10/2/02

      I didn't feel like cooking tonight--Okay, I feel like cooking NEVER--and since I had to go to the supermarket for milk and yogurt and cash from the ATM, I looked for something to eat tonight. No rotisserie turkey breast, friend of Man and Cat. So I bought store sushi.
      One, it's not very good. Two, it's remarkably filling. Three, it'll probably go all nasty if I don't choke it all down tonight.
      Forget the flying cars. The Jetsons promised me FOOD PILLS, and I want them NOW.
      I'm all sushi-bloated. And, as we all know, bloating leads to blogging.

      Did I mention that I'd installed Civilization II on the Store's computer? There's the ultimate timekiller. You win one of two ways: Conquering the entire world, or sending a spaceship out to colonize Alpha Centauri. You get more points for sending the spaceship than by conquering the world, but you get even more if you conquer the world except for one enemy city, and then send the spaceship.
      I start off as a peaceful kingdom interested only in expanding my economy, my technology, and my people's happiness. Any wars that happen are defensive on my end. Eventually, I have the most powerful economy in the world, and an army that's both the world's smallest and most technically advanced. I used to try and just build the damn spaceship and ignore everybody else, but the game's set up so that every other country in the world will eventually attack you. I learned that in the second half of the game, you have to attack to survive. So once I can build fighters and spies, I shift gears and become the world's biggest asshole, attacking every other country in the world. Until I'm the sole superpower.
      The Bush administration has been playing waaay too much Civilization II. To me, it's a game. To them, "This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the 'American imperialists' that our enemies always claimed we were."
      And that's not from some nuthead webpage, either. Read it and worry.

      But it's not like any third party has anything to gain by an American invasion of the Middle East. Right?

      HUH. Funny how that "Turkey finds WEAPONS-GRADE URANIUM being smuggled to IRAQ" story magically disappeared from the news...Don't expect any corrections, though.

      Scalzi on the Many Universes Theory. In all but one, I bet that we have a different and saner President.

      Aldo in Mexico recommends the web animations of Matazone, and so do I!

      I don't know how entertaining Roky Erickson's album The Evil One is, but the review is certainly cool.

      Want to make a pic of Dumbya made up entirely of a mosaic of tiny beer labels? Mike in the UK found a program that does it!

10/3

10/4

      Sick.
      Dunno with what. Woke up to the alarm, which is unusual for me; I generally wake up long before it goes off and lie there half-awake. I felt odd, so instead of coffee, I drank juice, which usually makes me feel better. It didn't. Started to get what felt like a migraine and took ibuprofen. Eight of them, all told. Then it felt like sinus pressure, so when I got home I took some store-brand decongestant ("Psuedo-fed," as I call it). Still feel weird. Don't want to post. Not that I need that as an excuse, if you look at yesterday's "entry." (That pic's something you find when you put "stupidest" into Google image search)

      Speaking of Google, here's a few ways people found The News today:
      the blood in the human boody Not body. Boody. They found a reference to cartoonist Boody Rogers.
      sonic cockroaches What you find in a Sega hedgehog's kitchen? Or do they scuttle away really, REALLY fast when you turn on the lights?
      man who fired shots in front of UN Bldg. yesterday Not an unreasonable request. Amusing to me because I think I know who was looking for this...
      screen saver chameleon vomit download The Mind, It Boggles. Is it of a chameleon vomiting? If so, where does its giant tongue go? Or is it a vomit screensaver that matches the colors on your desktop? If so, does it make your desktop only look a might chunky?
      blowing peking duck pics Of course. One wants oral sex from Chinese food. How utterly reasonable. Why, I am ready to choke General Tsao's chicken over the very thought! Oh, to pork one's pork-fried rice!
      At the bottom of that search are the following helpful links:

Search for blowing peking duck pics in your local yellow pages
Find blowing peking duck pics at eBay! Register now!
Comparison shop for blowing peking duck pics

      From the aforementioned Un Bldg. Shots Fired guy's page, a really cool story about an airplane's toilet.

10/5

      Only sick for half the day. General nausea and spaciness. Possibly a large-scale ibuprofen hangover.

      Dear Mr Man who found this page by searching for tapeworms, bacon, cola--I'll pass on having dinner at your house, thanks.

      I went to Cat of the Day and saw this:

USG (UNIX Security Guards)

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS Jerusalem THE CAPITAL OF Israel

THERE IS ONLY ONE ARABIC Jerusalem

USA I think that you are all about to be some war criminals

UK you are a slave to USA

FREE PALESTINE!

STOP THE PAIN!

 

Greetz: AIC (Anti India Crew), WFD (World Fabulous Defacers),DkD, BreaKIce, Rivver, TheBugz
and everyone else who fights for the same case.

 

WE Are: Egyptian|Fighter, ShellCode, LinuxLover and rD.

 

rD of USG

usg@hackermail.com

      You can't believe everything you read--especially if it's in The Onion.

      A long, fascinating, horrifying look at the monster behind the God Hates Fags campaign.

      Via Aldo:


what's your cowboy bebop theme song?

10/6

      Up through the ground comes a bubblin' crude: There's a broken water main in the condo courtyard. It's spewing brown water at a rate of probably a thousand gallons an hour. Fortunately, the condo association responded by immediately sending out a crew to spray paint 3 arrows in the grass pointing to it.
      Brilliant. The water's burbling 3 inches into the air and you can hear it before you see it. Those arrows reeeally help.
      I'm calling them tomorrow to find out who's paying the water bill next quarter. It won't be me.

      Politics!
      Is Dumbya Insane?
      Rumsfeldism: The New Surrealism.
      "The problem is this: probably due to a collating error, the EPA forgot to mention global warming. This is rather like a doctor pronouncing his patient is in perfect health because he overlooked a trifling case of decapitation. Forget the headless corpse- global warming is the 500 pound gorilla in the corner of the room. And don't think this gorilla is going to stay where it is, because it's out of rye crisps and still mighty hungry."
      "It all started when George W. Bush (R--Texas), upset over losing the election of 2000 to an earth-toned man, set out to erase the legacy of the previous president, the moderate Republican William Clinton. Clinton was a very wicked man indeed, with a penis the size and shape of Florida, a comparison which caused a great deal of trouble during the election as people in Florida were afraid to touch anything, just in case it wasn't Florida they were standing on."
      (There's actually a lot of interesting articles on that site, most of which are a good deal more serious than those last few)
      From Mike in the UK, Pinky and the Brain, 2002 Version.

      Not Politics!
      From Kiru, an older Salon article on comic book writer Alan Moore (CROW: "They're graphic novels!!")

10/7

      I had a pile of errands to do today, so I set the alarm to get up an hour earlier than usual. Amazingly, I actually got up! The plan was to hit the shower and get moving. It was going to rain in the morning, then clear up in the afternoon--If I timed it right, I'd get the essentials out of the way in time to hit Valley Falls Park when the sun came out.
      Good News: They'd come to fix the mud geyser in the courtyard! Bad News: There was no running water in here. No shower, unless I wanted to use the ice water in the fridge.
      So I sat in front of the Pookie and surfed, wondering how long the repairs would take. A backhoe had already dug a hole deep and wide enough to bury an elephant that had eaten another, larger elephant, and they were still digging. Soon, like the Siberian oil drillers, they'd break through to Hell and there'd be all that screaming of the Damned that brings down property values. Kill Kill was interested enough that she allowed me to pick her up and hold her to the bathroom window so that she could watch the odd goings-on. Till she realized that she was being held, and squirmed to escape. Apparently, I have cooties.
      I checked my mail. Hotmail was actually the best freemail service when it started. Then it was bought by the Lord Gates, and he waved his mighty scepter of SUCK over it. There was an exponential increase in spam after it was bought; okay, that may because it was suddenly more high profile. But the Junk Mail folder simply did not work. Recently, they fixed the Junk Mail: instead of my Inbox getting 40 emails a day, 35 of which are spam, I get 20 emails in my Junk Mail, and 15 in my Inbox that are spam. Next, they announced that they were no longer supplying 5K of storage, but 2. Oh, and you've got to the end of the week to move it all out or we'll randomly delete your messages, and, no, there isn't a way to FTP it all to your hard drive because that would be EASY and make SENSE. Then messages stopped being stored oldest-to-newest (the whole REASON I got Hotmail in the first place, as it's the easiest way to read a mailing list) but newest-to-oldest. Oh, and did we mention that we were deleting everyone's Sent Mail folder? Possibly we did, but it was in an email titled "Important News About Your Account," which is what we title even the most trivial email, so you probably didn't hear about it until we sent the email explaining the deleting after we did the deleting. Since the whole purpose of that was to make you pay for extra storage, and we deleted all your Sent Mail, freeing up your storage and making you realize that we can't be trusted with storage--Umm, maybe we should've thought that one through a tad better. Now, we have the exciting new feature--"Emails not sorted newest-to-oldest, but Alphabetical by Subject Line!" It mixes up your old and new emails at random, HUZZAH! We're workin' hard to remove any possible utility from Hotmail, and we're SUCCEEDING! Soon we hope to translate all your mail into Ancient Sumerian. Hope you can read Sumerian.
      75 minutes later and they were still down there in the pit, now with a noisy pump sucking the water out. A shower? To Hell (or Siberia) with that, I said. I've got stuff to do, and I guess I'm going to have to do it stinky style. At least this happened on a day off, and not a work day. At that moment, the bathtub began a creaking and groaning roar, like some fabled sea monster was in the drain. Actually, it sounded a lot like the Kraken from Clash of the Titans, and that's our pointless pop culture ref for today. The water started up again, all brown and muddy at first, but clearing after a minute. Since I have a clock in my shower, I can tell you the exact minute I started showering: The exact same minute that I'd be getting in it if it was a work day. Getting up an hour early did nothing but cost me an hour's sleep.
      But I did my errands, going to Stop & Shop to buy chicken and yogurt and cat litter (Oh, my Yogurt Chicken Litter Surprise Casserole is to die for!--No, wait, that should be from), and K-Mart for a kitchen trash can with a lid (replacing the one that got smashed in a month ago, when late at night I slipped on one of KK's superballs, falling and smashing the old lid and knocking over a curio cabinet of irreplacable ceramic tchotckes; amazingly, though they all fell, not a single one broke. Still missing one of the wind-up Mecha-Ghidorah's heads, but that's a small price to pay). A new closable trash can had become a priority, as those obnoxious little teeny gnats were breeding in the open one. My monitor was covered in my fingerprints, each print representing a squished gnat.
      Then I went to Valley Falls. The lost 75 minutes was bad, in the sense that a bus full of elementary school kids had just arrived. Imagine the volume level, or just stick your head in a metal oil drum and bang the outside with a hammer. Many kids had big plastic buckets. Why? "Dunno, Copper!" (pop culture comic book ref NO ONE will get) Every breeze sent yellow leaves fluttering like snow and ripe acorns falling like hail, and that's about all there was to collect. But my timing was also good, as the showers finally stopped and the sun was stabbing through the clouds. It turned out to be the only sunny part of today.
      I wandered off on a different trail than last time, confident that, like last time, it would lead me back to the rail trail before I trespassed into the Forbidden Zone of private property. But the trail simply ended--It turned out to be a circuitous route to a chipmunk lair or hive or mall or whatever you call a chipmunk's home. I thought that I'd taken a wrong turn, and cut cross country to find my way back. Oops, No Trespassing signs. Buckshot-bearin' old coots are probably stalking my skinny white ass! I walked a little more quietly in the direction of the rail trail, eventually coming to a near-sheer rise. Umm, is that the trail up there? Aha! Telegraph poles!! Victory!
      And then I went back to where I started.
      The End. I hope you enjoyed my gripping tale.
      On the top of my list of must-do chores today was the laundry. But I ain't gonna be the first person to use the washing machine, and have my clothes marinate in the brown water for a minute or so. Defeats the purpose, y'know?

