Just freakin' weird, that's all I'm saying

So I was watching TV over the weekend, and on The Soup I saw a clip where a dude claimed that even though he'd been having lots of sex with another dude, he wasn't gay. The dude in question justified his non-gayness with this line:

"When me and Whitney found out we weren't brother and sister, we had sex all the time."

What I love about that line is that only on daytime TV would that not be a show stopper, y'know? I mean, in any situation you can imagine, you'd need the person in question to back the hell up and give a lengthy explanation about that particular statement. Also, if you aren't familiar with the particular show this line came from, you really can't say for sure which show it was. This line could have been spoken on just about any daytime show for the past fifteen years, at anytime between about 9:30am and 3:30pm. Could have been Geraldo, or Dr. Phil, or Jerry Springer; Could have come from any soap opera ever made, might have come from The View, even, or the midday news.

The line did in fact come from a soap opera, Passions. Passions, for those who don't know, specializes in story lines that are straight up bat-shit crazy, even by the admittedly lax standards of detergent dramas.

Man, I love this country.

A little quick on the draw

So, I was talking to Hasty, a couple of days after I'd accidentally fired a 9mm round through the ceiling of the apartment in which I was staying.

"Yeah," Hasty drawled, "You mess around with guns long enough, somethin' like that's gonna happen."

"Really?" I said, sounding a bit testier than I should have. Hasty was trying to make me feel better, after all. "Something like this ever happen to you?"

"Yeah, but when I did it, it was with a shotgun. Blew a pretty big hole in the roof."

That shut my ass up.

Nerdcore, bitches!

I'm gonna be a Nerdcore rappper (The extra 'p' is for pimpin'). The great thing about making a statement like, 'I'm gonna be a Nerdcore rappper', is that it's such a freaking dorky thing to say, and therefore plays right into the whole idea. I just love that.

Anyway, self-amusement aside, I've been getting into MC Frontalot and a couple of other Nerdcore dudes. Frontalot kills me. He's got a song and video out called 'It is pitch black', which can be found on Youtube. The chorus starts with 'You are likely to be eaten by a grue', and if you don't get that reference, the song is gonna confuse the hell out of you. Nevertheless, I urge you, all three people who might read this missive, to do a little listening, as the guy actually has skill even if you don't follow the subject matter. I got no idea what the hell Busta Rhymes is talking about, but he sounds great. Same with Frontalot. MC Chris and MC Hawking have some good stuff, too.

So me and my buddy Blake are gonna pursue this, in addition to the amazingly original and funny comedy we're gonna do as Bad Puppets. Look out for dweeb rhymes from Oculus And Dactylos (I'm Dactylos, just so you know). We're gonna be kicking out fat beats behind songs about Nicola Tesla, Charles Fort, and the Emperor Norton.

Y'all better reconize!

Bored? Well, a little...

So... what would Amish porn be like?

A wood carving of a woman without a coal-scuttle bonnet? A man and a woman holding hands?

Send in your idea's!

These boots are killin' me...

I like these boots. Big black Army combats, steel-toed. They make me about an inch taller. I've been wearing them for more than a month now, so they're broken in and not giving me blisters anymore. The only boots I have left that were issued to me by the Army. The only footwear I possess right now, actually. They're insulated for winter wear, too. They are great boots. But...

They will not shut up!

Every other step, the right one squeaks. No matter how I plant my foot, they issue a loud half-farting sound. And they fuck with me. Sometimes the left boot joins in. Sometimes the right one stops, just long enough for me to think, 'Hey, maybe they finally...', SQUEAK! Damn you, boots! Every time I walk into the local college library to check my e-mail, the squeak cranks up the volume so that people with headphones are looking around, trying to see who's cutting the cheese with such metronome-like regularity. Cute college chicks give me The Look. It's all I can do sometimes to keep myself from looking down and screaming, 'SHUT UP, DAMN YOU! SHUT! UP!'

I'm telling you, these boots are lucky I don't have any choice about wearing them.

Got some time to kill?

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/

Oh, my friends. If you don't know about Craigslist's best of, you are in for a treat. I pride myself on being pretty well informed, especially about the sites I like, but I just found out about this little gem. Thanks for that, Sarah.

It is a hoot, my friends, a HOOT.

I've been lucky so far...

