covers (Sammy Davis, Jr., you're gonna make it after all!)
* Spoken Word (Just when you thought you'd never find that bedwetting hypnosis tape.)
* Audio Collage and Mash-Ups (I will pull down a copy of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Dictionaraoke on my site.)
* Celebrities Who Insist On Singing (no further description necessary)
* Celebrities Who Can't Sing, So They Talk To Music
* Things You Probably Weren't Supposed To Hear (I love the Jim Backus one.)
* Beatles Covers
* Stairway to Heaven
* Learn Italian with Fabio
* Chicken Songs
* Terrifying Christian Recordings ("Menstruation is God's Plan")
* Bizarre Covers ("Black Hole Sun" by Steve and Eydie gave me this brain tumor!)
* And sooooo much more!
Anywho, with categories like these, how can you resist wallowing in the April freshness?
Sunday, August 19, 2007
School spirit
On the Wikipedia page for my high school, one of the few people listed under the "Notable alumni" section is a porn star.
And to answer your question, yes, I looked her up online.
And to answer your other question, yes, she does good work. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some...uh...work...to do. Yeah. Work. That's the ticket.
And to answer your question, yes, I looked her up online.
And to answer your other question, yes, she does good work. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some...uh...work...to do. Yeah. Work. That's the ticket.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
And Now We Know Just How Deep The Obsession Can Go...Not That We Wanted To.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
My Gift To You!
Today is my birthday, thus I give you this, a mini-contest. Using the words on the pictured label, please come up with as many porn movie titles as possible.
My entry: "Beaver Mustard: Inside the Factory."
I may be old(er), but my sense of humor remains in 8th grade.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Woman Gets Lead Out of Head After 55 Years
After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed.
Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the 3.15 inch-long pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain.
"It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner told Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy."
In celebration of the pending removal, prior to the surgery Mrs. Wegner sneezed out a letter of recommendation to the pencil manufacturer.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
I bet they even deep-fry the cereal
WENDY'S DEATH MOGUL
You know, I just can't help but feel like we aren't killing our customers quickly enough, given the limited amount of time our restaurants are open during the day. How can we solve this?
ASSISTANT
We had the marketing boys mock-up a breakfast menu for just such a situation, Sir.
WENDY'S DEATH MOGUL
Why, this...this is genius! Somebody's getting an extra carton of smokes this week!
Let's dissect this menu, in the form of a question-and-answer done reverse-style:
ANSWER:
QUESTION:
I'd like to see someone in physical pain as they're eating. What should I feed them?
ANSWER:
QUESTION:
No, no, I want to see them clutching at the front of their shirt as their lips turn blue. Do you have anything that does that?
ANSWER:
QUESTION:
I'm a sadomasochist. I'm planning on jogging nonstop to the ocean furthest away from me, and I need a single food which will supply all the calories I'll need, as well as induce piercing stomach cramps and uncontrollable explosive diarrhea. Using these guidelines, what can your chefs concoct to fulfill my needs?
QUESTION:
If I ate every single item on this menu in one sitting, can you describe what my heart and blood supply would look like after I finished?
ANSWER:
QUESTION:
Which one of you fucktards stepped on my biscuit?
ANSWER:
QUESTION:
There's something healthy on this menu. How can we steer people away from purchasing and consuming it?
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Cosmo
I didn't like Cosmo very much the first time I met him.
He'd moved into the complex recently, and I had to do a work order in his apartment. I'm not a perfect painter, and sometimes a water stain will bleed back through, or I missed something, etc. This work order stated that there was some sort of discoloration on his living room wall.
I was warned about him. "He's very picky." In maintenance terms, "very picky" means "huge pain in the ass."
He was waiting for me when I got there. Eighty or so years old, but not frail, not at all, with his thick ruddy face, bulbous nose, ham-sized hands, and a thick wavy head of white hair. I introduced myself, and I am sure that right off the bat he didn't think much of me, with my unshaven face and scraggly chin whiskers, hair that I'd decided wasn't worth the effort of cutting, and a general blank attitude towards everything. I was moving towards the crest of that two-year void. He was clean-shaven and neat, and I was a stringy mess of apathy. He was raised in a generation that never even considered giving up, and that was my specialty at the moment. If they gave out awards for not giving a sh!t, I would've had a nice showcase filled with little faux chrome men perched on trophies, captured in various poses of shrugging, or rolling their eyes, or sleeping on tiny faux chrome couches like little chrome weirdos.
