Door Hinge

Bj Penn looks like this guy from an Amp'd mobil ad

2007-04-12T10:21:00.000-04:00

Frank Dux' Sensei Deeply Disappointed By Souvenirs

2007-01-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

The Lovers, The Dreamers

2006-08-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

"Why are there so many... lazy black people? And why
don't they all get jobs? I've had -"

Ok Kermit, I'm gonna have to cut you off, luv. Very
good chops, very post-Bee-Gees. 'oweveh, it's supposed
to be about rainbows, me cranberry. Not a bloody
race-riot anthem. Roight?

*SHTWANG!*

Real mature, mate, throw your banjo at me and hop
away. Just hop away like always! Hop back into your
bottle you bloody 'ack! Leave me to clean up the mess
you made! Like always, mate!

Anybody Remember "Yu-Gi-Oh"?

2006-07-27T13:22:00.000-04:00

Well Yugi boy, it looks like I just about have you bent over a barrel!

Pegasus is right! I better start playing good cards!

Don't even bother trying, Yugi boy, it's my turn and I'm going to thoroughly violate your defense points.

Oh no!

Just relax and take it as me and my Millennium item play- The One-Eyed Spitting Cobra!

Oh no! That's a powerful card!

Think fast Yugi boy, you better play a card in defense mode before my one-eyed snake spits warm yogurt all over the small of your back.

What does that mean? Pegasus is right though- I need a strong defense card!

Well Yugi, may I suggest you present the Spread-Cheeked Brown-Eyed Cave Dweller?

Oh no! Pegasus can see my cards somehow! But he's right- that's my only hope! I'll play it!

Ohhhh yeah... that's the one.... Well Yugi...uh... I can't play anymore, I'm spent. You win.

I did it! Thanks, Brown-eyed cave dweller!

Superman In Mexico

2006-07-16T20:46:00.000-04:00

Thrown sock hits door jamb; helicopters

2006-06-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

Someone should make a sink so large that it's unshippable

2006-06-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

Mocked-Up Nutrition Facts Label On Board Game Strangely Unenthusiastic

2006-05-26T10:07:00.000-04:00

Invention

2006-05-13T19:19:00.000-04:00

Matt Mullett Presents: Annotated Bullshit

2006-05-03T21:37:00.000-04:00

Ok, so, I was reading an interview in a magazine that someone left in the bathroom, and it was so rife with inaccuracies that I felt like writing about it. So why not put it in the old blog? Whenever I think of something interesting I might as well put it on here, I figure, even if it’s not five times a week anymore.
Anyway, the article is an interview with “original thinker and longtime social entrepreneur” Nina Simons in the Nov-Dec 2005 Utne Reader. I reproduce some of it below with commentary.

Nina Utne, the Interviewer: I’ve heard you say that you see the world thought gender-colored lenses. Why do you see things that way?

NS: About 10 years ago (I learned that there was a) 500-year period(1) throughout most of Europe when many women were accused of being witches and killed. Huge numbers of women were tortured and burned at the stake.(2) I was shocked to the core to learn about this momentous event, which I saw as a root cause of our culture’s disease.(3) It seemed to awaken an ancient memory in me.(4)
Prior to this period women owned more property and had more wealth. Before, women were the healers, the midwifes, and the herbalists. After only men were permitted to practice medicine.(5) …all the characteristics, values, and qualities that have been associated with the “feminine” have been systematically devalued and denigrated in our culture. Attention to process, relationship building, empathy, intuition, and the collective wisdom of groups have all been chronically derided.(6) …many of our challenges, including environmental degradation, social injustice, and corporate globalization, (are) expressions of the gross imbalance between what our culture defines as “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. …a greater emergence of the healthy feminine (qualities) throughout our world might help achieve the balance that can restore our social and environmental systems.

1. It was 300 according to Wikipedia.
2. This is vague enough to not be actually incorrect, but it’s misleading. To quote Wikipedia: “Modern historians have shown that the victims of the witchhunt were not always female (in Iceland, for example, 80% of those accused were men)… Generally accepted figures amongst historians today range from …around 60,000 (victims) to …around 40,000.” And that was between 1450 and 1750. Hardly the “female holocaust” Nina Simons seems to be imagining- even low-scale wars kill far more people, generally in 5 years or less, mostly men.
3. I doubt it. She only heard of the witch trials 10 years ago and was shocked? Didn’t she attend 3rd grade? Come on.
4. …what?
5. This is ridiculous. I won't even bother with the retarded "women had more income and property before this" claim (retarded, anyway, if she's saying they had 'more' than men- it's not clear what she means), but women have been prevented from practicing medicine since 1750? I typed in “female doctor” and found, for example, Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, who became a doctor in 1870- not notable for being the world’s first female doctor but for being New York’s first black female doctor! And 1870 is after 1750.
6. This “female qualities” stuff is crap. If someone said “black qualities, like dancing and talking jive and basketball” they’d obviously be racist; to list a bunch of positive qualities as “female” is no better. Not to mention that the list of qualities is dumb. “Attention to process”?

I don’t even know what the hell she’s talking about most of the time but it’s such nonsense I felt like shitting all over it so there you have it.

Blog

2006-04-14T12:07:00.000-04:00

Well, as you may have noticed, I stopped updating this. It was becoming a little too much effort to write something every day for the 4 people who were reading it. I do, however, want to thank those people, and I consider the project to have been a success, as I wrote a lot more in the last 5 months than I would have otherwise. I'm going to leave the blog up in case any talent agents stumble onto it and immediately start stuffing 10,000 bills in my face, and I may return to it in the future. Oh, and I returned to the "classic Doorhinge look". Vaya con Dios!

Impersonal Space

2006-04-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

You know what I like? The staircase landings in office buildings and hotels. Cold and impersonal. And it seems like a lot of wasted space- they should let me live on one. Somewhere up at the top of the building where no one would take the stairs unless there was a fire. There’s enough room for a twin bed, small television, and hotplate, I’d say. Not a lot of privacy, but you’d get used to it. Also, I’d like to live on a highway median.

Old Joke Perfected

2006-04-03T10:39:00.000-04:00

A boy walked into his 2nd grade classroom rather disheveled and quite late. “All right,” his teacher, Mrs. Bloomquist, said. “What on earth were you doing?” The boy shrugged. “How did you get so muddy?” Mrs. Bloomquist asked.
“I was just in the backyard, running around, blowing bubbles,” the boy said.
“Well how did you get that nosebleed?” Mrs. Bloomquist asked.
“I was just blowing bubbles,” the boy repeated.
“And,” Mrs. Bloomquist asked incredulously, “how about the two black eyes?!”
“Blowing bubbles,” the boy insisted. Just then a clown burst happily through the classroom door, laughing and honking his bicycle horn.
“All right!” Mrs. Bloomquist demanded. “And just who are you?”
“I’m Bubbles!!” the clown said.

Redesign!

2006-03-31T00:19:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-30T10:12:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-29T00:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-28T10:20:00.001-05:00

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

2006-03-27T00:12:00.000-05:00

Help Me, I’m Uncomfortably Dry

2006-03-24T09:14:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-03-21T08:17:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-20T08:53:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-16T09:49:00.001-05:00

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

2006-03-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-03-14T00:04:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-03-13T01:07:00.000-05:00

Krümelmonster

2006-03-10T10:15:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-08T11:40:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-07T11:56:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

Rock and Roll Recording Studio Heaven

2006-03-03T10:09:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-02T00:05:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-01T01:45:00.000-05:00

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.

Hiatus

2006-02-27T10:46:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately I have to go on hiatus. I know I said "every day Monday through Friday" but don't worry, that will resume soon. Check back often!

Art thou an Ephraimite?

