2/2/2

This month's opening quote came from Bartlett's Generic Quotations.

Those outside of the Booze Industry think that the Super Bowl is a busy weekend for us. Not really. People are generally partied out after New Years, and the Xmas bills have arrived.
Apparently it's different when a local team is playing. I guess that if New England makes it into the Stupid Bowl, it's officially an excuse to get drunk. Or, at least, wait until the last hour of the 72 we're open a week to come in and work Bill to death. Actually, I DID die, and John Edward is writing this. "I sense a...clown." "Uh, no. There was no clown. He died because of the Super Bowl." "Ah HA! A clown would be like...uh...The Three Stooges! One of whom was Moe--who had a BOWL HAIRCUT!" "WOW! John, YOU'RE AMAZINGLY ACCURATE!"
Will I watch the Stupid Bowl? Why bother? Without ever seeing one I can tell you what will happen: "It was an okay game at first, then that one team got really far ahead in the 1st quarter. By halftime I stopped paying attention. Wasn't that halftime show so stupid? Hey, did you see that new Bud ad? That was AWESOME!"
But I think that I'll watch the ads this time. PBS, of all networks, is showing all the ads after the game without the grunting sweaty millionaire mesomorphs. I watch so little TV (so little that I'm getting rid of cable) that these will prly seem really exotic to me. Or, if not, I'll just stop watching them.
Oh, wait--The Gist.com description is: "A round-table discussion examines cultural implications of five new commercials to air during Super Bowl XXXVI." Umm. Well, that would be why it's on PBS, I guess.

Groundhog's Day in Afghanistan.

The Lord of the Rings as written by other writers, such as Lewis Carroll or Hemingway. Amusing, but kind of hit & miss. And no one seemed to get the idea to try it backwards: I'd be less interested than Ian Fleming writing LotR than seeing JRR Tolkein write James Bond (As I'm sure that I'm the only person here who's actually read a Bond book, their styles are strangely similar, in the sense that they tell you in excrutiating detail the contents of every character's meals). Wait, the Bond books were boring. Maybe a Bond movie would be better...

FRODO BOND in "RINGFINGER"

"DO pay attention, 007!" said Gandalf of Q Division testily.
"You have my undivided attention." said Frodo, walking between the legs of a sexy female technician and looking up her skirt.
"First, you'll need this." Gandalf handed Frodo a ring. "What's it do?" asked Frodo, flipping it into the air. The ring jumped of its own accord onto his finger, making him invisible. "It makes the Bearer invisible--" All the female technicians went "EEK!" and put their hands on their bottoms. "--As no doubt you've discovered, in your bum-pinching frenzy. Before you get too carried away, it also drinks away your soul, as easily as you would drink a mug of good Shire beer, shaken, not stirred."
Frodo reappeared. "You need to fine-tune this. It was all whooshy in there, and a huge, blood-shot eye jumped out at me--Oh, wait, that's your eye."
"Forego the wittiscisms, 007. Here is the latest Aston Martin DB-5 horsecart. It has wing-mounted rear-firing fireworks launchers, a smoke-screen that dispenses comically shaped smoke-rings, and a stick shift that glows blue in the presence of ORC."
"I thought that the Organization of Repulsive Creatures might be behind this. But how do I find their leader?"
"This device that looks like a radar screen is what you'll use. It's really a Babe Magnet. It will lead you to a series of highly sexually attractive 60s bimbos who you'll have sex with, which in turn will lead you to Sauric Ringfinger."
And then there was a hilarious punchline!

PS: If someone sent me an email the other day with the subject line "Bill, do you think this picture looks like..." I deleted it without remembering that it's the Hotmail account that gets all the spam, and the C4 account deletes permanently. I assume that it was prly not sent by anybody reading this (most likely it was the Ob), but try again if you are. And it wasn't spam. Or something.

Hey, Tom Tomorrow has a blog! I can hear James Lileks coughing blood as we speak!

Karl sends this: "File under: EBay Nutsacks."

An interview with the world's least likely Punk, Atom and His Package: "Although he's full of it, sincerity is not the emotion most associate with the man who's latest album is audaciously/ironically called Redefining Music - and who penned 'Sting Cannot Possibly Be the Same Guy Who Was in The Police' and 'If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock.'"

2/4

Oh, sure. The one time I actually mention the Soupy Bowl here, and the game actually is exciting. Damn you, NFL!

Rendering unto Caesar is a pain.
Yeah, the state & federal Caesars owe me $1000 in tax refunds ($1300, if you count Dubya's not-really-a-refund-but-an-advance "rebate" last year). But it's still a damn pain. And is it just me, or is there a huge typo on the 1040? If you follow the instructions for Line 40 as given, your taxes owed comes out to a whole $300 less than your entire yearly income! There's nothing there about using the tax table in the back to calculate what you owe. Maybe this is Dumbya's plan to offset his billions in Reagan-moronics deficit spending.
Dumbya's Big Plan to Restorificate the Current Economically Problematicness is for me to max out my credit cards, as part of my own deficit spending. Sorry, Spurious George, the cash is going straight into my savings account. Your little nostalgia trip to the 1980s may cost me more than it should, and I'm going to be vigilant with my homeland financial security.

Tom Tomorrow's journal (it's only blog in format) is pretty good so far. I wonder why the phrase "knee-jerk liberal" is so prevalent, when every liberal I know (like Tom, who I don't know) has some conservativish views, while most conseratives just automatically hate anything a Green or Democrat says. Of course, there are people like Ted Rall. He has a really enjoyable comic that boils complicated issues down to 4 panels quite eloquently. Yet the few columns of his that I've read Make Head Hurt, and if I wanted Head to Hurt, I'd read Ann "Batshit" Coulter. He takes complicated issues & makes them incomprehensible. Half the time, I can't even tell what he's upset about. Maybe there's more than one Ted Rall?

Possibly I was dreaming of Ann & Ted last night, as I awoke around dawn with a migraine. Same as last Monday, when I got up 3 times to gulp ibuprofens. Screw this, I thought, I'm swallowing 4 ibu's RIGHT NOW.
I woke up still vaguely headachy, but also nauseous. Not a feeling you want during flu & stomach bug & anthrax season. It turned out to be an ibuprofen hangover, which I get when I eat a bunch of them & then sleep.
Sleep is the only time I get migraines anymore. I never got them until about ten years ago, when they suddenly happened A LOT. We're talkin' 2 day long migraines, the kind where you can barely see, the kind that are so bad you puke. All I could do sometimes was rub a spot over my right eye. Once, rubbing that spot was the only way that I could even see to drive; if I didn't have an automatic, I never would've made it home. Another time I rubbed that one spot so hard that the next day I not only had rubbed the skin off my forehead, but I'd left a bruise.
The weird thing was the migraine's causes. Three times it was second-hand smoke, three times pollen, twice Red Red Wine (Goes straight to my head, makes me wish I was dead), and three times no cause whatsoever. It was the last that worried me--How the hell was I going to avoid these things if I didn't know what caused them?
Then one day I was taking some ibu & thought, "Man, I'm going through a bottle of these almost every month!"
*CLICK*
That was the connection. Every time I had a 2-day migraine I knew that I was getting one, but didn't have immediate access to painkillers. I was actually getting migraines all the time, but was preventing them by taking ibuprofen right away.
Now I keep ibuprofen in my house, my car, and in my wallet. And I think that now I'm just going to take one every night before bed, so that the migraines can't sneak up on me when I'm sleeping.