He showed me the wall, and there was no stain. It was just a trick of the light spilling through his window blinds and the angle it was reflecting off the wall. I told him so. He insisted that he saw SOMETHING on the wall. Again, I stressed that what he was seeing was sunlight, and nothing more. He was getting frustrated, and asked if there was anything at all I could do about it. The implication in the tone of his voice was that I was a pretty sorry excuse for a painter.
"Yeah," I said, "I can paint over your windows."
I don't know why. Sometimes this stuff comes out of me so fast that it doesn't even register in my own mind until I've already said it. It's more instinct than anything else, I suppose, trying to disarm someone or defuse a rising situation.
Cosmo didn't think it was very funny.
Just humor this crotchety old dude, I thought, so you can get back to whatever you were doing before and not have to talk to anyone. I hate work orders. I never make much money on these little things, they're usually just a waste of my time, and I have to deal with people hovering over me and either telling me how to do my job or just breathing down my neck out of curiosity over the magical world of patching a hole in a bathroom ceiling. Half the time they seem to be vaguely irritated at my presence, even though they were the ones who asked for the repair/touch-up work. I want this repaired and/or painted, but I'd prefer it if you sent the fixit elves while I am sleeping, and tell them to keep it quiet.
I sprayed some Kilz (or, as that dude who runs this joint calls it, "Kilts") in the general area he was complaining about, and then topcoated it a few minutes later. He did not seem satisfied with the results, said the spot was still there, and of course it was still there, because I can't do anything about the f*cking sun, old man.
I heard about it a few days later. He'd complained to Gene, the assistant maintenance supervisor. "Some painter," summed up his opinion of my handling of the Sunshine Situation. Gene thought it was all very funny, especially the "paint your windows" line, because the old man had already had him inside that apartment a dozen times for various nonreasons. He told me Cosmo had been in WWII, at Iwo Jima. Said he'd seen the flag raising.
I didn't really believe it. I wondered aloud how many guys in their late seventies or early eighties claimed to have been at Pearl Harbor, or Normandy, or Iwo Jima. I was sure there's a decent percentage, like the old people who used to claim they were in the original Little Rascals back in the 1970s and 1980s (it's true - one guy was even interviewed in several national magazines before he was found out).
I forgot about Cosmo for a while, and went back to drifting. A few months later I had to return to his apartment, to patch a hole the plumbers had cut into the wall behind the bathroom sink/vanity. They'd already replaced the vanity, so I had to work around it. Cosmo tried to make a little small talk, and at first I didn't really respond, because of the whole Sunshine Situation incident. I noticed he was watching Turner Classic Movies, and that's only the best channel ever on cable, so I warmed a little and started BSing with him about old movies. I also noticed something on his wall, something having to do with his serving as a New York fireman.
OK, he's not so bad, maybe. He likes old movies and knows all the actors by name, so that's a point for him. He was a fireman, and that's pretty cool, so another point. I still didn't believe he'd been at Iwo Jima, though.
Earlier this year, around April, Cosmo was moving out. Gene had volunteered himself, and Steve, and me, to move him. On the Thursday before we were going to move Cosmo, Gene had gone to the doctor. He'd been short of breath for a while, tired all the time, generally weak feeling. The doctor had told him that he had a heart defect, a weak valve, no joking matter, he better take it easy and not lift anything or exert himself too much until he could get to a specialist because there was the distinct possibility he might just fall over dead like athletes sometimes do. This has since been proven to be a misdiagnosis (he has a thickened heart, still very serious, but not immediately life-threatening). We didn't know that at the time, though. All we knew is that there was no way in hell we were letting him lift anything and fall over dead on us. He could drive the moving truck, and that was it, that was all we would let him do no matter how much he wanted to puff out his chest about it. If he insisted on being there because he promised the old guy, and doing something, then he could sit in the f*cking truck and listen to the radio while we handled everything else.