2006-02-24T00:02:00.000-05:00

Back on January 9th, I was discussing a phenomenon I had noticed, wherein people keep changing the pronunciations of words in order to differentiate between those like them and pathetic losers who can’t keep up with the latest in high-brow. Well, it turns out that there is an actual name for this phenomenon! The term is “shibboleth”. Literally, it means a word that is used to prove or disprove that one is a friend or foe- historically, this typically means by how they pronounce words. In the Pacific Theater in WWII an American GI might have a potential Japanese spy try to pronounce “linoleum” because Japanese have trouble with the letter L. (In fact it is claimed that this practice involved the word “lollapalooza”. Rorraparooza! Ha ha).
Anyway, this can metaphorically be applied to the scenario I was referring to earlier. People test whether you say “pro-GRAM” or “PRO-grum” and know if you are a chardonnay-swilling NPR-listening elitist homo or a shotgun-sniffing drooling farting bumpkin.

The Strait of Magellan

2006-02-23T09:55:00.000-05:00

The most over-rated thing on the planet has to be the Strait of Magellan. You know, you read about it in 5th grade when you learned that Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the world (not particularly accurate since he died on the way and they tossed his bloated reeking fetid corpse overboard). The Strait, after you’ve sailed aaaaaaall the way down from Portugal to the southern tip of Argentina, saves you from having to make the final .04% of the trip around South America. It’s a giant joke on the Explorers. Ha ha! Get on your knees and thank God you get to shave 11 minutes off your trip! You’re running out of figs!
Apparently there was at least one good thing about it- the area around the tip of South America where the Pacific, Atlantic, and Antarctic (if they called the water around Antarctica the Antarctic Ocean but they don’t but you get the point) Oceans all mix has some of the world’s crappiest weather, not surprisingly, and sailors liked to avoid it. Still, the majority eschewed the Strait, probably out of pure spite. So, in conclusion, I spit at thee, Strait of Magellan. On the plus side, it’s relatively near Bouvet Island, on which movie classic Alien vs. Predator 1: Just Starting to Verse was set.

While we’re doing “Onion rip-offs” and “Children’s Show Humor” I thought, why not combine the two?

2006-02-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

King Friday Realizes He’s Only Make-Believe; Disappears

AP – February 22 2006

LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE – King Friday the First of the Land of Make-Believe disappeared Tuesday, leaving this village of imaginary owls, tigers, and purple pandas without leadership.
“Well gee whiz I was just talkin’ to the king and pointing out to him how his existence don’t make no sense because he’s only pretend and all!” said X the Owl, who witnessed the event. “He was telling me that was ridiculous, how he has to exist ‘cause he’s the king, but I said, king of what? King of the Land of Make-Believe, man! Think about it!” At this point the King apparently appeared to have some kind of revelation, shouted “Wai-“ and shrunk to the size of a dot before ceasing to exist, as, in fact, he never had to begin with. A power struggle between the King’s heir, Prince Tuesday, Lady Elaine, and a sapient miniature trolley, is now expected to take place.

Kermit the Frog of Sesame Street News contributed to this report.

Pakir part 2

2006-02-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

”Thenk you for calling Dell Service and Support, thees is Pakir, thenk you for calling, how may I help you now today.”

“Uh, yeah, my monitor won’t show red.”

“It won’t what sir?”

“It won’t show the color red.”

“One moment I check with supervisor.”

“Huh... ok. Stupid Dell. Dum de dum… come on Eileen, I swear…hello?”

“Yes sir, thank you for holding, supervisor say, you fucked it up.”

“What?”

“That’s what supervisor say sir.”

“He said what?”

“He say you probably fucked it up.”

“I did what?”

“You FUCKED IT UP sir. You bent one of the pins yanking the stupid cable out and jamming it back in like a drooling retard sir. Get some needle-nose pliers and straighten the pin out. Idiot. Next call, Click! Thenk you for holding thees is Pakir how may I help you now?”

“This is still the same guy, man.”

“How long do you intend to remain on the phone having your lower than impressive aptitude pointed out to you sir?”

“I- uh- you’re hurting my feelings, man.“

“Yes. Thenk you for buying a Dell please. This is Pakir. Click!”

Gordon’s Burden

2006-02-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

”Gordon.” Cookie Monster shook Gordon, who was sleeping. “Gordon,” he said again. Gordon opened his eyes.

“What the- oh, Cookie Monster, what do you want, man? It’s 3AM.”

“Me ate entire tube of latex caulking, Gordon. Me not feel too good.”

“I bet you don’t.” Gordon sat up in his boxer shorts. “One second.” Gordon picked up the phone that was next to his bed and dialed it. “Hello, is this the Children’s Television Workshop? Yeah, this is Gordon. I have a question for you. How come Linda the deaf woman gets Kermit and I’m stuck with Cookie Monster? Kermit keeps his fur clean, he holds down a job as a newscaster… yeah, I know it’s 3AM! Me being wakened at 3AM is what precipitated this phone call! Oh to hell with you.”

“Gordon,” said Cookie Monster, ”that sound like too many numbers you dial to be 911.”

“OK, get up man,” said Gordon. Cookie Monster was lying on the floor, holding his furry blue abdomen. “Come on, man, get up, I’ll take you to the all-night vet.” Cookie Monster gained his feet and managed to make it out to Gordon’s car, climbing into the back seat and laying down. Gordon drove the short distance to the 24 hour vet. “We’re here, man,” Gordon said, looking in the back seat. Cookie Monster was sleeping. “Well one of us gets to sleep tonight, is that it? Man, get up.”

“What? Where are we? Cookie Monster tired, Gordon. Stop playing.”

“Where are we? Man, you ate 11 damn ounces of latex caulking, now get up and get inside and see the vet! Damn!”

Gordon led the roughly 3 foot tall monster into the veterinarian’s office. There was no one else waiting. He explained the issue to the receptionist and sat down, reading a Reader’s Digest, as Cookie Monster wandered off, chewing on some heartworm pamphlets. Quickly the vet came out.

“Mr. Robinson?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” said Gordon, barely looking up from the Reader’s Digest.

“Your pet consumed some …latex caulking?” the vet asked, concerned.

“Whole tube,” said Gordon. “One of those big tubes. He had to use a caulking gun.”

“Oh, my!” said the vet. “This is very serious. We’ll need to get him into surgery immediately.”

“I don’t think so,” said Gordon. “He’ll eat anything. He’s like a fat blue goat, man. He ate the Christmas tree once. Seriously. He ate the radiator out my damn car, man.”

“Hmm,” said the vet, “how about a prescription laxative to sort of move it on through, then?”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” said Gordon. “You hear that, Cookie Monster? You’re not missing the litter box this time, buddy. And that’s a whole week where you’re not allowed to go around finding people who are trying to illustrate the concept of a letter or a shape or something with a big foam representation of it and interrupt them and eat it. OK?” He patted Cookie Monster’s head. “Let’s go home, man.”

Doing It Onion Style

2006-02-17T07:53:00.000-05:00

Handicapped Polish Homosexual Jew Has Bright Outlook
For Future

AP - March 12 1932

BERLIN - "Nothing bad can possibly happen," said Derrek Goldburg, 71, on the occasion of his becoming further handicapped with a mid-femur leg amputation. "There is a just, and loving God," Goldburg continued. He looked forward to continuing to have unrestrained homosexual sex in total immoderation, perhaps, he indicated hopefully, made all the more deviant now that he is a multiple amputee. He further expressed his great satisfaction at the prospect of a future full of constant, unmolested deeply observant Judaism. Goldburg plans to return to his native Poland in about 10 years, he said.

