Redesign!

Blogging about your blog is the lowest form of human experience, but I think a complete redesign after 4 months warrants a little self-indulgence. Plus, you may notice I’ve taken down the ads for the time being. Any thoughts? Questions, comments? Advice on how I can get “Name: Door Hinge” actually under “About Me” instead of floating in the middle?

NFL Japan, Season One

Uh, herro, very nice to meet you Mr. new American foot-boru teamuh-mate. May I ask, are you quarterblack?

A quarter black? Hell no! Man, what the fuck! Get outta here with that shit.

Ah, my very most apologies, foot-boru teamuh-mate. Are you- …halfblack?

HALF black!? Damn niggah! You best get the fuck OUT wit’ dat shit! I ain’t playin’, dawg. Really.

My most sincere apologies once again sir! Are you….fullblack?

Yeah, damn right, niggah. FULL, BLACK. Write it down, son. By the way, what position are you? I'm the quarterback.

Women and the NFL

Some women like football. They make sure you know this. “I know about football,” they say, “!”. I find it annoying. Not because people are horning in on my club- I hate the whole atmosphere of creating some club, inventing jargon, and keeping people out- but because they are just so strident in making sure you know they are your equal in football enjoyment. Who cares? It’s not hard to sit on your wide ass watching football from 11am Sunday to 1am Monday. It’s not like proving you are a nuclear technician.
But anyway, I doubt most of them really are, they just can’t stand to be left out of anything. You don’t see men getting in your face about knitting. It’s really easy to fake knowledge about a subject- gain an enormous depth of knowledge in one specific area, then casually talk about the cover-2 defense. But it’s the breadth of knowledge that’s hard to fake. Which one is closer to the quarterback, the tackle or the guard, huh? How come some teams have a DRT and a DLT and others have an NT or two but neither of the others? What ever happened to split ends? The answer is, it doesn’t matter.
Another NFL related post tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Everyone Loves A Parade

The most obvious target for a magazine parody has unfortunately already been parodied by too many people. I'm referring, of course, to Parade. As anyone who's ever leafed through a Sunday paper in America knows, it's the most egregious waste of newsprint in publishing history. Yes, even more so than Maxim. But, as I said, it's been done, so I'll just run down what's wrong with it in list form. First of all, the cover story is always the same pointless garbage- some (often minor) celebrity either with a disease (Michael J. Fox- Life Is A Gift!) or some vague charity effort (Whitney Houston Gives Something Back!). I can honestly say I've never read one of the cover stories, however, so maybe they are completely brilliant. Then we have the worst set of cartoons anywhere, ironically titled "The Laugh Parade", and written by two people who combined manage the massive output of three cartoons a week. These often focus on such current issues as women making bad drivers and doctors who won't do house calls. Throw in the baffling "ask a woman with a 200 iq what the biggest tree in the world is when you could just look it up" and there you have it- it's not even good enough to read while taking a dump.
Also, last week's issue actually had a recipe for a tuna sandwich in it. I can just picture the millions of Americans who had been fruitlessly banging unopened cans of tuna against jars of mayonaise in a vain effort to make one before that came along.

Breaking News

Help Me, I’m Uncomfortably Dry

Apparently my ancestors were a very moist people, living in a very moist land- perhaps traveling from rainy season to rainy season around the globe, or maybe they were actually aquatic mammals. Whenever the humidity around here drops below 99% (and from November 1st to June 1st it drops to about 0.4%) my skin cracks and bleeds. I’ve had 3 nosebleeds in the last 24 hours, and that’s not significantly above average. I gave up on chap-stick a long time ago and just keep a tub of petroleum jelly around, scooping out big double-fingered portions as needed, and enduring the “is this a tub of Vaseline with lip marks in it?” jokes. Today presented a new challenge, though- as I slept last night I was aware that my heel hurt, and I thought I had bruised it yesterday somehow. When I finally got up, I realized my entire heel had cracked open from the dryness and was bleeding. Excellent.
The irony is, I don’t like humidity, although I suppose no one does.
P.S.: My nose began spontaneously bleeding before I finished typing this.