Well, I've talked about taxes, damn crazy liberals, and my health.
I am now officially middle-aged.
DAMN KIDS! Get offen my property! I gotta shotgun fulla rock salt for your behinds iffen you don't get offen!!

2/6

I took the What Mythological Creature Are you? test by !

Don't expect too much in this space over the next few days. I'm transcribing a chapter from a book, all 17 squinty-typed pages of it. But it should be worth the wait. I may put chapters up before it's completely done, but I need my proofreader to look it over.

Wow, these 5 months of non-stop claims from the FBI & CIA that "a second attack is imminent!" finally has come true! Not at the Super Bowl, as the ever-alert CIA said today 3 days after it ended, but at the most important place in America! The Connecticut capitol building. Yeah. Right. I'm so sure.

More unbelievable CT news: A teacher is fired after bashing her ex on the coconut with a hammer. Her Compelling Explanation: "Simler filed papers contending that her former boyfriend was accident-prone and that the hammer fell and hit him accidentally. She said that the blow caused him to struggle with her and that a second hammer, which she had picked up, also struck him accidentally during the struggle." Yeah. Right. I'm so sure.

Quote of the moment: On the subject of the store owners going to see "Phantom of the Opera" this weekend, the pants-pooping coworker said "I'd never go see that! I HATE opera!"
I had to explain that if that's an opera, so is "Grease."
"I didn't want to go see the movie 'The Green Mile.' That's too far to walk."

Test your psychic powers!

2/7

Ahh, the things one finds when one Googles oneself.

NOW someone makes a banner ad! Still, one finds it charmingly funny.
One will cease calling one's self "one" now.

Another thing I found was a blog. This is an odd co-inky-dink, as only an hour before I'd looked at The Bloggies & it was the only blog name that snagged on my neurons. It was interesting, as it contains...You're sitting down, right? No pointy corners to fall and smush your head on?...It contains history's ONLY KNOWN DEFENSE OF SUPER GREEN BERET!!! How did THAT happen! There really must BE a room of infinite typing monkeys that will eventually write every possible combination of words!
"Although I am Asian-American, I feel the need to defend the comic book a little. Sure, it's atrocious, but it was written during the Vietnam War! Think about the (common) mentality then. Think about your parents and what they thought about the war if they were middle class Joe's and Jane's. Although we are all influenced by the hippy era, that was a very very small minority, and they only have a big name because they were very very loud. I am not descending on the war, the hippies, Communism, anti-communism, but perhaps we should all think with more open minds then such quick-to-come-to-a-conclusion minds. (Whoa couldn't find a good word there!)"
Well, Infinite Monkey 1,770,319, I still say that 1967 was not the freakin' Dark Ages, and the Dirty Jap/Gook crap was indefensible even then.
Another reply to Super Green Beret was more apt: "i actually read thro the whole thing. i am now dumber than was 10 minutes ago."

Speaking of self-referential monkey-related items, somehow I ended up mentioning Monkeymaniac's LiveJournal last night. I sent Kevin the url, then reread it myself for the first time since it abruptly ended *exactly* a year ago today. Almost every "funny comedy joke gag" I write is written with a slight smirk; Monkeymaniac is one of only two things I've ever done that made me literally LOL!!! (Super Greenie Beanie being the other) If you weren't reading this page a year ago, it might be worth your time reading, at least up till the point that the new Microsoft OS (the Orange Snot) turns up. Of course, there's an actual plot, so you have to read it by scrolling to the earlier posts & clicking on "Comments." A lot of it is FCUKIN HILAROUS espeshally the HOTTIES and the VERY CLUELESS PEOPLES that thot it were for real!!! LOL!
I think that it came out quite good. But given that it was only started as a way to relieve my stress in the days before my father's funeral--Well, I don't want that kind of "inspiration" again.

"That's a good idea," said Kevin when I briefly outlined "Monkeymaniac" to him, Jay and Scott last night. "It's about time somebody did a parody of those losers that put their pets on a webpage and talk about how cute they are!" Har, har! Hey, I resemble that remark!
First Scott had to tape "That 80s Show for Retards" for his sister. Possibly he has more than one sister, as his sister that one kn--er, that I know about--came into his apartment from HER apartment one door down in the same squeaky-staired old building while it was on, and ignored it. Kevin--I'm sorry, I meant (BOOMING VOICE!)K!M!D!S!--was particularly annoyed over the line, "This is why I love the 80s!" "Who has EVER said anything like that!" he correctly pointed out. From now on, I will! Just gonna rear up on my hind legs and scream "THIS is why I love the...Zeros!!" when terrorists blow shit up or we blow terrorist shit up or someone in the Oil Industry pleads the Fifth or there's a report of a machine-gun-wielding terrorist on the CT Capitol Building and it turns out to be a cameraman filming a cable-access TV commercial (as it did turn out).

Then we watched a Japanese video called "Junk." Now, I realize that there's a certain level of suspension of disbelief one must have when watching a flesh-eating zombie movie. But there's also a certain level of internal consistency needed for the movie to actually WORK as a movie. Let's say, how about establishing what bullets do to zombies, for instance. They should either kill the zombies, or they don't. Bullets should definitely not be something that don't kill zombies, then abruptly do kill (re-kill, whatever) them for 15 minutes of the movie, then not kill them for another 15 minutes, then knock them over but not kill them for 15 minutes, then kill them AGAIN. Am I asking for too much thought here? One or zero: They do, or they don't.
Somebody had seen some Tarantino, so the erstwhile heroes are a ruthless, unlikable band of murderous gangsters ("erstwhile" means "by default" or "I suck as a screenwriter so you don't care who dies"). They go to hold up a "jewellry" store. They are such good thieves that they bring a sword for no reason, smash every case (which sets off no alarms), and have a getaway car that they've taken for a test drive from a car dealership. For several hours, apparently. The getaway driver gave the dealership her cell phone number before stealing it, and gets a call from the salesman during the robbery. Her compadres doing the robbery are almost defeated by a woman who jabs a pair of scissors into one guy's foot (it took me the whole movie before I got who he looked like in clothes & hair--Johnny Slash! "Square pegs square pegs square--PEGS!" Now THAT'S that 80s show!). That was her whole gig. Jabbin' the scissors, makin' the blood spurt, just sittin' there so one of the heroes can shoot her. Wow, NOW they're likable.
Oh, yeah, the movie opened with a SECRET AMERICAN ARMY PROJECT to REANIMATE DEAD JAPANESE people. This high-tech cutting-edge experiment took place in an abandoned warehouse with a staff of two. This Naked Japanese Chick was injected with "DNX," the magic life-giving formula with the mild side effect of making any corpse immediately eat your neck, or at least rip off the piece of latex that covered the blood bag. You know, if for some reason I ever get a job reanimating dead people, I'm locking them in a big vault first. Has there ever been a movie where the dead didn't jump up & eat your guts, but instead ran off to find Jimmy Carter and build houses for the poor? At the very least, I'd expand the budget so that there was a third person, and his specialty would be De-Animation. And I'd try DNX on a toothless hamster first. SCIENTIST: "It's--ALIVE! My creation is ALIV--Okay, Mr Fluffikin's trying to rip my latex jugular out now." (De-Animator grabs Mr Fluffikins & flings him into the trash can) "Let's brew up a better batch of DNX this time, okay? With less throat-ripping this time?"
And meanwhile, back at the gangsters: Johhny Slash's foot is geysering blood, but the Girl heals him by pouring Evian on it (NOT MAKING THIS UP!). Then there was a bunch of shit we paid no attention to, US Army reanimating dead, some Japanese scientist, Yakuza fencing the "jewells," the place to make the payment is--why, it's an abandoned factory! The kind where you have shoot-outs! In over-populated Japan, and it's abandoned, EXCEPT FOR THE ZOMBIES.
Boo!
Zombies don't scare me. They're like mummies with broken feet. If zombies had an Olympics, the 50 Yard Dash would still be going on during the next Olympics. It's hard to be afraid of something that I could outrun, and harder still when it's something that I could out-loiter.
(In front of the 7-11): "Hey, dude! That's zombie's gonna eat us!"
"Yep. He sure looks hungry."
"Yeah. I am so running away in...I dunno. Ten minutes?"
"Maybe. I may wanna microwave another burrito, dude. Let's say...Ten minutes and 90 seconds."
"'Kay." (slurps) "I may need to use the bathroom after this Big Gulp though."
ZOMBIE: "ARRGHH! BRAAAAINS!"
"Hahaha! Dude, he wants BRAINS! You're so safe!!"
"Fuck you, man!" (slurps) "What kind of burrito? Beef & bean?"