      The Molly Awards. It's the worst of Australian Rock and Pop, and while the only act I've ever heard of is Natalie Imbruglia, it's pretty funny in the snarky bitchfest way. "In front of packed-out shows waiting to see Australia's latest great white hopes rock like nobody's business, The Vines rocked like nobodys, putting on performances that would've seen them booed of the stage at high-school talent-shows. It's not that Craig Nicholls occasionally sings off-key, it's that he seems to have no idea what key is, warbling with a childish sneer in some pathetic evocation of air-guitar fantasies whilst the disinterested rhythm-section cash their paycheck."

      While backtracking a hit to this page, I came across something I believe I've seen before, Movie Mistakes. I believe that every movie has an endless parade of mistakes you can find if you look hard enough. The only time that it matters is when you notice them without looking for them at all--that means it's a bad or boring movie, and your mind has both the time and the crankiness to search for faults. In a good movie, you never notice them. My example was always Raiders of the Lost Ark. Great movie, but hey, did you notice how Indy takes a 100 mile trip on the outside of a submarine? And he's tired and wet when it ends, when he should be drowned and dead?
      I know you're going to say "I don't remember that!" all defensively. Everyone says that, and relax, it's just a movie. It's a tribute to the film's quality and pacing that you don't remember it (it's near the end, right after the U-boat captures Marion from the tramp steamer. We're shown one of those "maps with a dotted line" snaking through the Aegean Islands next, to the island where the Nazis open the Ark)
      Certainly, with a whopping 65! errors spotted in Raiders, they caught the ones I did, right? No. They totally miss the U-boat, and instead point out important stuff like: "When Marian is being held captive she is gagged, and in one scene her hair is held near her ear. In the next scene it is closer to her nose." DUDE! You TOTALLY RUINED the movie for me!! The gagging scene was my FAVE! And if you're looking for stupid, petty errors--Her name's MariOn.
      Two other things that somehow weren't important enough to mention in that 65:

When we first see Marion, she's involved in a drinking contest in a crowded Himalayan bar. Ignoring the question of how crowded a damn bar up a Himalayan mountainside would ever get, she's downed, oh I forget, 15 or 20 shots of hooch and appears to be about to pass out. But then her opponent, Slooshi the Slurpin' Sherpa I name him, takes an alcoholic header on the table. 15 to 20 shots is a fifth to a quart of liquor. This is a lot. A woman of Marion's build should not only pass out, but DIE, no matter how much of a lush she is (Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm a Liquor Professional. We know these things) But then she's instantly sober when Indie appears, and in fact even kicks some Nazi ass in the battle scene. She should be lying comatose on the floor, fighting not the Nazis but her own choking vomit.
      After Indie survives his lack of drowning on the U-boat, we get the best continuity-intact scene in movie history: He clubs a Kraut and steals his uniform. For the first time in any movie, it doesn't fit. He gets cussed out by an officer over his shabby clothes, then Indie measures out the guy's height, sees that it's the same as his, then clubs that guy and steals his better-fitting uniform. I love that bit! But next he threatens to blow up the Ark with a bazooka. N'kay, let's look at this one:
      1: It's a 1970s NATO bazooka; an Anglo-French Miniman to be exact. They didn't have those in 1937.
      2: They didn't have bazookas in 1937. They weren't invented until well into WWII.
      3: Why would a submarine be carrying antitank weapons anyway? It's not like tanks carry depth charges...

      "Once you obey God, you go free regardless of what others do to you," accurately says the nun who ruthlessly beat little children who were "seduced by Satan". FUNDAMENTALISM! It's goood!!

      "John Paul II is a saint machine...For Roman Catholics, who believe God makes saints and the pope discerns them, this is one eagle-eyed pope. He has recognized more saints than any pope in history -- more, in fact, than all the popes of the past four centuries combined."
      "He named...a Polish Franciscan priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe, who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for opposing the Nazis. He died there when he exchanged his life for that of a condemned married man." I read that bit and thought, wow, that's pretty saintly! But then I thought, if he was a devout Christian, he believed that he wasn't going to die, but go to Heaven. Wouldn't an athiest who gave up the only life he ever expected to have be braver than a Christian who's sure he's getting the free upgrade to first class?

      How'd I miss this unblinking 9/11 anniversary look by the redoubtable Carol Lay? Photo Op.

      We're reaching that point of the year where there's One Last Good Day, and One Last Nice Night. Once or twice a month in the Late Spring to Early Autumn, I walk the rail trail behind the condo after sunset. Tonight seemed a good night, maybe the last night this year. I stealthed up in black Converses, black jeans, navy shirt, 3 days of beard due to today's water shortage, ready to disappear into the shadows.
      First I took a look at the Pit in the Courtyard. It's filled in again, a soupy mess of mud. Along the sidewalk leading to it are great sodden divots left by the treads of the backhoe; horse apples from the industrial age. Chunks of the sidewalk lay cast aside by it. I can expect to be awakened by this project again soon.
      Walking in the woods was tricky before the National Guard redid the trail, and evened it out with crushed stone. A night ten years ago I tripped, fell and nearly sprained my thumb, while falling with enough force to give me a mild concussion. Now, I just listen as I walk in the dark. The sharp crunch of the crushed stone gives way to the softer crumbling of the leaves on the edges of the trail when I wander off it.
      The bright lights in the backyards along the thin strip of woods give it a tunnel effect. The leaves of the trees glow like a halo, while the core of the trail remains dark in the distance. Like life, the diversions along the sides are clearer than the destination to come.
      When I last walked here at night, the woods were aglow with fireflies, spinning in their mating dance. Shooting stars that you could always wish on, as they never fell to earth. Now only the desperate wirrr of the crickets is heard: Come to me, my mate. Summer is over. Time is short.
      It smells of Spring, but it's the opposite of Spring. The smell comes from leaves falling, not sprouting. A strong and chill breeze blows. When last I walked here, it was a soothing antidote to the humidity of Summer. In a month, it will be a clawing on the ears, the first raspy clutch of the cold white skeletal fingers of Winter.
      A big dog in a small apartment barks at me in the woods. The first bark sounds like a pony's neigh, the next, like a shortened whale song. Possibly its owner said "Shut up!" Big dog in small place, not free to run with the pack, pacing the floor. In the distance, another caged dog barks back at the first. And a mile away, a white-furred queen sleeps soundly in her wine crate, oblivious to the trapped giant dogs, confident that her Territory is hers alone.
      I turn around and walk back. The walk back is different: There is still a tunnel, but the sides are dark and the end is brightly lit by a streetlight, and lit again and again by the white and red lights of cars passing on the road beside it. The cars rumble, the trucks roar, a motorcycle burps and farts with all its adolescent glee. But still the crickets are the loudest. Come to me. Time is short. Soon the cold white hand will take us all.

10/8

      "Yeah, well, no one said God's Law would make sense." God Hates Flags, by hatemonger "Phred Felts." The site seems pretty big, and the funniest things I've seen so far are the "facts" about "Flaggots."

      Bias in the Blogosphere. Due to be instantly derided by the warblogging dittoheads due to a few quotes from Chomsky. Chomsky lies! Dumbya truths! Critical thinking and cold hand of logic is only for big dumb Commie-nist dummies! Me very smarts in my head parts, believe everything gummint says without question! Did me mention my smartsness?! Ooh, ass itch. Must scratch. Where my buck knife?

      Heh...God Hates Flags had this true story from Finland involving Fred Phelps: "Being told what to think by obscure religious sects from the armpits of America is no more in our nature than allowing the Soviet Union to march in and take the place over in 1939." Hooray for Finlandia!

10/9

      WHOA! Gone & Forgotten has updated! That's a true rarity! It's also quite funny, which is never rare for GAF.

      For the last 2 days, the radio traffic reports have warned about the huge backups caused by the most important thing to ever ever ever happen here since Thomas Hooker invented Connecticut.
      I live in a state filled with IDIOTS.

      The Space Elevator. Next floor: 60,000 MILES above the surface of the Earth.

10/10

      I don't know how you can throw your back out by taking a shower, but I did and yelled with pain. Kevin said "It's probably your shampoo."
       Scott came into the store and asked me if I wanted to go to a Halloween-themed laser light show at the planetarium at 10PM. Naw, that's kinda late, I said. As soon as he left, I realized that it wasn't late. How long does a light show last, an hour? But my back never improved, and sitting in one of dentist chairs at the planetarium probably wouldn't have helped. Dude. Bummer.

      "These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East."

10/11

      I don't know how you can throw your back out by taking a shower TWO DAYS IN A ROW, but I did it again. Yesterday it happened when I put the shampoo in my hair, today Killsy poked her head in the tub and I made the wildly reckless gesture of waving to her. And then screaming in pain.
      I think I'll just stick my head in toilet and flush from now on.

      Following Dougal Dixon's alternative evolution scenario from "After Man" is a BBC production called "The Future is Wild."

10/12

      I managed to shower today without decapitating myself. Although at one point, my back tried to go out. And all I was doing was standing there. Is there something in the water here?

      I haven't been keeping you guys up on the latest store news. Because it hasn't been good news.
      6 weeks ago, Art of the Yale Newstands wanted to buy the New Store. I was told to "talk the store up," which I did, while being honest. I told him that it makes sense to buy a small, low-volume high-profit store in order to learn the booze biz, but he should next buy Store 2, the high-volume low-profit store. There's just not enough cash flowing out of New to live on. Outside of the fact that it's simply true, it's really S2 that the owners want to ditch. It's high volume, but also high maintenance in terms of the time they have to spend there.
      The first person that the owners had come to when selling New came up was me. But I'd need to pay 2 $50K loans at once if I wanted the place, with my only income being New Store. It's flatlined at $7500 a week. That's just not enough to cover the loans, my pay, my medical. I believe that the store will do much more in business as time goes on, but that's not guaranteed. If it goes to, say, $10K, yeah sure that sucker's MINE! But if it doesn't, I'm just looking at debt accumulating. Unpayable Debt is something to avoid. That way lies madness, and also bankruptcy. Since I have a condo, also possible homelessness. So I regretfully passed on the offer.
      And I screwed up. Art decided that he wants to buy S2 and not New, and take me with him to run S2. How did I screw up? That same day that I talked with Art, Hement came into New. He is from India. "Are you looking to sell?" "No! It's just been sold!" Bill didn't say. Bill said, "It looks like a done deal, but there's a chance it won't happen." Hement latched onto the "won't happen" hope like a hyena on a rotting zebra rump.
      He's a nice guy, mind you. And I'm sure that any reader of this page knows I'm not a bigot. But here's a little dramatization of Hement:

"THE INESCAPABLE EYES OF HEMENT!"
      He'd come to the store and hang out for hours, to learn the business and stare at me. Then, he'd stare at me. For variety, HE'D STARE AT ME. I'd take advantage of his presence to go into the cooler, and instead of watching the store he'd come into the cooler and guess what HE'D STARE AT ME. Welcome to the Monkey House! Eep eep, my name is Bill the MonkeySplut! Throw me a banana or I'll be throwing something else at you!
      Sure, he'd ask me questions. Twice or more before I understood what he was asking, three or more answers from me before he he'd understand what I was saying. After a few hours, it wears thin. It wears to a nanothickness when I know that I'm training the guy who's going to TAKE MY BEAUTIFUL STORE AWAY FROM ME.
      The customers would give him Looks. Not just the bigots with their "damn furriners!" looks, but the times when it'd get busy and I'd have to abandon the register to run Lotto. If I was in a line and there were 2 people behind the counter, it'd irk me if one was running around and the other doing nothing. Unless STARING counts.
      And there were the customers who just don't like Indians. Well, fuck you. I suppose that your family came to America when they crossed the damn Bering Strait land bridge 10,000 years ago, and not in steerage like my Irish and Scots forebears did. It's America because we like immigration, you dittoheads. And you know what? A hot Indian babe is hotter than ANY babe of any other ethnicity! Do me vindaloo-style, sweet brown sugar of the Ganges!--
      Okay, I wandered a bit there. The bottom line is that:

1: Art buys New, I stay in New.
2: Hement buys New, Bill goes to MISERABLE HATEFUL S2 as part of the package deal they're giving Art AND WORKS WITH THE EGOTISTIC THIEVING DRUNK WHO SHITS HIS PANTS.
3: Bill buys New, fails, ends up on street corner with sign that says "WIL WORK FOR CAT TREETS JESUS BLESS U"
4: None of the Above; Bill stays in beloved New.