Cops! …in Boston

All right, buddy, ya gonna have ta move ya caah.

No hablo inglés. ¿Qué usted desea?

Ya caah is paahkd heea incorrectly on these train tracks. Ya gotta move it there pally.

¿Qué? Planeo quemarme mi coche con las llamas para destruir el tren.

All right- what he said was, he’s gonna have his llama come and pull the caah off the tracks. Hurry up with that llama, buddy. Let’s go.

How you get “llama” from what I pronounce as “yamma”, even if it is spell llama? Make no sense, meng.

I see anything anyone says in speech bubbles. It’s like a supa powah. Anything anyone says I see it in big speech balloons. If they think it I see it in like puffy clouds with dots trailin’ back to theah heads. More of a curse, really.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding! WHAM!

Theahs the train.

Ignorance on the bus

I ride the bus a lot, and I see some ignorant shit. The bus seems to breed and multiply the ignorance that is naturally bound to the heart of the average citizen; or, perhaps, people who can’t afford a car are generally assholes. There’s a wide range of bus stupidity, but most of it involves failing to take into account the existence of the literal busload of other people that will be waiting as the one casually creates inconvenience for them all. For example, a person will stand at a bus stop for fourteen minutes with their thumb up their ass, accomplishing nothing, and then when the bus arrives, they will climb the stairs, walk right past the fare-box, set their belongings down, sigh, look out the window a moment, whistle a jaunty little tune, and then finally begin to gather the bus fare from where ever they keep it, allowing the bus to actually move again. Someone today did just that, and then she got off at the very next stop, some 1/10 of a mile away.
On there other end of the spectrum, there are ignorant bus behaviors that don’t inconvenience anyone, they are just ignorant. I saw someone- non-retarded and past the age of 30- get on with his bus pass on a lanyard around his neck. Unless your mom made you, you just can’t do that.

Gender Politix: He or She?

So what do you call someone who is a transsexual- he or she? The nicest solution would seem to be to call the person whatever they say they are- if they want to be a she, call them a she. However, there’s an obvious flaw in that. What if someone says they are the king of Antarctica, am I supposed to call them Your Majesty? Which wishful delusions are we supposed to support and which not? Niceness conflicts with accuracy. A man wearing lipstick and a skirt is not a woman. A man wearing lipstick and a skirt and announcing that he is a woman is still not a woman. It is not the idea of gender-reassignment I have a problem with, just the feeling that I am being forced to use inaccurate terms. I saw a show recently in which a young person was surgically altered from male to female, and all the people around him forced the word “she” into the conversation every which way possible- She’s a big girl, she’ll do well in surgery, won’t she? It sounded to me like an attempt to say something so often that people start to believe it- propaganda, in other words.
But then again, if a man in a skirt is a man, what’s a man in a skirt with implanted breasts, no penis or testicles, and a surgically sculpted vulva?
A common genderless pronoun would help- as you can see I improperly but effectively used “they” at the beginning of the post- but it really only hides the problem. And I reject the idea that gender is a societal construct that doesn’t really exist and therefore needs no words to describe it- yes there are people born with chromosomes mixed up in such a way that they are neither male nor female; this no more invalidates the other 6 billion people’s gender than people who’s mixed up chromosomes result in them having no arms invalidates the concept of arms.

Crabs and Boxers

There was this guy in my homeroom in high school, considered to be cool and well-liked but a few IQ points shy. He told the same story about 400 times over the course of 150 homeroom periods, in which he had been in juvenile detention, and he and his roommate had sat on the edge of the tub in their boxers, picking crabs out of their own pubic areas, and making the crabs fight, on the edge of the tub. The plausibility of this seemed remote to me even at the time; it was no doubt something he had heard other people claiming could be done with sexually-transmitted vermin rather than done himself, and in fact the possibility that it could be done at all seemed doubtful. Meanwhile, it gave him the double-edged coolness sword of having spent time in jail and having indirect proof of sexual activity. Unfortunately, he seemed not to realize that it also made him sound very, very gay. Every time he told this story of sitting on a tub in his underwear with another lad, both reaching repeatedly for their own genitals, I winced. Not because tales of confused but sexually adventurous boys away at a boarding school don’t appeal to me, but because I knew eventually someone would call him gay and start a fight if he told it enough times, and I sat right next to him, so I’d have to get up. Well, eventually, someone did- someone new to the homeroom class, as I recall. You can imagine the scene that followed.