Gene pulled the truck alongside the building. We thought if we pulled around the back of the building we'd save ourselves some walking. It had rained the night before, the ground was soaked, and we kept close to the building where the ground was more solid but of course the truck got stuck, back wheels spinning in place, wedging deeper into muddy grooves. Steve and I tried boards and roofing tiles for traction, but all that ended up doing was spitting pieces of roofing tile directly at my head at great velocities. After half an hour we were both filthy messes, and we hadn't even lifted the first box.
Cosmo toddled around the corner (he had a bum leg, and crabwalked everywhere he went) demanding Gene give him the truck keys. Gene shrugged and handed them over. Next thing I knew, Cosmo was stomping the gas pedal to the floorboard. Mud slung everywhere, the wheels caught hold, and the moving truck shot forward, veering dangerously close to the side of the building. Cosmo jerked the steering wheel to the right, and kept the pedal down. He dug two black trenches from one end of the building to the other, trenches over half a foot deep, mud flying a good ten feet into the air. People on that side of the building were staring out of their apartment windows, pointing as the old man clenched his jaw and stood on the gas and almost took out the lower half of their home.
I literally fell down to my knees, I was laughing so hard. I decided Cosmo was a pretty smooth cat, after all.
Anyway, we packed up Cosmo's life for him after that without much incident, and as we were putting boxes in the truck he gave me the laminated card pictured above. I didn't have a lot of time to actually read it then, but I believed the Iwo Jima story then. He also gave me a little cross on a chain, a cheap thing but ornate for being cheap, and that's hanging off the stopper on my linen closet door as I type this. I don't know about God, really, and whether either one of us really believes in the other, but Cosmo believed, and he gave me the cross, so there it hangs.
We took Cosmo's life over to his new place, which I also found humorous because it was about a block away from the college, and if he thought the noise was unbearable at the complex then he hadn't experienced a block party at two in the morning just off a college campus.
He'd moved into the complex recently, and I had to do a work order in his apartment. I'm not a perfect painter, and sometimes a water stain will bleed back through, or I missed something, etc. This work order stated that there was some sort of discoloration on his living room wall.
I was warned about him. "He's very picky." In maintenance terms, "very picky" means "huge pain in the ass."
He was waiting for me when I got there. Eighty or so years old, but not frail, not at all, with his thick ruddy face, bulbous nose, ham-sized hands, and a thick wavy head of white hair. I introduced myself, and I am sure that right off the bat he didn't think much of me, with my unshaven face and scraggly chin whiskers, hair that I'd decided wasn't worth the effort of cutting, and a general blank attitude towards everything. I was moving towards the crest of that two-year void. He was clean-shaven and neat, and I was a stringy mess of apathy. He was raised in a generation that never even considered giving up, and that was my specialty at the moment. If they gave out awards for not giving a sh!t, I would've had a nice showcase filled with little faux chrome men perched on trophies, captured in various poses of shrugging, or rolling their eyes, or sleeping on tiny faux chrome couches like little chrome weirdos.
He showed me the wall, and there was no stain. It was just a trick of the light spilling through his window blinds and the angle it was reflecting off the wall. I told him so. He insisted that he saw SOMETHING on the wall. Again, I stressed that what he was seeing was sunlight, and nothing more. He was getting frustrated, and asked if there was anything at all I could do about it. The implication in the tone of his voice was that I was a pretty sorry excuse for a painter.
"Yeah," I said, "I can paint over your windows."
I don't know why. Sometimes this stuff comes out of me so fast that it doesn't even register in my own mind until I've already said it. It's more instinct than anything else, I suppose, trying to disarm someone or defuse a rising situation.
Cosmo didn't think it was very funny.
Just humor this crotchety old dude, I thought, so you can get back to whatever you were doing before and not have to talk to anyone. I hate work orders. I never make much money on these little things, they're usually just a waste of my time, and I have to deal with people hovering over me and either telling me how to do my job or just breathing down my neck out of curiosity over the magical world of patching a hole in a bathroom ceiling. Half the time they seem to be vaguely irritated at my presence, even though they were the ones who asked for the repair/touch-up work. I want this repaired and/or painted, but I'd prefer it if you sent the fixit elves while I am sleeping, and tell them to keep it quiet.
