Live Long and Kick Ass

I may have gotten a little off track in my galactic cosmology class...

2012-01-30T12:50:00.000-05:00

Hmm, too small, click here: http://imgur.com/KWiui

I would like to add that though this section got out of hand and I may have faded to the land of IMAGINATION for a good four to five minutes, the rest of my notes were splendiferously scientastic. This is not technologies fault, it would have taken longer in a notebook and I still would have done it. Probably with drawerings.

Intro to Derp Latin (DRP 101)

2012-01-30T12:46:00.003-05:00

So you want eaksperp erpderp atinlerp? Well you have certainly come to the right aceplerp!

Derp Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Derp Latin form of an English word the first consonant (or consonant cluster) is moved to the end of the word and an erp is affixed (for example, derp yields erp-derp and computer yields omputer-cerp). The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules. The reference to Latin is a deliberate misnomer, as it is simply a form of jargon, used only for its English connotations as a "strange and foreign-sounding language."

The usual rules for changing standard English into Derp Latin are as follows:

In words that begin with consonant sounds, the initial consonant or consonant cluster is moved to the end of the word, and "erp" is added, as in the following examples:

happy → appy-herp
question → estion-querp

In words that begin with vowel sounds or silent consonants, the syllable "derp" is simply added to the end of the word. In some variants, the syllable "erp" is added, without the "d" in front. Sometimes the vowel will be moved and followed by the syllable "herp."

another→ another-derp, another-erp, nother-aherp
about→ about-derp, about-erp, bout-aherp

In compound words or words with two distinct syllables, each component word or syllable is sometimes transcribed separately.

For example: birdhouse would be ird-berp-ouse-herp.

Transcription varies. A hyphen or apostrophe is sometimes used to facilitate translation back into English. Raysperp, for instance, is ambiguous, but ray-sperp means "spray" whereas rays-perp means "prays."

Did you know?
Derp latin is used in the popular Disney movie "The Lion Derp". Zazu says to Simba "ixnerp on the upidsterp" and in response Banzai the Hyena says "Who you calling upidsterp?"

SOTU Live Blog

2012-01-24T21:15:00.001-05:00

9:04 HILLDOG IN DA HOUSE

9:14 Joe Biden almost dies coughing.

9:25 Cantor looks like a very uncomfortable statue.

9:27 Obligatory American inspirational story person sitting by Michelle. Called it. Drink!

9:32 The SAT people are going to be calling their congressperson.

9:33 Hmm, looks like your plans to drop out of high school may not work.

9:35 Did he just put colleges and universities on notice? Stephen Colbert gonna sue somebody!

9:39 BP seems to be talking through Obamers mouth hole. DRILL BABY DRILL!

9:40 Barack Obama picks up the objectivist Exploit the Earth vote.

9:41 Mitch McConnell looks like a tortoise watching its eggs get smashed by a giant hentai dick monster: amusingly horrified.

9:42 Another typical american story. Drink!

9:43 WINDMILLS!!!!!!!!!!1111111

9:44 DoD buying green to power 250000 homes or half an aircraft carrier.

9:45 Not sure if it is just CNN but Obama was just shrouded in a divine light. The resurrection is nigh.

9:46 The National Adhesives Lobby would like to complain about Mr. Obamas opposition to the tape industry, in specific his unfounded bias against their red colored adhesive rolls.

9:48 Geithner has a look of profound internal contemplation. I think he just realized what his life has become. By next week he will retire, find his lifetime sweetheart and settle down in western Nebraska where he will take up a life of basketry.

9:50 First he opens more offshore drilling then he reminds us that BP dumped a fuckload out there. Well I guess it was good enough for him to swim in...

9:53 Turn the pageeeeya dunnnn dun duh duh deh de de

9:54 Boehner forgot his flag pin. Awkward.

9:59 Did I just hear a dog bark?

10:00 Barack just got booed for limiting insider trading in congress. Can't wait to see that representative defend that opinion tomorrow.

10:02 Our federal bureaucracy will be better, faster, stronger than before.

10:06 Speaks out about Syria.

10:07 YAY JEWS!

10:08 Nice CNN, zoom in to Liebermans forehead right when Obama mentions a tough stance on Iran. Waiting for him to walk up to the podium and declare the first GALACTIC EMPIRE.

10:15 The State of our Union has potential!

Signing out.

EDIT: Republican Response

10:31 Did he just say that 2012 could be our last year? Does he have information I do not?

10:33 "Steve Jobs, what an appropriate name"

10:34 We need a more affordable safety net. Ask any fire department in America, those things you should not buy cheap.

10:37 A niagara of debt. I don't even have to add stuff to this speech, its full of amusing language.

10:38 We might pick the wrong lightbulb! (Yes, yes you would)

Signing ou...

10:40 What is this shit?

10:41 Leather jacket woman at the national press club?

10:42 Tea baggers in snake skin jacket. Sign me up. This shit just got interesting.

10:42 THE CAIN TRAIN IS IN THE HOUSE!

10:46 Seems to wish we all lived in China. Why can't we have as many jobs as them? Sigh Herman....

10:49 Invents the word "citizenpeople".

10:52 Yeah Obama is really weak on defense.

10:53 Racial innuendos? I am confused.

10:54 Always so angry Herman. But I am too tired for revolution...

10:55 An army of Davids v. the government Goliath, I thought the republicans were against human cloning...

10:56 Question and answer session. Ooooooh.

10:58 Reporter forgets Paul and Santorum.

11:02 The tea party has officially had more time than the republican response. Do they also have more constituents?

11:03 Pro Colbert speech in progress.

11:06 Srsly, that ladies snake skin jacket screams laissez-faire.

SIGNING OUT (not like you'll get an occupy response amirite?)

A Thank You Letter to the 112th Congress of the United States

2012-01-24T01:42:00.000-05:00

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the 112th U.S. Congress,

Hello, as a proud constituent of Maine's 2nd District and on behalf of Americans everywhere I just want to thank you all for the hard work you're doing. For years, participation by the citizenry has always been a big problem in America. Voting numbers are down, direct participation in democracy is unheard of, the American people don't care. These are criticisms which have circled about our great country for far too long. The question has always been there, how do we get Americans to participate in their democracy? Leaders have tried fireside chats, fun children's news programs and the MTV sponsored Rock the Vote campaign. Despite all of this grass roots and top level effort, the people remained stagnant.

Then you, the 112th Congress of the United States of America were elected and took your seats in the halls of government and the country changed. Suddenly grassroots movements are just the beginning. Citizen participation is reaching all time highs. This with no advertising campaigns, no cross country tours, almost no P. Diddy. For you had the guts to try something new. You knew that America needed to get off the couch and into the polls. So you took the hit for America and our democratic way of life. You walked onto Capital Hill and changed the game. You walked into the dome of the Capital Building and shouted into the high ceiling of marble that you would be the worst fucking Congress this country had ever seen.