      Bizarre story about a rocket belt. I never knew those were worth commiting capital crimes for. Repeatedly.

10/13

      I went north to Grafton, MA today. Junk shopping with Jessie, then dinner with her and her husband Ron in their mansion! Err, condo. Four damn story condo.
      This meant driving on the hateful Mass Pike. Even people who are not New Englanders are familiar with the phrase "Boston drivers" as a synonym for "suicidal road ragin' psychopaths." If you are from New England, you just call them "Massachusetts drivers." It's not that everybody in Mass drives that way. Its just that most of them do. Mass drivers are best described as "risk a massive multi-car pileup at 90 miles an hour in order to gain one car length." Some dork almost hit me when he cut me off at the toll booth. Yes, in true insult to injury fashion, you have to pay to drive with white knuckles on the Pike.
      With perfect timing, I arrived at their condo as they were unloading their groceries. "Did you have any trouble getting here?" asked Ron. "Not once I deJessified the directions," I said. She'd told me to "turn right after the light" at an intersection with no light but a stop sign, and to "go straight for 10 mins" on a road that ended in a T after 30 seconds.
      Wow, what an awesome place they have! And in a really nice town, Grafton: rural/suburban. Lots of huge old Victorian homes, a lake with a beach, and the Grafton Flea Market. Evidentally it's a great big ol' thing in the Summer. This time of year, it's indoors. Fifty whole cents to get in! An outrage! And the dealers are...interesting. Okay, not interesting, but "mentally ill." They were really odd, especially the hunchbacked old man who just s-t-a-r-e-d at us all Hement-like. I don't know if he thought the pony-tailed hippie in the trenchcoat was planning on shoplifting (flealifting?) or if he was just ogling the fine young thang next to me. Since he turned up at a booth quite far from his own 10 minutes later, I'd go with the latter.
      Jess bought incense, I bought a "cat candy bar" (a rectangular cloth with a bell and catnip in it--Gourd, but Killsy loves this! She snags it with her claws, and rubs it all over her face like a washcloth--so cute! I bought a purple one, as that's the color of royalty), a spring-mounted lobster fridge magnet (there's a style I'd never seen before), and a little Connecticut lapel pin:

      Erm, that's...not a very accurate map. CT does have a little panhandle, but it's square. This CT has a dangling weiner with 'nads going on.
      Two for $5 80s videos at one booth! The only booth with an owner who seemed like he was normal, BTW. Jess bought Mannequin and The Pick-Up Artist. I bought long-standing MST3K in-joke Gymkata ("HAIKEEBA!!"), and Bad Guys:

      Say--Is that giant penetrating missile between their Speedo'd legs supposed to represent something?
      Whoa, you just know that the "zany, action-packed escapades" of wrestlers who take on the "Kremlin Krushers" is going to mine comedy gold. Note that prominently placed "review" from the NY Times, which they're so proud of that it turns up in boldface on the back of the box. That's not a review, that's a comment. It's like a radio ad I keep hearing about some romance novel set in WWII Russia: "It recalls Doctor Zhivago." The ad refers to this a "rave," when it's one of those out-of-context lines that really could mean anything. Like "It rips off Doctor Zhivago." I've seen Ebert's bad reviews being used as "raves." "The best movie Adam Sandler's made so far!" he said of Little Nicky. Which he meant as "The bluntest nail I've pounded into my temple so far!"
      Next we went to Spags. What, was the name Skanks already taken? This is a department store so legendary that when Jess says that she lives in Worcester County, people immediately ask "Are you close to Spags?" Since they also talk about how weird the place is, me and Jess were "We're THERE, baby!" from the get-go!
      (If you're wondering where her husband Ron was during all this, he was at home watching ESPN. Jess hates ESPN; he hates junk shopping. That's what Jess has me for, her straight version of a gay friend)
      I had the digicam in my coat pocket. I should've taken some pics of the building. It dates from 1935, the front neon sign looks like it's from the 40s, and it's been added to in a really haphazard way over the decades. It's an architectural mess. There's a Giant Spag statue when you first walk in; some old dude in a cowboy hat. I don't know the backstory, as spags.com won't come up, but it was really a disappointment to veteran weird-store shoppers like us. It's really just a disorganized Wal-Mart that doesn't throw anything away. We saw a couple of things that clearly had been in the store since the late 60s or early 70s, but it wasn't all that exciting. As to the organization, the big pet department segued into automotive, and the tiny toy department was next to an endcap of RAT POISON.
      We bought some utilitarian stuff, instead of the craziness we were after: Jess got Twix and Butterfingers, a toilet paper dispenser, a vacuum cleaner bag, and index cards to help teach her daughter spelling, and I got a kitchen fire extinguisher to protect my daughter, and a lint brush to protect my clothes from my daughter's shedding.
      We had an awesome Ron-made dinner and talked. Ron says, re New Store, that I could get a small business loan for the $100K I'd need to buy the place and it would be a payment of only $400 or so a month. HMM, that's eminently doable for me. Must look into that.
      Jess' cat Marjoriam snoozed upstairs and Ron's cat Bogart snoozed on Jess' Chair of Toys.

      "He's the cutest cat in the world!" said Ron.

      "No he's not," I said.
      Jess and me Super Joyed for a bit, then I headed home. I thought that I'd established my personal level of hate for the Mass Pike, but I'd never driven it after dark in the rain before. I think that one rainy night AC/DC drove on the Mass Pike, and then released Highway to Hell.

      The Right-Wing Warbloggers take on their latest perceived Traitor to America.

      Well, I'm off to see how far I get into Bad Guys. The main costars are Sgt Slaughter and Ruth Buzzi. Wish me luck!

10/14

      I went to Ocean State Job Lot, a bigger but duller version of our beloved Jerry Van Dykarama which also has "Lot" in its name. Don't look back at our store, you'll turn into a pillar of salt! (I never got that part of the Bible. It seemed like God was just showing off) The heating element in my waterbed burned out (a year ago) and I'm too lazy to drain the whole thing and put in a new one. So I bought an electric blanket today. Except now they're called "automatic" blankets. Why? I'm still the one who has to turn it on and off.
      I opened it up and the heating cord came out, as well as a seperate bag with a male/female connector. In that bag was instructions that contained the encouraging url blanket recall.com. Well, I guess we know how this ended up in a closeout store. Good thing I bought that fire extinguisher...

      I knew that it was a bad sign when I put Bad Guys into the VCR and it was at the 35 minute mark. That meant someone had reached their personal best at making themselves watch it. And they were stronger than me--I gave up at 30 minutes, when Ruth Buzzi came on. As a wrestler! Cackling like a witch on nitrous for every second of screen time.
      It's one of those "So bad it's bad" movies. Nothing sucks worse than a comedy that isn't funny. Or having main characters that are completely unlikable when the movie thinks they're lovable. One newspaper headline--in a Los Angeles paper that's exactly 4 pages thick--refers to them as "Brutal Cops Maim Teenagers." I have no idea when that happened, as it comes after the Brutal Cops wail the shit out of a biker bar. There was another "newspaper" of paper towel thickness that headlined that fight, "Brutal Cops Beat Up Biker Bar." Let's face it, if you're commonly known as Brutal Cops in Rodney King's home town, you're pretty fucking as brutal as cops can be. And I'm supposed to hate the Kremlin Krushers just because it says "CCCP" on their shorts?
      There are Fag Jokes, too. Mincing, lisping, prancing, makeup-wearing campy faggy-fag cliches right out of the 60s. This is odd as this movie cannot be said to have a homoerotic subtext. It has a homoerotic ubertext. The second scene in the movie has Blond Cop rubbing Brunette Cop's nipple in a way that says "Why, yes, I rub his nipples all the time, what's your beef?" (Brunette Cop does not say "Oh, I'm your beef!") Oh, and they work as Chippendales in one scene, and Brutal Blond rips Brutal Brunette's pants off. And, ya know, wrestling involves rubbing against sweaty men in their undies, so draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is: Subtext or not, Good GOURD, this movie sucks turnbuckle.
      But I said that I'd watch, and I'll watch it just for you, the loyal reader. It's not like I've got anything else to do anyway. But I'm watching it small, measured doses. Dang, this thing's harsh. Daddy needs his reviewing medicine! Fetch the Jagermeister!

      The next time someone tells you that Windows XP doesn't blue-screen, punch them in the snoot. It just ate all that I'd typed since that last bit, and I'm sure not rewinding the movie to see what I missed. My next computer's a Mac.

      First bit of comic genius I saw when I restarted the tape:

CRUSTY OLD MANAGER: You're now the Boston Bad Guys!
BRUTAL BRUNETTE: But we've never been to Boston!
RUTH BUZZI: Who gives a shit!
(Hysterical laughter from all)

BRUTAL BLONDIE: Janice, I really like you.
JANICE: I like you too!
BLONDIE: No, I really like you.

      AH-HAHAHAHA!!! You nut! You so cute! You...oh, wait, the horrible SU-SPENSE. I forgot.
      The Commies beat an old guy who takes the flag and holds it up all Red Badge of Couragey. "That's the most patriotic thing I've ever seen!" says one of the Brutals. I can't tell which, as the dialogue's dubbed. "Now let's show them what AMERICA MEANS!" Which is jumping on people and beating them to shit. YEAH! Don Rumsfeld must LOVE this movie!
      "USA! USA! USA!" chants Slaughter. "Report to the station first thing tomorrow!" says the Chief of Police. "Report to the gym first thing tomorrow!" says the Trainer. "First things first!" chorus the Brutals, as they kiss the Promoter on her cheeks. While looking at each other...NO! SUBTEXT! HERE!
      Gag me with a wrestling belt, the end credits have a rawk video based on the movie. Throaty-voiced 1985 girl group that looks suspiciously like the Misfits from Jem and the Holograms, although their name is "Precious Metal." "BAD GUYS! God, you'll wish you never met us! BAD GUYS! They'll beat you till you're deadest!" Brilliant lyrics! Oh, how Morrissey weeps over not coming up with that insight. Okay, Morrissey weeps when he writes a grocery list, but if there ever was a group that'd make you cry (with pain), It's Jem and the Precious Metals.
      This next lyric I listened to 5 times, and the first, best and only translation I have is: "When trouble starts, you gotta watch for those swingin' low! He feels so Greek, He falls from one mighty blow!"
      NO!
      SUB!
      TEXT!

      Oops, almost forgot the Obligatory Link. Via the always entertaining student radical at Xoverboard, a funny and weird anti-smoking Flash video.

10/15

      "Automatic" Blanket, Night One: House burn down, save only Cat and fridge magnets. Magnets still on fridge, so wasted time carying fridge. Could've planned that one better. Live in Internet cafe/laundry now.
      Actually, it was a resounding success, and even received two paws up from Killsy. She never sleeps with me when it's dark . She comes in after her dawn birdwatching. Last night she plopped on the blanket as soon as I turned it on, and crashed until 430AM. I slept great until that point, when a migraine and an acid-refluxing tummy forced me awake. I never did get fully asleep after that. I have the feeling that they were Bad Guys-related.

      The building across the street from the Store is a bland brick box. It has 4 offices, but the only one in use is Tina's Nail & Hair, which seems to have a payroll consisting of Tina. They've been renovating the facade just recently, so I thought that maybe some new businesses were going into the vacant spaces. The first new one is in! It's called "Chairs For Rent." Now there's a niche business.

      There's a series of 6 new Wallace & Grommit shorts coming out, and the first one's a free download! I was all excited, until I realized that sometimes, you get what you pay for...

      Via Mark the Vet, a Connecticut-based research study on The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome.

      American Heritage's Most Over- and Underrated.

      Special Note: 10/15 marked the first radio Christmas ad of the non-season I've heard. Kill me NOW!