In that no one has been around with a video camera when I've done really stupid things. Like the time I scraped off a rear-view mirror on my parents car because I hadn't noticed the pole I was backing into. Or the uncountable occasions I have tripped on steps, or accidentally spit while talking, or almost knocked down a chandelier while putting on a coat with too much enthusiasm. Don't ask.

I say this because lately I've had access to a computer for long periods of time, and I've found myself spending a lot of it watching YouTube, seeing clips of people doing stupid things and hurting themselves. I can't help it. It's just so wonderful, seeing all of the things bored people do, usually guys, usually young, that end up damaging them. Not permanently, mind you. I'm not chuckling to video of kids mistakenly chopping off their arms or anything. But some of it's pretty close. And it's all 'there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I' kind of stuff, things I can see myself taking part in without a thought, and then wondering why the hell my arm's suddenly going off at an odd angle. I suggest these video's to anyone, just because you'll spend a couple of days being a little more careful about even the simplest tasks. This stuff could happen to any of us, really. It could be me doing that.

Except for the kid who dropped a lit firecracker into his pants, just to see what would happen. He's an idiot, pure and simple. Lucky for the rest of the species, I don't think he'll be able to breed.

What a cute little guy...

The kid made eye contact with me from about a block away.

He was part of a double line of pre-school kids walking down the street, and was standing next to the teacher bringing up the rear, holding her hand. As we walked towards each other, the little dude held my eye.

I was about 19 at the time, had a full beard and long hair, and I was wearing a green, Indiana Jones-type hat and a big ugly green coat. He kept looking at me, and I kept looking at him.

As we drew abreast of one another, he turned his head slightly to address the teacher, but still kept a watchful eye on me.

"Does that man have a gun?", he asked in a piping voice.

I almost fell over laughing, and didn't stop for the rest of the day.

A new VA hospital...

This new hospital is starting to creep me out. It has something to do with the muzak that's piped in all over the building. It's not really muzak, it's just instrumental versions of songs that Bobby Darin and Petulla Clark would sing.

Something about waking up at 7:00 am in a Veteran's facility and hearing 'The Girl from Ipanema' just strikes me as odd. The people are as nice as they were in the crazy house, and just as helpful, but the music is still kind of off-putting.

By the way, my mom hates it when I talk about having been in the 'crazy house'. So, please, if any of you talk to her, use that expression, or some other nickname for a psych ward, as often as possible. I love my mom a lot, but she is very funny when she's angry.

No time...

I was gonna post something new today, but I was looking at video's of guys hurting themselves on YouTube, and my favorite show, Hiroki Fleishmann, Ninja Accountant, is starting in a minute...

Sorry...

Raising your own Pizza Box Tree

The Pizza Box Tree is for people who don't want to be tied down to the responsibility involved in keeping a plant alive. It's non-organic, and quite easy to make, relying as it does on a person's natural laziness, and actually does grow.

What you do is, you get an apartment near a pizza place, near enough so that you can pick up a couple of slices in a box every couple of days. You stack the empty boxes in a corner, until they are too high to add another box without standing on something.

Then you need to spend the next couple of months using the stack of boxes as a kind of open air filing cabinet. You stick notes, important paperwork, and correspondence into the gaps between the boxes, far enough so they will be held firmly but still able to stick out a bit. Eventually, you will end up with a thick bodied tree in that corner, with foliage, or actually 'foliage', of various colors brightening the room.

If you're into the bonsai thing, you can make sure that larger paper is near the top, and smaller paper near the bottom, for a more naturalistic and harmonious canopy effect. One tall friend of mine had his Pizza Box Tree set up near his desk and phone, and would always add 'foliage' while sitting down. This gave him a tree that had it's 'foliage' all at about stomach height, with the 'trunk' rising bare above it. He ended up with an interesting effect we dubbed 'Martian Penis'.

Remember, your Pizza Box Tree should reflect you. Don't let anyone else tell you what your Tree needs, or that it's unsanitary. The bugs are all part of the great Circle of Life, after all.

Enjoy!

In Fond Memory

Marcel Marceau died recently.

And on that day, the world was just a little louder.

Robert Goulet has also passed.

Will Ferrell was reportedly inconsolable.

A man of rare quality, indeed

At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U.S., and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in the Musical Hall of this city on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

It was with this proclamation that Joshua Norton became Emperor Norton I, Dei Gratia monarch of our fine nation, and protector of Mexico, in 1859.