You cut the backroom deals that would lock the entire government in gridlock. You would be willing to let this country fall into bankruptcy over the slight possibility of using money for abortions. You would fight and fight and fight to water down the budget to the point of draconian lunacy and then still vote against it since it could go further. You would turn the word compromise into a joke. You would accept money from every lobbyist and push legislation they wrote openly and with no feeling of corruption. You would then push legislation to censor the one place where American youth felt safe, the internet.

Suddenly people are in the streets worldwide. Protesting the banks you've protected by watering down Dodd-Frank. Thousands have been arrested in demonstrations that grew bigger than anyone dreamed. Then there was SOPA/PIPA. Never before in my life have I heard of so many people writing their congressmen. More than once today I heard peers say it was the first and only time they'd written a letter to their representative. As they come piling into your offices you must feel an enormous sense of pride as the work you've done and continue to do has inspired so many young people to become interested in today's politics. So once again, thank you for your hard work. Thanks to you, I'll be keeping a very close eye on Washington for a long time.

Thanks Again,
A Proud Citizen

It is not over yet

2012-01-21T15:56:00.001-05:00

Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of censorship, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long years of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of COICA, of which I was speaking just now, the same wind which would have carried its transports across the DNS might have driven away the blockading firewall. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Senate committees. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manœuvre. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of man power and those which belong to will power if it can be locally exercised.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our digital home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of The Internets — every man and woman of them. That is the will of Reddit and the web. The EFF and the Wikipedia Foundation, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of the Internet and many old and famous Sites have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Government and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in Washington, we shall fight on the Reddits and Twitters, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the airwaves, we shall defend our right to speak, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the blogs, we shall fight on the landlines, we shall fight in the protests and in the streets, we shall fight in the petitions; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this community or a large part of it were subjugated and censored, then our World beyond the web, informed and guarded by their conviction, would carry on the struggle, until, in good time, the new world wide web, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Happy MLK Day

2012-01-16T16:36:00.001-05:00

I'm currently at Powell Hall and they are celebrating this holiday by blasting MLK speeches over the radio system. Very appropriate. Of course I am here pooping. So basically MLK is yelling at me as I go number two. Not so appropriate. I'm just kind of sitting here agreeing and wondering why this bathroom isn't better sound proofed.

Happy Martin Luther King Day.

Cheers Champ

2011-10-14T10:46:00.002-04:00

Liking Barack Obama is getting more difficult is getting more difficult every day. The constant bantering for materialism, pitching to investors and the insufferable quote of the day feature. Liking Barack Obama on Facebook is just getting more and more difficult.

When did you stop leading the free world and get so, needy?
And no I haven't started my poster yet.

Not to say I don't like him as the president, my Jeep bumper is currently adorned with the free bumper sticker he sent me. Liking him on Facebook is getting harder and harder because it is the same 4 posts everyday. First is his Quote of the Day, just some shit he said in a speech. This about the only thing he posts that I appreciate as it gives me a better understanding on his take on issues.

Then we start the campaigning.

The second type Barack Obama post is the number of donors post. Hey, we almost have a million donors, don't you want to be donor #1,000,000?!

The third type is the one where he reaches out to voters by physically grabbing one off the street making them talk about how awesome Barack Obama really is.

Beautiful thing here is the only comment I didn't shop, Dick Cheney.

Finally, merchandising!!!!

At first it was the things you'd expect, t-shirts, women's shirts, mugs, messenger bags, you name it. The usual "I got a CafePress account, so lets run for president!" mentality that I know, love and roomed with at one point in time. Of course even from that experience, eventually the campaigns merch department starts filling those niche campaign items.

This image is not endorsed by Americans for TonTon SuperPAC

With Barack Obama, it started with the grill apron and then the Cats for Obama collar. Every day a new fascinating object. I almost unliked him on Facebook to reduce clutter until this morning. Then all my thoughts against materialism and advertising and money in politics faded. It all faded, every worry I had into oblivion as I gazed upon that glorious, nay, divine object with which my life will never be complete without.

That is when I said it, out loud for the world to hear. I said, "I need that Joe Biden Can Holder."

Oh my.... It's just so (tears up)... beautiful. (full crying)(joy)

5 Stages of Grief: Local Bookstore Edition

2011-09-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

My paperboy job has many ups and downs. The negatives are obviously the early hours and the subsequent antisocial sleep schedule. But the positives, well. Let's just look at my history, my personality. You take all the data points and plot them and any statistician will come to the same conclusion. Some day, I am going to have to build something big, something really big, for no good positive reason other than I find it amusing, and I'm going to have to build it out of a metric assload of Papier-mâché. When that day comes, and by his noodley appendage it will, I am going to need a lot of newspapers. Ladies and Gentlemen I am here to tell you that when that day comes, or more likely very late night. I. Am. Fucking. Ready.

Very seriously, my heroes.

Another positive that came with it recently, a bitter sweet positive point I might add, was that it allowed me to discover that my local used book store was closing this Saturday. I might not have even noticed had not my route made me drive past it. While I was in there I heard the phrase "it's a sign of the times" at least three or four times. This is sadly true as Borders is also now joining the now almost endless list of defunct book retailers, though Borders has a different problem. Having dealt with this particularly devastating kind of grief, I feel like I have enough data point to satisfy psychologists. So here is,

The Five Stage of Grief

(So your bookstore is closing)

Denial

Oh, its like every furniture store ever opened since the Big Bang, their just saying that. Their not really going out of business, just an excuse to throw a sale, broaden the customer base. Maybe they're just moving locations, yes! That's it. They're just moving. This building closes and another opens. Well maybe another bookstore will move in and take over, this is temporary. This is temporary. All will be well...

Anger

I shop here 3 times a month and this is how I'm repayed?!? Sure! So I don't buy anything and perhaps I'm just browsing before buying at a more reasonable price on Amazon. You know what? It's not my fault, it's society. Yeah! Most people in this country have no interest in books. If our culture encouraged it more. I didn't do this, FUCKING FOOTBALL PLAYERS DID THIS!

Bargaining

Look, I will go home right now and cancel my Amazon account. Oh for fucks sake, so Amazon makes it difficult as fuck to do that, not my fucking fault.

Depression

Please... don't go. If this place goes I'll have no place to kill half an hour while I'm waiting for the pizza I ordered to cook. I'll have no where to browse before buying online. The first time I see a book will be after I bought. I just, please... I'll miss you...

