That kind of stuff is humorous, and plus it's not racism because Bill Cosby doesn't like those guys either, and he's probably black, I guess.
When I started this blog, the furthest thing from my mind was money. My thoughts were purely focused on the betterment of mankind. Also, Johnny Depp. Maybe it was the betterment of mankind through Johnny Depp, or the betterment of Johnny Depp through mankind's ritual sacrifices to Him.
Either way, it was pretty damn noble.
However, like all well intentioned people, I'm secretly a huge slut for money. So when I absently clicked through the formatting options and saw the availability of google ads, dollar signs in a font that properly conveys capitalistic greed and humor, maybe comic sans, popped up in my pupils. After a trip to the optometrist, I quickly set up as many of those little fuckers as I could at the bottom of the page, because I figured that way I'd be cheating the system and squeezing a bunch of ads into a place where no one looks anyway. It's like smuggling arms in the anus of a poor, starving child, but painting the child fun colors to confuse border patrol.
Christ, I could barely contain my excitement. I mean, these things pay out, right? Like, big time. Those youtube guys didn't even have ads, and they made money. This page has to get at least as many views as youtube. Hell, if it doesn't, I'll just pay a twelve year old to butcher a classical piece of music on his guitar and watch the page views rack up. I quickly became lost in contemplation of the things my new riches could buy me. Hookers, probably. Chocolate. Gold.
Gold plated hookers carrying chocolate. Oh, yes. Yes.
It turns out, though, that I was in for the biggest disappointment of my life, aside from finding out that women are not attracted to full body Chuck E. Cheese tattoos. After ten days, I hadn't made any money. Apparently, a thousand page views are required before google will fork over their huge piles of search engine scented cash. And, when they do finally pay, it's about three dollars.
Google, I've known you a while. I kind of like you, in the sense that I don't really, but I'm saying that so as to avoid social awkwardness. However, let me make this perfectly clear.
I would make more money off of this thing if I meticulously collected the finger sweat from my keyboard after every post, saved it in a jar, and sold it to some Taiwanese guy named Lucky who sits around in a lime green bathing suit all day purchasing primo quality finger sweat for his nefarious uses. Like, twice as much money.
On an unrelated note, feel free to contact me about killer deals on, uh. Bottled water. Yeah.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Pretty in purple
I'm interviewing for a job tomorrow. Well, technically I've already had a phone interview, an internet submitted interview, and then a second phone interview, and then a scheduled interview tomorrow. You know, I'd be annoyed with all the red tape, but at this point in my career, I'm so far advanced along my path that it's only natural for employers to want to verify that I'm really the one. It's a complicated position, the one I'm interviewing for. It requires quick thinking, fast reflexes, nerves of some metallic substance that is slightly less over used than steel.
The job is called, "Courtesy Clerk." There's no required degree, previous job experience, or really any requirement except for the fact that you're actually alive and not just some sort of reanimated super corpse. Hell, they'd probably even let that slide if you were hot and not too decayed.
Fine. Fine, I can live with that. So I have to interview a bunch, take up some time from my life. I've got plenty to spare. That's all acceptable. What is not acceptable is the fucking purple polo shirt that I am required to wear for my job.
Somewhere along the line, some well intentioned guy with a degree in psychology and a sweater vest with wood buttons decided that purple is non threatening. Purple, it seems, is the quintessential color, the be all and end all of the visible spectrum. It's the color that the Germans would be studying in a lab sometime during World War II, they'd be exclaiming things that sound funny, like "ACH" and "BITTE, MEIN FRAULEIN."
Those guys were a crack up.
Anyway, purple polo shirt is my future. Years from now, I'm that guy who used to be seen changing on the sly after every shift. I'm that guy who would have some purple piece of cloth sticking out of his bag, and when you asked about it, he'd run away.
On the other hand, I'll be making $9.50 an hour. These riches require some sacrifices.
The job is called, "Courtesy Clerk." There's no required degree, previous job experience, or really any requirement except for the fact that you're actually alive and not just some sort of reanimated super corpse. Hell, they'd probably even let that slide if you were hot and not too decayed.
Fine. Fine, I can live with that. So I have to interview a bunch, take up some time from my life. I've got plenty to spare. That's all acceptable. What is not acceptable is the fucking purple polo shirt that I am required to wear for my job.