New England Barbeque

2006-02-16T11:02:00.000-05:00

We like to have barbeques here in New England. Some people down in Texas or something have strict rules about barbeque- like it involves slow-cooking pork over a spit or something. We do, too- it involves dropping cold hot dogs on the propane grill, blackening one side, and serving it up with ketchup and a tub of supermarket potato salad. You also have to put the hot dog buns on the grill until they become hard and unpleasant. Seriously, if I announce I’m having a barbeque, I don’t even have to say anything, someone will bring a tub of pre-made potato salad, and someone will bring a brick of turkey wieners. I’d like to nominate “New England Barbeque” as a metaphor for people blissfully going about something in a completely wrong and ignorant way. “Look at that guy spending his welfare check on scratch-off tickets. New England Barbeque, man.”

Let's Try This Again

2006-02-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

Based on some of the feedback I got yesterday, some people thought "Rock Climber!" was an actual Atari game- I guess I was too subtle in my parody. How's this?

The Atari Game Cover Would Way Oversell The Actual Game

2006-02-14T09:48:00.000-05:00

Your Host

2006-02-13T09:01:00.000-05:00

Many of you I’m sure want to see a photo of the site’s author. I can do even better! And as a bonus, you can also see where I learned my drawing skills, from this helpful rendition of me that doubles as a lesson in drawing me, by my friend Brian.

Internet debates (Its Myanmar stupid)

2006-02-10T09:17:00.000-05:00

There is just nothing more pointless than internet debates. Not debates about the internet, but debates carried out on the internet, mostly in message boards and on Usenet. They are characterized by completely humorless participants refusing to concede that anyone else could possibly have a point. They are also full of people who feel they have to prove something by tossing around Latin. A typical response to a response to a picked-fight on the internet:

To take your “arguments” in order:

1. Your response here is a total non-sequitur, sorry, perhaps you’d like to rephrase it intelligibly? Up to you.

2. Post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy.

3. I refuse to reply to ad hominem attacks.

4. You’re stupid.

5. As you can see from the above, it’s spelled “you’re”.

This could have been an argument about anything from abortion to Ford vs. Chevy.
My favorite response I ever saw in an internet argument was this: Someone picked out the word “Burma” out of the previous person’s post and replied, sans punctuation just as it appears here:

>Such_and_such wrote:
>Burma…

its myanmar stupid

The Southland Ice Company

2006-02-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Middle-Eastern convenience store clerks, I was working in a lovely, rural, lake-side town a year or two ago, and daily would visit its fine gas station at about 9AM for coffee and breakfast treats. Behind the counter sat an 18 to 20 year old recent immigrant of one of the afore-mentioned Middle-Eastern communities. Sitting, in fact, is unusual enough for a convenience store counter clerk, but he was in fact sitting low in a lawn chair (I’m imagining it was originally intended to be for sale) parallel to the counter, facing the wall, reading a newspaper.
Attempting to sort myself with some coffee, I approached the coffee pot and pushed the plunger. It went pffffffft!, spraying an atomized air and coffee mixture all over my hand and around my cup, as a coffee pot will, when it’s been empty since 6:30.
“Is the coffee pot empty, man?” he said, without looking up from his reading. “That’s bullshit, man,” he sympathized, without a trace of irony (also without attempting to remedy the situation, as was his responsibility and as he was in fact the only one capable of doing). Luckily, the coffee wasn’t for me, so I found nothing but humor in the situation. The next day, the identical scene occurred, complete with “No coffee? Really? That’s bullshit, man,” except he had loud Arab music playing. Obviously, he begrudgingly fills the pot up once when he gets there at 6, and if you don’t like it, too bad, whitey. I can’t help but picture the young man arriving in New England mere months before and finding himself ecstatic to live in a smog-free, safe, pleasant-smelling village while making an amazing $9 an hour for hitting the switch to activate pump four. It’s impressive how quickly he assimilated into the service industry culture of “not trying” and “sticking it to the man”.

The Value of Marketing

2006-02-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

One must evaluate the marketplace and adjust one’s advertising strategy accordingly:

Bus stops

2006-02-07T08:51:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I would be out at the bus stop by myself in the morning for 10 or 15 minutes, and had just enough time to embark on pointless endeavors. A trickle of water running down the shoulder of the road was a natural- it desired to be dammed up, in my estimation. The wintertime provided an endless supply of inherently disastrously flawed damming material- snow. Running 40 degree water, it seems, rather efficiently melts small dams made of snow. And in any case, road-trickles are fantastically resistant to any damming attempts even with non-moronic materials- the water slowly but surely builds up until it is able to make a 90 degree turn left and another right and bypasses the mighty, foot-and-a-half long muddy stick.
Sadly, though, most of this never really even got off the ground, as I would make vastly elaborate plans but lack the time to carry them out, because the bus would arrive. As I boarded the bus I would commit myself to coming back during the wide-open afternoon and realizing my vision, but 7 hours later when I finally did get home, I would instead run inside and watch DuckTales.
The city busses I sometimes use now for $1.25 a ride don’t have ill-defined spots to stand and kick at snow and fight the tide of nature, they have Bus Stops, or even little shelters. The bus shelter is usually teeming with cigarette butts and wadded up napkins and graffiti and ant colonies and weeds fighting through the cracks in the concrete floor. Someone sticks ads for 1-900 numbers all over the place in there, too. Yeah, I ride the bus and all, but four dollars a minute to hear true confessions, you can't afford not to.

Hypotenuse

2006-02-06T09:13:00.000-05:00

The neighborhood I live in forms an isosceles triangle, anchored firmly at its base by a 7-11. It is owned and proprietored by a middle-eastern individual named Mohammad (the 7-11, not the triangle. [That joke was in the style of Dave Barry. I feel nauseous]). Mohammad thinks it’s hilarious to tell the other strangers in line how much beer I buy. He buy a 12 pack now but he’ll stumble back later and buy a 40 ounce of Schlitz Malt Liquor! I’ve always wanted to bring a Mountain Dew up to the counter and say, well, sometimes you have to take the Mountain Dew to Mohammad. Ha ha! …Anyway.
The interesting phenomenon of a 7-11 is the radiating circles of trash that ring the rest of the neighborhood. Within 50 feet of the store is the scratch-off ticket zone- there’s nothing like shuffling ankle deep through loss and failure. Next is the hotdog box zone. People must actually buy hotdogs at 7-11, stuff them into their face like Porkins with a birthday cake before they’re halfway out of the parking lot, and then slam down the spent box at their feet as they go. So, where are the signature items of the 7-11, the Big Gulps? Never see them- they take longer to drink than it takes to walk to my apartment. Can people really be so selfish that they discard whatever they feel they no longer completely need whenever and wherever they happen to no longer need it?
This reminds me of how I saw a guy walking down that very street a couple summers ago eating an ice cream cone. Where did he get it?? There is no ice cream parlor around and 7-11 does not sell sugar cones, ok? Did a grown man scoop himself out a peppermint stick cone in his kitchen and then go for a walk?

The Daylight Zone

2006-02-03T08:35:00.000-05:00

Presented for your approval: a story of a man. A regular man. A man like any other, except he has no idea that when he shinnies back down this lamppost, he’ll be entering a world where things aren’t quite the way he left them. That’s because he’s shinnied his way right into:
The Twilight Zone.
His name is Ray Peterson. He wandered away from his job at the egg factory earlier today, and he’s been at or near the top of that lamppost for a while now. But six or eight months from now, he’s going to notice something difficult to believe- he’s entered an alternate universe, where the seasons never change. It’s always late spring here, in the Twilight Zone. Oh sure, at first Ray will think it’s great, but eventually, he’ll come to realize that what he thought was heaven, is pure hell.
That’s because-
This sucks, Rod.
What?
This sucks. This is a stupid idea for an episode.
What? Why? No it doesn’t. Why? I didn’t write this one. Ray Bradbury sent it in.
Well, I doubt that Rod, but regardless, it sucks. For one thing, that’s what it’s like on the equator.
That’s what what’s like?
The seasons never change on the equator. I know we’re doing another morality play where the guy gets what he most wants and then it turns out to be his worst nightmare, but he could just move to the equatorial regions.
It’s not a morality play…it’s an anti-McCarthyism allegory.
Why don’t you write an anti-suck allegory?
I hate you guys.