Acceptance

Holy. Living. Fuck.

25 cents a book. All the books here are 25 cents. Every single book. All of them. I can buy them, for a god damned quarter. I've got quarters, my carpets in the car are made from quarters. I can buy books with them. Whole books. For 25 cents. Any book, any book they have. This is... It's just... This is,

THE GREATEST FUCKING DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!11111111111

My Review of "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes"-related Dream I Had Last Night

2011-09-20T21:30:00.000-04:00

So I had no plan to go view "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" anytime soon, but apparently my brain had other ideas. It decided to make me watch it's own version of it based on the small amounts of information I've picked up from the very small number of television advertisements I've seen for this film. Since the movie-dream was so, we'll go with intriguing, I've decided to review my dream remix of "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes".

Amazingly, no Inception references.

Note: From here on out, my brain will be referred to as The Director.

So the film opened with Dr. James Franco demonstrating his new box of Alzheimer's fixing black lights. He had a monkey named George, a curious little fellow, open up his Pandora's Box shaped suspiciously like the IT Crowd "Internet". George was suddenly able to talk after being bathed in it's ultraviolet creaminess. The room applauded and the next scene opened with George helping Dr. James Franco make some improvements on the black light box of wonder. This of course was trickery as George made the box turn him into an asian human with a fashion aesthetic that screams, "I'm on my way to a rave, a monkey rave" with the only monkey bit left being the face. George then proceeded to kill Dr. James Franco using what looked like a neck bone snapping variant of the Vulcan Death Grip. I thought this was an interesting choice on the part of the director, as many of the previews I saw for this film indicated the James Franco would be the main character. It would appear that I had been deceived, but in a pleasant way, at that moment only ten minutes in I knew I could leave all my expectation at the dreamdoor.

The following scene just showed a nice downtown market in an nondescript US city. Suddenly raving neanderthal anime characters with sunglasses came down from above with jet packs and proceeded to one by one NeckSnapVulcanDeathGrip every person there to death. The interesting and almost confusing thing about this sequence was that no one in the crowd fought back. No police armed themselves and nobody fought against their own deaths. This apathy made the scene incredibly eerie and disturbing. It was as if all of humanity faced with extinction just accepted their fate. The director seemed to be using these BrightlyDressedNeanderthalSquareEnixNeckSnappingVulcanDeathGripMonkeysWithJetPacks as a metaphor for our own acceptance of the destruction we are bringing to our planet.

Then, once again, the film took a 360 degree turn from a serious and deep metaphorical analysis of human society and introduced our true main characters, Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter.

Wait the what the fuck a what a why a woahhhhhh...

Leonard spent the rest of the movie basically protecting Sheldon who personally accepted his ape overlords. Eventually they were killed like everyone else on Earth, apathetically accepting the SuperVulcanDeathGrip. To be honest I was expecting this part of the film to be much better than it was. Up until this point the film had been shocking and caught me off guard but by the end it was just a really bad Big Bang Theory season finale and as much as I love The Big Bang Theory, it's not really cinema quality stuff. Also I'm not sure how this prequel fits in with the overall Planet of the Apes canon as the apes apparently abandoned their rave based society. I guess it was just a phase, maybe a side effect of black light radiation. Overall not what I expected when I realized that this was how I was going to spend my entire night of REM sleep.

I give The Rise of the Planet of the Apes a 6 out of 10

AA+

2011-08-06T22:09:00.000-04:00

Alrighty everybody, it looks like this bumpy ride just got bumpier.

Let's start off the week with the passing of S. 365: the Budget Control Act of 2011. It passed with massive cuts to student aid programs and other programs and no increases in revenue. Shared sacrifice for 98% of the country achieved, high score! Move forward in the week and watch the market fall right into free fall again followed by the latest breaking news.

Standard and Poors has downgraded the United States of America to an AA+ rating for the first time since 1917.

To which I said, that's a bad rating? Am I the only one who would totally shit my pants if I got a paper back with an AA+ on it? Well apparently in financial circles you are graded on a much more arduous basis than in academic work. For instance, a 98 on a physics exam would be considered an exemplary score to which you would be rewarded with, well, a 98! The profit incentive is weird in academics, okay? But if that were say, my credit score, apparently freecreditreport.com will actually send the band from the commercials over to beat my head in with an acoustic guitar and to make things worse, the pirate outfit would be optional.

Oh thank god, he's going to wear the pirate suit.

I've done some reading and there are some interesting facts flying around here. So here are the reasons the S&P downgraded the US credit rating:

1) The inadequacy of policy response in the United States Congress, with both parties using the fate of our economy as a means to win points politically.

2) Out of control spending that prompted them to add a negative outlook to their AA+ rating, meaning the nation could fall further.

These are legitimate criticisms and such, but lets look at Standard and Poors themselves. The administration correctly pointed out hours before the credit rating dropped that S&P's numbers were off by 2 trillion dollars, which is a lot of money to just misplace, though it wouldn't be the first time. Then another thing I was reading caught my eye, this from the AP report:

"The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. "

...

Does that say?

No...

Wait, I, uhhh....

...

Ummmmmm...

...

Woah...

Telegraphed. It says, the word, telegraphed. Ladies and Gentlemen, I don't think anyone has told Standard and Poors what year it is...

Ralph, you tell President Wilson that we will downgrade if he doesn't cut it with this didgery doo about this so called League of Nations. Also he's giving to much ground to women-folk, bad for business boy.

Okay, so S&P, directed by the unaging beauty of Henry Varnum Poor has downgraded us, after giving subprime mortgage lending a stellar rating in 2008 as well as the future profiteering off of trains in 1860. Fair enough. Now lets look at the media.

I read the news online the second it broke last night and turned the television on to CNN and was switching between it and MSNBC. Heres the thing, their immediate knee-jerk reaction was this, that congress failed to cut into medicare. That exact line, heard it maybe 6 times. Heard stuff about failure to raise revenue, like, once. One time.

This I think goes down to what my friend Bradd call, "the conservative tick". He claims that every American, by our very cultural identity, has a tiny little tea party libertarian warhawk in the back of their head. Recently I've expanded this theory to encompass knee jerk political reactions. This tick seems to get driven into overdrive after dramatic events, for maybe an hour or so even the most leftist person may be caught on a right wing offensive.

This is the first picture that comes up if you Google "conservative tick". Not really sure why I posted it.

I mean the night Osama bin Laden was killed, even those of us who abhor violence and wish he'd been taken alive thought for just a second, "Where is that Toby Keith album I bought in 2002, it's has to be around here somewhere...