Somewhere along the line, some well intentioned guy with a degree in psychology and a sweater vest with wood buttons decided that purple is non threatening. Purple, it seems, is the quintessential color, the be all and end all of the visible spectrum. It's the color that the Germans would be studying in a lab sometime during World War II, they'd be exclaiming things that sound funny, like "ACH" and "BITTE, MEIN FRAULEIN."
Those guys were a crack up.
Anyway, purple polo shirt is my future. Years from now, I'm that guy who used to be seen changing on the sly after every shift. I'm that guy who would have some purple piece of cloth sticking out of his bag, and when you asked about it, he'd run away.
On the other hand, I'll be making $9.50 an hour. These riches require some sacrifices.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
All purpose phrases
I need to break my habit of wanting to pronounce purpose as porpoise. Man.
When I was about twelve, I started to notice that there were a few phrases that could be used for almost anything. They were ideally ambiguous, vaguely familiar to people (via pop culture, in the best case scenario), and short.
I first became familiar with this phenomenon after a trip to the doctor's for my yearly check up. Probably I was around ten at the time. When my mother left me alone in the waiting room, I noticed a series of "growing up" pamphlets, designed to help struggling parents explain to their kids what exactly dicks and ovaries and pissing fetishes are. Two in particular caught my eye.
The first one featured a paternal figure sitting on a couch, looking at his son, gesticulating into the air while he apparently talked to the kid. I say apparently because for all I know, he was just doing some kind of guppy impression or demonstrating what a nice set of fillings he had. In any event, on the inside it had such pertinent questions as, "What's a vagina?" and "Is my penis normal?"
"Well," I thought, "How timely. I've just begun to question my dick's normality, and I heard someone say vagina once in a dirty context."
I surreptitiously swiped the booklet, along with another one called, "What happens if I masturbate too much?"
Later, I was perusing them in my room when I heard my mother coming towards the door. As she was about to open the door, I frantically stuffed the reading matter under my bed, and shouted the first thing that came to my mind.
"CHECK IT OUT NOW FUNK SOUL BROTHER," I screamed, in a falsetto that, in better times, could have netted me a position in a band where the people look moody and wear things that are trendy, but not trendy enough to label them as sell outs. This is important to them, because they must retain their street cred.
Incredibly, my mother stopped. She didn't open the door. She'd heard, at some point, Fatboy Slim's Rockafeller Skank, and was trying to figure out what the lyrics meant in this context, coming from her apparently castrated son. In the time it took her to realize that it was just gibberish, I'd hidden my contraband naughtiness and taken out a copy of EGM. I just sat on my bed, triumphant, and replied to her inquiry, "Yes, I would like some super hero themed underwear."
I felt awesome. Deception was my world now, mother. Oh, yes. You couldn't see the sly fox that your darling son had become. I casually stared at her, pretending, in my mind, to be Sean Connery in James Bond, right before he ordered a martini or revealed to the world that under the suit, his chest had the appearance of a caribou fur draped maggot.
Since then, I've evolved in the way that I use these phrases. In the proper group of people, a well dropped, "RUNNNN! Get back to dah choppah!" can be a useful way to buy myself some time to explain why I'm wearing a Madonna t-shirt. I hunt for those phrases now, in magazines and movies and music.
I even managed to net the last available Mountain Dew at the supermarket the other day by stunning the obese man reaching for it with, "Can't step to this!"
Yes, the depressed middle aged woman in the aisle who was fantasizing about getting married to the cashier at register three and moving away somewhere romantic and maybe she'd finally get a foot rub that fucking pig at home never gives her foot rubs maybe she should kill him, yes she clutched her child closer and eyed me with the same suspicion she normally reserves for the waiters at Red Lobster when she thinks they've added things to the bill.
Dammit, though. It was worth it.
When I was about twelve, I started to notice that there were a few phrases that could be used for almost anything. They were ideally ambiguous, vaguely familiar to people (via pop culture, in the best case scenario), and short.
I first became familiar with this phenomenon after a trip to the doctor's for my yearly check up. Probably I was around ten at the time. When my mother left me alone in the waiting room, I noticed a series of "growing up" pamphlets, designed to help struggling parents explain to their kids what exactly dicks and ovaries and pissing fetishes are. Two in particular caught my eye.