You say you didn't know we had an Emperor. Well, now you know. I first ran across mention of him in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shaw's Illuminatus Trilogy back in high school, but the book was crammed with so much weirdness I don't believe good Joshua captured my attention. Later, while reading Neil Gaiman's superlative comic work, The Sandman, I came across a story called 'Three Septembers and a January', which had the Emperor as it's focus.

You can learn about him on Wikipedia, which has a link to a fine site that collects his proclamations, even the forged ones, from the years of his odd reign. The introduction is especially worth reading, and makes the cogent point that the Emperor Norton could only have existed in an egalitarian state such as ours. Here, in the land of the free, a man is truly able to be Emperor, if he wants to be. When the Emperor was arrested by a young policeman of San Francisco, to be incarcerated for psychological treatment, the people of the city expressed outrage, and Police Chief Patrick Crowley released him quickly and gave a formal apology. Chief Crowley observed of the self-styled monarch "that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line."

That is where my personal affection for the Emperor comes from. Joshua Norton apparently developed delusions of grandeur after losing his fortune speculating in rice, but far from attempting to live out the life of the average monarch, this gentle man spent his days walking the streets of his adopted city, inspecting the cleanliness of the streets, the repair of public buildings, and the uniforms of the constabulary, who, following his arrest and release, would salute him as he passed. He was a beloved figure, known for being accompanied by his two dogs, Lazarus and Bummer. He would also give out Imperial currency and bonds to pay debts, which are now collector's items, and the fine restaurants he ate at would place plaques at their entrances, reading, 'by Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States'. They say he once stopped an anti-Chinese mob from committing harm upon their targets by standing in the street between them and reciting the Lord's Prayer, head bowed.

You'll never find a better emperor anywhere in the history of the world.

Here's to you, my emperor, Joshua Norton, Norton I.

In the before times...

In the long, long ago...
There was once an ancient sage
Who thought of his home
As his clothes.
One day
Visitors came
And found the sage naked.
The sage was asked,
'Why are you naked?'
And the sage asked in return,
'What are you doing
In my pants?'

Is it wrong that this delights me?

This is why I got into comics as a kid. The sheer insanity of it all.

http://superdickery.com/dick/46.html

Just look at the cover depicted in the link. Plane crashing into building? Check. Car accident? Check. Train derailment, not just coming down on the car accident, but also with optional festive falling bodies? Check. And the cherry on top, the guy on the right getting shot in the back with a rifle, getting a gun-barrel backiotomy, as it were, from point-blank range. All while Lois and Superman stride off, teeth ablaze, with the simple joy of not giving a shit about any of it.

Really, if you're gonna have people in skintight costumes galivanting about, why not go nuts?

How the bridge got it's name

We called it Weidemann Bridge.

It was about three quarters of the way down Route Michigan, if you were headed from Fort Corregidore to TQ, out there in Anbar Province. The bridge was the only one on the route, and was constantly manned by 1/506th on the topside, and only military traffic was allowed to pass underneath. The 506th had placed stretches of concertina wire on both sides of the bridge, which forced any traffic going under to slow to a crawl to get through it, so that even if a carbomb were driven towards the bridge, the guys on top would have plenty of time to light his ass up. Well, let's be fair, light his OR HER ass up.

But that came later. For the first couple of months, they tried to use stone blocks, about a foot and a half on a side, to force traffic to slow and weave.

Sgt. Weidemann was one of the NCO's for the cooks, and was widely regarded as being as full of shit as a five-hundred-head cow pasture in mid-June, and stupid enough that he almost needed watering every day. And it was he who gave the bridge it's name.

A convoy run was coming back under the bridge one night, and Sgt. Weidemann decided to ignore the guys on top. Wouldn't have mattered in the daylight, but the sun had just gone down, and, just like always, the drivers were using Night-Vision Goggles to see. The 506th would lend a hand on dark nights, when the lack of ambient light was so low that it made it very hard to spot the stone blocks in the road. The guys on the bridge would play their IR lights over the blocks to let the drivers know where the obstacles were, allowing them to be safely avoided.

Of course, Sgt. Weidemann was having none of it. I don't know what it was, maybe he got a testosterone rush, maybe he thought the guys on the bridge were insolent, maybe he decided to show the stone blocks how tough the LMTV he was driving was. Whatever the reason, eyewitnesses say that at one point, he just hit the gas and ran over one of the blocks.