An Early Case of Heterosexuality

2006-02-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

I’ve never understood the stance that homosexuality is a choice. That assumes that gays really desire to screw girls just like anyone else, but for some reason choose to toss some guy’s salad. Right? I mean, someone tell me what I’m missing. Why would anyone make that choice? Yes, homosexual behavior is a choice (although choosing against exercising one’s sexuality is very unlikely given any opportunity to do so), but desire is not, at least biologically speaking. I feel personally very certain that sexuality is ingrained at birth, because I remember having crushes on people when I was as young as four, and they were all female. In particular, in kindergarten we had both a teacher and a teacher’s aide, and the aide was probably about 22. I totally was into her. I showed my devious cleverness in pursuit of her attention (even though at that age I found myself unable to open my complicated overalls and pissed myself at least once) by rigging the results of a Simon Says match. Having noticed that the failures who couldn’t manage to decipher “Simon says touch your toes” were being removed from the game by being tapped on the head by the aide in question, I began to deliberately make such errors. It took a few, as they were probably being charitable in hopes that the less gifted students would catch on eventually. Unfortunately the touch on the head was a bit of a letdown (she didn’t stop to talk to me or anything) and it probably led to me being tracked as slow for a few years. My revenge is, she’d be about 48 now.
While we’re on gays, I’d like to debunk another statistic. Gay people are not 10% of the population! I don’t know why it matters so much to people that there be more gays than there are, but according to this article, while there are no completely definitive studies, 4% for men and less for women is a reasonable starting point.

Take that, hippies

2006-02-01T08:27:00.000-05:00

It’s a hobby of mine to turn the most beloved hippie music I can think of into the most blatantly pointless rap I can think of. My goal is to hurt the feelings of hippies (they take their crappy music seriously; this is like wiping your ass with the flag to them) and yet leave them unable to complain without seeming racist. It’s fun!

“Imagine”

Imagine all the malt liquor
It's easy if you try
Some for the dead homies,
Livin’ up in the sky,
Imagine all my niggaz
chillin’ up in here...

You may say what the dilly
yo yo homie, wazzup dawg
I hope some day shorty get back here with the malt liquor
And the bitches will chill and shit

“Let it Be”

When I find myself up in here chillin’
My nigga comes to me
Speakin’ what the dilly, my ho-mie
And when I’m playa hatin’
And pimpin’ wit’ my Dom P
Be thuggin’ wit’ my nigga, my ho-mie
Nigga please, nigga please, what the dil, yo nigga please
Thuggin’ wit’ my niggaz, ho-mie.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
Thuggin’ wit’ my niggaz, ho-mie.

I invite you all to comment with your own versions!

We're Right About Everything

2006-01-31T06:48:00.000-05:00

Once, about ten years ago, I fell for a stupid commercial and decided to subscribe to Consumer Reports. I got two free “books” (pamphlets that rehashed stuff from the magazine). As for the magazine itself, what a worthless pile of crap. Yes, I realize they don’t take ads. Yes I realize they don’t allow their reviews to be used in other companies’ ads. So what? I can’t stand their attitude, first of all. Every review is saturated in negativity and a parental “this is for your own good” tone. They usually start by telling you why you don’t need the product at all:

God only knows why any of you feel you “need” a VCR. Couldn’t you be saving that money for your retirement? Tsk, tsk. For shaaaame! Anyway, here are the 7 VCRs we tested by putting them on a stained mattress and dropping pots and pans on them for a week. They all failed.

As you can see, I’m not convinced of the scientific merit of their tests, but, luckily, they sure are. I remember the new car issue actually said, “speedometers are rarely dead-on accurate, so we ignore them and rely on our own data”. Great. That explains why the ’95 Taurus got 819 miles to the gallon. Another tidbit I remember, at the top of their review of brands of spaghetti: “Spaghetti is nothing but a way to get sauce into your mouth anyway”. (I know, that’s why I switched to using the jar as a device to get the sauce into my mouth.) Gee, way to tell me why the following article doesn’t matter. And how can they tell me what kind of spaghetti I’ll like? Isn’t that about as fundamentally subjective as anything can be? Screw them.

The Rachael Ray Drinking Game

2006-01-30T10:43:00.000-05:00

Note: This drinking game regards Food TV 30 Minute Meals host Rachael Ray. If you have no idea who that is, or you are on the wagon, I suggest you select “archive: December” and look at some of the forgotten older posts. They were funny.

If Rachael Ray says:
E.V.O.O. = 1 drink
E-V-O-O-extra-virgin-olive-oil (thereby suffocating and cruelly killing the intension of abbreviations) = 1 can of crappy light beer*
Yum! = 1 drink
Yum-Oh! = 2 drinks
(Laughs like a retarded lunatic at something mundane such as “just eyeball it”)= 1 drink
(Refers to the grocery store as) the “regular” grocery store= 1 drink; cheap Canadian Whiskey
(Issues the non-sequitor) Putting salt in the water is the only chance you have to salt the pasta itself= 1 full American Beer** with 14 tablespoons of salt itself
(Brags about not being ‘into’ baking)= One 40 oz***
I always burn bread! = enema with 750ml cheap Canadian Whiskey
(Mentions her) “Sweetie” (John Cusimano of the band The Cringe): As drunk as you can get off of $5 [I suggest you start at Rite Aid]
(Wears desexualizing, high neckline clothing): nothing, too frequent.

*Crappy light beers include Keystone, Natural Light, and Milwaukee’s Best Light
**American Beers include Miller Genuine Draft and Pabst Blue Ribbon
***Only Double Malt Colt 45 accepted

Frank and Dan

2006-01-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

”Where’s the key to the car?” Frank’s wife asked.
“Key?” said Frank.
“Yes, the key to the car.” Frank paused.
“Oh. It’s right here,” Frank said eventually, jingling the keys that dangled from the ignition as he drove the car they had rented to travel the long distance to her parents’ house for the holidays.
“No. The key to OUR car. Why isn’t it on the keychain?” Frank paused for about 10 seconds.
“The key?” he said finally.
“Did you lend the car to-“ his wife started.
“What?” Frank interrupted.
“Did you lend the car-“
“Did I what? Did I WHAT?”
“I asked you not to lend the car to-“
“Listen. Listen! Because I am only going to say this one time. Ok? Are you listening? I did not lend the car to Dan. That’s all there is to it. Ok? I did NOT! LEND! The CAR! To DAN! Do you hear me?” Frank rose to a crescendo. “I DID NOT! LEND! THE CAR! TO DAN!”
“Then where’s the-“ she started.
“That’s IT!” Frank announced as he banged on the dashboard with his right hand to punctuate each word. “I DID NOT!!! LEND!!! THE CAR!!! TO DAN!!!!” By the last “Dan” Frank had shouted himself into a rather ineffectual voice-cracking hoarseness.
“Whatever,” his wife said, “gawd. Ass.” Nothing was said for about a half hour, when Frank once again said,
“I did NOT lend the car to-“
“Ok! Jesus, enough already,” She said.
“I didn’t lend the-“
“Ok. Ok! Christ!”
“I didn’t,” he muttered.
Frank came back to hammer this one point repeatedly throughout the next three days, roughly once every three hours, as if he was an amateur military historian who’d run into someone who insisted on the effectiveness of the Maginot Line and just couldn’t be convinced otherwise, although his wife had long since tuned him out completely, so he was often reduced to announcing it to himself in the shower or empty bedroom. He had pretty much worn himself out by the time they began the seven hour drive home.
They finally pulled into their driveway around five PM. Parked in front of their house, half on the sidewalk, with the driver’s side door open, the key in the ignition, and the ‘door ajar’ noise pinging relentlessly, was their 1998 Chrysler. They both stood wordlessly, looking at it; a note on the windshield was visible:

HERES YOUR CAR HAD A FENDERBENDER DAN

Nervous Pudding

2006-01-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

Speaking of horrible television shows, I particularly am fond of not liking MASH (or “M*A*S*H”- when I was a kid I could never figure out where to put the asterisks, so I would write *M*A*S*H*. Come to think of it, why was I ever writing about MASH when I was a kid?) It was such transparent preachy crapola- everybody who disagrees with Hawkeye and BJ (or Trapper John, it doesn’t matter) about the value of armed conflict is presented as a drooling retard, while they are the only “cool kids” in all of Korea. Meanwhile, it was a show about a war that lasted 3 years, and yet the show was on for 11 years! Also, Hawkeye is always reminiscing about his home in Candyass Cove, Maine, but I happen to live in coastal Maine, and his reminiscings sound like a Hollywood writer’s un-researched treacly bullcrap. Mainly, though, MASH was supposed to be a comedy, and that is where the foulness most lies. There hasn’t been a show with more egregiously “clever” one-liners in my lifetime.