As far as the internal consistency thing goes, zombies are caused by direct medical injection of DNX. Or, some guy spraying 8,000 rounds from the Uzi of Infinite Ammo at a cheap wooden shelf of DNX while going "YAARRGGHH!" (while the people he's supposedly shooting crouch down behind it; he doesn't bother aiming a yard lower and kill them, as he's to busy yaarrgghhing) which causes DNX to seep into the carefully-preserved corpses in the high-tech storage facility (they're wrapped in sacks & laying on the floor--Hoo WEE, that place must need a whole forest of pine tree air fresheners!). They are also caused by zombies eating corpses of major characters, well, not eating, noshing really, on their intestines. And sometimes the zombies eat their OWN guts. They're a self-contained biosphere! If I could live just by eating my fingernails, I sure wouldn't be eating some stranger's intestines. I mean, intestines! Who KNOWS what HE'S been eating!

Plot...Plot, yes. The US Army gets together with this Japanese scientist whose dialogue is half the time in Japanese, and the rest of the time in Martian. No, wait, it's phonetically read English, and he's got a throat full of pudding. That's the way it sounds, at any rate. It's the "Night of the Living Pink Lady and Jeff"! "Okk-ay, Jheff, naow we siong ouhr song uhnd den, we eat yoo-or brains!" "Hey, sexy ladies! That sounds good! Wait--what's that phonetic cue card say again? The brains part, I mean?" "Eet say--H'ARRGH! BRAIIINS!" *chomp* And all America cheered!
The scientist & an Army guy try to blow up the factory with the zombies by remote computer control. But! They didn't count on Naked Zombie Chick! Since this movie just basically uses every stupid thing from every stupid American Action Blockbuster of the last 5 years, the Army guy types 1600WPM on the keyboard (about a 160:1 ratio to the words on the monitor) to send the AUTO-DESTRUCT signal to the factory's LPD--wait, I meant "CPU," not "Lame Plot Device" (How come houses or toasters don't come with auto-destruct sequences, but Villain Headquarters or Abandoned Factories always do? If you build that into your reanimation lab, aren't you just admitting that you're too stupid to put the corpses in a vault before reviving them?)
Unfortunately, they don't realize that they're dealing with the only L33t haX0r Naked z0mbie ChiX in the whole world! She types THREE WHOLE KEYSTROKES which turns the auto-destruct off. It can't be reactivated...except...for...this key...ZZZZ...
Huh? Wha? Sorry, dozed off during that last totally unpredictable plot twist. Oh, wait, Scientist says "One of them is very smart!" ("Zom B. Coyote, SUPER Genius!") "This is not a normal zombie!" Yeah, the normal zombies are shopping at the Mall. "Can I help you with anything?" "Yessss...BRAAAAINS!!" "Aisle Two, sir."

I'm devoting far too much typing to this stupid movie. Umm, now the scientist takes an L33t commando team (him and another guy) to attack Zombie Headquarters. The producers paid for the helicopter rental, so damned if they ain't gonna draaag the flight out for 10 minutes! Scientist says several English sentences like "Muh num glum compootuh uhnd da keys hai fo zombeesuh, Jheff!" while the Americans wisely avoid pronouncing any Japanese. Obviously, the producers were quite sure that this was going to get an American release as a breakthrough crossover hit. Morons. Jet Li reciting Beowulf would be more comprehensible.
At some point when we weren't paying attention, Naked Zombie Chick found a leather miniskirt. In the abandoned stinking-corpse-filled factory. With matching boots. And nylons. And garter belt.
Scientist confronts Clothed Zombie Chick. Kevin says, "Oh, you're my beloved girlfriend! You were killed in a car crash, so I brought you back to life!" AND THAT'S JUST WHAT HAPPENS! We thought Kev had read about it on the web, but no, he was just doing some free-style cliche guessing.
She was killed in a car crash, but there wasn't a single mark on her body (she was Naked most of it, remember?). Okay, maybe she was...umm, suffocated by the airbag or something. But Scientist also tells us that she died "two years ago." And...uhh...You know, I'm betting that a Naked Chick who's been dead for TWO YEARS is not someone I'd want to see naked. Especially in a place where the Stiff-Stor (R) is the unrefridgerated floor of an abandoned factory. "Oh no! Disney-San has thawed! And he's being eaten by mice! It is ironic!"
The Clothed Zombie Chick throws Scientist's head down the stairs at Girl gangster's feet. Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that her whole gang except Johnny Slash was killed? Man, and I got to know them so closely as characters. And, umm, Johnny? He's like driving away in that car they stole from the dealership? Like 8 hours ago? And he's like on his cellphone? He's trying to call the girl, but like she can't reach her cell phone? Because of the zombies? But then she does? And she shoots Zombie Chick, and like with no explanation or even any comment, Zombie's hair turns like Platinum Blonde? I KNOW, girlfriend! Shoot me any time if it like makes me blonde!!
And Platinum Zombie swallows the keys that blow things up, so you know, yeah, Johnny Slash is all of a sudden right there and cuts Pia Zombidora in HALF with a SHOVEL. And her hair is inexplicably black again. Hero Chick recovers the plot-pointed keys while the Foley guy loudly crinkles cellophane at his microphone to make gut-ransackin' noises.
Oh, Gourd. Why am I still typing this?! Come ON, you just KNOW the Main Zombie's not dead! Why the hell else would Hero Chick WALK RIGHT UP TO HER? Note to Main Zombie killers: If the Main Zombie is killed, run the fuck away. Do NOT WALK UP as the HALF-A-ZOMBIE will ATTACK! Yes, it's her TORSO attacking like the fucking Black Knight in "Monty Python & the Holy Zombie," and her FUCKING HAIR'S BLONDE AGAIN.
Hero Chick throws Zombina into a circuit breaker, & she bursts into flame, just like the circuit breaker in your basement does when you throw a blonde torso at it. "OH NO!" I yelled, shocked at this amazing special effect. "Her mannequin's on fire! Get her wig, that cost 1800 yen!!"
BOOM!
Wow, not only did they blow the factory up, they also outran the giant explosion with one second left on the red decimal counter.
Hero Chick had spent the movie complaining how she wanted a Porsche. Guess what! Johnnie "My Horribly Stabbed Foot Was Healed By Evian" Slash had ordered a Porsche over his cell phone! From IDIOT MOTORS TOKYO, the same retards that lost the car they stole during a test ride to use as a getaway car! And the same salesmoron delivers it! To the smoking ruins of the zombie factory! With no one with him! And they beat him and steal the car! HAPPY ENDING, JHEFF! WE SIANG CLOHSING TITULL MOOHSIC NAOW!
And then, at the ruins of the factory--A ZOMBIE HAND POKES THROUGH THE DIRT! "The End--?"
Thanks for squeezing one final, total cliche in.
JAY (bored, late in the movie): I don't get it--Why's this movie named "Junk"?
ME: I think that's pretty obvious.