I sprayed some Kilz (or, as that dude who runs this joint calls it, "Kilts") in the general area he was complaining about, and then topcoated it a few minutes later. He did not seem satisfied with the results, said the spot was still there, and of course it was still there, because I can't do anything about the f*cking sun, old man.
I heard about it a few days later. He'd complained to Gene, the assistant maintenance supervisor. "Some painter," summed up his opinion of my handling of the Sunshine Situation. Gene thought it was all very funny, especially the "paint your windows" line, because the old man had already had him inside that apartment a dozen times for various nonreasons. He told me Cosmo had been in WWII, at Iwo Jima. Said he'd seen the flag raising.
I didn't really believe it. I wondered aloud how many guys in their late seventies or early eighties claimed to have been at Pearl Harbor, or Normandy, or Iwo Jima. I was sure there's a decent percentage, like the old people who used to claim they were in the original Little Rascals back in the 1970s and 1980s (it's true - one guy was even interviewed in several national magazines before he was found out).
I forgot about Cosmo for a while, and went back to drifting. A few months later I had to return to his apartment, to patch a hole the plumbers had cut into the wall behind the bathroom sink/vanity. They'd already replaced the vanity, so I had to work around it. Cosmo tried to make a little small talk, and at first I didn't really respond, because of the whole Sunshine Situation incident. I noticed he was watching Turner Classic Movies, and that's only the best channel ever on cable, so I warmed a little and started BSing with him about old movies. I also noticed something on his wall, something having to do with his serving as a New York fireman.
OK, he's not so bad, maybe. He likes old movies and knows all the actors by name, so that's a point for him. He was a fireman, and that's pretty cool, so another point. I still didn't believe he'd been at Iwo Jima, though.
After that we'd say hello every now and again. When I was painting the apartment across the hall from him, a really nasty piece of work I had to roll out with Final Sealer, he poked his head through the door and tried to grill me about who was moving in, complaining about the noise in his building. I guess the older you get the quieter you want it, until you finally reach that point where there's never any sound again.
I never asked him about the war during any of these times we spoke. I didn't want to catch him in a lie, see. Most vets don't like to speak of it in anything other than the vaguest of terms, anyway.Earlier this year, around April, Cosmo was moving out. Gene had volunteered himself, and Steve, and me, to move him. On the Thursday before we were going to move Cosmo, Gene had gone to the doctor. He'd been short of breath for a while, tired all the time, generally weak feeling. The doctor had told him that he had a heart defect, a weak valve, no joking matter, he better take it easy and not lift anything or exert himself too much until he could get to a specialist because there was the distinct possibility he might just fall over dead like athletes sometimes do. This has since been proven to be a misdiagnosis (he has a thickened heart, still very serious, but not immediately life-threatening). We didn't know that at the time, though. All we knew is that there was no way in hell we were letting him lift anything and fall over dead on us. He could drive the moving truck, and that was it, that was all we would let him do no matter how much he wanted to puff out his chest about it. If he insisted on being there because he promised the old guy, and doing something, then he could sit in the f*cking truck and listen to the radio while we handled everything else.
Gene pulled the truck alongside the building. We thought if we pulled around the back of the building we'd save ourselves some walking. It had rained the night before, the ground was soaked, and we kept close to the building where the ground was more solid but of course the truck got stuck, back wheels spinning in place, wedging deeper into muddy grooves. Steve and I tried boards and roofing tiles for traction, but all that ended up doing was spitting pieces of roofing tile directly at my head at great velocities. After half an hour we were both filthy messes, and we hadn't even lifted the first box.
Cosmo toddled around the corner (he had a bum leg, and crabwalked everywhere he went) demanding Gene give him the truck keys. Gene shrugged and handed them over. Next thing I knew, Cosmo was stomping the gas pedal to the floorboard. Mud slung everywhere, the wheels caught hold, and the moving truck shot forward, veering dangerously close to the side of the building. Cosmo jerked the steering wheel to the right, and kept the pedal down. He dug two black trenches from one end of the building to the other, trenches over half a foot deep, mud flying a good ten feet into the air. People on that side of the building were staring out of their apartment windows, pointing as the old man clenched his jaw and stood on the gas and almost took out the lower half of their home.