The first one featured a paternal figure sitting on a couch, looking at his son, gesticulating into the air while he apparently talked to the kid. I say apparently because for all I know, he was just doing some kind of guppy impression or demonstrating what a nice set of fillings he had. In any event, on the inside it had such pertinent questions as, "What's a vagina?" and "Is my penis normal?"
"Well," I thought, "How timely. I've just begun to question my dick's normality, and I heard someone say vagina once in a dirty context."
I surreptitiously swiped the booklet, along with another one called, "What happens if I masturbate too much?"
Later, I was perusing them in my room when I heard my mother coming towards the door. As she was about to open the door, I frantically stuffed the reading matter under my bed, and shouted the first thing that came to my mind.
"CHECK IT OUT NOW FUNK SOUL BROTHER," I screamed, in a falsetto that, in better times, could have netted me a position in a band where the people look moody and wear things that are trendy, but not trendy enough to label them as sell outs. This is important to them, because they must retain their street cred.
Incredibly, my mother stopped. She didn't open the door. She'd heard, at some point, Fatboy Slim's Rockafeller Skank, and was trying to figure out what the lyrics meant in this context, coming from her apparently castrated son. In the time it took her to realize that it was just gibberish, I'd hidden my contraband naughtiness and taken out a copy of EGM. I just sat on my bed, triumphant, and replied to her inquiry, "Yes, I would like some super hero themed underwear."
I felt awesome. Deception was my world now, mother. Oh, yes. You couldn't see the sly fox that your darling son had become. I casually stared at her, pretending, in my mind, to be Sean Connery in James Bond, right before he ordered a martini or revealed to the world that under the suit, his chest had the appearance of a caribou fur draped maggot.
Since then, I've evolved in the way that I use these phrases. In the proper group of people, a well dropped, "RUNNNN! Get back to dah choppah!" can be a useful way to buy myself some time to explain why I'm wearing a Madonna t-shirt. I hunt for those phrases now, in magazines and movies and music.
I even managed to net the last available Mountain Dew at the supermarket the other day by stunning the obese man reaching for it with, "Can't step to this!"
Yes, the depressed middle aged woman in the aisle who was fantasizing about getting married to the cashier at register three and moving away somewhere romantic and maybe she'd finally get a foot rub that fucking pig at home never gives her foot rubs maybe she should kill him, yes she clutched her child closer and eyed me with the same suspicion she normally reserves for the waiters at Red Lobster when she thinks they've added things to the bill.
Dammit, though. It was worth it.
Friday, March 7, 2008
I'M MAKING COKE IN MY GARAGE
...by which I mean a home brewed batch of Coca-Cola imitation, of course.
I noticed a while ago that if I just stayed on my computer or read a book, only moving to go to school or to exercise, I'd get depressed. I'm the type of person who likes a good project, a good activity. I'm the guy who would run into a Boy Scout's meeting and laugh at them for being homophobic, and then come back later and steal their bird house building materials so I could make my own. It's just who I am.
When I'm not creating something manually, I can't help the feeling that I'm not doing anything. Logically, sure, I can tell myself, "You're doing something. You're writing that essay, you're masturbating at a frequency that is both record breaking and disturbing, you're reading that book."
However, it's like there's a part of my mind that refuses to believe that. It's a skeptic. If I'm not able to quantify my accomplishments occasionally, and do it quickly, it rebells.
So I make little projects for myself. Stupid things that don't take long most of the time, occasionally big projects. Last week I bought some coconuts from a market, shaved them and sanded them, and made little tropical glasses so that I could put on a colorful shirt and recline and feel like I was in Hawaii, if instead of a beach, Hawaii had a great view of one of my dogs licking his asshole.
Also, I like run on sentences. It's as close to stream of consciousness writing as I can get without feeling woozy.
In any event, I chose to make coca cola substitute this weekend, because that sounds fun (I have a warped sense of fun) and delicious.
Here's a link, if you're curious. I have the sneaking suspicion that that website is designed for middle aged women looking for things to cook, but I put a mustache and a fake set of testicles on my monitor to make it more manly, and now everything is just dandy.