Really I'm just mad about the bill that got signed this week, what S&P has to say matters to me very little. The bill contained five sections. First to raise the debt ceiling and establish some discretionary spending limits. Second it asked Congress to vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment. Third, a debt ceiling disapproval process. Fourth, established the super-committee, which silly people are calling a super congress, sigh... But last, the first section to make cuts on any one specific area.

TITLE V--PELL GRANT AND STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM CHANGES

Sec. 501. Federal Pell grants.

Sec. 502. Termination of authority to make interest subsidized loans to graduate and professional students.

Sec. 503. Termination of direct loan repayment incentives.

Sec. 504. Inapplicability of title IV negotiated rulemaking and master calendar exception.

That's right, the only thing they could agree on was cuts to student aid. Why is it that education is the wonderful place where both parties can come together and start removing dollars. This is something I will never understand and would quite like it explained to me actually. Because Education is definitely where we are committing far too many resources right now.

Rays of Life

2011-07-20T11:37:00.000-04:00

A common theme on this blog has gone back to Mr. Obama's call for the United States to out compete the world. We need to produce more, know more and innovate more than any country on Earth and that ladies and gentleman is a tall order/ambitious new years resolution.

Obama: This year I want to beat everyone at everything.
Santa: Ho ho ho, good luck with that.

Well we're halfway done the year and it seems that we're not doing to hot. Our main exports remain bullets and Justin Bieber concerts while congress is too busy trying to either assassinate the Tappet brothers or raise their taxes to come up with solutions.

Note: spell check is telling me that the correct way to spell Bieber is Lieberman
Notier Note: So Bieber is Canadian, we are more fucked than I thought.

Today I found out that we are failing, once again, to out innovate in yet another sector of the economy. As one would imagine it's the Europeans who are out-innovating us, they have their problems but bitches know how to innovate.

More specifically the economic powerhouse that is the Republic of Cyprus is totally whooping us. They are absolutely dominating this country in one of the most important sectors of the 21st century economy. I am of course talking about the very very crucial energy apparel market. Them crafty Cypricians or Cypricans or whatever the hells have finally cracked the secret to the Far Infrared Radiation, quoting from their website: "known to be the most healthy radiations". Their company FIRTEX produced clothing that reflects back this miracle radiation to energize you. For only 200 euros this miracle of modern science can have you doing spontaneous back flips and winning the X-Games. They claim you'll jump 10% higher and feel 10% more energetic and even reduces pain.

I recommend giving their site a look over, the science seems solid. I highly doubt they picked low-ball percentages which can be wholly explained by the placebo effect. That would just be stupid.

Asian Night

2011-07-19T09:06:00.000-04:00

Note: I just found this in my drafts and was quite dismayed to notice I never published it. Enjoy my several month old post!

For those of you who don't go to Alfred University, we have the great pride and privilege to have AVI Foodsystems, inc. cater our dining halls. Recently they've been undergoing their usual face lift procedure they attempt after every break to make us not hate them with every god damned fiber in our horribly malnourished bodies. They have taken the painstaking effort to raise the pans of food to a slight 20 degree angle, because everyone knows angled food is more appealing. Now they have a powerpoint presentation that greets our entrance to their illustrious dining halls. Though they're not dining halls anymore. They are now known as CULINARY CENTERS!

Pictured: Ade Culinary Center
Also Pictured: Used Hypodermic Needle

So for the past several weeks we have been bombarded by a world class advertising campaign to inform us that on the 22nd day of March in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, the Powell Culinary Center would be playing host to, ASIAN NIGHT!!!!111 Not Chinese Night, or Japanese Night or Thai Night, motherfuckin' ASIAN NIGHT.

Pictured: Food from the continent of Asia.

I actually had the unique opportunity to sit in on the planning session for this. I am publishing the full transcript here so that one may fully appreciate the work done by our illustrious culinary center staff. Names have been changed to protect the identities of those depicted (also because I honestly don't know people)

MERYL: Oi, Vernita?! When it is this Asian night thingy happening.

NOREENE: I think its tonight.

MERYL: NO ONE ASKED YOU NOREENE!

VERNITA: I think it's tonight.

MERYL: Well cock biscuits. Round up everybody! We need to plan this thing and stat!

Noreene and Vernita gather the troops.

MERYL: Okay people, brain storm.
NOREENE: BRAINNNNNNNNNN STORMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
VERNITA: Just, just wow Noreene.
EMPLOYEE 1: We should definitely not make nearly enough food.
MERYL: Good point Drone, small portions are classy.
EMPLOYEE 1: I was going to say because I don't want to cook but yeah, what you said.
NOREENE: I'M AT WORK!
VERNITA: Okay, next idea.
EMPLOYEE 2: We should up advertising Sushi, and stop serving it at 5.
EMPLOYEE 1: Doesn't this damn thing start at 5?
MERYL: Fucked if I know.
EMPLOYEE 2: This is the genius of my plan.

Pictured: Sushi selection.

EMPLOYEE 3: Are we going to serve any tasty beverages?
MERYL: Yes, in excessively small disposable cups.
VERNITA: The plates are also very small.
EMPLOYEE 4: Why is everything so small?
MERYL: It's Asian Night!
EMPLOYEE 4: I don't understand the correlation.

Pictured: Asian sized plates.

MERYL: Also in keeping with AVI Foodsystems contractual obligation to humiliate and oppress, all employees will wear stereotypical conical straw hats on your head while looking down at the ground in shame, hoping your hat will hide your now prideless eyes from your peers as they wander in search of food.
EMPLOYEES: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
NOREENE: !!!
VERNITA: Thank you Noreene for teaching me the sound of a series of exclamation points.
MERYL: And in keeping with our dedication to cruel and unusual punishment of the customer, border lining on a constitutional offense, we will start cleaning up all the food only half an hour into this event. We will actually pour perfectly good food into trash cans as people just begin to arrive and watch as we flush squiggly equals fourteen dollars of their own money into a trash can. It's not like we give them the choice if they want to spend it.
EMPLOYEE 3: We could buy 3 fucking meals at the Chinese restaurant for one of these shitty meals.
EMPLOYEE 2: Or make 4-5 of our own with higher quality ingredients.
MERYL: Exactly, good to hear you've been reading the employee handbook.
EMPLOYEE 4: What if people don't like the fancy drinks we got them.
MERYL: Fuck 'em, that's what. If they so much as try to cross my Great Wall of Chairs to obtain any other beverages I will personally berate and insult them like the Mongols that they are. Everyone understand what you're doing?
NOREENE: Gonna derp this herp til there ain't no derp to be herped.
MERYL: Thats the spirit. When these kids walk out of this culinary center I want them to feel like this.
VERNITA: This?
MERYL: This.