I literally fell down to my knees, I was laughing so hard. I decided Cosmo was a pretty smooth cat, after all.
Anyway, we packed up Cosmo's life for him after that without much incident, and as we were putting boxes in the truck he gave me the laminated card pictured above. I didn't have a lot of time to actually read it then, but I believed the Iwo Jima story then. He also gave me a little cross on a chain, a cheap thing but ornate for being cheap, and that's hanging off the stopper on my linen closet door as I type this. I don't know about God, really, and whether either one of us really believes in the other, but Cosmo believed, and he gave me the cross, so there it hangs.
We took Cosmo's life over to his new place, which I also found humorous because it was about a block away from the college, and if he thought the noise was unbearable at the complex then he hadn't experienced a block party at two in the morning just off a college campus.
As we were unpacking and filing away things where Cosmo directed (Gene kept trying to pick up and move boxes and I kept telling him to SIT THE F*CK DOWN because, again, fall over dead), Steve wheeled in a bunch of boxes on a hand truck. He bumped into the door jamb and the boxes spilled all over Cosmo's new living room floor.
Cosmo's eyes popped big and he pointed at one particular box, saying "Be careful with that, that's my wife!"
Everyone stopped. After a deathly moment of awkward silence, I picked up the box and asked Cosmo where he wanted to put her. We then continued shuffling boxes around, unpacking certain things for him. I helped set up his computer.
Cosmo took us all out to eat afterward, anywhere we wanted, he said, and we were so tired and hungry we just settled on a nearby Ruby Tuesday. Over the meal I asked Cosmo a little about the war, and he mentioned Okinawa. I asked if he'd seen any of the cliff suicides. He said he had, and I decided not to press any further. There was a lot I wanted to ask, but I didn't want to bring any painful memories out. He talked a little about being a fireman instead.
As we were leaving, Cosmo noticed his fly had been open the entire time, and asked, loudly "Why didn't you guys tell me?!?!" which of course made everyone around us look over just in time to see the old guy zip up his hole, which they never would have noticed otherwise.
We dropped him off at his new pad, saying our goodbyes. He rolled up his pants leg to show us the knotted mass of surgery scars from his bum leg, and I probably could have gone the next thirty or forty years without seeing that.
I saw Cosmo a few weeks ago, at the Wall-Mark across the street. He was riding in one of those motorized shopping carts, and I felt a little sad seeing that, since he had gotten around pretty well when he lived here. I should have walked over and said hello, but I was late for something I can't even remember now, so I didn't. I'll try to stop by his place for a visit after this two-week rush of work I have. He probably doesn't get a lot of visitors. Maybe I'll ask him some more about the war, if he's willing to talk.
I'll break down what's on the card for you:
Cosmo Maffetore was a crew member of the LST 808, a tank landing ship which hit the beaches of Iwo Jima during the initial assault, under mortar fire and attacks by enemy aircraft. They suffered no casualties or damage at Iwo. From there, they moved on to Okinawa, where they were subject to Kamikaze attacks. As they mother shipped Boat Pool Able around the waters of le Shima (off the coast of Okinawa), they were struck by an aerial torpedo which nearly tore the ship in half. The ship was pushed aground to avoid being completely sunk, but was struck by a Kamikaze two days later. There were 11 killed in the torpedo attack, and numerous injured. The remainder of the crew were stranded on le Shima for six weeks, until rescued. Cosmo was there through all of it.
Yeah, Cosmo's all right, I guess.
***
Did you miss me? Yeah, I missed me, too. I am in the midst of Painter's Hell for the next two weeks, something like 18 apartments due, so lots of long days and weekend work for me for a while. I have the story of my Roller Derby trip, and some more Shark Week DVD reviews, and a Popeye DVD review/discussion, and my absolute domination of our little bowling circuit, and some more BS all lined up, but I can't guarantee when it will all get posted. All I can say is check back every day, and I'll try to have a little something, but I can't make any promises right now. Next up will definitely be the Roller Derby story, though. Tomorrow, I need to catch up on some blog reading. There's been lots of good stuff posted lately, which you can check out by going through the links in my "Other Blogs Full of Win" section on the sidebar.
***
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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