I noticed a while ago that if I just stayed on my computer or read a book, only moving to go to school or to exercise, I'd get depressed. I'm the type of person who likes a good project, a good activity. I'm the guy who would run into a Boy Scout's meeting and laugh at them for being homophobic, and then come back later and steal their bird house building materials so I could make my own. It's just who I am.
When I'm not creating something manually, I can't help the feeling that I'm not doing anything. Logically, sure, I can tell myself, "You're doing something. You're writing that essay, you're masturbating at a frequency that is both record breaking and disturbing, you're reading that book."
However, it's like there's a part of my mind that refuses to believe that. It's a skeptic. If I'm not able to quantify my accomplishments occasionally, and do it quickly, it rebells.
So I make little projects for myself. Stupid things that don't take long most of the time, occasionally big projects. Last week I bought some coconuts from a market, shaved them and sanded them, and made little tropical glasses so that I could put on a colorful shirt and recline and feel like I was in Hawaii, if instead of a beach, Hawaii had a great view of one of my dogs licking his asshole.
Also, I like run on sentences. It's as close to stream of consciousness writing as I can get without feeling woozy.
In any event, I chose to make coca cola substitute this weekend, because that sounds fun (I have a warped sense of fun) and delicious.
Here's a link, if you're curious. I have the sneaking suspicion that that website is designed for middle aged women looking for things to cook, but I put a mustache and a fake set of testicles on my monitor to make it more manly, and now everything is just dandy.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Porn has the right idea
Yesterday, I was watching TV and a commercial came on advertising Bowflex. They had this huge, ripped guy exercising, and a voice over that was so enthusiastic it made my balls hurt.
However, isn't the point of advertising these days to get people to empathize with the fictional guy on TV, working on getting those sculpted buns? Having a huge dude proclaiming the efficacy of the system doesn't really give them anything to relate to. Unless they're deluded to the nth degree, they're probably going to realize that they don't look like that guy, and they won't ever look like that guy.
In porn, people have started replacing ripped, muscled guys with pudgy, pasty, middle aged white dudes with body hair that's somehow unsettling. The reason being, as far as I can tell, that they've realized their market demographic: pudgy, pasty, middle aged white dudes with body hair that's somehow unsettling. The last thing these guys want to see when they're watching porn is someone who'll intimidate them. It's just going to remind them that they're sitting at home in a dark room, holding their small dick and sweating unpleasantly while they try not the think about their wife's cottage cheese thighs. Having these big walking towers of cock and muscle is just a slap in the face to the poor man.
So, why hasn't this been extrapolated to normal advertising? The only downside is that the advertising corporations don't have someone to show off what could be, if only the viewer would get off of his ass and buy their shit. They've lost that.
However, they've gained the knowledge that all around America, there's out of shape guys who are still watching that infomerical because they haven't been scared away by the fact that their wife thinks of the guy on the Bowflex commercial during sex. Instead, there's someone they can relate to. He's got the same problems they do: hairy ass, no muscles, a filthy attraction to that girl who was on Jeopardy the other night. They can relate. Hell, if he can look stupid pulling on those rods while wearing a sweatband, so can they.
Oh, and if you're pudgy, pasty, white, and middle aged, but you have body hair arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way, just disregard this.
However, isn't the point of advertising these days to get people to empathize with the fictional guy on TV, working on getting those sculpted buns? Having a huge dude proclaiming the efficacy of the system doesn't really give them anything to relate to. Unless they're deluded to the nth degree, they're probably going to realize that they don't look like that guy, and they won't ever look like that guy.
In porn, people have started replacing ripped, muscled guys with pudgy, pasty, middle aged white dudes with body hair that's somehow unsettling. The reason being, as far as I can tell, that they've realized their market demographic: pudgy, pasty, middle aged white dudes with body hair that's somehow unsettling. The last thing these guys want to see when they're watching porn is someone who'll intimidate them. It's just going to remind them that they're sitting at home in a dark room, holding their small dick and sweating unpleasantly while they try not the think about their wife's cottage cheese thighs. Having these big walking towers of cock and muscle is just a slap in the face to the poor man.
So, why hasn't this been extrapolated to normal advertising? The only downside is that the advertising corporations don't have someone to show off what could be, if only the viewer would get off of his ass and buy their shit. They've lost that.