Father Mulcahy: What’s for chow at the old mess hall, gentlemen?
Hawkeye: We’re out of mess, but I think there’s still some eyesore and catastrophe left.
BJ: Don’t forget the untidiness and monstrosity.

No one would ever talk like that, guys. Well, the good news is, there’s some show on The Disney Channel with Britney Spears’ 15 year old sister on it.

Ellen’s Energy Adventure

2006-01-25T09:20:00.000-05:00

I want to stop something before it goes much further. I’ve heard from several sources of information a load of crap regarding the Ellen Degeneres sitcom that used to be on in the 1990’s (first called These Friends of Mine, then renamed Ellen). The only source I am positive I heard it from was one of those awful I Love The 90’s vomit-festivals on VH1, which is problematic, because VH1 presumably doesn’t take responsibility for what a bunch of e-list celebrity talking heads say (even though they are all clearly fed the identical joke in advance- everyone together now: Lionel Richie, what was with that jheri-curl? What’s the deal with Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days? How come Andrew Keaton on Family Ties ages 4 years during one summer? I [random e-list celebrity] am probably the first one to point this out, but did you ever notice that Patrick Swayze says to Jerry Orbach in Dirty Dancing, “nobody puts Baby in a corner”? That’s a whack thing to say dude!). Anyway, the consensus seems to be that Ellen (the show) was doing great, until she came out as gay, and then social conservatives and red-state bumpkins forced it off the air. The reality is, the coming-out hype-fest improved the ratings significantly! To quote Wikipedia: In spite of the controversy, or perhaps because of it, the outing episode was one of the highest-rated episodes of the show.

"Arthur's Theme" (Best That You Can Do)

2006-01-24T07:25:00.000-05:00

”Thenk you for calling Dell Service and Support, thees is Pakir, thenk you for calling, how may I help you now today.”
“Uh, yeah, hi Pakir, thanks. Uh, my computer- let me see here, it’s a Dell Dimension 2400. I bought it at Sears, I believe in July 04? The keyboard isn’t –“
“One moment please.” When you get caught between the moon and New York City…I know it’s crazy …but it’s true… when you get caught between-- “OK thenk you for calling Dell Service and Support, thenk you, thees is Pakir, how may I help you very much now today.”
“Um- ok. I was saying, the computer won’t recognize my keyboard- it’s a USB keyboard, but the computer won’t-“
“One moment.” When you get caught between the moon and New York City…
“Hey, Pakir, I can tell that’s just you singing, man.” The best that you can do…”Seriously man, I know that song wasn’t done in a Pakistani accent. Ok? Hello? Pakir?” …Is fall in love. Arthur he does as he pleases…
“Click! Thees is Dell Service and Support, thees is Pakir, thenk you for calling, how- oh Jesus, it’s thees fucking guy again.”
“Look, I - HEY! Look, Pakir! I have been very patient! Stop singing! Stop pretending to put me on hold! Now YOU listen to ME! Ok!?”
“Yes.”
“My old legacy keyboard functions normally! Ok!?”
“Yes.”
“I cannot get the computer to recognize my USB keyboard. Is that clear!?“
“Yes.”
“The DELL computer that YOU sold me! IS NOT WORKING ACCEPTABLY! Do you understand!?”
“Yes.”
“Ok then. I’m sorry I yelled. This computer stuff can be frustrating. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that, right? Heh heh. What am I telling Pakir for, he deals with it all day. Right? Ok, so, buddy, let’s see what you and I can do together, Pakir, to come to a satisfactory conclusion to this mutual problem, that will benefit everybody. Ok?”
“One Moment.” Poor old Johnny Ray! Sounded sad upon the radio, he moved a million hearts in mono…

Cool as the other side of the pillow

2006-01-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

Another thing I’m tired of hearing from idiots: “The USA (or ‘The West’ or ‘Developed Nations’) comprise some very small percentage of the world’s population while using some very large percentage of the world’s recourses”. This is known as a zero-sum game logical fallacy. The statement is presented as if there is a certain amount of stuff to go around, and certain folks are hogging it. In reality, the developed nations produce almost all the goods; then they use most of what they produce. To simplify things, let’s say that developed nations produce 100% of the cars in the world. And they buy 90%. So it would be correct to say that these nations comprise 15% of the world’s population, while driving 90% of the cars. Hey, that’s not fair! But, they built all of them! We aren’t stealing the corn, the soybeans, and the cars, we grew and manufactured them in the first place. The solution apparently would be to reduce production of these things so we could proudly say, the USA is 7% of the world’s population and has ceased exporting goods and only has 3 bicycles and a carrot. Hooray!
On another note, a friend of mine who’s probably a racist person said of ESPN’s Stuart Scott, “He’s so black, even his eye is lazy”. I don’t think that’s appropriate, frankly.

Last Supper

2006-01-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

I was reading about condemned prisoner’s last meals today. Apparently it’s pretty limited in terms of how much you can spend, and they won’t give you alcohol. Ted Bundy had steak and eggs. Clarence Ray Allen, the 76 year old who was executed in California last week, had a bucket of KFC, which this website claims is called KFC rather than Kentucky Fried Chicken because it isn’t really made of chicken anymore. Anyway, I have to wonder how one can have any kind of appetite in that scenario- I don’t think I’d feel like eating much. I imagine a lot of about-to-die convicts order the most elaborate thing they can imagine (six lobsters, a wedding cake, a dodo egg omelet) and then flush it all down the toilet when it arrives purely for spite. “Oh man, you sure showed us guards. I’m still going to be feeling stupid about this in four hours…when I’m not dead”.

The Law

2006-01-19T09:21:00.000-05:00

I like when someone gets pulled over for going 47 in reverse down a one-way 25 mile per hour school zone and says to the cop, “Shouldn’t you be going after real criminals?” You’re right, I should go kick down some hippie-with-a-dime-bag’s door, confiscate his SpongeBob DVDs, and jump up and down on his neck while you plow into a family of 8. I mean, you were aware that traffic crimes were crimes, weren’t you? What did you think the sign with the 25 was there for? A loose, at-your-discretion, take it or leave it guideline? Another popular commentary to trot out is “Oh, I get it, you have to give me a ticket. You have to meet your quota”. He’s going to meet his quota for nightstick sodomy if you keep that up. And let’s not forget “My taxes pay your salary!” Hey, thanks for the 5.5 cents towards my salary that you paid in sales tax for that 40-ounce you’re drinking out of a paper bag.