Now, an LMTV is essentially a huge, top-heavy pickup truck, painted an unsightly green. Getting up an over an obstacle that's only one and a half feet high isn't a problem. But, when you ramp up to about ten miles an hour, as the Sgt. did, and you hit the obstacle with only one tire, as the Sgt. did, well, the driver of the truck might just find that the passenger side of the truck has risen into the air, and shortly thereafter might just find that the truck has, in fact, fallen onto it's side. OK, now replace the 'might' with 'did'.

To cut through the verbiage, dumbass knocked his truck over by being really stupid.

I don't think the Sgt.'s named would have graced the bridge in our minds, if we'd just been able to use another LMTV to get Sgt. Weidemann's back on it's wheels. What sealed the deal was that as soon as we started to right the fallen truck, tracer fire lit up the night. Yep, we had to correct this idiots mistake while taking small arms and RPG fire. Took about 45 minutes.

And so the bridge was christened, Weidemann Bridge.

Mean Joe Queenan

I like Joe Queenan.

For those of you who have never heard of this sage of the cineplex, I envy you. You get to go out and pick up one of Joe's books, maybe 'Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler' or 'If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble' or suchlike, and experience the joy of reading the man's take on the world of entertainment. And by 'take on', I mean 'evisceration of', because Joe, man, Joe's mean.

Joe Queenan is, pretty much by his own admission, a professional bastard. This guy actually wrote a book about his attempt to be a good person, in which he takes the time to go through his complete written works to determine how many evil things he's said over the years, with only a little 'well, this guy deserved it' back-pedaling.

Being good didn't take.

Of course, he's not just mean. Just being mean would make him a depressing read. Joe is funny as hell. He's a virtual compendium of nasty remarks that you wish you'd said to someone, and will try to remember for future use. In the words of Dave Barry: "If you're a fan of informed viciousness (and who isn't?), you'll love Joe Queenan."

How can you not like a guy who once spent and entire day being Mickey Rourke? Who's made not one but three attempts to actually perform some of the less likely stunts that appear in movies, and has concluded, after endangering life and limb, that movies are full of shit? A guy who once described Abraham Lincoln as "looking like he'd come in a distant second in an ax fight with a stegosaurus"?

Beautiful.

More Action! More amicus briefs! More of our Native Brethren!

I find my heart embiggened today. For today, my bosses at Smogtrouser Comics have commissioned a second comics book series from yours truly, legendary creator of the Spork.

My new series will be more down to earth, more focused on real life problems. The hero is the first Native American appointed to the Supreme Court. By day, he and his stalwart allies wrestle with the thorny problem of testing the constitutionality of our laws, and by night, he fights crime in the nations capitol as Chief Justice! Garbed in a mask, judicial robe, and traditional Indian headdress, Chief Justice fights such enemies as: The Landgrabber! Captain Al-Kai-Hol! and, of course, Doctor Syphilis and his amazing infected blanket! And, of course, Chief Justice's arch-nemesis, the shadowy head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs!

Keep yer eyes peeled for it!

All too often, I was the idiot

I got smoked once for calling a Drill Sergeant 'ma'am'.

I didn't even have to look at him. I just got down on the ground and started knocking out push-ups.

I seem to recall staying down there for a very long time.

So Close, But Yet So Far

I don't remember who the guy was, but I do remember that he managed to screw up at the point where it seemed like it wasn't even possible anymore.

It was the day before our graduation from Infantry School at Fort Benning. Everyone in Alpha 2/58 had been given a six hour pass to spend a little time with their families before the festivities and hullabaloo of the graduation ceremony. And it was great, for all of us. Just some time off with the people you cared about, and who you hadn't seen in fourteen weeks. My parents were there, along with my brother and his girlfriend and a friend of mine who'd flown out from California. We went to the Waffle House and everyone commented on how much weight I'd lost.

At 1800 hours, the men of Alpha 2/58 returned to our barracks, standing in formation for one of the last times, listening to roll call. Then, one of the Drills from third platoon yelled, "What the hell are you wearing?"

Yeah, we were in formation, at attention, but we turned around anyway. Not that the Drills really cared. All of us had come through our FTX and the twenty-five mile march, we'd had our Crossed Rifle ceremony, and but for one more day, we were Infantry. Besides, the Drills wanted to know what was happening, too.

So we craned our necks and looked at the guy who was getting yelled at, in third platoon's front rank. And as we looked at him, it became apparent that something wasn't quite right with his camoflage BDU's.