Then we watched--oh, crap, I don't even WANNA talk about THAT--but after the Festival of Steaming Piles ended we saw Wave Twisters! MAN, was that good! Any minute of that had more imagination than the entirety of "Junk"! An intergalactic hip-hop dentist flying his low-rider starship to battle "THE RED WORM," a baby in a Mexican wrestler's mask with a talking red tapeworm in his navel, and an army of chin-puppets. Scott's g-friend Christine described it as "if Negativland made a movie;" it reminded me of EBN's "Telecommunication Breakdown" remade as a cartoon. It was really funny, and not for a second boring.
Like you're going to find either one of these at Blockbuster.

The 100 Worst Movies of the 20th Century, not mentioning "Junk." Like the IMDB, heavily weighted towards recent releases. I think. I didn't get very far down the list, as I was writing about a stupid zombie movie.
I don't know why you'd have a vote on something like this, then run it in alphabetical order. And I don't care. Too much typing for one night.

2/8

That was long, so this is short.

Boy bands.

Spocktails.

2/9

A page remembering Japanese cartoons of the 60s.
Some aren't cartoons, and some aren't Japanese. Non-cartoon "Johnny Sokko and his Giant Robot" is the series that my most-watched-ever movie "Voyage Into Space" was derived from (apparently, in Australia it was shown as a TV series). And there's the non-Japanese cartoon "Super President."
I remember little from my childhood, but I sure as hell remember Super President. As being the first thing that insulted my intelligence as a 6 year old. OK, I knew that you can't take your glasses off and have your coworkers think you're a different person, but I was willing to grant Superman that logical inconsistency. But how could people not recognize the PRESIDENT? When he calls himself SUPER PRESIDENT?! Not Commander-In-Chief Man or Captain Executive Branch, which might at least make you pause a bit. Or Lyndon Johnson getting into a wheelchair and founding the L.B.J-Men.
I was so insulted that I turned the show off halfway through, and never watched it again.
Unfortunately, I also never forgot about it, and have spent the years since 1966 trying to convince people that it actually existed. If there wasn't a brief mention in the comic book history "All in Color For a Dime," even I would've started questioning my sanity.
But I'm dying to know about the cartoon now. Who did he fight, Congress Man? Did he go to China to fight Communist Chair Man? Was his archenemy Lex Krushchev? Here was one 1960s President who had NO EXCUSE to lose the Viet Nam War.
If they remade it today, Super President's weakness wouldn't be Kryptonite, but pretzels. And it would be his sidekick, Cheney the Dick Wonder, who'd really be in charge. Look out for Osama bin Luthor!

An interesting interview with Laurie Anderson.

2/10

Thanks to my old buddy Negaduck! All sorts of Super Presidential links! (Note: if old 60s cartoons don't interest you--and I'm pretty sure that most people who read this weren't even zygotes back then--stop reading)
A Super Prez episode guide! Unfortunately, just the titles. "The Great Vegetable Disintegrator"? Ooh, scary. If there had been such a thing in 1967, the entire creative team of Super Green Beret would have been toast. And why's that a bad thing?
The memories of viewers of SP indicate that the villains were the usual 60s cartoon mad scientists/aliens crap. They also remember it as being violent for its time, unlike more contemporary cartoons. You'd think that after the thousandth attack by COBRA, GI Joe might have hit on the idea of killing them before they parachuted out of the crashing planes or burning tanks. Is a cartoon that teaches violence as the only solution to problems somehow made better when the violence doesn't hurt anybody?
This is why so many cartoons since have made the bad guys, from COBRA's BATs to the Ninja Turtles Foot Clan, robots. Of course, the first thing that happens in any war is the dehumanization of the enemy, making them no more than robots, and removing any moral qualms about killing people. They're not people, they're the enemy!
The best of the links she sent me was ToonTracker. I remember finding this page early on in my Internet experience. There's plenty of stuff here that I'd forgotten that I'd remembered, such as "The Beagles," a show by the Underdog people exploiting a certain British band of the time. There's lots of Real Audio files, none of which I could get to work. But that may be because I downloaded the latest version of RA, and that's why I rarely use RA. I found another part of that site that mentions that the files were meant to be viewed in RA 8.0, so maybe that'll work. I hope so. I want to hear that SP theme that so many mentioned on Yesterdayland.
Ahh, yes, that was the problem. Check out the Demented Toon Tunes, which includes a Sparks song about Minnie Mouse that I was unaware of, among other treasures.

2/12

Notably, Bush's "Axis of Evil" doesn't include terrorist regimes, like Pakistan, or ruthless hegemonists, like China, or even the greatest source of Islamic terrorist funding to everybody including Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia. Just countries that don't suck up to us are evil. "My own axis of evil includes France and Canadian Tire."

An article on Bob Carroll, the guy behind The Skeptic's Dictionary. When I first stumbled across the site years ago, I spent days reading it from "abracadabra" to "zombies and p-zombies." I think that it's fascinating. You may too, but since most people have at least one Load of Unprovable Ridiculous Crap with no Evidence for its Existence that they fervently believe, eventually you'll find him challenging your Load. And you'll probably sputter, "I KNOW that [fill in the blank] is true because--I KNOW!"
I used to be that way about religion. Now, I'm less stupid. Try reading it; maybe, like me, you'll discover that the world doesn't need to have "magic" in order to still be amazingly magical.

There might be a few typos in Page 4, as I just submitted this to Lilly for proofreading, but here's my big transcription project.
Terrorists attack the American government, and a weak President lets his right-wing Fundamentalist Attorney General respond with mass arrests without charges, mass deportations of immigrants without trial and a general suspension of the Bill of Rights, amid widespread xenophobia and chest-thumping patriotism.
The year was 1919.

2/13

Click here, violate a patent! Yes, a British firm insists that they invented the hyperlink 22 years ago, and wants royalties from every ISP that uses links.

Have Human Rights become irrelevant?

Enron's ties to almost every American politician? Who cares? Ashcroft's abrogation of civil rights? Non-starter. The "Axis of Evil" bullshit possibly being a Bushbaby ploy to start a war that lasts until the 2004 elections, keeping his approval rating up? YAWN.
TERRIBLE HORRIBLE ATROCITY COMMITTED OVER OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATING!!!!!!!!!! Now THAT is NEWS!!

I had the good luck last night to twice hear Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" suite on the radio. Not that I couldn't get out my CD or vinyl copies and play it anytime. I think that the biggest loss when vinyl went away was that the liner notes were on the outside of the package. It made it a lot easier to decide whether or not you'd like the contents. While there was a lot of Commie Classical that I liked, I was surprised to discover that there were many times when Prokofiev, Khachaturian or Shostakovitch were really kinda boring. I figured something out: If the liner notes said that Stalin liked the music, don't buy it. If they said that the composer almost got thrown in a gulag for writing it, it'd be good. Government-approved music is like salted sugared fat without the taste of salt or sugar, just the greasiness of fat.

Shake it Baby!