In conclusion a mad lib: AVI can go (verb) themselves in the (noun) with an (adjective)(noun) on a (adjective)(noun) until they turn (color) and (verb)... refrigerator.

On Journalism

2011-07-18T08:56:00.001-04:00

Today while I was tossing newspapers I saw a headline on the front page of the Bangor Daily News that infuriated me to no end. The headline was "Plan for Al-Jazeera Journalist to Speak in Rockland Riles Many". Abderrahim Foukara, the bureau chief for Al-Jazeera's Washington branch has been invited to speak at a Rockland fundraising event honoring a hero of the American Revolution. I have since did much Googling on the subject and found varying opinions on this front.

So let me just say this out front. I read Al-Jazeera English every damn day. I have since the Egyptian Uprisings because I saw something then that I hadn't ever seen on any American news program, journalism. They brilliantly covered the events live as they happened and even dealt with a police raid on their headquarters. Things you'll find on Al-Jazeera's website, news of global importance, news presented with both sides of the story and an outside perspective on this country that is both critical and understanding of the conditions in this country. Things you won't find, support for Al Queda or the Taliban. It is not "Jihad Television".

Yet you wouldn't know it from the all out war Tea Party supporters have been throwing against this proposed speech. In response to this article in the Bangor Daily News, commenter Susan Andersen wrote, "We do NOT kill people just because they disagree with us- UNLIKE Al-Jazeera- We have freedom of the press in this country. There is no such station as Fox News in the Mideast that criticizes the regime. In fact in most countries protesters were killed.” This paragraph almost made me vomit my oatmeal, and it was delicious oatmeal so now I'm just pissed.

So to any of you who may feel uneasy about a journalist from Al Jazeera coming to Maine, I offer to you this challenge. Go watch it, or read it. Right now. You'll be amazed what's happening in the world that nobody in the US is able to report over Nancy Grace's loud mouthed campaign to cause the vigilante murder of Casey Anthony.

And here are the articles, listed in order from most to least bigoted.

http://www.sunjournal.com/letters/story/1059490
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/13/news/midcoast/more-people-criticize-support-arab-network-speaker-in-rockland/
http://www.pressherald.com/news/al-jazeera-tv-chief-a-threat_-lets-be-rational_2011-07-15.html

I'll try and be funnier in another post.

Operation Early Bird: Analysis of the Phenomenon of Mornings

2011-07-12T20:48:00.000-04:00

I have officially acquired a job as a local paper boy for the Bangor Daily News. This brings me up to two independent contractor positions this summer on top of the ChaCha Expeditor position I hold. There I have assisted over 500 customers, meaning I've made almost ten dollars! (WOWIE!!!!1) When I was informed that I got the position with the BDN, I was told to meet my new manager at around four o'clock in "the morning". This puzzled me at the time, I agreed to his terms not knowing their full meaning. After doing some research I learned of this "morning" he spoke of.

Morning, which comes from the Middle English word morwening, is an early predecessor of the time I know as noon, or wake-up time. I have dealt with it before, but had cast it aside as a hallucination induced by sleep deprivation. Some kind of nirvana filled with bright light, the smell of buttered toast and surprisingly energetic elderly people. I always assumed that this was the light at the end of the tunnel they tell you about in the movie-films. I always promptly went to sleep as to avoid a certain and most painful death. But further research indicates that this is a legitimate time of day and that it is when a large segment of the population wakes up. Wikipedia tells me that,

The ability of a person to wake up effectively in the morning may be influenced by a gene called "Period 3". This gene comes in two forms, a "short" and a "long" variant. It seems to affect the person's preference for mornings or evenings. People who carry the long variant were over-represented as morning people, while the ones carrying the short variant were evening preference people.

So it would appear that I got the short end of the Period 3 stick. Amazing how a single gene in the human genome has gone on to successfully segregate mankind into two different classes that live in separate universes with separate cultures that only interact around dinner time. Neither knowing of the worlds and cultures that exist in each others independent realms. Both holding discriminatory views of the other. How many of you long-genes have been made fun of for your early bed time? How many of my fellow short-genes, for your inability to wake up? The long-genes live in a world where McDonald's doesn't serve McGangbangs or fries, but these strange sandwiches covered in the fried chicken albumen and soaked in the condensed blood of maple trees. There is a strange film on the landscape known as dew. In their world the police are relatively friendly, the coffee is always warm and most businesses are actually open.

This is in sharp contrast to the world I know and was raised in. See my fellow short genes may find the previous paragraph an informative anthropological piece, now my long-gened friends should take a listen. The Mad Max like landscape that is known as the night or darktime is in every way the opposite to the world of the morwening. The ancient Saxons referred to this dark realm as the death mist. At this time the only people over 50 you see out are working at the only two open businesses, and they don't like you. At this time there are only two vehicles on the road, cops who hate the night shift and teenagers about to be pulled over by these cranky cops.

My long-gened readers may find the previous paragraph shocking and disturbing. I'm sure they are quite happy with the genes they have been given. But let it be known that your world disturbs me as much as mine does you. I will continue to be a resident of your realm, for as long as I am paid to, and not a minute longer. I am a foreigner in your lands and I know that, I promise you that I will not overstay my welcome.

Good night.

Yeah

2011-07-11T23:36:00.003-04:00

It is my twenty first birthday. Yop... bradd done got me drunk. That is all. If you have a problem with this post refer to the mission statement. Yop...
Ps. I can blog on my phone now. This is going to end badly.
Pps. Gibberish now: jcujdokfjreioheujiojideodjnfhrujeiuyrdsdghhgdzgjkihfdfihfjhfgkhfzgjgddgjhgdfhkjgdfhkihfdfhkljgdgjkhgfhpoutedriutdsdgouretoiyrwqwetuyrewetuteweyrweyrasjgdsdkufdsdgkjgdsdhjhfzkjcxcjhvkjgdsdjzzkhxxkhvckbcxcbmmnvccvkjgfdgjkjhdzjhgfiuteaqetoitsriydsdoitautewrtewyeqwyeqwruteasfkifsasfkjghkkhgdgjkhxzcvxjgdzhczFddguuydasfkihfzljgzXhjhfsdgihfdfdkhffhd

Edit: So I'm not taking this down as it is a testament not only to our almost creepily connected world but to the powerful human drive to attention whore ones self in a public forum.

A House Divided Cannot Stand

2011-06-22T20:46:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am tired. I am tired of the bickering and god damn it I am tired of this division. I am tired of hearing of another happy home divided over this very polarizing issue. Having a friendly discussion over a cooler just to have it fall apart when you claim allegiance to one side or another. The competitive and belligerent nature of this debate is ripping our country apart.