The Drill who was yelling grabbed the young citizen-soldier and checked a tag on the inside back of the private's top. Then the Drill pointed at the ground, and the kid started knocking out pushups, which he was still doing when the rest of us were dismissed.

Turned out that to celebrate, the youngster had gone to an Army Supply store off post, to get himself four brand-spanking-new sets of BDU's. Unfortunately for him, he failed to notice that the BDU's in question weren't from the Armerican Army, but for use in New Zealand.

Today I am a Man!

I just got my Denver Library Card, and it's got that sweet new card smell.

Cool Girl

I met a girl once, in Japan. She was amazing.

I've always liked Asian women. The best relationship I've ever had was with a lovely Chinese girl. But this new girl, she looked to blow that one out of the water.

We met right after I arrived in country, and spent every minute together that we could. She spoke English very well, and taught me a lot of Japanese. She seemed to think I was perfect, and I was quite sure she was.

So we spent days together, mixing visits with tourist attractions and local places she showed me. We laughed a lot, and held hands, and smiled at each other constantly.

It was perfect. Up until the moment the lights came on, and they started rousting everyone out of bed.

It was the start of another day of Basic Training. I wasn't in Japan. I was on Sand Hill, in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Ain't that a bitch?

Thing is, you'd be wrong

It would seem logical to think that sometime in my 34 years of stomping this sorry and wonderful globe, I'da picked up some kind of useful job skill.

Ode to a Crackerbox

Ah, the joy of it. The joy of being in possesion of a place of my own, where a door can be locked on the whole rest of the world!

No roommates walking around arguing loudly with their significant others. No pets, constantly shedding, innundating my domicile with their fur, coating my clothes and flavoring my food. No fighting for use of the computer. Actually, no computer, but so what? The central branch of the library, such a lovely building, is less than a mile away. Gives me a reason to get out of the place for a while, close enough that even on hellish winter days it's worthwhile to go. Local shops, a couple of neat bookstores also within walking distance. Even a New York style pizza place, by which I mean a semi-sanitary hole-in-the-wall that serves wide slices you gotta fold in half while eating.

No walk to shovel. Bliss.

Sure the new spot's small. Sure, I can take a shower, cook something, watch a movie, and answer the door all at the same time. It's over-priced, even. But I don't give a rat's ass. It's no worse than the last place I lived in New York, and I don't have to go down the hall to get a shower.

Truly a joyous New Year, Y'all.

Top o' the Year to ya!

2006 ended with my air mattress springing a leak. Before turning in this evening, the last of the year, I used the pump provided with my inflatable sleeping convenience to achieve a comfortable firmness in the thing, and then woke up some hours later to find myself in the beginnings of a rubberized foxhole. I made this discovery at 11:55 PM, December 31st, 2006.

It’s really my fault, though. I mean, I’m an eighth of a ton of fighting American male, and it’s a mass-produced balloon. Of course over-inflating would lead to stress on its fabric and seams, causing the leak, the actual location of which has so far eluded me. But it’s there, leaking out precious air molecules.

I bought the thing just over a week ago, and I was hoping to get at least a couple of months of use out of it. And now it’s just another warning that I should probably lose weight.

I could spin the air-mattress into a metaphor for my life, and not just this past year. The high hopes at the beginning, the progress of some plan that at first goes swimmingly, the beginnings of failure caused by a combination of personal errors and flaws in design, the inevitable end finding me laying on a hard floor on top of a sadly deflated sleeping balloon. You know, that old chestnut.

The hell with that. It’s a cheap air-mattress, not a metaphor for the Grand Design of the Universe, or the path I tread therein. Even if it is, I don’t care. The year’s over. The year’s begun. It was a hell of a year, the one behind, in many senses of the word; and I have no reason not to think the coming year won’t be a hell of a year in its own right. The future, as always, is upon all of us, waiting for each of us to commit those actions which, woven together, form our existence. That last sentence was right purty, if I do say so myself.

In Watchmen, Alan Moore has one of his characters, Ozymandias, who has committed a great crime in what he sees as the service of humanity, ask another character, Dr. Manhattan, if his actions were correct, in the end. And Ozymandias is told that nothing ever really ends.

The air-mattress is just an air-mattress, like Freud said. It won’t be a metaphor for anything, just an object lesson about not buying cheap inflatables. It’ll do.

Happy New Year.