Hooray For TV Commercials

2006-01-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

I’ve noticed that commercials aimed at women tend to suck up to them. You’re beautiful and intelligent, and you deserve a malt liquor that won’t let you down. There’s a “Triscuit” (actually Wheat Thins but what’s the difference) commercial where they have a really annoying animated woman jumping around and crap, while they refer to female Triscuit consumers as “goddesses”. Goddesses like you are beautiful and intelligent. So eat a snow shovel full of Triscuits. I would personally find that very insulting to my intelligence- I know they only want me to buy Triscuits; they don’t really think I’m a goddess. And most other men seem to feel the same way, as you don’t see many ads for motor oil or internet porn or jock-itch cream using the you’re so smart and good-looking, so buy stuff approach.
Other ads, however, don’t seem to mind actually insulting you, such as some of the latest phony-baloney weight loss treatments. I actually saw one this morning called Goddamn! You’re fat. Seriously.

Hooray For Historical Examples

2006-01-17T08:40:00.000-05:00

I suppose if you could accept that someone you were at war with was the same as you, you wouldn’t be at war with them, however, it is odd how often people assume the other side will react in the opposite way that they themselves would. Historical example: It could be argued (and has been, by smarter folks than I) that Germany turning their attention from fighting the British Air Force to bombing London in 1940-41 (known as “The Blitz” to the English) actually saved Britain, as London absorbed the bombing capably, and the RAF used that time to recover; meanwhile the resolve of the British people was only strengthened by what they saw as cruel terror bombing.
So what do the Allies do four years later? Bomb the German people, as in the firebombing of Dresden, under the impression that being terrorized would make the Germans give up- when the identical thing had had the exact opposite effect on them!
History, and not just military history, is full of stupid people unable to apply their own experience to anything else.
I'd also like to say today that if you brought a banana to school in your lunch when you were a kid, it made the rest of your lunch smell like banana.

Toilet Clog

2006-01-16T08:58:00.000-05:00

We at Door Hinge Studios are extremely lucky to have uncovered a piece of history- an unrecorded song by “Weird” Al Yankovic from 1974, parodying the Paul Simon hit “Kodachrome” in classic “Weird” Al style. Without further ado, we bring it to you now.

When I think back on all the stuff I put in my toilet
It's a wonder I can flush at all
I'd like to think my clogging hasn't hurt me none
But there's water flowin' down the hall

Toilet Clog (og, og, og...)
I tried my plunger
Tried some liquid plumber
Make my toilet clog go away, hey, hey
I want to sit on the porcelain
And read Huckleberry Finn
Somebody take my toilet clog away

If you took all the toilet paper in the county
And stuffed 'em all down my pipe
I know they'd never match my clog situation
Things would be easier if I just didn't wipe

Toilet Clog (og, og, og...)
I tried my plunger
Tried some liquid plumber
Make my toilet clog go away, hey, hey
I want to sit on the porcelain
And read Huckleberry Finn
Somebody take my toilet clog away

Somebody take my toilet clog away
Somebody take my toilet clog away
Somebody take my toilet clog away

Somebody take my toilet clog
Somebody take my toilet clog
Somebody take my toilet clog away

(Accordion solo)

Somebody take my toilet clog
Uhm uhm!
Somebody take my toilet clog away
O.K.!

And then you moved to Gabon

2006-01-13T09:29:00.000-05:00

It was actually cool to fart in High School, in certain situations, if you could pull it off right. Let us paint another picture in prose…
The cool guy at the lunch table keeps getting huge laughs with a certain routine, you can’t help but notice. At a given moment he’ll suddenly get a serious look in his eyes, cock his head to the side as if he hears something, and shush everyone, holding up one finger.
“Shh, shh…. Wait…shh!” And when everyone has stopped to look, he rips a loud and enthusiastic cheese-cleaver, to the laughter and delight of all.
Well, you’re barely even tolerated at the very same table, but this performance is such a seemingly guaranteed hit that when you feel a stirring in your large intestine, you go for it.
“Wait, guys,” you say, not getting much notice. “Shh! Guys! Wait!” you say, much more forcefully, gaining the undivided, if annoyed, attention of the greater table area. “Wait! ...Shh…” You pause for the sake of comic timing, and then,
“I SHIT myself!!!” you involuntarily yell out, as your body forms a stiff, 45 degree angle to the floor, knocking the table ajar. As you run away in shame and horror you hear the girl who had been sitting next to you say disgustedly,
“Why did he want everyone to watch him crapping in his pants at lunch?”

Streamlining

2006-01-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

I’m aware that some people relish a good professional haircut, but as soon as shaving one’s head became fashionable in the late 1990s I jumped at it, as it was something I could do myself. I hated making an appointment and then telling some stranger how I want my hair (which for some reason they seem disposed to argue about) and then paying $16 plus tip (that’s the highest amount I paid, anyway- at Sears, of all places). Plus, I heard on The Dr. Dean Edell Show once that many people have had neck problems (probably strokes and total paralysis based on my experience) from putting their heads into that basin they use for the shampoo and rinse.
Pretty soon the head-shaving routine became too high-maintenance, so I switched to just buzzing my head 6 times a year with the clippers set on 1/8th inch. And thus a constant nuisance was all but eliminated.
Another pertinent example: when the city towed off my car during a snow storm a few weeks ago, I never bothered to go get it, and I’m much happier without it, as you can see from my earlier post about walking down the icy sidewalk and being denied the pleasure of even complaining about it.
I mention all this, however, not to imply that I know the right way for everyone to deal with their personal grooming and vehicle ownership. There’s little more annoying than people who happen to do something a certain way and then preach to everyone about how virtuous that way is.

With a name like Mullett Incorporated it has to be good

2006-01-11T06:46:00.000-05:00

This post is dedicated to Mason Adams, the voice of the Smucker’s Jam commercials, who passed away last year at the age of 86.

6-11-02

Dear Mr. Mullett:

I received your inquiry regarding voice-over opportunities for your future ad campaigns. I must admit I am not familiar with your company; however, your offer is more than generous. I hope that my "down-home style" delivery that has served the Smucker’s Jam people so well will do the same for Mullett Brothers Incorporated.

Sincerely,

Mason Adams

6-21-02

Dear Mr. Mullett:

Enclosed find the reel-to-reel tapes of me performing the copy you requested. I found it a bit strange, as the spots do not conform to either 30 or 60-second radio commercial formats; and at no point do I ever mention anything whatsoever about what Mullett Limited Liability Corporation LLC does or sells or attempts to accomplish. I think I am safe in assuming that you are involved in the bakery business, due to the phrase, "next time you're pinching a loaf, here's what I want you to think about". Also, I must remind you that I have not received my first payment yet. I am certain it has simply been held up in the mail.

Truly,

Mason Adams

7-6-02

Mr. Mullett:

I write to wish your company a happy Independence Day. Also, although I did receive your outline for a magazine campaign featuring me, I still have not received any of the three installments of payment I am owed. It is time to give up on the mail and re-cut those checks I am afraid, gentlemen. As to the other matter, I have done exclusively voice-over and acting work in my advertising career thus far, but I am willing to try if you bear with someone who's not too used to modeling.

Yours,

Mason Adams.

7-16-02

Dear Mullett Incorporated:

I hope the photographs in the enclosed manila envelope suit your campaign. Although a photographer did show up for the session, as promised, I must say I felt his behavior was most unprofessional. The use of a disposable camera seemed out of place for a campaign that is to be featured in so many high profile magazines. Also, that I was left to get the film developed myself was quite nearly unacceptable. Anyway, as instructed, I provided a campground setting. Enclosed are two 8 x 10's each of me doing the following, as requested: pitching a tent; dropping a log; getting wood; dropping my kids off at the pool; and displaying the fact that there is a brick in my shorts. Frankly I'm at a loss as to how this sells bakery products, but I suppose that's the modern age for you. Finally, I must insist that payment for this and previous work be remitted as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

M. A.

8-08-02

Dear Sirs:

I certainly appreciate the monopoly money on which you crossed out "$500" and wrote "dump". I also thank you for the pictures of you and your brother at Chuck E Cheese's, in the ball pit, and at the whack-a-mole station. The children seem largely scared as you both seem to be about 30. But regardless...it's not quite legal tender either.