I saw a movie today--"2001: A Space Odyssey." What a load of crap! I REALLY think that if a Giant Space Fetus was in the sky last year, I would've NOTICED.
Juuust kidding. I love that movie, and it was great to see it on the Big Screen. Too bad the theater blasted the sound so loud that the speakers were distorting (so loud I had my fingers in my ears during the Stargate sequence). It holds up fine, although it's impossible to imagine it being made today. "Armageddon" was basically a 2 hour trailer with everything ramped up to 11. No brain, no story that couldn't have been a "Superfriends" episode. "2001" would be painfully slow to the MTV-raised attention-span-of-a-gnat crowd.

As Roger Ebert says, it's almost a silent movie. People talk to show people talking, not to really impart any information, a lot like real life. But the slow pacing is what makes it work for me--I feel like I'm in this world of the Near Future. And the effects are amazing, for a movie from 1968. Amazing for movies today, in fact; today, the scene where Dave grabs Frank's corpse with the Pod would be done with CGI. And look it. Then, it was done with...umm, wires, I assume, but the body is spinning on its axis and really moves like it's in a zero-G environment.
Of course, we didn't have a base on the Moon in 2001 like the movie predicted. But in 1968, if the movie had predicted that in 2001 there would be no Pan Am airlines, no Soviet Union, not even Bell Telephone--THAT would've seemed like crazy science fiction.
If this wonderful restoration makes it to a theater near you, see it. It's meant to be seen in Cinerama. Just remember the ear plugs.

2/14

I received one more "Happy Valentine's Day" than I sent out (it went to Kill Kill around midnight, when I realized what day it was--no, neither of the two I received were from her). One, unsurprisingly, was from Jessica, who used to spend her own money to buy decorations for the liquor store on any holiday more recognized than Arbor Day.
The other came from a big burly blue-collar customer buying Bud. Actually, he only said "Have a happy holiday," but it still seemed weird.
It's not a real boozy holiday, of course--Someone might buy a bottle of wine, but most people who acknowledge VD's existence are more likely to go to a restaurant than eat at home. However, some guys bought a keg of Bud Light. Ahh, a nice, romantic candle-lit dinner for 200.
I assume that they have a lot of friends who, like them, are dateless. "Said the guy drinking a Genny beer while typing his webpage." Of course, I'm happily--nay, blissfully unattached. And I plan to stay that way. Sorry, gals, I'm not available! Also, sorry to you big burly blue-collar boys.

Remember a coupla months ago when I saw Bill "Zippy th' Pinhead" Griffith at RAW? Zippy remembers!

Okay, it wasn't a hilarious joke, but don't tell me that you wouldn't be psyched about having your favorite local landmarks regularly turning up in your favorite comic strip.

Bizarro World? You're soaking living in it!

2/16

BILL, at work, 5PM Friday: I think I'm coming down with something. Probably just a cold. But I'll be in tomorrow. I only get sick maybe 2 days a year!
BILL, on phone to work, 8AM Saturday: I'm...not...gonna...make...it...in...today...
I don't think it's a cold. It's a stomach bug. I'll spare you the toiletcentric details.

Hopefully I'm not contagious, since I was overconfident enough last night that I went over to Jessica's to play Super Joy and chat.
JESS: I took my cat in to be fixed. It cost me an arm and a leg!
BILL: Think what it cost him!

Mark the Vet sends this: "Thought you might be interested in what happened when someone brought up Britney Spears in the debate community of Live Journal. A usually high-brow group went ape-shit over her."

Speaking of Britney and Live Journals...Guess who's back! LOL!

I slept close to 12 hours today, for the sake of my health. And what do I see upon awakening? This: "Contrary to popular belief, people who sleep six to seven hours a night live longer, and those who sleep eight hours or more die younger." The thing is a bit confusing, as it talks about long sleepers having a "34% greater risk of dying." I think the overall chance of dying is 100%, at least until Bill Gates implants his cloned brain into a giant robot. I guess that it's clarified by "dying within the study period." Since the study period was 1982-1988, the more you sleep, the more likely you are to travel back in time and die during the Reagan administration.

2/17

So I fell asleep at 10PM yesterday, woke up around 4AM with a headache and pain in my joints, didn't fall back to sleep until around 630, had a weird dream, and woke up at 835. Didn't feel great--still had that damn sore throat, and was so tired despite all the sleeping I've done in the last 36 hours--but I wasn't in hell, either. So I went to church.
It was a memorial mass for my the anniversary of my father's death. That sounds all important, but all they did was mention his name at the beginning, then it was just a regular old Catholic mass.
This was the first time I'd been in a church for reasons other than baptisms or weddings in almost twenty years. Excluding Xmas and Easter masses, since junior high. It was funny that I remembered a lot of the stuff you had to recite, but forgot how much some Catholics cross themselves. Kneel before you enter the pew, cross yourself, kneel down and pray, cross yourself, and this is all before the Mass even begins. I also remembered the thumping of the prayer benches--sometimes you kick them up, other times you kick them down.
What I'd never noticed before was that when everybody recited something, the air really smelled like bad breath.
They could've done better with the first reading, which was the Garden of Eden story. Better in the sense that I was sitting there thinking about how this is one of things that turned me from very religious to athiest. The Bible contradicts itself in its first two chapters. First, Jehovah makes Adam, then all the animals and plants, then Eve. The next chapter of Genesis tells us that Elohim first made the plants and animals, then the unnamed first man and woman at the same time. And while King James translates Elohim as "The Lord," Elohim really means "The Gods." Of course, this only is important if you believe every word of the Bible is literally true, and that's more of a Protestant thing. But still--the first two chapters, and it can't even get its creation story straight?

The priest gave a longer-than-necessary sermon that equated alcoholism and drug abuse with Harry Potter. And murder and war with abortion. And asked us how we would feel if the police came into church on Easter and arrested us for being "part-time Christians." It'd make me feel like I was living under the Taliban, pal. And that it's probably your wet dream.

Sin causes War, he was saying, and religion prevents it. Yes, just look at Northern Ireland! Oh, the happy, carefree lives people in the Middle East have because they're so religious! Imagine how things might have turned out if a certain pep talk had gone like this:
"Okay, when you're crashing your jets into the World Trade Center tomorrow, remember that your martyrdom will lead to being on fire and blown to bits, then eternal nothingness. That's right, there's no Allah, there's no Paradise, and there sure as hell ain't no 72 horny virgins waiting for you after you explode. It would've been a better investment of your time to skip the flight lessons and try getting laid in this life, rather than hoping to score after you became flaming meat confetti. And while you're yelling 'Allah Akbar,' try writing a letter to Santy Claus, too. Get all those bases covered.
"So, have a nice explosion tomorrow! I'll still be around living life after you're pate de fois dipshit. Hey! Why are you all leaving?!"

Only one link today, and it's right here. I'm not planning on writing a part two at the moment.
Its title turned out to be a Googlewack, although I thought it was obvious.

2/18

Slow night.

Regarding the Speed story, StarChaser sends Where Are The Toons Now? I'll take his word for it; I couldn't get any of the videos to work.

(Thanks, Charity!)

2/19

Even slower night. From 24 Hour Drive-Thru, an email he received:

At 8:02 PM (8 PM is 20:00 hours on the Greenwich or military clock
scale) on the 20th of February, a twice in eternity event will take place and
you are here to witness it.
As the clock ticks over from 8:01 pm on Wednesday, February 20th,
2002, time will (for sixty seconds only) read in perfect symmetry. To be
more precise: 20:02, 20/02, 2002. It is an event which has only occured
once before in all eternity and is something that will never happen again!
The last occasion that time read in such a symmetrical pattern (a numerical 
palindrome, since it can be read forwards or backwards) was long before 
the days of the digital watch (or the 24-hour clock): 10:01 am, on 
January 10, 1001. And because the clock only goes up to 23:59, it is 
something that will never happen again.
SO, ENJOY THIS "LAST IN AN ETERNITY" EVENT!