10/16

      Someone searched the News for "penis comparison pics enlargement." Their server? cox.net.

      A short handbook of Japanese gestures. Includes "Danger, Yakuza!"

      "Our mentally ill are simply exercising their Second Amendment rights, by God."

      Swatch celebrates the 40th anniversary of James Bond with a new series of ugly overpriced watches. There's also a game that I haven't tried yet.

      Well, that's all that I've got. Via the Null Device comes two odd short stories: Global Eye, set in Occupied Iraq, 2004, and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft's favorite Christmas story, Emergency Claus.

10/17

       I've wanted to switch to DSL for a long time. Although Netplex's dialup has been good to me for 6 years, it dropped from a regular 52K connection in January to 48K in April. That's when I applied to SBC for a DSL connection. I was told that they'd get back to me, as only 66% of my part of town was DSL-ready. They didn't get back. I called them and they said that I was part of the 34%. "Call back in October."
      I did. Currently, my dialup is connecting at 45K, except when it logs on at 42K. I got a reply this time! I was to expect my modem by October 11th! October 11th arrived! I got an email that said, "You've been approved for DSL! Expect your modem by the 21st." Wha-a-at?!
      Yesterday there was a Post-It note from UPS on my door: They'd tried to deliver my modem, but I wasn't home. Well, duh, what does UPS expect when it only delivers when people are at work? So I went to ups.com and changed the delivery address to the Store.
And here I am at work, and my modem has finally come! It looks so purty! High-speed Internet, you're mine at last! And--"Software will be sent SEPERATELY"?! ARRRGH!!
      On the other hand, today I found out that if I do buy the Store, I can write off a DSL connection there as a business expense...

      Amusing review of a bad online multiplayer game named Blade Mistress.

      Speaking of amusing and bad, I won an eBay auction today for King Kong Lives. Once upon a time, master filmmaker Dino de Laurentis made a movie about King Kong. Everyone hated it. So, naturally, he made a sequel. But not until 10 years after the first movie, as Mr de Horrendous hoped that everyone who'd seen the first one had either died or been injected with a formula that makes people forget bad movies and the name "Dino de Laurentis."
      I saw this once years ago, taped off of late night TV. It was funny, because it wasn't supposed to be funny. The opening involves emergency surgery to save Kong from his traumatic fall (from the WTC in this version). Surgeon extraordinare Linda "Terminator and nothing else" Hamilton performs the operation. "Bring me the bonesaw!" she cries in the OR, and a couple of guys in scrubs lug one the size of a ten speed bike to the table. "Cotton swabs!" she demands, and the guys hold GIANT COTTON POM-POMS over their heads...
      Maybe it was funnier when it was free, but I bought it for $2.38, which is pretty close to free. Expect a full review here when I get it. There's also another unintentional laff-riot I'm hoping to get, but I'll wait until I win that auction before I talk about it.

       "I saw birds turning into ashes in the sky..." A short article on the harrowing recollections of the survivors of Soviet nuclear tests on humans. Not that America didn't do the same thing, of course, if you've ever seen Atomic Cafe.

10/18

      I got my DSL software in the mail today. So I ran the software, hooked everything up, and discovered something. "It runs on your existing phone line!" is not the same as "It runs on your existing phone wires." I have 25 feet of cable to run into my only phone jack, which is 50 feet away from the computer. The help line guy told me that I could buy it at Wal-Mart or Radio Shack. So DSL gets put off yet another day.
      I went back to dialup, and I connected at the sceamin' 1995 speed of 28kps. I reconnected 5 times, and that's the best that I can get. Is my dialup having its worst day ever, or does the installation of the DSL software deliberately inhibit dialup's max connect speed? HMMM...

      Self-unaware Anti-Iraq Attack quote of the day: "Those who chose to live in denial may eventually be forced to live in fear," President Bush said Wednesday.

      Thanks to the guy in Germany who searched this page for "brunette in jeans shorts farts"! Because only a freak would search for a blonde.

10/21

      < JIM ANCHOWER >: Hola amigos. What's goin' on there on the flipside? I know it's been a long time since I last rapped at ya, but I've had some problems...< /Anchower >
      If you get SBC DSL, don't use their software. It does something to your dialup. Saturday night it took 5 to 10 minutes to connect, and that's with the auto redial set at every 3 seconds. I'd connect at the blazing non-speed of 28kps, then get disconnected, redial for 5 to 10 minutes, 28kps, disconnect, repeat as unneccesary. There really wasn't any point in me posting. The only thing I had I couldn't get to--That damnable c4.com email account went down back on the 8th, and refused to come up until late Saturday. But it was doing the same thing that my dialup was, letting me in briefly before throwing me out. There was an email from Pamela Roza. One link didn't work, although on the same page I found this:

      She also sent this cat-herding game. It's really not impossible to herd cats! Just make judicious use of the tuna.

      I slept in Sunday, getting up 2 hours later than usual (ie, 130PM--ahh, the wonder that is second shift). I went through more of the same crap with my dialup, while I killed time before Kevin showed up. At 28kps, the time was also killing me.
      I'd won another eBay auction, this time for that fine film by Irwin "Master of Disaster Who Sucks" Allen, the killer bee classic The Swarm. Like King Kong Lives, this is a movie so bad that it MySTs itself, no bots required. It has an all-star cast (in the washed-up Love Boat sense of all-star), and the worst dialogue and acting ever. Noted actor and infamous script whore Michael Caine SCREAMS EVERY LINE OF DIALOGUE, and when the lines are stuff like "I never dreamed it would be the bees! They've always been our friends!"...Well, I'm screaming, too, but it's from laughter.
      In the absolute greatest awful scene in bad movie history, General Richard Widmark prepares to do battle with The Swarm (which is never called the Swarm, or even much "Africanized killer bees." They keep calling them "the Africans." Yes, Whitey spends the whole movie talking about the terrible peril to America caused by these Africans invading us from across the border with Mexico, and not one person thought that this might appear odd to the audience). The Swar--err, The Africans, is advancing on Houston. General Widmark says, "No matter who my enemy is, I always credit him with equal intelligence!" Is the General as smart as a tiny insect? You be the judge: His master plan to defeat the creepy-flyies is to completely evacuate Houston (apparently, in only a matter of hours!), then send guys in asbestos suits to the top floors of skyscrapers. They open all the windows, and when the bees fly into the rooms, they shoot them with flamethrowers. After about 5 minutes of hot flamethrower-on-bee action, one soldier looks around and screams "THE BUILDING'S ON FIRE!" Yes, there is one eensy flaw in the General's plan. One wonders what Plan B was--"We'll dab honey on our foreheads, and when the bees land on us, we'll hit them with hammers!" Five minutes later: "OUR SKULLS ARE SMASHED IN!"
      General Dipshit looks out over the burning ruins of Houston and declaims "Houston--On fire! Will history blame me--or the bees?!" Dunno, Copper! Was it the bees that came up with that flamethrower brainstorm?
      Kevin eventually appeared. He quickly set up a new connection for the DSL. I was wrong about needing a different type of cable; it wasn't due to be turned on from their end until midnight Monday.
      He wanted to take seperate cars, as he wanted to go to Best Buy after the movie. No way Best Buy's gonna be open at 8 on a Sunday, I said, and plus, I was going to go there tomorrow anyway. So we went there first. I bought the double DVD of Koyaanisqatsi and Powasqatsi. Kevin looked at a replacement washing machine. He's 11 years younger than me, and Jess is 19 years my junior, but they're the domestic ones and I'm buying the "Whoa, DUDE! Far OUT!" videos.
      We went for an early dinner at the City Steam brew pub. The food's better at John Harvards and especially Trout Brook, but they've the best beer. And great waitstaff; I told the guy upfront that we had to be out of there in 45 minutes because we were going to a movie, and damned if he didn't expedite things. He got a nice tip, of course.
      The movie was very entertaining, and also one the weirdest things I've ever seen. I'm sure that at some point in your life, you've asked yourself "I wonder what Gumby would be like if he'd been made by Stalin?" Well, The New Gulliver answered that question. It was a 1935 kids movie from Stalinist Russia, half live action, half stop-motion puppets. A diligent young Soviet Pioneer (a Commie version of the Boy/Girl Scouts) is awarded a copy of "Gulliver's Travels." Awarded for what, we're not told. Ratting out his parents to the NKVD, possibly. He falls asleep as he draws flies, and dreams that he's the New, Sovietically Correct Gulliver.
      "Gulliver's Travels" is actually a pretty biting satire, but every kids version waters it down to the Lilliput story and leaves it at that. But there was no such thing as "art" or even "entertainment" in days of the Purges. Everything had to glorify the State, the Workers, and oh yeah, Uncle Joe himself. So the king of Lilliput is a gibbering idiot, his advisors corrupt, his Duma/Parliament full of venal Capitalists and cowardly Christian clerics. Meanwhile, the oppressed Workers find Gulliver's lost homework, which speaks of the glories of the workers' paradise back home. Notably, the Royals are all scrawny, effeminate grotesques, and the Workers are all done in the heavy, muscular style of the heroic Soviet sculpture of the time. And, as Kevin noted, except for their bearded Leader, they're identical. "Apparently, individuality is overrated," Kev said.
      The movie mainly focuses on the farcial antics of the Royals with Gulliver. At one point the King--who, like Dumbya and his teleprompter, is incapable of giving a speech unless he's lipsynching to a record player--brings out the midgets. Gulliver looks wide-eyed at the finger-sized Lilliputians and says disbelievingly, "You have dwarves?!" which actually was pretty funny. The impossibly tiny dwarves march about, but one falls out of step and is beaten by the Prime Minister. "You beat your own people?!" seethes Gulliver. The seeds of REVOLT have been sown! The Royals plot to kill Gulliver while he sleeps and also draws flies like a bowl of borscht that's sat too long in the sun.
      And, yeah, that's what happens. Claymation Communist Revolution. The plot of the standard Gulliver tale is the war between Lilliput and its enemy, which is going to be fought over which end of a soft-boiled egg you should open to eat it: The little end or the big end. It's a satire on the oft-times pointlessness of war. Here, it's an allegory for the moral necessity of the Workers rising against the Monarchy. Cute lil' Workers lure the cute lil' Monarchists into a field of cute lil' landmines and blow them to cute lil' bits. The workers march on the Palace, which also draws flies. How'd they miss the flies in a stop-motion segment? Should'nt the flies at this point be getting billing in the credits?
      It was totally entertaining, both from the weirdness angle as well as its actual story. The effects are great for a 1935 movie. And there's 2 more films to go by this director, Aleksandr Ptushko! Next week is 1946's The Stone Flower, and the Sunday after that is Sadko. MST3K viewers will remember this as The Magic Voyage of Sinbad--"I want a Sampo!" Watching that get MySTed made me think "I'll bet that this was originally a damn good movie, before it got edited and dubbed into crap." We'll see! And on the Big Screen, too! And the same theater is showing the third part of the Koyaanisquatsi Trilogy soon!
      Then I got home and discovered that it was now IMPOSSIBLE to get into dialup. "Incorrect Password." Apparently, Kevin making that new connection somehow ported my new password into my dialup connection, or something equally noncoincidental. Since I don't remember the dialup password, that was the end of my Interent experience for Sunday.
      So I watched Powatsqui. I'm a huge fan of the first movie, which I won't try to describe to because it's beyond description. It has striking images with a powerful Philip Glass soundtrack and no dialogue. The title means "Life Out of Balance" in the Hopi language. And that's the clear message that you get: Americans have replaced Nature with Technology, rather than balancing them out. Ten minutes into my first viewing of it, I said "Why am I watching this?'" Twenty minutes in, I couldn't pull my eyes away from it. It's hypnotic, but I found myself lost not in the mindless brainfeeding that most Visual Product gives, but lost in my thoughts about what I was watching. It's a surprisingly emotional movie in a ...purely logical sense...Err, okay, I said it was indescribable.
      Powatsqui is set entirely in the Third World, and it's about...umm, "Life is Balancing Shit on Your Head." Not really. But there's a lot of people...balancing shit on their heads. Big loads of heavy looking stuff. The startling opening image is a crowd of workers painfully crawling up a hill of mud, carrying on their backs and heads big sacks of what looks like more mud. Close-ups of their straining faces as they carry their loads in sweltering heat, then a long shot: The workers going up the hill of mud with their full bags, the workers with empty bags scurrying down the hill, darting between the orderly lines of those going up. Ants on an anthill is the inescapable thought. But there was no payoff, no longer shot where we saw why the hell they were dragging bags of mud up a hill of mud in order to dump the mud, and go back down for more mud. Or was that the payoff? They're hauling mud to make a mountain of mud. Sisyphus carries coals to Newcastle.
      Or not. The title is translated as "Life in Transistion." I wondered if this was going to be Rousseau's lame "Noble Savage" conceit, but it wasn't. There were scenes of towering buildings and pollution, but there was no indication that this was some fall from grace. I thought, "Man, I'm glad I don't live in some 100-story Singapore apartment complex, but I'd take that over carrying sacks of mud and washing myself in a river other people are shitting in." About as close to a message as I could personally get was, "It sucked to live in the Third World when it was primitive and low-tech, and it's going to suck in a different way when it's all high-tech." I guess that I need to see it a second time. It does have the best score that Philip Glass has ever done. A lot of Philip Glass sounds like a lot of Philip Glass, but he blends in some World Beat elements, and it's great.
      The Magic Green Light blinked on the modem at midnight, and I had DSL. I marveled at the difference between 28kps and100mps. Then I went to beds.
      And woke up at 430AM. I threw spaghetti at Kill Kill. (Her first toy was my ponytail elastics--I'd shoot them like rubber bands, and she'd chase and sometimes fetch. She ignores them now, except for a pair that had broken. No longer a loop, but a long strand. And those 2 are the most fun to a-t-t-a-c-k!! For some reason, these are the toy of the Paris Fall Season among the fashionable cats, so I've been converting the loops to spaghettis with my Swiss Army Spork)
      I watched the giant candy-corn colored Moon set on the horizon. You can actually see it move when it's that close to the edge of the Earth...
      Crawled back to bed around 8 for some fitful sleep. I got up to go walk in the woods, which I mention only because the 4-letter S-word is already being used: snow. It's October! The leaves haven't fallen! It didn't snow until late January last Winter!
      I'm not wishing for Global Warming. GW is causing this. In 1995, we had the worst drought in 30 years over the Summer. By September, the skies broke open and the rain came. We were 15 inches below normal rainfall then; by New Years' Eve, we were a few inches above normal. The Worst Drought was followed by the All-Time Greatest Snowfall that Winter. I dread what's coming next...I mean, does it LOOK like tomorrow there should be snow here?!