M. S. Adams

9-01-02

I will take the repeated flaming bags of dog mess on my porch as signaling the end of our business relationship. God only knows how you got a dog to eat that much jam.

Mason. Adams

Butterfly in the Sky

2006-01-10T09:14:00.000-05:00

In our continuing series on television shows that I am 20+ years too old to be watching, I just want to say, I cannot trust the book reviews on Reading Rainbow. How can I, when those kids never give a negative review? Not every book is fun and exciting and a thorough top-to-bottom recommendation, kids. Just once I want to hear one of those 7-year-olds say, “Well, Geordi, I just read Celia and the Coyote, and, let’s see, boring, sucked, about 12 pages long, and enough with the faux-watercolor illustrations, for Christ’s sake.” Da-den-den!

Timely Christmas Commentary

2006-01-09T00:05:00.000-05:00

I’ve noticed that the pronunciations of certain words have changed subtly over the years, and I am fairly certain I know why. These words start out as specialized beings, known and understood to only a select few, but then the great masses get a hold of them, and it becomes necessary to change something about them to continue to differentiate those who still belong in the club. Examples: ‘Neanderthal’ used to be pronounced with a ‘th-’ sound as in ‘thirty’, but the in-the-know pronunciation is now ‘neander - tall’. ‘Zoology’ used to be ‘zoo’ but now it's ‘zoh’ (rhymes with ‘blow’). NPR and other highbrow media folks have decided that they don’t provide ‘programs’, they provide ‘pro-grums’. Now, you may be thinking, there are good reasons for some of this. You can’t pronounce ‘Zoology’ the old way, it is said, because it’s spelled ‘zo-ology’ not ‘zoo-ology’. I don’t know why we can’t pronounce ‘zo’ like ‘zoo’, though; we seem to do all right pronouncing ‘do’ that way.
On a more-or-less related note, while the last thing I want to wade into is the endlessly boring ‘war on Christmas’, there is one aspect of it that has been aggravating me. Newspaper letter writers and other cranks never tire of smugly reminding everyone that all of our so-called ‘Christmas’ traditions are REALLY ancient celtic/pagan/druid/jedi/whatever. Well, no, moron, they aren’t. That’s a complete failure to understand symbolism, and to grasp the difference between “real” and “earlier”. Faithful and chaste Druidity may have been an earlier intent behind the Christmas tree or Yule log whatever else, but it’s a symbol, and if the person using it today and all the people seeing it know the intended meaning is “Christmas”, then that’s what it REALLY means. What it means to someone else somewhere else, even if they were first, isn’t any more real. Similarly, the same type of people like to see you eating pizza and say,
“that’s not “real” pizza! Real pizza from Napoli is square with big chunks of mozzarella and has no red sauce, not this American cardboard Domino’s CRAP."
Hey, my pizza comes frozen with a cartoon guy named Tony on the box, buddy, so screw you.

Second To Last Page

2006-01-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

And so we come to an end- here are the last two pages.

Last Page

2006-01-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

The Main Feature, Part One

2006-01-05T09:39:00.000-05:00

The magazine in question would always feature a movie parody, of course, so today we present just that. The first couple pages of it, anyway. Stay tuned for the rest tomorrow.

Day Three

2006-01-04T00:12:00.000-05:00

Day Two

2006-01-03T00:32:00.000-05:00

And we continue with our epic week-long farce. Again, click on it to get a good look.

Magazine Parody Dept.

2006-01-01T20:36:00.000-05:00

Having already sent up "The New Yorker" recently, it occurred to me that there was a magazine that I wished to bludgeon much more utterly. So utterly, in fact, that I am devoting the entire week to it. I imagine you'll figure out what magazine, exactly, we are talking about. Today, we begin with the (wildly inaccurate) Table of Contents (click on it to get a good look). Stay tuned.

BraveDragon

2005-12-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

The dragon swooped down on the Scottish village, burning down some huts with his breath and simply landing on others. When he lay down on a grass roof it would inevitably collapse, and after crushing the furniture under his feet like beer cans, he would get bored and take off again. Apparently to save from having to constantly blow fire on everything, he also took to uprooting trees and sheds and people and carrying them around in his jaws, using them as torches to touch off bridges, abutments and small crowds. When he was tired of this he would drop the flaming remnants on the pub or the meeting hall.

Eventually, the town organized its response. Within that afternoon, the men of the village gathered a force to push back the dragon attack, a group of 50 or 60 in kilts, with pitchforks and heavy ornate doorknobs and legs from pianos that the dragon had reclined on. While 30 or 35 of the men were charred immediately, and a number just eaten, the rest did eventually manage to climb on the dragon's back and bonk it on the head till it lost consciousness (or likely just got tired) and laid on the ground.

They rolled it onto a tarp and dragged it into a nearby yard, and tied it to a stump. People gathered around, poking the dragon, and peppering it with questions. Soon talk turned to what exactly they ought to do with it, now that they had it.

"I say we drag it a few miles and dump it over the town line," suggested one villager.

"Don't you imagine it'll just fly right back!" shouted Gregor MacHudsonsmith. "Let's tie a rock to it at least! Or a coffee can, filled with dirt. As an anchor."

"Maybe if we fed it our children it would be full and leave on its own."

They were debating the various merits of their ideas when the dragon, which had had its eyes rolled back and its tongue hanging out, spoke.

"Freeee-dooom!" it shouted.

They all looked in stunned silence.

"Now see here," started Macbruce Cloudscuttle, whose leg was bitten off earlier, mid-femur (a condition that had plagued many of his ancestors), "You don't go shouting about freedom after you fly into town, eat my house, pull off the roof of the church and defile it with your waste, not to mention-"

The dragon ate him, showing surprising reach.

"Freedom," it said.

"Shut up!” said another villager, “you used my wife as a club to beat my horse!"

The dragon stopped a moment, seeming to consider this. It took a breath, its lips pursed in thought. Raising its head up over the top of the stump, it wailed out,

"Freeeee-doooooom!"

Tomorrow: Another short story

2005-12-29T00:14:00.000-05:00

A lot of cross dresser types aren’t even gay. This has always violated some internal sense of fairness I have. If you’re going to dress up like a woman at least be gay! I fear I might be drunk enough to start talking to one some night, and he might say, “Uh, dude- back off man, I’m not queer. Like you.”
I mean, fine, if you want to dress up like a girl, it’s none of my business, but you’re trying to have the best of at least three possible worlds: you want to be a girl making out with a chick; you want to stick it in somebody; and you want to not be gay. Those three worlds are mutually exclusive, muchacho.
For some reason, this reminds me of a recurring vision I have had. In it, Bigfoot finally pulls himself out of the woods, somewhere, say, around the Veteran’s Bridge, and the first thing he sees is me, a passenger in a Ford Ranger.
“Look at this ass,” he says, with a disgusted look on his face. “F--- you, man,” he says, shaking his head. He makes some jerk-off motions towards me and, convinced that I am representative of humanity, goes back to the woods for good. Meanwhile, I am unable to alert the other occupants of the vehicle in time, as I point frantically and try to conjure up the word “Bigfoot”.

Can’t you assume that I made the best choice possible with the information on hand?

2005-12-28T09:21:00.000-05:00

I really can’t stand it when I’m trying to complain about something and people won’t stop suggesting ways I could have done whatever I was doing differently and therefore wouldn’t have had to complain about it. What do they think this might accomplish? For example:
“I was walking down the sidewalk last night and it was really icy. Pissed me off. I slipped, like, 4 times.”
“Why didn’t you find a dry patch to walk in? Why didn’t you put down sand or salt? Why didn’t you walk down the middle of the street where the friction of the vehicle traffic would have minimized or eliminated the ice? Why don’t you have those spikes to clamp onto the sole of your boots? Why didn’t you hop on your skateboard and grab onto the back of a passing Jeep like Marty McFly? Why didn’t you construct a massive kilometer-wide solar sail using a 30 nanometer thick reflective panel of aluminum film to slowly pull you along the sidewalk using the momentum granted by the minute pressure of the stars’ radiation?”
Really, I’m not going to go for a two mile walk with a wheelbarrow full of sand, tossing handfuls in front of me as I go like Johnny Appleseed, but thanks for assuming I’m stupid.