However, they've gained the knowledge that all around America, there's out of shape guys who are still watching that infomerical because they haven't been scared away by the fact that their wife thinks of the guy on the Bowflex commercial during sex. Instead, there's someone they can relate to. He's got the same problems they do: hairy ass, no muscles, a filthy attraction to that girl who was on Jeopardy the other night. They can relate. Hell, if he can look stupid pulling on those rods while wearing a sweatband, so can they.
Oh, and if you're pudgy, pasty, white, and middle aged, but you have body hair arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way, just disregard this.
Monday, March 3, 2008
There's no one left who I can safely like
I was talking to someone yesterday, and they made a comment about how arrogant those guys who sat with baseball caps on in sport stadiums are. I thought, "Fuck, I thought I could like those people. Who's left?"
Environmentalists are all skinny hippies with art degrees, the salt of the earth is just old dudes who aren't educated or old dudes who are educated but pretend not to be. Liberals are hypocrites, conservatives are fascists, the left wing is turning into the right wing and the right wing is turning into those people you see on the bus who are reading a KJV and want you to know it.
The problem that I'm having right now is that, for whatever reason, I haven't been able to fit into any social group. That would be awesome, under normal circumstances, because not fitting into a social group is, in itself, a social group, and they're pretty cool and they have chicks who wear jeans and shirts that say things that they don't understand.
The real issue with my situation is that I don't mind most of these people, with their social groups. I don't (oddly) even think I'm better than them. So I have no sense of superiority I can share with a collective, I have no struggle I can bring up with people and say, "Man, look at this struggle. It's fucking hard. I wish other people had to deal with this stuff, maybe then they'd understand us."
Most people understand me. There's not much to it. The biggest struggle I deal with is normally the fact that when I shower, I knock over my bodywash container a lot, and it leaks out and then I have to buy new bodywash, and that sucks, because then my bodywash costs are excessively high, and that's terrible.
So it's always been a delicate balance for me, finding some social group who almost everyone can agree to dislike, and finding some social group that everyone can agree to like. When I was 12, I just got some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I was in with that crowd, and then I pretended to like WWF and I was in with that crowd, and that was pretty much it. Most recently, I actively proclaimed my distaste for people who like My Chemical Romance and advocated a reevaluation of American morals so they'd jive with the kids of today. That worked for a while, but then everyone started hating My Chemical Romance and too many people finally realized what relativism was, and I was back to square one.
So I'm out of people I can like, I'm out of people I can dislike, and I'm out of bodywash.
Which is terrible.
Environmentalists are all skinny hippies with art degrees, the salt of the earth is just old dudes who aren't educated or old dudes who are educated but pretend not to be. Liberals are hypocrites, conservatives are fascists, the left wing is turning into the right wing and the right wing is turning into those people you see on the bus who are reading a KJV and want you to know it.
The problem that I'm having right now is that, for whatever reason, I haven't been able to fit into any social group. That would be awesome, under normal circumstances, because not fitting into a social group is, in itself, a social group, and they're pretty cool and they have chicks who wear jeans and shirts that say things that they don't understand.
The real issue with my situation is that I don't mind most of these people, with their social groups. I don't (oddly) even think I'm better than them. So I have no sense of superiority I can share with a collective, I have no struggle I can bring up with people and say, "Man, look at this struggle. It's fucking hard. I wish other people had to deal with this stuff, maybe then they'd understand us."
Most people understand me. There's not much to it. The biggest struggle I deal with is normally the fact that when I shower, I knock over my bodywash container a lot, and it leaks out and then I have to buy new bodywash, and that sucks, because then my bodywash costs are excessively high, and that's terrible.
So it's always been a delicate balance for me, finding some social group who almost everyone can agree to dislike, and finding some social group that everyone can agree to like. When I was 12, I just got some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I was in with that crowd, and then I pretended to like WWF and I was in with that crowd, and that was pretty much it. Most recently, I actively proclaimed my distaste for people who like My Chemical Romance and advocated a reevaluation of American morals so they'd jive with the kids of today. That worked for a while, but then everyone started hating My Chemical Romance and too many people finally realized what relativism was, and I was back to square one.
So I'm out of people I can like, I'm out of people I can dislike, and I'm out of bodywash.
Which is terrible.
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