Let me share a personal story. I was raised in a blue home. My father and my fathers father had chosen their allegiance a while back. As I got older and became ingratiated by the opinions of those around me I found myself being swayed by the opposition. Then while I was attending school away from home I converted. This was fine while in high school, except when I found myself at home where I found myself in an environment that had become bitterly divided. Then I went to college and found myself once again an outsider. I had to travel off campus to find people who saw the world as I did. From a blue home, then to a blue school it is amazing that I ever became the red blooded American I am today.

But today I decided enough was enough. Today, I took a stand against the bipartisanship that is wreaking havoc on our society. Today, I looked this conflict in it's eyes and saw it for the bitter childish argument that it was. Today I realized that only together can we move forward and divided we will inevitably fall. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I mixed Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and I liked it.

If Only Life Were So Symple

2011-04-19T13:39:00.000-04:00

I would like to open by saying that I like Alfred University, the faculty, the staff, the students. I'm very happy here. The village of Alfred reminds me of the County, this small little enclave of academia in the middle of the woods makes me happy.

That being said, if I had a nickel for every night I was kept up thinking very seriously about walking down to Residence Life or Dining Services and taking a dump on their porch, I would be able to buy a yacht so big that there is a god damned yacht in the pool. A yacht so big that it's gravitational pull in conjunction with the water displaced actually fucks up the tides of whatever ocean it is in. A yacht so unimaginably massive that geographers have to sit down and have a serious god damned discussion about the definition of a continent. A yacht so monstrously big, your mom could actually ride on it. Then, with the spare nickels in my Piggy Bank Death Star, hire SpaceX to divert their engineering talent to firing that Yacht to Saturn. There it would remain in orbit for my three year "Yachtin' 'round Saturn Festive Celabratory Extravaganzery Party". Why? Why do I think so often about defecating on their porch? Because, Fuck Those Guys.

Seriously, they are like one Whore of Babylon
away from being smoted to all fuck.

Now I'm not writing about dining services in this post, because I enjoyed my tuna sandwich today at lunch and as of this moment I am still stacked to be on the 77 meal plan next year. They have been spared this day. No, for this week, as it was this time last year, I have been enslaved by Residence Life. What does that mean? They got me jacked into Symplicity. It's like being jacked into the Matrix, if the Matrix replaced the dehumanizing corporate structure that Neo finds himself in during the intro with a 234-tentacled Japanese rape monster.

Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here.

Last year, we got our group together of six people a few weeks in advance like the responsible god damned students that we are. We did everything the damned system told us to, exchanged pass codes, had a little room sign up party at our alloted time, had a previously researched room lined up. The day came, we entered in the system and it had the nerve to look us straight in the eye and tell us no. So we literally lived in the Residential Life office for a week, it took a whole god damned week to figure out why the system had a vendetta against us. Meanwhile all the good rooms were filling up. Finally we got our stuff in and let out a sigh of relief that lasted until the summer when we got our confirmation emails that informed us that the system had placed us all in the wrong room, with the wrong roommate in the wrong god damned building, just as it was designed to do. They finally got their shit together and put us all with our right roommates in the wrong room in the wrong building.

So you can imagine how excited I am to be entering this season once again. Once again I have gotten my room together well in advance and yesterday awaited my 7:30 slot, the best of our group.At two hours left I noticed something funny, my countdown clock said one day and an hour left until two hours from now. I pulled out the nearest speedometer and made sure my computer and I were going the same fucking velocity, well relativity could not account for this bullshit. So after panicking, we finally located the aptly named "fuck you guys" loophole in the Resonomicon (location un-fucking-known) and found out that it's not your groups best time, but the average of all your groups credits class standings best time. Did you hear that? It was the drip drop of my brain melting out my ears.

Then the room we picked in advance had filled out. No problem, there are two left, we'll pick one of those. We have four people and they are four person apartments, nothing can go wrong here, 4 = 4, that much I believe a computer can figure out. So we select to change the room that is now occupied. We want to switch from Thor Floor 3 to Thor Floor 1, Thor Floor 1 is empty, we switch to it, the computer informs us that we can't Thor Floor 3 is full. Well we want to go to Floor 1, you can't, Floor 3 is full. Finally that glitch faded when I deleted all knowledge of our previous selection. Then it informed us that our 4 roommates did not meet the occupancy requirements of our 4 person apartment.

Well we've played your game, so we can finally agree with the others now that you are the world's worst web interface. We weren't sure before. Symplicity? Don't you think you should suffer for the harm you've done to the human race? Don't you think the world's worst web interface ought to be punished for the most effective deforming of reality? Death to sYmplicitY!

Obscure Jude Law reference ftw.

Den Haushalt

2011-02-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

President Barack Obama, or as I will call him for the remainder of this post, Le Roi de l'Internet, hath decreed his budget proposal, and the people did say that it was meh.

It's okay, I guess...

Several people think it doesn't go far enough, others think it could go farther, and still others question how these people measure distance of budgets. I don't know if anyones read it and I'm not 100% sure if a person wrote it. How many times in your life have you heard someone tell you that the bible must be true, because how could one person make all that up? This logic has been presented to me by several people on several occasions and if you haven't heard this argument before, God bless you. If that is good enough justification to believe in a supernatural deity than things like the healthcare bill and the federal register (622 pages have been written in the Federal Register in the time it took me to write this blog post) are irrefutable evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not only real, but types federal documents really fast.

The bureaucracy has been touched by his noodley appendage.

But I digress (majorly, that whole FSM bullshit was not part of the original outline). As I was saying, King Barry, Lord of Internet and Protector of Locomotives did decree-eth some budgets, it was decreed unto the media, and unto the Twitters and unto the Book of Face. It was there on the Book of Face that I saw the great King of the Interblags did hand some of his power unto the people. He wanted the opinion of the humble American citizen in this great fiscal debacle. I wondered what kind of stirring discussions and debates I would find on the other side of that link. The rousing Libertarian cry for the end of government intervention, or the impassioned liberal pleading for a government that will care for all it's citizens. I was excited to partake in this grand forum of true democracy. Then I clicked the link and this is what I found.

I guess at the end of the day democracy usually dissolves into multiple choice.

Uhm, okay, not what I had mine. But wait! I clicked the link on Facebook, so theoretically I can join the comments thread there! Lets see,

A fair point Ann. Let us hear the voice of the people, not in multiple choice, but short answer form! Now the Once and Future King of All That is Cyberspace is a very busy man, so I will offer myself and my sense of civic duty to sorting through and reading the opinions of everyday Americans! Lets see,

Uhm, I think most everyday Americans speak English, I'm gonna try again.