He did throw for 47,000 yards you know

2005-12-27T12:05:00.000-05:00

Last night was the last “Monday Night Football” game on ABC, and it made me think of a phenomenon I caught the tail end of in my life- the phenomenon of hearing someone say, in whatever context, “Howard Cosell”, and someone else feeling a deep pressing need to shout out the same two words, but in a Howard Cosell impression. It sounded pretty much like:
“Oh, I was reading this Newsweek article about Howard Co-“
“HAH…WIDD …CO…SELL!”
“…sell”.
Unfortunately, this lives on in the almost identical “Arnold Schwarzenegger Syndrome”.
All this talk about football reminds me of an incident from second grade. Once a week or so, we were given mimeographed handouts about famous and important Americans (we once went straight from learning about Martin Luther King Jr. to Billy Joel). One week, the random somewhat important person was NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton. It actually contained the sentence “Fran Tarkenton- wow!”. So I figured I’d impress my dad with my new football knowledge. When he got home that night, I casually sprinted out to his car, and casually slipped “Fran Tarkenton” into the conversation 12 or 13 times as he attempted to open his door. I’m sure he was wondering where his 7 year old son had got a hold of so much crack, but what he said was, “Tarkenton? Overrated”.

Air Conditioning: A Short Story

2005-12-26T09:02:00.000-05:00

The prehistoric man entered a clearing and was caught off guard by the smell of semi-fresh meat.

"A deer carcass!" He exclaimed, waving the flies away from it. "Wow. I mean, seven of my nine teeth are impacted, one of my femurs snapped and re-healed in a horrible deformity, and I more or less exist in the fetid stench of my own filth. But you know, finding this deer carcass kind of makes it all worth whi-"

Just then the saber-toothed cat that had happened by decided to bite him.

"My leg! Oh no God! My good femur!"

The tiger bit the prehistoric man's leg off, mid-femur, and piled it on top of the deer carcass, carefully dragging them both away. The man sat glumly watching, leaning on his one remaining leg.

"Let this be a lesson that anything too pleasurable is dangerous, and probably causes massive wastes of electricity, environmental damage, and is a breeding ground for legionnaire's disease," he thought.

I do not have time for thees chit. I am a backyardigan, choo get it mang?

2005-12-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

There’s a show on Nickelodeon called “The Backyardigans”. I don’t know what the name is supposed to signify, except that it’s a combination of “back yard” and “cardigan”. Anyway, I’ve been watching it a lot lately. It seems to be aimed at preschoolers. It has become obvious that two of the four characters (none of which are wearing cardigans incidentally) are black people, even though, strangely, they aren’t black or people, they are an orange computer animated moose, and a pink computer generated alien type thing with antennae. You can tell they are black people because their names are “Uneequa” and “Tyrone”. I’m surprised there isn’t a computer animated red panda named “Gonzalo Sanchez” who goes around the back yard saying “It’s si-eeesta time, mang! Where’s my tequeee-la?”

This appeared previously elsewhere

2005-12-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

I think women might be largely unaware of the prevalence of homosexual graffiti in men's rooms. For some reason I don't think women's stalls are covered in erect-penis-with-testicles key scratches, but men's stalls sure are. Something compels a large percentage of men to make vague but graphic sexual offers to random people who will in the future be in public taking a dump. I was reflecting on this while I was in the Home Depot yesterday, ostensibly purchasing three bundles of "silver lining" color asphalt shingles and assorted other roofing materials. What I reflected on even more thoroughly was the fact that the guy in the stall next to me was asleep. I could tell; he had regular, deep breathing and occasional snoring. The only conclusion I could come to was that he was an employee, and this was the only place he could go and sleep where the boss couldn't come after him. I really don't think that justifies sitting on a toilet all afternoon while a succession of men come in and shit 16 inches from you, though. As for roofing, there is a tool we use called a "roof bully", to pull the old shingles off before new ones are installed. Based on that, I have long felt that "-bully" would be a good suffix to adopt generally. Can opener: soup bully. Wheel barrow: yard debris bully.

The Death of Eustace Tilley

2005-12-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

The New Yorker: it’s such an oozing orgasm of smug pretension and self awareness. In the best possible way, of course. I love the way they put little dieresis marks over repeating vowels. I love the tiny little ads in the back- as far as I know, they’ve been the same ads since Dorothy Parker worked there. Omaha Steaks; the mattress-sized pool that creates its own current for you to swim against; the zero gravity upside down back saver chair. Most people, of course, say they like the cartoons. Talking animals, people at a cocktail party, 1950s style office vignettes, sad children at a birthday party, obscure references. I once submitted cartoons to the New Yorker, you know, when I was 15. No dice, although they did at least write back. The strongest one, I think, involved people assuming that Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the man who was responsible for the original 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, had got his name “the Shake” from his bump-and-grind dancing. (Hey I was 15- it was topical and cutting). So, in that spirit, here is my attempt at the highly abstract variety of New Yorker style cartoon:

And then you moved to Chad

2005-12-20T09:04:00.000-05:00

Accidentally farting in high school, of course, would bring anyone to near-suicide from utter shame and humiliation, but, for reasons I need not explore here on the Door Hinge, I’ve been driven to imagine circumstances that could actually make it much, much worse. Let’s paint a picture in words:

You are sitting in History of Western Civilization, 10th grade, about 15 minutes into a discussion about the Carthaginians which you have managed to seem interested in while avoiding actually being called on to participate. You sense a bit of nervous gas, but you’ve dealt with that before- it’s pretty much harmless and odorless, you figure, so you shift and slide your weight to one side and confidently prepare to discharge, when-
“I shit myself!” you involuntarily yell out, as your body forms a stiff, 45 degree angle to the floor, knocking your desk ajar. There are several seconds of silence.

No cartoon today. I'm not a cartoon machine.

2005-12-19T09:26:00.000-05:00

I love listening to white people who can’t stop stridently insisting that they aren’t racist. They’ll awkwardly shoe-horn “African-American” into a sentence every which way. I saw Jeremy Schaap interviewing Warren Moon on ESPN the other day, and he produced a question very similar to: “As an African-American in a league where African-Americans weren’t always as accepted in the league as they were in the African-American community, not that the African-American community is monolithic in structure, of course, there is more than one African-American community, but football-wise, or in an African-American neighborhood per se, as an African-American quarterback, you faced unique African-American circumstances…word? ...African-American?”

I especially like when a white person feels they are being accused of racism, and they sputter forth some inevitable stock phrases:

“I’m the least racist person I know!” I especially like this one because even if it’s true, it doesn’t prove anything. I don’t know who you know! Maybe you work for a neo-nazi newsletter and your dad was an Imperial Dragon.

“I don’t care if you’re black, white, green, purple or whatever!” For some reason, it’s always green and purple following the real colors people could actually be.

Let the regularity begin

2005-12-16T14:27:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's Friday, December 16th, 2005. So begins the torrent of humorous content! Only to immediately end, only to resume again Monday, if I get around to it. Enjoy today's cartoon.

First Post

2005-12-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome to "The Door Hinge- Humorous Content Updated Regularly". This is the first of the humorous content, and also something of a test. I will build up some Content and start fulfilling the promise of Regular Updates in the near future. Until then, enjoy this preview of things to come: a poorly drawn rendition of my idea for a new malt liquor product.