"ob's that frozen gives? chili mac ice at the handle yum!"

Yeah, I'm bored & Googling myself. Check out Number 4 and ask yourself, "Did he really find what he was looking for?"

2/20

Tice Rust the Java Jive Turkey...wait, did I just type that?...asks this:

I'm probably setting myself up to look like an ass here, but the email you 
posted about the Greenwich time/date thing seems to neglect a couple of 
dates.

Wouldn't 9:12pm December 21, 2112 count, too, yielding 21:12, 21/12, 2112? 
Or likewise, 11:11am November 11, 1111, with its 11:11 11/11, 1111?

Is it the email that's stupid, or me?

A Snopes article I hadn't read before points out the real reason why some people are pissed off about the Bonsai Kitten page.

John "Coagulation of Church and State" Ashcroft announces that Terrorism is caused by NOT being a Fundamentalist.

Which tarot card are you?

Speaking of things that don't mean diddly (like Tarot cards), I'm a big fan of Fuckedworld.com. So of course I was excited to find out that its author, John Berger, had another site.

Oh, great.
He's nuts too.

"Warning: Some images on this site may be directly connected to very dangerous spiritual spaces and/or beings."
"Saturday, November 17, 2001
The death of 4,000 people in one day is not that unusual an event in the world, nor is it particularly distinguished historically in terms of body count. Earthquakes routinely claim tens of thousands of lives in one-day spans. About 142,000 people die each day, around the world, for any number of reasons, including natural causes.
I think what's different this time is that literally millions of people watched it happen, and hundreds of millions of people have seen the images and focused intensely on the event. It's caused a real magical effect that is still reverberating in the world, and one whose ultimate consequence is still unknown.
Imagine 200 million people projecting their psychic energy, consciously or unconsciously, into the Tower Tarot card. Or don't imagine it; it already happened. With a simultaneous blood sacrifice of 4,000 lives. If you suspect there's a magical significance to the Pentagon, then the simultaneous breaking of that structure becomes a huge part of the mix in understanding this event. The changes to this world are not just overt, not just political and psychological. Something else is going on. The people who perpetrated this attack were not oblivious to its occult ramifications.
Is The Tower is part of a sequence of events? The Devil precedes The Tower in the major arcana, and the Star succeeds it, followed by The Moon. What will The Star mean in the current context? What blaze of light might be ignited in the world? It may be cause for optimism, but it may be cause for concern. We continue to watch."

And there's t-shirts!

2/21

If you couldn't get in here yesterday, this is why:

"As many of you are aware, at the beginning of this month our network was attacked by a hacker. We lost two web servers and four instances of SQL out of the 100 servers we currently host and were not able to recover the backups we had in place. Since the attack we are working on upgrading our backup system, firewall and phone system to ensure this does not happen in the future."

That kinda sucks. But, as far as I can tell, I didn't lose anything (not that it'd matter--I learned from my last My-Site-Has-Disappeared experience to regularly download the whole site to a CD-R. It'd be up in the merest of jiffies. Even sooner than that next week, when I get DSL. A nanojiffy then. (Thanks to Negs for the server news).

Hey, guess what! Tasty Chick's open again! "The Original Tasty Chick," in fact. Whatever that means. I noticed that they were working in there, but I didn't think that they'd open so soon. Guess I'll have to go there.
Last Summer, I walked behind Tasty Chick. And there were a pair of very happy--and very chubby--cats hanging out by the dumpsters. Tasty Chick's appeal crosses species lines!

Tonight's chicken is in the soup. I'm still being bothered by the Mystery Bug of last weekend. And it's Hello Kitty brand Cup Noodles. HK is on the package, looking less than happy about her soup. Why? She can't eat it. She has no mouth!
Speaking of Japan, check out the J-List! The infamous HELLO KITTY VIBRATOR! "Hamster Color Stick Glue"? Holy cow, there's even a "Voyage Into Space" Giant Robot toy!

"I have a cunning plan!" The Lord of the Rings as a Blackadder episode.

The Pentagon lost 2.3 TRILLION dollars. "We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

The Angry Youth has left the building, but Recherche is her new journal (title taken from that really long book, perhaps?). I like the story about her insane dentist.

What I bought on J-List:
Anime Strap ~ Deluxe Giant Robo $8.00
Hyper Ultraman 3 ~ Ultraman Taro $4.00
Totoro's Wonder Tin Toy Collection ~ Neko Bus $16.00
Japanese T-shirt "Hiragana Man" $12.95
Hello Kitty Vibrator ~ Shoulder massage $15.00

Shoulder massage, shhyeah.

2/23

Way to not get people to read your spam: title it "helpful septic system info."

Shelley needed next Wednesday off, but The CoWorker Who Shat Himself--henceforth to be refered to on this page as Mr Poopy-Pants--insisted that she come in to close that night, despite the fact she has to drive virtually from Massachusetts to central CT to do so, for a whole 2 hour shift.
What's the Poopster doing that's so important? He plays darts that night!
What's the less-important thing Shelley's doing that day? She's been subpoenaed to testify in a capitol murder trial. I guess we all have our priorities. Sometimes, pathetically lame priorities.
(Note: That link's short, but it's not a very pleasant read)

And I get my day in court this Thursday. JURY DUTY! Wah! They've called me for the 4th time in 8 years! I lucked out of the first 2, as they cancelled it the day before. I semi-lucked the next time, as they cancelled it, but not until after I'd spent 8&1/2 hours sitting there bored bored bored.
Since we're at near-skeleton-crew staffing at work, of course the owners give me "great advice" on how to get out of it. "Say that you're too important to your job"--The judge explicitly ruled that out in his opening remarks; "Claim that you have anxiety attacks" was another--That requires a doctor's note, and I neither suffer from anxiety attacks nor have a doctor at the moment; and, of course, the classic "I hate fuckin' niggers!" line, which, of course, gains you a contempt of court charge. And a possible beating in the parking lot.
Basically, the owners want me to lie under oath to aid their business. Did I mention that they're conservative Republicans? Shouldn't I be shredding something?

Speaking of which, Michael Moore on Enron and the trail of slime that leads to Dumbya. Clinton hoses Monica, and it's a CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS!!, but the Bush and the Dick help the Lay and the corporate-controlled media nods off to sleepybyes. Amazing how you can steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family and go to jail, but steal millions or billions and get off scot-free while forcing thousands into the position of stealing that loaf of bread...

From Kevin: Cool Clock

2/24

There's an interactive computer game coming out starring Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, Frank Conniff and Josh Weinstein, and narrated by Peter "Rocketship XM" Graves. It's set on a spaceship, and it's a murder mystery. And "It's not a comedy. It's definitely not MST3K."
It also doesn't sound like a very good idea. Why cast it exclusively with MST3K alumni if it's not MST3K or a comedy? Who's the target audience?
You can be both an accomplished comic actor and a terrible dramatic one, and vice versa. I can't picture these people being serious. And I don't know how many of you have ever seen TV's Frank's predecessor Dr Earnhardt, but Josh Weinstein sucked. Even Dumbya reads from a teleprompter better.
Here's Joel as "the intruder from Mars":

With his porn star moustache and tres Gizmonics jumpsuit, he really looks like someone that'd appear in the Satellite of Love's Hexfield Viewscreen.
Of course, the game isn't just unreleased but still unfinished, so it's unfair of me to pass judgement. It might turn out okay. Or it might end up as the MST3K version of "The Day the Clown Cried," the infamous unreleased movie that put Jerry Lewis in a Nazi concentration camp.