I don't think that those are words.

I'll hand it to you Shirley, at least you make a bold attempt at the English language.

You know Obama, I see why you didn't leave room for an "Other" option on your survey.

Someday. Someday...

I DON'T LIKE SPAM! Have you got anything without spam?

Truth. He speaks it.

God I hope he clicked the Education button.

Wait, what in the name of all that is fuck?! The Arch Angel Michael has a Facebook account! God damn Obama, when they say you got friends in high places, damn.

You know Noah? I'm just not sure if that's true anymore.

So what has been the point of all this. First, Facebook needs a highest rated comment system like Youtube on fan pages. I think I have presented enough evidence of this. Second, you can totally give the president's budget a product review on Amazon. I demand all my readers to do so. So get to work, both of you!

Never can there come fog too thick

2011-02-03T20:28:00.000-05:00

So one of my good friends recently bought a box full of Earl Grey tea for us to drink when everyones over. I ended up looking up the Wikipedia article on it while drinking some when a debate about what it's made of started up. There I found out about a brilliant invention known as London Fog. It's a combination of Earl Grey, steamed milk and vanilla that is just made out of awesome. Apparently after some Googling it's been a popular item at Starbucks, of course I wouldn't know that because fuck Starbucks.

But steaming milk was out of the question, for I did not have the expensive tools to do it. I wasn't going to go blow 500 bajillion pesos on a stupid thing to steam milk for me. Then I remembered that I have the greatest culinary tool since Tater Mitts, the Internet! So I Googled it and the very first thing that came up was an eHow on how to steam milk without an espresso machine! So we quickly stole vanilla from the school and got to work. The results were astounding. I then went on to make some Bustelocino. Overall, another glorious victory for the internet.

Rock Like An Egyptian

2011-01-28T15:28:00.002-05:00

First Tunisia, now Egypt. The whole Middle East is up in arms. There isn't much I can add to this that isn't already said, so here is my response to both situations, to the tune of "London Bridge is Burning Down".

Tunisia is burning down, burning down, burning down.
Tunisia is burning down, run Ben Ali!

Mubarak is going down, going down, going down.
Mubarak is going down, so much for the army!

We Can Defeat the World and Win "The Future"

2011-01-26T17:41:00.000-05:00

Last night was the State of the Union address and Barack Obama has laid the foundation for the next year in Washington. He called for a lot of fun things like fast trains to keep Joe happy and a nifty high score system so teachers can see how good they're doing. Competition always makes things more fun! (grumble grumble) So after listening to the speech, I picked up two major points.

1. There is a game, it is called "The Future", and apparently we need to win the hell out of it.

2. We are apparently playing this game against the ENTIRE GOD DAMNED PLANET EARTH.

"We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world [...] we need to win The Future."
-President Barack Obama

For those of you doing the math at home, we're talking 6583779486 players against our 311951347 or approximately 20 to 1. Well I've played my fair share of RTS games and I know that we have our work cut our for us. Luckily we have the resources to even the playing field, if only we could wean ourselves off of the Vespian Gas. I sat there, thinking about the big questions like how to defeat the world and whether to get chicken tenders or a wrap after the speech was done when Obama came to his thrilling conclusion.

We are a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I'm not sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get there. I know we will." We do big things.

"She told me her name was Billie Jean, as she caused a scene. Then every head turned with eyes that dreamed of being the one." -Michael Jackson

There it is. We do big things. I like it. It's how we roll. It made me think about a blog post I almost put up a few weeks ago about American awesomenessocity that was inspired, not by the leader of the free world, but by Richard Hammond, who while speeding along in a 1970 Pontiac GTO, said this,

The Germans will be remembered for their engineering. The French for their quirky brilliance. The Italians for passion. The British for the nimble roadster. But the Americans, they'll be remembered for giving us a laugh. I don't mean that spitefully. What I mean is they make cars like this that basically just say "Oh calm down, nobody died, it's just a bit of fun. Enjoy it!"

That ladies and gentlemen is the American spirit as outlined by a small British man. At least the former American spirit. We used to be a country that embraced stupidly hilarious ideas. We built cars that were just stupidly powerful. When we heard the Russians had sent a blippy box thingy into space, we decided "Fuck you guys, we'll play golf on the moon." We built a cities economy off of testing nuclear explosions that were stupidly close by. We even wanted to send men to Saturn using a giant nuclear machine gun strapped to a Hilton Hotel. Now we shut down major space programs faster than we eat Baconators, and we know how to eat some motherfuckin' Baconators.

"No workers are more productive than ours."
-President Barack Obama

So yes, we have unlocked many achievements, we beat the fuck out of "The Past". I think today we take all of that stuff as a given and forget how hard some of them really tricky levels were. Now we have to beat "The Future". I'm sure it'll be a bitch. But we can beat it as long we continue our tradition of playing like a bunch of god damned mad men who create crazy awesome things for the fuck of it. As Steve Carrell once famously said,

"The Wright Brothers decided to make themselves a flying machine. 'You fools, you idiots! What's your problem?' everyone shouted. 'That will never work because plywood weighs more than air.' To which the Wright Brothers responded, 'No, it doesn’t.'"

So get out there and unlock some achievements, for America.

"If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation [...] become a teacher. Your country needs you."
-President Barack Obama
"Alright, I'll do it. Just get off my back. Jeeeeeeeez."
-Moi

Screw Real Life Applications

2011-01-18T13:54:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I moved back to Alfred and set up my computer and inevitably caught up on some web comics. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has this excellent comic about science education that made me lqtm.

And then this happened...

Six years might be too short a time to jump on this project if you've been ignoring science your whole life, but it's not too late to learn the ancient art of leather tanning. Someone has to make that saddle, maybe you can get a free ride!

Merry Xmas, Lets Go Kill The Shit Out Of Frosty!

2010-12-22T22:00:00.000-05:00

Every year I attend the Christmas Eve mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Presque Isle. At this point in my life, it's more about tradition than faith. Every year we get the same speech from the priest about how the holiday not about presents, but about Jesus and miracles like magnets and stuff. I am sure this year will be no different. Every year you hear that consumerism is destroying the Christmas spirit.

The thing is, this used to be subtle. Companies turning Christmas into super profit overdrive time used to be a subtle practice. Yet I think we are entering a decade that is going to be very blunt. We have several movies that just blatantly tell the audience "this will have no plot, but I bet it'll be fun!". This blunt attitude is extending into Christmas advertising in a very creepy way. The most egregious example being the new Christmas Best Buy Elf, Kenneth.

He literally just killed Frosty the god damned Snowman with consumerism. That just happened. One second Frosty is alive, spreading cheer to the boys and girls, the next, gruesomely decapitated by a price match guarantee. God damn.