      Wow, look at what's here in the mail already! King Kong Lives! Maybe more later.

      Big Bird brings out the kooks: "I came onto some information on a flying animal called a Pteradon, which is of the Pteradactyl family. These animals are thought to be extict [sic] over 150,000 years ago." 150,000 years, 65 million, whatever. No less reasonable than the guy who thinks it's a "Northern Ice Dragon."

10/22

       I should've known better than to try to watch King Kong Lives after a night of disrupted sleep. Half an hour into it I went out like I'd been hit with monkey tranquilizers. I was disoriented enough to believe that I was going to go to bed for the night. And sleep for 16 hours straight. I lasted 3.
       So I surfed and played spaghetti-toss. I came across Mike From The UK's page, which has this cut&paste parody of some crap comic strip called Sabrina Online. The original's like a blander Gonterman. The art's okay, if you like slavish copying of Don Bluth. It's sorta like Cathy, except she's a skunk and her office makes furry porn. Hey, I said it was like Gonterman!
       (Actually, further searching into this confuses me...Mike seems to be mentioned on the official Sabrina site. Maybe he really likes the strip. Umm, I don't. Decide for yourself, I guess. In the meantime, I'll email Mike and prly be back here tomorrow explaining what a dork I am.)
       Speaking of the Master, Daveykins enters Ferd'nand territory. "FAH!...And do you see that vapor trail? UGH! It looks like a--" "JAMIE, SHUSH." My, but that's a lot to say as a bullet hurtles towards you from 10 feet away. Why would it have a vapor trail? Is it rocket-powered? And what's the Bad Thing that it looks like? After much staring, maybe it looks like it's trailing sperm inside a magic floating condom, if you squint real hard while beating yourself with a flaming tire iron. But Jamie's 9 years old! Why would she be thinking about stuff like that? I think that the DYS might want to prevent Jamie from having any more sleepovers at her creepy Uncle Davey's place...

       The other thing I bought at Best Buy was a radio. Since it looks like I'm not immediately leaving the Store, I wanted to get a replacement for my old one. It was bought at--you guessed it--BIG!Lots. It was supposed to be a weather alert radio, the kind that starts automatically when the weather service sends out a bulletin about thunderstorms or tornados or flying monkey shit storms. Instead, it went off when they sent out the regular robot-voiced forecast--every 6 minutes. It was like having Steven J. Hawkings with an airhorn in the corner of the room. HONNNK! "The National Weather Service predicts the heat-death of the Universe in 8 trillion years! Slight chance of frost overnight in the normally colder valleys!"
      So it became the Store radio. It can't tune in anything accurately, and it makes this weird, loud noise at random. It sounds like someone ate a big bowl of static too fast and then belched. But now it's been replaced with an RCA clock radio. It's literally ass-backwards, as the speakers faces the opposite direction of the clock, but it has digital tuning. I was able to listen to my favorite Ambient radio show today, for the first day that wasn't a vacation day in five years! One of the reasons I stopped buying music is because I stopped being exposed to the style I like. But now I may buy Lemon Jelly based on today's show. They're like an odder version of the Orb. Yeah, you don't care, but I do.

       Via Karl: "WE ARE THE SPACE ROBOTS. WE ARE HERE TO PROTECT YOU FROM THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE."

      An update tomorrow is either unlikely or going to come past your puny first-shift bedtime.
       I'm going to SCOTTIE'S!

10/23

      I figure that sometime during the workday I should grab something to eat before I head over to Scott's and start boozing (or "devil's blooding," as the case may be). I'll prly go to Pizza Turk, as I can just yell my order in while still keeping an eye on the Store. I notice that on their menu they offer under "FRIED SEAFOOD" such delicacies as "Fish Flounder" (as opposed to what, Hippo Flounder?) and "Fish Had." Fish had what? A good workout at the Gym Flounder? A Merry Christmas and a Happy Fish Year? Or is this some mutant crossbreeding of Shad and Haddock? Or is it a roly-poly Fish Had?

      Yesterday I received a surprise in the mail--An invitation to my 25th high school reunion. First thought: "I haven't gone to any of them! Why are they wasting their time?" Second thought: "How the hell did they find me?!" My parents moved right after the 10th reunion, so by the next reunion their mail forwarding would've expired. I've had no contact with anybody from hell school, so they couldn't've found it that way, either. There's even another William A Young living in this same complex! In fact, there was a list of 32 people that they couldn't find, and I was the last name on it.
      However they found me, they still wasted a stamp. Back then, I hated high school, hated my classmates, hated myself, hated my life. Worst years of my life. The only way I'd go to my reunion is with a sackfull of grenades.
      But I was amused by the picture in the flyer. It was taken of the entire senior class. It was the only day of the schoolyear that the senior class had 100% attendance. But you'd have to squint very closely at that picture to notice that it had 99.9% attendance. One senior refused to participate...And I still intend to stay out of that picture.

      What weird things have you eaten?

      Wakboth in Finland asks: "Please write more nice things about Finland, and, if possible, about Amiga-using cartoon skunks." Well, we're still in the research phase on Sabrina Online, but here's an interesting (if abruptly-ending) story about Finnish IRCers tracking down the identity of a nut who bombed a mall before the cops did.

      Kirk tells me that I could've done worse with my clock radio purchase. "But… jeez. Your clock shouldn’t lie to you."

      As Salvador Dali said, "While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one." And that's my cue to go to bed. G'night.

10/25

      I don't have anything, but I don't like going more than a day without a post...
      So...
      Umm...
      ...Nice baseball weather, huh?

      2 interesting spam title lines:
      "I would xjcpvxk if you'd let me"
      "Fawn A Bigger, Better Hammer"
      Not interesting enough for me to read them, but it beats "FURRY BARNYARD ANIMAL RAPERS!!!!!"

      This Ebert review of Seinfeld's new movie seems a lot more insightful than the actual film

      Since I have nothing much, here's a part of an IM conversation I had tonight:

Kevin Sartori says:
Hey, I downloaded version 5.0 of Messenger.  It just came out.
Looks a little nicer and sounds cooler, but that's it.
Bill says:
I may download it just to stop the nag window, poika.  That means "boy" in Finnish!
Bill says:
I'm gonna say "OH POIKA!" from now on.
Kevin Sartori says:
Every day I learn something new.  Some things more useful than others.
Bill says:
Some guy in Finland wrote me.  Did you that in Finland,
you start learning English in the 3rd grade?
  This is because "Finnish is useless everywhere except in Finland."
Kevin Sartori says:
Wow, imagine the nationwide low self esteem that kind of thinking must lead to.
Bill says:
He said in his 1st email that the Finns "suffer from a national insignificance problem."
Bill says:
But it's true; the Finoo-Ugric language group has no other languages remotely like it.
Bill says:
Finno-Ugric
Kevin Sartori says:
Hmmn, where the fuck is Finland exactly anyway?
Bill says:
It's near Willimantic.
Kevin Sartori says:
Ah, that makes sense.
Bill says:
By the Thread Factory and the Frog Bridge.
Kevin Sartori says:
Oh, where the Populous Pudding used to be?
Bill says:
NO!
Bill says:
That's ESTONIA.
Kevin Sartori says:
OOOhhh, damn, that's right...
Bill says:
You have to ask for the upstairs neighbors if you want Fi9nland!
Bill says:
FINland.
Kevin Sartori says:
But only if you speak Finnish...
Bill says:
Thick fingers tonight.
Kevin Sartori says:
Yeah, right, you're just giving them a real workout with the full motion porn you can now download.
Thank you DSL!
Kevin Sartori says:
http://www.freebigmovies.com/
Bill says:
(wipes screen off)  I'm sorry, I missed that last bit.  I was looking at a Russian 
FURRY BARNYARD RAPERS site--err, the Library of Congress!
Bill says:
OH, and we just HAPPENED TO HAVE THAT URL AT HAND.
Bill says:
ONE hand, that is
Kevin Sartori says:
C'mon, dude, you know the Polish do that barnyard stuff best.
Kevin Sartori says:
You "beat" me to the hand joke...
Bill says:
Don't  "pull" that on me!
Bill says:
Heh!  "Girl" in Finnish is "tytto"!
Bill says:
TYTTO, GEDDIT?!
Kevin Sartori says:
I actually ran across that site when I first got DSL when looking for "free movies".
I wasn't too knowledgable about that yet.
Bill says:
BECUZ GIRLZ HAV TITTOS!!!
Bill says:
TOO OF THEM!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
Tivo?
Bill says:
D00D THAT NOT TIVO THAt ARE TITTIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
Wow, that's scary.  You do the 13 year old really well.
Bill says:
DUMASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
You must talk to a lot of them.
Bill says:
YOR MOMMA AND A HORSE DICK!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!
Bill says:
WTF?!?!?!
Kevin Sartori says:
Roll on the floor laughing my ass off.  You've really never seen that before?
Bill says:
I AM A l33T HAX0R!
Kevin Sartori says:
It took me a second the first time I saw it too.
Bill says:
I SAW TRON ONCE IT WAS GAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
    (happy face icon)
Bill says:
    (randomly chosen icons from the IM menu)
WTF?!
Kevin Sartori says:
My first computer was a Pentium II, what a piece of shit!
Bill says:
U R SO GAY!  U SHUOLD GETS A TANDY THEY R ROXIN
Bill says:
FUKC IT HURTS TO THINK THIS WAY
Bill says:
*whew*
Bill says:
(light bulb icon)
Kevin Sartori says:
I'm almost done soldering my Timex Sinclaire 1000 on to my Atari VCS
(you're fucking lame if you call it a 2600).
Bill says:
I BUILDED A LITE BULB!!!!!!!!!!!  FUK U ALBERT EDISON!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
That's about the funniest fucking thing you've ever said.
Bill says:
WELL I MADE A COLECO ADAM INTO A DOOMDAY WEPPON TO BLOWS UP IRAQ !!!!!!!!!!
I BET BUSH HIRE ME TO HAX0R THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
Well, everything was cool until my data cassette on my ADAM erased my Doomsday program...
Bill says:
ALBERT EDISON ASLO INVENTD THE E=MC2, WHICH I CAN ALSO PROV IS SHIT!!
E=*E*! NR GENIUSS!!!  DUH!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
NR MEANS "NO REALLY" WICH I ASLO JUST INVENTD!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
WHOOS THE GENUIS NOW EDISON!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
Dude, stop, you're killing me.
Bill says:
AND YOR STUPID LIGHHTBULB WICH IS *SOOO GREEEAT* GOES OFF WHEN YOU SHUT FRIGERATER DOOR! 
i KNOW CUZ I SPENT A HOLE NIGHT SLEEPO9ING IN THEIR TO MAKE SURE!!!!
Bill says:
IT GOT STUFFY.
Bill says:
THE DOCTRO SAID IT MAKE MY HEAD FUNNY,
Bill says:
FULL OF SHITT!!!!!!!!!!  THAT DOCTOR!   I FIT IN REAL GOOD ON CHAT ROOMS
Bill says:
DID U HEER BRITNEYS NEW SINGEL
Bill says:
IT IS VERRY DEEP
Kevin Sartori says:
YEH, I GOT IT OFF KAZAA.
Bill says:
LIK HER BOOBS!!!!
Bill says:
lol
Bill says:
WAIT I SPELD THAT LAST BIT WRONG
Bill says:
LOL
Bill says:
THATS BETER
Kevin Sartori says:
SHE COULD REFORMAT MY HARD DRIVE ANY TIME!!!!  RIGHT!
Bill says:
YEH AND THEN I INSERT MY DVD IN TO HER SLOT!!!!!
Bill says:
AND PRESS PLAY
Kevin Sartori says:
YEAH, BUT DUDE, SHE CAN'T PLAY MINIDISC.
Bill says:
SHE WOOD WITH ME!  MY DISC IS SOOOO MINI!
Bill says:
WWAIT I TAKE THAT BACK IT CAMES OUT WRONG
Bill says:
MY DISC IS...
Bill says:
LARGE FORMAT!
Kevin Sartori says:
DOOD, IF I HAD HER IN MY BEDROOM AND MY PARANTS WERENT HOME, I FUCK HER BUT!
Kevin Sartori says:
RIGHT!
Bill says:
bUT WHAT?
Kevin Sartori says:
THEN I'D MAKE HER LICK MY ASS. AND SING.
Bill says:
I FUK HER NO BUTS ABOUT IT
Bill says:
D00D THATS JUS SICK!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
HEY, THAT'S MY GIRL YOUR TALKIN ABOUT!
Bill says:
I SEED HER FIRST!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
NO WAY, DOOD, i WAS INTO HER WAAAAAAYYYYYY BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD PUBES!
Kevin Sartori says:
D00D.
Bill says:
BUT I TRAVELD IN TIME TO BEFORE U WHERE BORNED AND I FUCK HER MOMMY
AND SHES ACSHUALLY MY DAUGHTER SO I GET FIRST CALL ON HER!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
YEH, BUT YOU SHOULD LISSEN TO YOUR DAD, CUT YOUR DAD IS IMPOTANT
AND I WENT BACK IN TIME AND DIKKED YOUR MOM AND SHE HAD YOU.  beeeeeAAAAAACHCHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
sUCK oN tHAT!
Bill says:
D00D U R FUKECD IN THE HEAD!!!!!!!!!!  THATS MY MOM AND NOT BRITNYS
WE'RE TALKING ABOT!!!! 
AND U WANT TO SUCK ON MY DAD SO WHOSE THE PREVERT HERE?!?!?!
I GIVE U HINT HIS NAME IS--
Bill says:
YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
I ASLO WENT BAK IN TIME AND KILT YOR GRANFATHER SO U DON'T EVEN EXIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(long pause on Kevin's end)

Bill says:
SEE?
Kevin Sartori says:
WOW, D00D, YOU SEEEM REAL, LIKE, OBSESSSED WITH ME AND SHIT.  aRE YOU LIKE GAY OR SOMETHING?
cUZ THAT GIRL CINDI SAID THAT YOU WANTED HERE TO STICK HER THUM IN YUR ASS.
Kevin Sartori says:
sORRY, D00D, BUT UM, I DON'T LUV YOU.  NICE TRY.
Bill says:
U MORON U CANT EVEN SPEL THUM!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
"THUMB"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
YOU WOULD KNOW, POINDECKSTERR.
Bill says:
YEH WELL U PRLY REED NEWSPAPRS AND SHIT!   ALBERT EDISON!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
FUK YOU!  I'M NOT SMART!
Bill says:
YEH WELL IM A GENUIS BUT ONLY IN THE STREET SMART WAY NOT SUM BUKWORM!!!!!!!!!!
Bill says:
I LERNED AT THE SCHULE OF HARD KNOCKS!!!!!!!!!!!
AND ASLO I WATCJH THE MTV U CAN LERNS LOTS THAT WAY
Bill says:
LIK HOW TO GET BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kevin Sartori says:
All right, dude, I think we've thoroughly lost what our characters are supposed to be...
Bill says:
MY HEA--err, my head hurts now.
Bill says:
In Finland, they learn English in the 3rf grade!
Kevin Sartori says:
I can't think of the last time I laughed that hard.  You really have it down.
Bill says:
Yeah, I'm down.  I'm like--the BASEMENT of humor!
Bill says:
Wait, do over!
Bill says:
I'm....
Bill says:
Nevermind.
Kevin Sartori says:
Yeah, like the Nirvana album!  That's you, man.
Bill says:
I tried that once.
Bill says:
The baby bit the dollar, and I spent a month in jail.

      Dino de Laurentiis on a possible sequel to his 1976 version of King Kong:
      "I am think about. Maybe I am no do. But I tell-a you what ingenuity we plan and you tell me what you think. Kong-a lay dead, and how you say--scientist come apart, and Kong come like Frunkensteen--you know Frunkensteen--and he come crazy bad. He kill everyone. And Dwan [Jessica Lange] is now a big time movie star and she say, 'Hey, Kong, remember me?' She jumps in his hand, he picks her up, put her to his face, smile and then...WOMP, he eat her! You like?"
      --from The Golden Turkey Awards

      I'm making a second attempt at watching King Kong Lives.
      It opens with the closing scenes of King Kong, Dino de Laurentiis version. Kong is not a O'Brian stop-motion effect; he is Rick Baker in a monkey suit. He climbs the World Trade Center with former model and future ex-actress Jessica Lange in hand. He steps on the Observation Deck and squishes Tourist Guy. Ha ha! Tourist Guy! How 2001 of me! Fakey helicopter gunships fly up and shoot Kong with fakey miniguns (which go "squeak clik clik clik!" when they move). He spurts blood and falls nice and slow like a Macy's Parade Balloon. "OOH!" says ...you know...that guy...Jeff Bridges, yeah! He has so much 70s facial hair that it makes Kong look like he bathes in Nair. SPLAT! Kong on the ground; enough ground Kong to make a million Kongburgers. And he dies...
      Or DOES he?!.
      At the "Atlanta Institute in Georgia" (I'm sure that Kim performs as Dr Frunk N. Steen near there), King Kong is in the GAICU (well, they don't call it that, but it's like a regular ICU except it's only for Giant Apes). They've been keeping him in the ICU for TEN YEARS.
      So...One wonders about the pitch for this idea. "He was a giant rampaging menace! Can I keep him? He followed me home. I was on the elevator going 'down' at the WTC at the time, but he pretty much followed me. Straight down. And very very fast. And he'll be on life support, GIANT MONKEY LIFE SUPPORT, for TEN YEARS. I'll pay for that with my paper route!"
      "It's not his heart;" says surgeon and odd-looking nonactress Linda "Thank Gott for Schwarzenegger" Hamilton, "that damn thing runs like a Swiss watch. It's his blood. It got all squirty when the minguns fired, and got all floody when he fell 110 stories. Were you in NYC that Summer when the sewers were backed up with giant monkey blood? Hoo-WHEE, talk about your smells! Everyone had to stick Tampax up their nostrils!".
      Hmm. We're 5 minutes into the movie, and I've already typed more than I did about Bad Guys. And I'm already making Tampax jokes. Let's call this "Part One of the King Kong Lives Review."
      At this point--crap, this is twice I've forgotten his name and had to check the box--International Hollywood MegaSuperStar Hunk "Brian Kerwin" appears as a lovable rogue. "Brian Kerwin" appears (whom I will continue to call "Brian Kerwin," as he is no more "Brian Kerwin" than I am a SOUL-STEALING LIZARD ALIEN DAVID-ICKE MAN or as the Galactic Council calls them "the KERWIN,", which ONE of us REALLY IS. BUT I'M NOT THE LIZARD MAN, and THAT WAS YOUR HINT AS TO THE IDENTITY OF WHICH OF US IS).
      He is currently talking to his ass. "Bitch bitch bitch! If it weren't for me," he says to his ass, "You candy-asses would still be in Aguira (sp?) So quit your bitchin' and come on!" Does his ass come? Yes, as also does his other donkey.
      I would've thought that a donkey would be more at home in the Grand Canyon than the unidentified sweaty jungle that "Brian Kerwin's" in. His clothes are sweat-stained and dirty, but he looks like he just got a facial and feather-cut at HairPort, the Tri-Town area's regional hair salon. (local radio jingle: "HairPort! It's near the Airport!")
      "OLE MITCH IS GOING FOR A SNOOZE!" announces "Brian" as he attempts to persuade us that he is not a "Kerwin." He pulls a boa constrictor out of his leafy bed! Apparently, it's one of those baby boa constrictors that spends its days smoking opium, as it don't move much. Or at all. "Mr de Laurentiis--There's no Purina Snake Chow in your budget!" "Feeda de SNAKE? Dino no pay for-a feeda SNAKE! When he croak-a, make Dino a nice belt-a!"
      And where does "Kerwin" choose to snooze? Why, where else but the palm of--QUEEN KONG! Her giant REALLY fakey hand tries to grab and hopefully squish "Brian Kerwin," but sadly--she fails. "Holy SHIT," opines "Kerwin." "WHO YOU CALLIN' SHIT?!?!" is her reaction, and she shows off her tiny titties. Yes, she has boobies. "Good boy!" says "Kerwin" to her breasts, and there's another race between him and her fakey-fake hand. At one point, the hand's "skin" flops around like a used Monchichi rubber. Then, out of nowhere, or more accurately directly out of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a bunch of South American jungle natives magically appear and shoot Queen Kong with darts from their blowguns. Naturally, the blowguns are 3 feet long and the "darts" are about TEN feet long. (Hmm, I wonder if there's going to be as big a problem with scale in this movie as there was in 1933's Kong. One guesses "DAMN STRAIGHT, PARDNER!") "Don't! Stop! You'll kill her!" "Kerwin" yells, having seen the effects of tranquilizers on Boody the Boa Body a minute earlier. Then he says "OOGLY BOOGLY WAWA MANOS! YO YO MA OOGEDY BOOGEDY!" That's Native Jungle Blowgunner language! Then Queen Kong falls, landing right on top of "Kerwin," crushing his human body. The audience cheers! But then the audience awakens to find that it was ALL A DREAM! "Kerwins" still stalk the Earth, and possess the bodies of the LIVING!!
      (Side note to guy who Googled this for "bathroom gnats that are red in color when squished"--Read all 50 or so of The News. The Secret to your Mystical Gnat-Squishing Quest Lies Within!!)
      Negotiations begin with Linda and the GAICU. "I ain't interested in selling PLASMA!" yelps "Kerwin" into a field radio, from his jungle base of South American blowdarters and fat Jamaican women that shave him. "I wanna sell the WHOLE DAMN MONKEY!"
      Now, we live in a world where "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" became a catch phrase that was brilliant in its brevity: Only 4 short words that enabled everyone in a public gathering place to focus in on one loudmouthed white dipshit yelling the phrase, and think "What a clever and loudmouthed dipshit that honky is!" The many man-hours saved by this "Jerry McGiggles" (starring Tom "Carnival" Cruise) dipshit-identifying catchphrase was the only thing that saved our nation from bankruptcy when the Beanie Babies market fell through. It also cut down on the amount of time that it took non-whites to learn which whites were all tardy-headed! So why don't we, as a nation, as a people, as a bunch of retards nodding our heads about invading Iraq, simply embrace the coming collapse of the economy and scream "I wanna sell the WHOLE DAMN MONKEY!" as our catchy catch-phrase when we have to sell all our possessions and then fight over the remaining refrigerator boxes? It'll really take the edge off when Israel and Iraq start trading their Pokemon cards! "I pick--NERVE GAS!" "I pick--RAIN OF ATOMIC WARHEADS!"
      "I wanna sell the WHOLE DAMN MONKEY! You want JUST my canned corn?! What about my old coat, and my mutated 3-headed child? I wanna sell the WHOLE DAMN MONKEY! And I won't settle for less than FIFTY aspirin!"
      Okay, this is getting strange. And it's late. More later.
      Make this "Part One Of Many of the King Kong Lives Reviews."