A much better movie--though it remained largely unseen itself--was "Gattaca." It's that rarest of movies, a science fiction story with both real science and an actual brain in its head. In the near future, genetic engineering is used to correct bioligical "errors" in utero. At first it was used to prevent genetic diseases, but when parents discover that they could also correct things like obesity, shortness, or even eye color...Eventually, naturally conceived children grow up to be second-class citizens in a world of genetically perfect people.

The scary part of "Gattaca" was that it really was more science than fiction. And it has begun: "Zain suffers from the genetic disorder thalassaemia which creates potentially fatal levels of iron in his blood.
"His condition can only be cured by a bone marrow transplant from a perfect genetic match, but an extensive worldwide search has failed to find a suitable donor.
"Under the treatment agreed by the HFEA, embryos created through the Hashmis' IVF treatment will be screened to ensure they are the same tissue type as Zain before being put back in the womb.
"When the baby is born, blood from its umbilical cord will be used to try and cure the three-year-old."
Of course, we have to hear from some Anglican Bishop: "It would be very sad and damaging if that child grew up knowing that they had only been brought it into the world in order to provide blood for the sibling." Yeah, they're going to throw the baby away when they're done. They won't give it any love. All it did was bring one life into the world, and keep another life from a slow, early, painful death. Why would the parents--and its older brother--love their second child for merely doing that?
Just like the opponents to fetal stem cell research in the US, the "We can't play God" crowd would be talking out of the other side of their mouths as soon as they needed the benifits of this technology. Of course, the bishop is basically saying that the first child should die, which of course isn't in any way playing God.

Seperation of Church and State? We should also have seperation of Church and Medicine.

The Monkey Man and John Waters. Not at the same time.

Very likely the only time you'll ever see on my page a link to ESPN: Idiots hope to end the Red Sox's thousand year streak of losing the World Series by finding Babe Ruth's sunken piano. The exact logic of this escapes me, except for the fact that "The search is sponsored by the Restoration Project, a rehabilitation program for adults with mental illness and head injuries."

2/26

BIG!Lots has opened a new store, in "the Lechmere Plaza." I worked for Lechmere for years, but it also was well over 4 years ago that they went bankupt, so it's weird that it's still called "the Lechmere Plaza."
I just Googled, and the MBTA Green Line in Boston still has a stop at "Lechmere Station"...How soon will "Lechmere," a chain that lasted over 40 years, be known only from tradition, rather than memory? And be pronounced phonetically as "Letchmere" rather than "Leechmere"?
And I learned from the BIG!Lots radio ad--announcing this important Grand Opening, but which in typical BIG!Lots style, runs only once a day--that Jerry Van Dyke pronounces his name Jerry VanDyke, with no pause between the two words. With any other name, I'd go "Huh. Guess I've pronounced it wrong all these years." But maybe Jerry's either forgotten his own name, or he's trying to establish brand recognition outside of that other Van D.

If you've ever wanted to see a man in a dress drill a hole through a mountain using his scalp, here's "The Bouncer."

Plus side: despite what LA Weekly has reported, this airline security check was definitely not motivated by racial profiling. Downside: it's subject was 4 years old. These kids today!! Always with the hijackings! In MY day, we just did the suicide car bombings! I must've done a hundred! And we LIKED it!

2/27

Holy Pope with a Band Saw!
I've got to appear for jury selection tomorrow. This SUX, d00d! Way to waste a day off! And I'll bet that I get chosen this time, too. Oh boy, $50 bucks a day to get bored off my ass. What a dream job.
("Holy Pope with a Band Saw" actually came to me in a dream last night. It was a comic book starring the Pope. When danger called, he turned into a Super-Pope. And he carried a portable band saw. My dreams tend towards the odd side.)

There's a POP (point-of-purchase) sign at work advertising Miller Lite beer that I hadn't really looked at. Beer ads tend to feature either pro sports, Buxom Blonde Bimbos, or some combo of the above, so I rarely pay attention to them. This one had a NASCAR theme with the tagline "Taste the Victory!" I'm not sure if the line might work better or worse with a BBB.
My immediate thought was:
ROBERT DUVALL: "I love the taste of Miller Lite in the morning. It tastes like--Victory!"
Hey, the restored version of "Apocalypse Now" is playing in theaters across the country (including here in a month), so why doesn't Miller build a whole new ad campaign around it?

MARLON BRANDO: "The horror...the horror...of running out of Miller Lite! Buy a 30 pack today!"
DENNIS HOPPER: "Miller Lite is like a GOD, man!"
MARTIN SHEEN: "Old Milwaukee. I can't believe I'm still in Old Milwaukee."

Police find a battered teen. Literally.

See the site that made Jessica yell "Oh my goodness!!!! This is such an awesome web site!!!!! I have to get a computer at home I could spend hours on this site!!! Tomorrow is going to be GPK Day! Im bringing in my cards!" The cards are from the Garbage Pail Kids.
I have a bunch, too. My first "real" job was the Great Satan, Kay Bee Toys, during the height of the Cabbage Crotch Kids War. I do mean war: Kay Bee got some negative publicity when a store manager in Pennsylvania tried to calm a crowd of women rioting! for dolls! by standing on the register counter and waving a baseball bat. This was caught by the local news, and he lost his job.
Our less-warlike policy was to limit people to one horrifically deformed doll to a customer. I remember a woman grabbing 2, then spending no-lie a whole half-hour deciding which of these "completely individual and different" dolls to buy (one had blue eyes, one had brown! They were INCREDIBLY INDIVIDUALLY DIFFERENT!!), while another desperate suburban mom waited for her cast-off detritus. Eventually, the second mom tired of this crap and grabbed one and went to the counter. And there was much swearing. And yelling, and pushing, and shoving. Over a fucking dollie.
Our district supervisor was transporting a handfull of CPatches to our stores in the back of his corporate minivan. He stopped for gas, and an attractive young mom spotted the distinctive CP boxes (they were, believe it or not, pretty much the dimensions of a child's coffin. Which we on the front lines found appropriate). She offered him sex for one. And if you'd seen the guy, you'd understand just how crazy CP mania had become.
So when the GPK cards came out, I bought some. They were funny! And they SHARED MY HATRED. Yes, they were grotesque in those days (remember when America was horrified by Beavis and Butthead? And now doesn't bat an eye at Eminem?). But grotesque is what the PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT CABBABGE PATCH DOLLS WERE.
There were always normal customers buying a Barbie or a GI Joe, a Jem or a He-Man, and they'd shake their heads at the constant phone calls and interruptions by the Cabbage Heads that held up the check out line. They'd mention the Pennsylvania Riot or one of the others (yes, it happened that much), and I'd say, "In some countries they riot for food. In America, we riot for toys." And they'd shake their head in disgust at our misplacement of priorities.
I said that to one woman, and she nodded in agreement. "Yes!" she said. "We're so lucky to not live in those countries!" Yeah. Who the heck could need that stupid food that much?
"Completely individual and different" dolls. They all looked the same to me. Like mashed yams in a nylon stocking. Except for mine! I got one for FREE by buying a Coleco Adam! So I shaved her head into a mohawk and sent away for a "birth certificate" with the name I'd decided to give her.
But I for some reason, Coleco never sent me a "birth certificate" for my "daughter." Her name was to be "Pirahnna Bandylegs."