National Geograffix

If there’s one thing besides children’s programming that we are critical of here on the Door Hinge, it’s magazines, and today I was thinking about National Geographic. I know the cliché joke- that everyone looked at National Geographic when they are 11 to see some big floppy brown titties. Well, so did I, but that is not the point.
I actually would have had more complaints about it when I was 11- they have solved many of their more problematic issues over the years. At the time, I was always flummoxed by the fact that they pretended the page numbers extended across magazines to an entire year’s worth; therefore you’d open to page one and it would say “page 1112”. Also in the past is their policy of actually forcing prospective customers to be recommended to be a member of their society by another member if they actually wanted to purchase the magazine. Nowadays, you open it and twelve business reply mail index cards fall out begging you to subscribe just like, say, Swank. Another thing they used to do, and they now admit to this, was stage and pose many of their famous Pictures of Indigenous Peoples. They even had their cameramen carry around a red shirt, which they would then tell the subjects of potential photographs to put on, under the theory that a red shirt looks good in a picture. If you look at some old National Geographics you can occasionally see someone wearing a red shirt, with some other shirt peeking out beneath it.
Today, however, if you see a picture of an African with his dong hanging out spitting a blow dart at a monkey, you can bet it’s genuine.

New Recruit

What’s your name, new recruit!

Private Jackson, Sir!

You get your eyes off my ass, Private!

My eyes off your…? Yes Sergeant.

Excuse me, Private Jackson?

No, nothing sir.

PRIVATE JACKSON DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE ORAL COPULATION WITH YOU AT THIS TIME?

Uh, good God no, Sergeant? I mean… are you talking about receptive oral copulation, or…. You know what, it doesn’t even matter.

Oh, look here, gentlemen, we have ourselves a comedian! Private Jackson, I ask again, do you want to engage in any sort of intercourse with me?

I’m sorry, did I join the… gay army? It’s ok if you guys are the gay army… we just need to shuffle some paperwork around and get me transferred, you know, to the non-gay part of the… army.

Well guess what gentlemen? Private Jackson has bought you all a nice morning run with his comedy routine! That’s right, complain all you want, but we are going for a nice long jog, ladies. Prepare to fall out! An eighth of a mile jog and then back here for oral.

Uh, couldn’t we go a little further? An eighth of a mile is like once around this building.

Private Jackson, we all get it, you’re the company comedian. Now get moving.

Derrek Goldburg Part 2

Handicapped Polish Homosexual Jew Could Really Use a Shower After This Long Train Ride

AP - March 15 1943

OSWIECIM, Poland - “Boy, I can’t wait until this train ride is over,” said Derrek Goldburg, 82, elderly Jewish homosexual double amputee. "It’s more than a little bit crowded in here," Goldburg continued. “But I’ve been told we’ll all be taking a long shower once we get where we are going.” When asked if he maintained his bright outlook, not to mention his staunch homosexuality, Goldberg said, “absolutely”.

The Cheeseburger!