10/27

      I was supposed to go see another Ptushkin movie today, but Kevin had to bail because of family obligations and I don't feel like going by myself. It's the least interesting-sounding of the 3 films anyway. So I guess that I'll bask in the hideous glory that is King Kong Lives again.
      Mind you, all that typing last night represented only 15 minutes of this crowning achievement in filmmaking. Yes, it's that chockfull of goodness nuggets. If goodness nuggets were peanuts, this is a Snickers bar of goodness. For, as we all know, Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies! The same could be said of your poop the morning after eating too many Snickers bars, which is prly a better metaphor in this case.
      First dialogue nugget peanut: LINDA "Man, but I got big lips!" HAMILTON: "Sir, we're not lancing a hemorrhoid here! We're replacing a heart!" What? Kong's "Swiss watch" heart you said was perfect FIVE MINUTES AGO? Call 911 to the Continuity Police! And, Linda, this movie really IS like a hemorrhoid lancing. (I checked my Pocket Websters to make sure I was spelling that right. Websters' definition of Hemorrhoids: "Piles." Definition of Piles: "Hemorrhoids." "Pus-filled ass blisters" is not in the dictionary)
      I'm going to write a Film Noir and have the detective's name be "Lance Hemorrhoid, P.I."
      "I've got Harvard on the other line!" says "Kerwin." And what if the operation fails? "Then another university will have the only living ape!" direly warns a nameless guy in a labcoat. Yes, how the halls of academe compete to have their giant monkeys. That's a really big draw for new students. "Hey, this dorm smells like a gorilla farted in here!" "Well, close the window then!"
      "Kerwin" sells his WHOLE MONKEY! He hugs the fat Jamaican women who's been shaving him throughout the phone call. "Kerwin" isn't allowed to handle sharp objects, I guess. But her hand slips when he grabs her, and the straight razor slices his fool haid off quicker than you can say "Nicole Simpson." Oh, wait, it doesn't. I was just having a little fantasy here.
      A cargo plane full of monkey lands. Unsurprisingly, the cargo plane is about 1/3 the size of the ape. Hilarious peanuts from the dialogue toilet: REPORTER: "How did you get the monkey out of the jungle?" "KERWIN": "I left a trail of bananas!" Uproarious laughter! REPORTER: "Are you planning on breeding her?" "KERWIN": "You mean personally?" Reporters ROTFL! REPORTER: "Can I nail-gun your fucking head to the tarmac?" "KERWIN": "Be my guest, it's not like I'm using it for anything!" KA-CHUNK! goes the nail gun! LINDA "My head is shaped like a shoebox with a Dolly Parton wig on it" HAMILTON: "Where'd he get that hat, Camp Beverly Hills?" BILL: "WTF was THAT supposed to mean?"
      "Okay, let's get to work!" says Dr Hamilton. Yes, it's that moment we've been waiting for, open heart giant ape surgery with comically oversized medical equipment! Paging Doctor Prop Comic! An IV bag the size of a sleeping bag! A tray of instruments that includes giant clamps and pruning shears and salad tongs! A big ol' artificial heart that is so big ol' that it's clearly out of scale with Kong! The world's biggest electric bonesaw! With a big warning label that says "Keep fingers or hands or any part of your person away from blade for any reason. This is the world's biggest warning label!" The beachball-sized cotton swabs on loan from the Ripley's Believe it or Not Odditorium!! The world's biggest machine that goes "PING!"
      A giant claw machine pulls Kong's Swiss watch heart out, and drops it in a big bin marked "PURINA DOG CHOW." Phrase heard the most in the Operation (the Goofy Game for Dopey Giant Ape Doctors): "More suction!" Girlfriend, this movie defines the word "suction." The artificial heart (World's Biggest) goes into Kong, and the screen turns dramatically black...Then...KONG PARTY! Those crazy Atlanta Institute kids go "Kong Krazy," jumping around while waving signs like "Kute! Kuddly! Kissable! KONG!" and "Kong is a real swinger!" and "I (heart) Kong You Fay" and "With a Smile and a 'Kong'" and "Hey Kong Lets Monkey Around" and "I was Kong's Love Slave" (NOT making these up, folks) and "God I'm Such a Friggin' Dork" and other things that those "groovy" college "cats" from the "in crowd" might "say" about "this!" These kids are sooo lucky to be going to a school where a giant homicidal ape can escape at any time and trample them all!
      Dialogue peanut: UNNAMED DOCTOR, by Kong's bedside: "That horny son of a bitch! He smells the female from a mile away!" Woo, HOT MONKEY SEX! Kong rips out the various comically-oversized tubes going into his body, and begins jumping up and down to get out and find him some lovin'. It's only 3 days since the operation, but miraculously, there's NO SCAR on his chest. And all the fur's grown back. He's got a mutant healing factor, just like Wolverine! He should form the X-Apes!
      They decide to move Lady Kong (as they call her) to a place where Kong can't sniff her butt. Do they sedate her? No, they use handcuffs (World's Biggest) and bulldozers to corral her while the Atlanta Police turn up with a Jeep with a .50-caliber machine gun. There's certainly no way that this can go wrong! And who's watching Kong? Max Lansky! Wow, that's as cool a name as Lance Hemorrhoid! ONE cop is watching Kong. Who escapes. Or, in the witty dialogue peanut, "The other monkey's going apeshit!" AH-HAHAHA!! Algonquin Round Table, eat your (giant monkey) heart out! Wait, you can't! Dogs are eating it from cans of Purina!
      Kong SMASH! He breaks into the warehouse where the future Mrs Kong is being held, and in standard bad movie style, everyone runs--in opposite directions. One would think that they'd run in ONE direction, ie, "away from giant berserk monkey," but nooo. And for no reason, apparently the warehouse doubles as a parking garage, as there are immediately several high-speed car crashes inside. Including the classic "A-Team/Dukes truck flying off a hidden ramp" stunt. One car rolls over by itself and bursts into flame. Suuure it does, right from the transaxle. Thousands die every year in transmission fluid-related spontaneous combustion. "DOZERS TAKE HIM DOWN!" yells the Chief of Police. The bulldozers move in, but "Kerwin" knocks one driver out. Why? Who the fuck knows. This causes a dozer/car crash. Kong himself--after making a big smiley love-at-first-ape-sight face at Lady Kong while sappy romantic music plays and this sentence is way too long and poorly structured--tips a dozer on its side. It bursts into flames. Damn that transmission fluid! Then, a soldier falls over and his pants burst into flame. Linda Hamilton's lips explode on impact, and this is how the band "The Flaming Lips" got its start.
      As their lunch break ends, the cops with the .50-cal decide to finally take action. They blaze away but did they count on "Kerwin," the Least Action Hero? He crashes a car...again with the cars, again with crashing, crash crash crash, burn burn burn...Will no one think of the children? He hits the jeep with such force that he should be killed...but again...he doesn't...the "Kerwin," they are indestructable..."MORE SUCTION!"
      Okay, that's enough. And that was only another 20 minutes of peanutty goodness.

Sorry, Googlers. Despite what Google's led you to believe, this page does not have any info about "romantic dates for biker bitch."

10/28

      "He has weapons of mass destruction and uses poison gas on his own people!" Guess that we have to invade Russia now...

      The Realistic Internet Simulator.

      "More and more of our imports come from overseas": The Wit and Wisdom of Dubya.