Side note: If the name "Art Spiegelman" means anything to you, or you've ever read the amazing and horrifying, depressing and uplifting comic "Maus," in which Art's father's memories of life in a Nazi concentration camp (with the Jews made into cartoon mice and the Nazis into cats)--well, buy a copy of the incredible comic book. And think of how weird it was that Art was able to do it only because of the income he was getting from drawing the Garbage Pail Kids.

Of course, I found that GPK page via Kirk's page ( no, not THAT Kirk! Not the only Star Trek guy trying to imitate Wesley Crusher! Who blogs better anyway!) but Kirk Israel. Click on that last link; it's photos. I really really like the last one, "The Land of Layoffs." Kirk's been dot-sized, and it's a picture of his soon-to-be-former place of business. The building basks in golden sunshine--while the dark clouds that clog the sky rush up behind it. Brilliant visual metaphor.

One thing I've wondered about early web users..Was there That One Site that made you realize you HAD to have internet access? For late-user Jessica, it may be the Garbage Pail Kids site. For me, it was Donna Kossy's Kook Museum in 1996. It's much smaller now (she made a must-read book out of it). If you have that one old site that made you realize that you really needed the net, send the url or your memory of it to me. Email's on the main page.

The last time I went to jury selection, I brought a nice, long, unread magazine. I was expecting to sit there doing nothing for about an hour, not 8&1/2 hours . Tomorrow, I'm bringing "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
It's 700 pages.

2/28

First words heard upon entering the jury selection room at the courthouse: "It's almost an orgasmic feeling!"

Sadly, it was not Markie Post from "Night Court" telling me how she felt about meeting me. It was just an ad on "The Today Show," which they'd just turned on on the giant TV for our entertainment.
They called 65 people for a jury of 8. The marshall said that 16 never turned up (a $121 fine "may" be assessed against them, according to the website). I just hoped that they weren't going to interview us in alphabetical order (William Young was the last name on the list, even being beaten out by a John Young). They randomly generated a list, putting me in the second half. This was okay, as they'd have to reject over 2/3 of the people ahead of me before they even interviewed me.
Of course, the last time I was called I was there ALL DAMN DAY, and I had things I needed to do today, such as get rid of the cable box and do my laundry. I could do the cable on my hour lunch, but not my laundry.
We were told that we represented "the widest demographic sample" they could find by randomly drawing names from the tax base. Out of 50 people, they were 2 Asians, one Pakistani, no blacks or Hispanics, and--of course--only one male with hair longer than 2 inches (guess who!).
The trial itself was going to be oh-so-exciting. Some old man got a foot-owie in a minor car accident. Yeah, let's spend 3 days looking at that.
The lawyers were taking a ridiculously long time to interview people (I don't know how long; I'd left for a TV-less corner area where I could read in peace). At noon, they called us all into the main room and read off the names of 15 lucky ones who were being dismissed. I sank into my chair, certain that I wasn't going to be on the list. But I was the third name! Holy Pope with a band saw!
I was the only dismissee to collect his $20. But I might've been the only person who didn't know beforehand that, if today wasn't my normal day off (and it wasn't), I was supposed to keep my regular day off AND get paid in full by the Liquorium. Oh, well. I'll remember that when-not-if I get called in 2004.

I ditched the cable box after that. Not the way that I'd like, which would be by putting in in a rock-filled sack and tossing it off a bridge. However, what to my wondering eyes should appear when I got my mail, but next month's cable bill! Into the recycling go you! Ha Ha, Cable Fucks! No longer will you get your blood money! Now, to order DSL! Huzzah!
I parked by a sign in the Cable Fucks' teeny parking lot that said "Evacuation Start Area." I've never seen a sign like that before.

Two responses to yesterday's question.

From Kirk:

Your question about "what site made you *need* to get Net access"
is a good one.  It took me a second to realize why it was so 
difficult to think about...I first started getting Net access through
school, so not getting it as soon as I graduated was never an option
even though I had it at work.  (And I had one year of fast ethernet
in the dorms before graduating...it was painful going back to a 
modem until cable modems finally started coming out.) 

So Usenet groups was the first gotta-have-access thing for me...
that was before the Web.  And the first thing that really excited
me about the web was the ability to put up my own damn homepage,
which eventually morphed into the Blender of Love. Back then,
yahoo was super cutting edge, and was probably the first site
that wow'd me.  I remember when mtv.com was an Adam Curry (or 
whatever that VJ was named) owned thing, and you could spend 
half an hour downloading a WAV of his thought of the day 
(I remember the one time I did that, it was something like
"originality lies not in doing what no one has done before,
but in what no one can do again" or some such tripe.)

It was this bizarre online game
entitled Deceitful Monkey. Mind you, this was before
the days of Flash, so this game was based entirely on
clicking image maps - certain parts of certain
"stills" led to others when clicked. And this was the
most Inexplicable site I have ever seen to date.

Basically, the point was to chase a monkey down
through an artsy black-and-white noir forest. This was
tougher than it sounds, since just getting to his
house would get you beaten to death with monkey's
big-ass stick. Instead, you had to do all sorts of
other weird shit, like visit The Monkey Bar or dig up
the grave of an action figure. But what truly made
this game so memorably fucked up was the supporting
cast - an oak leaf named Leaf Erikson, an acorn rebel
leader named Francois LeAcorn, a pack of wild
Monchichis, and best of all, Smoking Baby, who was
exactly what you'd think.

Interaction with this loveable cast was limited to
clicking on them to get one unchanging screen of
dialogue, but this was the ultimate in
Inexplicability. Witness the following quotes (from
memory - I'm surprised I remember these):

"Studded Crotchless S&M diapers: Smoking Baby wore
these back in 1973 when he starred in a series of
low-budget porno films with ex-wife Linda Luscious. He
doesn't like the sight of them, as they make him sad
and want to do cocaine."

Francois LeAcorn: "I see you are admiring my stylish
beret. Please do me the good of keeping your fucking
hands off it." Then, later, when you clicked his
beret: "I told you not to touch my beret! Sacrebleu! I
piss upon your upturned face! I heave rancid
pancreatic emissions upon your firstborn child! Touch
it again, and you will be very sorry!"

This was hands down the coolest website I have ever
seen. Unfortunately, it's been gone for a couple of
years now. Last I saw it, it was at www.dmonkey.com,
but now it's vanished into the void. Incidentally,
www.archive.org keeps
archived versions of all sorts
of old pages, so you may find your own vanished
favorites there. Deceitful Monkey is archived there,
but unfortunately only the first three screens
actually work.

"It is very strange that conservatives, of all people, would want the government to meddle in the most personal of relationships. But it is certainly typical of the normal Republican doublespeak we've all become so accustom to hearing these days. Marriage is a personal choice, and it is not, as Bush and his cronies claim, a cure for poverty."

New way to not get me to look at your spam: Have a subject line like "look at my boobs" and an address that begins with "AAAAAAA." If that's going to be my reaction, I'd rather not see them.

Why video games are so stupid.

Oh, this bodes fucking well: "The highest favorable rating for the United States came from Lebanon with 41 percent. The lowest was Pakistan, where the United States had a 5 percent favorable rating.
Additionally, the poll found a perception of an America that is 'ruthless, arrogant, aggressive and conceited,' Gallup officials said."
Eh, who cares? Iranians said the same damn things back in 1979!