This has annoyed me for more than 10 years.
I read an interview in 1995 in a Sunday newspaper supplement or somewhere- a bunch of kids interviewing people they might be interested in. Zoo employees or dinosaur experts or whatever. In this case they were interviewing someone from the McDonalds corporate office, which might seem strange, but kids are inevitably interested in McDonalds, and they had many questions. One of them was: What is the most popular item at McDonalds? The answer- and I could feel the disingenuousness, the lying, the evil seeping through the newsprint as I read it- “the cheeseburger!” The exclamation point stood in for the woman’s forced smile and feigned enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for a LIE.
But first, let’s face facts. The way the question was asked (by a bunch of 8 year olds) the answer can be slippery. Popular? Maybe that means the one people like the best. (Of course she knew full well it meant which one sold the most). And cheeseburger? Well technically the Big Mac and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a bunch of others are cheeseburgers, right?
Well, bullshit. If you go to McDonalds and order “a cheeseburger” they don’t ask which one you mean, they give you a cheeseburger. And she didn’t say a cheeseburger- she said THE cheeseburger. And there is no way the cheeseburger is the most popular item- outside of Happy Meals does anyone ever buy them? It’s down by the Fishwich.
So why the lie? I don’t know. My guess is the most popular item is something unexciting like a 12 ounce Diet Coke. Plus, they want to answer that question with something eternal- not the McDLT or something that will be gone in a year. Still- it haunts me.

The Fun Pages!

Krümelmonster

We were discussing Cookie Monster recently; I find him to be underrated. He sings, he eats, he lives at Gordon's house. He's better than Telly; much better than Elmo (obviously), and a fair rival to Grover, although Grover is a waiter, which I enjoy a lot. All I really want to say today is that Cookie Monster in Germany is called "Krümelmonster". Guten tag Herr Krümelmonster, wurde Sie mögen einen Chistmas TannenBaum essen? Ha ha ha. Dumb foreigners.

Mohammad Cartoon

I am not sure why there was so much controversy recently about people drawing cartoons of the proprietor of my local 7-11, Mohammad; but, defender of free speech that I am I decided that I, too, would jump on the bandwagon and draw one. They can’t intimidate me!

The Homeless

It seems to me the homeless have become more demanding. Or, at any rate, they have learned through trial-and-error to ask for larger amounts, and not just say, “Can you help me out man?” Not long ago I was approached by a man outside 7-11 and he began to tell me he was down on his luck. I actually started to reach for a quarter when he said, “So can you give me ten dollars?” Ten dollars?! Are you out of your mind? I don’t have ten dollars, man. I gave him nothing. Another guy asked me for $5 and I took out a quarter anyway. He eyed it suspiciously for a few seconds but took it when I started to take it back. Look, the last thing I want to do is hold it over these people that I might have a dollar in my pocket and they don’t, and force them to beg and grovel and dance and throw themselves at my feet in thanks if I produce a nickel, and I hate people who get some kind of thrill out of throwing some filthy beer cans at a homeless guy from a moving car just to watch him scramble to collect them, but neither do I want to be accosted and a specific (relatively large) figure demanded. I’m sure the homeless tend to start to think that everyone else lives in a mansion waited on hand and foot at the tinkle of a silver bell, but the fact is, most of the people they are likely to meet walking down the street are doing so because we don’t have cars. Ten bucks would make a difference in my day too.

Black Stand-Up Comedian Who Works Video Game Conventions

Man, I was playin’ Resident Evil 4 for the first couple hours with the brightness on the TV turned down, and I thought Leon was black! Seriously, dawg, he be pickin’ up “the green herb” every five minutes and pawnin’ jewelry and shit! Let me tell y’all somethin’, the last time a man named Leon pawned a gun, he didn’t have no blond hair, know what I’m sayin’? Some of these games be havin’ some cracker-ass crackers though dawg. Like that dude in Zelda, he be all like, “Gee I think I will be going to Hyrule to save some people and go on some quests and then I will have a break at the normal allotted time period.” Hell no! A brother would be all “LOOK man, I’m a bust a CAP up in here, bee-otch!”
Also, I’m stuck in City of Heroes so if there are any COH’ers in here come on up to me after the show and help me out.

Traffic Signal Keeps Giving Me a C Minus

Rock and Roll Recording Studio Heaven

Well I took a giant dump about an hour ago!

Somebody in here better open a window…

It was another little-

Jim?

Uh, yeah?

Right, very good, very rock-and-roll Jim. Um, could you stick to the lyrics like as you wrote them, as I ‘ave them ‘ere, please? Right.