      Meanwhile, back at the monkey...
      The Kongs get away. Mr K picks up Mrs K and carries her, no idea why. So, does anyone follow them? Isn't the police force responding to all this destruction, gunfire, car crashes and "Kerwin"? NOPE. Two 50-foot-tall apes saunter away in the tiny rural town of ATLANTA, and no one sees where they go. Or smells where they go, as we've already been told how their love-juices can be sniffed a mile away.
      I didn't mention how Linda and the "Kerwin" have hated each other right from the start. This being a Bad Movie, if they knock heads now, they're guaranteed to be knockin' boots later. They team up to find their lost apes, after Linda forces "Kerwin" off the road with her SUV. "How far are you gonna get," she asks, "in your Rent-A-Wreck?" PAUSE. Long, artificial pause for the audience to wipe the tears of laughter from their eyes. Over the hi-larious Rent-A-Wreck joke. Even Ferd'nand shakes his head in disbelief.
      The Army has sealed off the little-known backwater town of Atlanta, and black helicopters fly by (supposedly the Army's, but they're the crop-dusting kind). The General in charge of the monkey hunt has vowed "to shoot the first civilian to cross the perimeter," which is kind of inexplicable. Are people smuggling monkey guns to the--wait for it--guerrillas? Haha! They're gorillas! Get it? Fuck you. Is he only going to shoot the first civilian? Can "Kerwin" go first?
      Uh oh, there's a reason why those choppers are cropdusters--the General is planning to use knockout gas on the apes. NO WAY THAT COULD FAIL! Thank you, General Putin! "The enemy will be easy to spot," he says. "They're approximately 50 feet tall and wearin' their birthday suits!" The apes will be safe if they hide out at a nudist colony for basketball players.
      And where are our monkeys? On "Honeymoon Ridge." Are you gagging yet? Oh, you will, as sappy goofy music plays. Kong offers Lady a tree to eat, and she playfully grabs a different tree! Then Kong reaches into a cave--near Atlanta--and pulls out a FUCKING BOA CONSTRICTOR. The common Georgia peach-eating cave boa, right. Lady refuses the snake while Hanna-Barbera music plays. Then Kong shows her a big owie on his leg, and she washes the wound. And here I have to give Rick Baker's monkey suits due credit--They actually have a full range of facial expression. The dialogue consists of "ARRRGHH!" but you can tell what the apes are supposed to be thinking and feeling, from love to annoyance to happiness. If only Baker had made Linda and "Kerwin" suits, the movie might be well-acted throughout.
      Linda avoids an Army roadblock by driving down a road right next to the roadblock that they didn't block. Smart thinkin' there, Army men! The Army shoots at them (Why?!). "I coulda used you in Borneo," says a pop-eyed Kerwin as she races through the woods, "If I wanted an early DEATH!" Yes, use her in Borneo! Hopefully during the film's preproduction!
      There's a scene where Linda sorta falls off of a bridge, which I won't go into detail about as it's exactly as exciting as catching a McNugget before it hits the dirty floor of the McDonald's. "Kerwin" gets an owie, and Linda dresses it--GET IT? It's like how Lady helped Kong! WOW, there are more layers in this movie than an Oreo! "You must be cold," he says. "Yes," she says, and takes her shirt off. "Your lips are on fire!" "Yes, " she says, and dunks her head in a bucket of gasoline.
      They find the Kongs immediately, via their superior tracking skills and the fact that giant apes yell "AAARRGGHH!" a lot. The Kongs settle in for a night of hot monkey sex--literally--and Linda and "Kerwin"...do the same. LINDA: "We're primates too!" Let me take a moment to comment on this scene:
      BAAAAARRRRFFF!!!
      Two GIANT HAIRY APES fucking like GIANT HAIRY RABBITS does NOT get me all steamy and horny! The only things that get me LESS horny would be "sex with a roadkill possum crawling with maggots" and "Sex with KERWIN."
      The Morning After, Kong is foraging when the helicopters come to spray Putin Gas. Huge roiling clouds of the gas. If it's strong enough to knock out a giant monkey, wouldn't it be strong enough to kill every living thing in the forest? The General already warned his men to all wear masks so the gas wouldn't get them. So as soon as Lady goes beddy-bye, they all RIP THEIR GAS MASKS OFF while HUGE CLOUDS OF GAS FLOAT AROUND THEM. The entire next scene is shot with the gas everywhere, including a close-up of the General with it blowing in his face. Kong sees Lady getting gassed, screams "Who gave my girlfriend ROOFIES?!" and rushes to her aid. MORE gas is dumped, all over the entirely maskless soldiers.
      Now would be a good time for me to point out that this movie is VERY RETARDED. Why did they specifically tell us that the Army could be knocked out by the gas, and then have a ten minute scene where they prance around in more gas than you'd find at a bean-eating contest but act like they were in an environment about as dangerous as the Ball Cage at Chuck E. Cheeses? All they had to do was put in line saying, "This gas only affects simians bigger than a house," and they'd have covered their asses. This is what you can only call "gratuitous stupidity." Stupidity for its own sake.
      They've captured Lady, so they want to kill Kong. I don't pretend to understand this crap any more. All Kong did in the movie was tear down one fuckin' wall. The only people who were hurt were the morons playing Demolition Derby in the warehouse. So the Army comes out in force, sprays gas everywhere, shoots grenades, sets the woods on fire with a flamethrower, and wants to blast Kong to pieces. But only the male Kong. Jesus Christ climbing the Empire State Building, but this makes no sense.
      Then it rains and Kong falls in a river and the current carries him until he bonks his Kong coconut on a rock. "Not even your KONG could survive that!" says the General of the Kong-conking rock. Dude, he fucking FELL OFF THE WTC and LIVED TO YELL "AARGGH!" ABOUT IT. A 110 story fall does NOT equal "hitting a rock at 2 miles an hour." It looked like the type of mortal injury that would make PJ cry in the Family Circus (MOM: "Who made this retarded sequel to a shit movie?" DINO: "NOT-A ME!")
      Meanwhile at the...
      ...at the...
      ...the "US ARMY SMALLFIELD DEPOT, SPECIAL CONTROL SECTION A GROUP, PRIMATE HOLDING DIVISION"...
      Christ.
      ...A truck of bananas goes into an underground bunker. It's the following Summer, and Lady is at the bottom of giant concrete silo. Where's PETA when you need them? Linda comes in with a letter from the Secretary of Defense, which evidentally lets her look at Lady for two minutes only once. Thanks for taking the time off your busy schedule to write THAT, Mr Secretary. The General (who's actually a Colonel) is very pissed about having to run a monkey jail, but he's also damn protective of his pointless assignment. "She senses something!" says Linda of Lady's groaning in misery. "She senses that she's in a crap movie! And that Kong's alive! And also trapped in this crap movie!" But how could Kong still be alive? By eatin' him some GATORS! "Now Amos Moses was a monkey, he live by himself in a swamp! He hunted alligators for his breakfast, he just womp'em in the haid with a stomp!" In the worst effect in the movie, Kong picks up a baby alligator which magically is a full-grown specimen in any camera shot that they don't share. He breaks its spine, to the utter horror of an onlooking bullfrog, and before you can say "I hope that they don't do the lame joke where he eats it, then burps," he eats it, and then burps. PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER.
      If you're one of those moviegoers who just can't get enough scenes where giant apes eat alligators, man, do I have the fuckin' rental for you. Kong's got a whole mouthful of (obviously adult and rubber) gators, and boy, do we ever get to see him chow down on gator corpses. Man, could I go for raw rubber gator tail right about now! Then Kong hears--through her giant underground bunker untold miles away--Lady scream for him. He smiles, then longingly, sadly, his smile slips away and he wishes they were together. The best acting in this is done by a man in a monkey suit, I can't stress that enough.
      As proof of that, the less evolved of the leading men returns from Borneo with a promise of a free-range monkey preserve. "Kerwin" is somehow unaware of the existence of Area 53, Primate Holding Division, and he tries to storm the place. Soldiers beat him up! Ooh, can I join the Army now, Special Primate-Holding Kerwin-Smacking Division? The Gener--err, Colonel--won't let anyone see the ape! But we were told that HE HATES THIS JOB! Wouldn't he WANT them to take the monkey to Borneo? Stupidity for its own sake again! Crap, I can't take anymore of this tonight.

10/29

      The closet door was talking to itself, so she asked it a question.
      The closet door gave no direct answer. So she asked it again, with greater determination: "Mew?"
      "Can't come out Kerwins will get me, Can't come out Kerwins will get me, Can't come out Kerwins will get me," muttered the voice behind the closet door.
      "EAOIWW!" insisted Kill Kill.
      "NO!" shrieked the voice behind the door. "No more monkey no more monkey! No more Army chase monkey! PEANUTS IN MY POOP! No KERWIN!!! No Linda no Linda, no nonononononono! PEEEEEANUUUTS!!!"
      "Yeowwwwrr!" Killsy insisted. "YEOWRR!"
      "'Best scene'?!" shrieked the voice in the closet. "There's no 'best scene' in this hemorrhoidal pile of piled hemorrhoids! I'm staying in this closet, under this blanket, with these mothballs, under these dead moths, wearing this gasmask, until that shitty movie is GONE!!!!!!!! PEANUTS--IN MY--POOOP! I only thought that it was funny, all those years ago when I saw it on TNT! From Atlanta! I was on drugs or something! IT SUCKS! THERE IS NO BEST SCENE!"
      "Aou yii yarrrr," shrugged the white cat with indifference, and casually, effortlessly jumped on the bed.
      The closet door opened a crack. "Did you say...ballcap?"
      Kill Kill smiled, quietly waltzed to her favorite corner of the bed, purred as she curled up, and went to sleep.
      The closet door opened wide. Empty tuna and beer cans fell out. "Ball...cap..." said the shambling, unshaven shell of a former human being. "Ball...cap..."

      The secret to Kong's acting ability seems to be his interchangable heads. There's a Mad Head, a Smiling Head and a Sad Head. He's using Sad Head now, listening to Lady scream "HAIRY! I want my husband, HAIRY!" (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, geddit? Hey, not my problem if you lack the deeper knowledge of American culture) "Fuck this shit!" says Kong of his swamp-hiding, gator-eating bachelor lifestyle, and heads out to find his true love. The shortest line between two points or giant apes is "Kate's Korner Cafe and Bait Place," beside a lake. A Crystal Lake, one could say.
      In a lakeside cabin, two horny teens are about to Get it ON! "You have the biggest, brownest bedroom eyes ever!" coos the male. And this means--KONG IN A JASON MASK! shoosh shoosh shoosh!! Or at least Kong sticking his head in the 1st story window, in a way that he could only do if his head was detached. Much like the brains of the director and screenwriter.
      The teens scream and run away. Katies Korner seems to be a cafe (and bait shop; don't order the sushi) and the single cabin. With a population of 500. Everyone instantly runs from the cafe in their pajamas (??), and...yes, just like in that warehouse scene...jump in the cars that were invisible earlier and race all over the place, usually in opposite directions. It's like those old Westerns--Whenever the two gunslingers were gonna have them a showdown on Main Street, everyone on the left side of the street ran to the right, and everyone on the right ran to the left. If two crazy bastards with guns are about to blast each other, the only logical thing to do is run right into their line of fire! We're given an extra treat: Since it's on a lake, other people jump in their boats and sail in random directions! Oh, if only there'd been a camel-riding academy at Kate's!
      Some crazy old scrawny bespectacled coot waves a shotgun around, causing the random runners to "comically" duck down. Actually, he looks like William S. Burroughs. He fires his shotgun in the air, because Kong interupted his naked lunch and made him spill his heroin.
      Kong does nothing throughout this scene. "HANG ON BABY! YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS!" says a guy and a gal who race a motorcycle between Kong's legs. Sadly, Kong does not pee on them. Kong finally shakes his head, and walks off obviously thinking "Christ. Dumbasses."
      "What is this, Deliverance?!" asks an Army guy the next morning. A flotilla of drunken good ol' boys is sailing after Kong like the Spanish Armada, or at least the Skoal-Spittin' Armada. "Are those guns loaded?" demands a soldier. "Yes sir, General!" says the Head Tardo, who, like everyone else in rural Georgia, has no trace of a Southern accent. "AND SO ARE WE!!" "You damn fools, you'll shoot yourselves!" Vince the Head Tardo yells "I want that damn ape's head on the hood of my PICKUP TRUCK!" And they sail away, from the Army that's been gassing the woods and shooting at civilians all movie long. These drunken armed morons they ignore.
      You see, there's 3 classes of people in this movie:

Stupid, pig-headed, pointlessly violent Army villians;
Stupid, pig-headed, pointlessly violent civilian redneck villians;
Stupid, pig-headed, pointlessly violent Linda and Kerwin. Our heroes!

      "Can you inhale the Future now?" Heck yeah, with the VAPIR™, a $200 electronic bong thingie. Err, not a bong, as it's to be used for your Herbs, pronounced as in "Herberts." Why Herb would stand still long enough for me to vaporize him at 237 degrees, I dunno. Herbert's weird that way, I guess.

      Someone found this page via the most nichey of searches I can imagine: "pics of porn star midgets who died." "You know you want me, baby! I'm hung like a midget! Yeah, 2 whole hard inches of MAN! Why don't you just--ARRRGGHH!" SPLAT! Kong SQUISH!

Mark the Vet sends the Manual Digital Clock!

10/30

      He walks in the Store, and I smile and said "Hi!" But I want to say, "Are you fucking kidding me? If you're 21, I'm the president of the John Ashcroft Fan Club!"
      He beelines to the Bud 6 packs. I roll my eyes; they're always told to buy Bud sixes. I look into the parking lot, and an SUV with tinted windows is waiting far from the store. Christ, you could at least make this sting a challenge for me?
      He puts the beer on the counter and I let a couple of seconds pass. "Can I see your ID?" I sigh. "Sure." He shows me his ID, still in his wallet. The birth date can't be seen. "Take it out please." Under 21 until 9-25-05. "Nice try," I say as I hand it back to him. He goes and sits on the passenger side of the SUV. The SUV doesn't move.
      I call the main store to warn them. One of the owners screams psychotically "I KNOW! THEY JUST BUSTED [employee]! AT THE SAME STORE AS LAST TIME!" He takes a breath and says, "I've gotta go!" and hangs up.
Last time it was our newest employee, a girl in her 20s, who left in cuffs. This time it was a guy in his 60s who had run his own liquor store for 30 years! And he LOOKED at the underage ID and STILL sold!
      A guy who'd come in before the brat and "browsed" picked now to leave without buying anything. The second he exits, the SUV's lights come on, and a minute later, it leaves with a squad car. He was the plainclothes that would've busted me, and that was the car that would've taken me to jail.
      Now that's TWO massive fines and 3-day store closings we have to deal with. I found out why I didn't get a warning call from the other store--They'd been hit at the exact same time as me, probably so that nobody could get a warning out. This means that there were several teams working at once. Is there seriously nothing worse going on in this damn town that the cops have the time and manpower to do this?