I see your hair is burning! Hills are filled with fire…. Cops in cars, topless bars, LA woman! LA woman!

Uh well I took a giant dump about an hour ago!

Jim.

What is it man! Stop interrupting.

Well I mean we’ve shut off the reel-to-reel machine, ‘aven’t we Jim. The band ‘as gone ‘ome, ‘aven’t they.

Man everything is all serious with you! Loosen up. Learn to enjoy humor.

Well it’s not really an issue of you being witty, Jim, is it. Or whimsical, or mirth-making, now is it, Jim? It’s more that every fourth word is scatological in nature. Rectums and feces and the like.

Mr. Mo-Jo risin’! Poop! Mr. Moooo-Joooooo ri-sin’!

Well I’ll tell you what Jim, right? Go ‘ome, and discuss flatulence and defecation there, oi? You can fart in your hand and sniff it and work on anagrams for yourself without the fourteen 'undred dollar a day charge for the studio o’ right?

Wait, man, I’m getting something, man. It’s the Indian. He’s talking to me.

Jim. Enough, Oi?

Wait! Shh. He’s telling me…he’s telling me… he farted on your mom. Whoo! Ha ha! Mr. Mo Jo risin!

Internet Message-Boards and Jargon

I was complaining about the absurd and tiresome arguments that take place on internet message boards some time ago, but in fact the whole culture of message boards is an irritant to me. They are always full of regulars who use their own indecipherable jargon and abbreviations and inside jokes. It comes across looking like:

The Man In The Yellow Hat: Obviously EV have X-PAS this week?
Far_Moniker: Um, hello? RTFS?

Now what could possibly be the point of writing like an illiterate moron, as above? To keep new people from understanding what you are saying, and therefore preserve the sense of identity and belonging that it gives you. I know what RTFS means, and most of these newbie ass-biscuits don’t! Haw, haw, haw.

As proof of my theory, I offer the “snopes.com” message board, which actually contains the question on its list of frequently asked questions, “What do all these abbreviations mean?”, and then goes out of its way not to answer its own question. God forbid just anyone know what these
idiotic abbreviations stand for! To quote:

Question: What do SLC, NFBSK, and other abbreviations stand for?

Answer: Some of the jargon used on this board may be unfamiliar to you. You can learn what various terms mean through context and observation; please do not create new threads and interrupt discussions to ask about them.

They actually have a rule that prevents new people from finding out what their stupid abbreviations mean! At least they are taking asinine dickheadedness to its logical extreme.

Showers

Well, the hiatus wasn’t as long as I had feared. I moved over the weekend, and it took some time to get things in order enough to get these posts going again, but I feel confident that there should be no further stoppages. Onward!
The move itself has inspired me to philosophize about showers. Ever since I lived in an apartment about 14 years ago which had the world’s shittiest shower, I have mentally graded each one I’ve come in contact with. The one I just left was a C+. It was a stall, which prevents it from going into B territory, but it was a roomy, solidly built one, with plenty of hot water almost every time I used it, and good water pressure. It had very poor drainage when I first moved in, and the water would be up to my shins by the end of a shower, but I fixed that, and the drainage was good for the majority of the time it was in use.
The new shower, unfortunately, is a C-. It’s another stall, but a lot smaller. It has weaker spray, and the shower head is located too low, so I have to duck slightly to get the top of my head under it.
So what was so bad about the one 14 years ago? It was a stall, of course- in fact it was an unsupported free-standing fiberglass rectangle precariously swaying in the middle of the room. If you put your hand on the wall while you were in there it would start to tip over. An already small shower stall becomes very cramped if you can’t touch the walls. Also, the water smelled rusty. Worst of all, though, not only would there never be hot water, if ever there was, it would wait until you had shampoo all in your hair and suddenly stop. Not the hot water- all the water. It would be 6:30AM, mid January, and you had to stand there freezing with soap in your eyes waiting, sometimes up to 5 minutes, for the water to magically return. Now that’s an F.