The Media Needs to Start Fresh, With Garlic and Herbs

2010-12-20T16:37:00.001-05:00

This year it seems that the big target of mass hatred is the media. At this point the unanimous conclusion seems to be that the American media is a load of horse shit that isn't doing it's job. Most people turn to Jon Stewart or the blogosphere or anything that isn't a major news organization for their information. They're tired of the bullshit, tired of hearing about Ashton Kutcher when major historical events are in progress. It hit a fever pitch with the Rally to Restore Sanity and then the emergence of Wikileaks.

There have been a lot of suggestions on how to correct this situation. Jay Rosen said that the "watchdog press is dead" and a lot of people would like to see the media return to the days of serious investigative journalism. Currently major media outlets pretty much do as the government tells them. I'm certain if Bradley Manning had sent the war logs to CNN they'd have ignored it to avoid trouble or worse, reported him.

But I don't think that these companies need to look at legendary figures of the old press to figure out what they need to do. There is already a company that has dealt with these type of smear campaigns by running into them head on. They need to take the cardboard crust and bad ingredients of their journalism practices and startover fresh, with garlic. They need to pull a Dominos.

They need to just come out say it, we've been feeding you horse shit with ketchup flavored sauce for years, and we want to change. First major media outlet to do that gets my respect.

GO!

Tis The Season To Kill Zombies. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

2010-12-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

It's good to be home finally. I got back in the county on Monday and I was shocked to learn that today is apparently Saturday. If you were to ask me what I've been up to this week, I'd probably just let out a long "uhhhhhhhhhhh". I guess I need to set up some goal/projects to keep my unemployed/vacationing self busy for 4 more weeks.

Something other than Minecraft.

Yup, that's David Tennant in leather battle armor
and a diamond pick axe.

I guess I could try and write a blog post every day. Oh god damn it, that looks like a goal I'll fail catastrophically at that I just typed. DAMN YOU STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS!

Well now it's published on the internet, guess I got to do it. Lame.

Lo, thy asswipe hath runneth dry

2010-11-16T21:32:00.000-05:00

This is just a general heads up to any Alfred University students who maybe considering living in the suites at any point, and want to know what is like, let me sum it up.

You'll have an RA. Your RA is being paid one of the highest salaries available to students on campus. Their job? To dole out the asswipe ladies and gentleman. Literally their whole job, right there. To unlock the vault of the most sacred roles of ass wiping goodness. Yet, whenever these services are needed, they won't be there, ever. If you live in a suite, once a week you'll hear one of your suitemates cry out to the heavens in despair. This familiar cry will tell you all you need the know, thy asswipe hath runneth dry. You'll run to your RA, and they will not be there, ever. I mean that, not once. You go back and tell the damning report to your comrade. Naturally he/she is not in a position to take no for an answer. So you will run to the public bathroom and loot it for all it has. This temporary solution has saved your comrade from a most unwearable pair of briefs. Every week you'll see signs going up telling you to stop stealing asswipe from the public restroom. It is ignored because when you got a man in there who is at the psychological breaking point, there is no other option. Though 1 out of 3 times the public bathroom will have runneth dry as well, usually because of another suite suffering a similar fate as of recent. Then comes creativity in the form of napkins and such. This is usually followed by consoling your comrade, who is in a most unfit state. Never at any point in your life, will toilet paper be on your mind as often as when you live in a suite, because it is a precious commodity. It's only more damning because of the vault filled to the ceiling with the stuff downstairs, the one your not entrusted to enter.

I am really not blaming the RAs, it's not their fault that they have lives and are expected to be available for this stupid mundane tasks at all hours. Really this system just needs some serious altering, because this on demand shit has got to go.

Speaking of asswipe, quantum physics test tomorrow. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

The Rarest of Days

2010-11-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

As I posted on Facebook recently, I have 22 pennies on my desk, the newest is from 2010 and the oldest is from 1944. In other news, I haven't left my room much today.

That being said, I'm having a very productive day, I tend to when Benjamin Franklin gives me a 25 hour day. Groovy stuff. Got up this morning, read two chapters of A Brief History of Time. Taught myself basic Python and programmed something that rated buildings on how good they would be at defending against zombies. Then I did my Diff Eq work early and listened to the new Guster album through 4 times, working on the fifth. I figured out how to break up cheese on the irregularly short Wegman's bread to a form that is geometrically desirable. I did my astronomy homework and I wrote five pages of a script for a movie I don't believe I'll ever make. Doing German now, just felt like documenting my once annual day of productivity.

Sic itur ad astra motherfucker.

Physical Literature

2010-10-25T23:07:00.000-04:00

I've been having this almost obsessive compulsive need to write lately, and yet no outlet to put it into. I guess spending all my days solving Physics and Math problems, although fun and awesome, leave the creative side of my brain craving exercise. Really thats all I'm writing about right now, that I need to write something, kind of self-fulfilling prophecy really.

I do find it interesting actually, how Physics and English seem to be intrinsically linked, or at least the people who study them. I have a friend who just switched from Physics to English. Half of my Physics professors started as English majors. Make a list of my top 10 favorite teachers, half of them taught me English. I have a high school English teacher who says one of his favorite teachers was his high school physics teacher. Lastly, before I decided to dedicate my self to the study of natural philosophy, I really seriously thought about studying English. This connection bugged me for a few weeks, since one is almost all quantitative reasoning and the other almost all qualitative reasoning.

I thought about doing some surveys or statistics or something to find out why these two unrelated subjects seem to draw all the same people. Well screw that, the answer is actually pretty obvious. All of the people I described above are simply hopeless academics, doomed to a life of research and schooling. Honestly, if you have a personality that draws you to a life of toilsome scholarship, it doesn't make that much of a difference if you spend it locked up in a library or a laboratory.

James Hetfield-ah

2010-09-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

Over the summer, my brother and I got a big kick out of doing what was called "James Hetfielding" songs. Simply sing a song, preferably not very metal, in James Hetfield voice. It was hilarious, and made several Green Day songs so much better. Then we started doing it to The Beatles, and many a rofl was had.

So imagine my shock when Wolfgang told me about a little band called "Beatallica". I was floored. It's just so hilarious hearing a Metallica-like band, sing The Beatles. Just listen to these folk,

And just for the lulz,

Super-Science Struggle

2010-09-18T23:40:00.000-04:00

Ahh, Saturdays. Waking up to the sound of Wolfgang yelling at the window. Saturday is our weekly Pancake Day. Every Saturday, Wolfgang comes up our suite for Pancakes at 10 AM and every week we are asleep when he gets here and he has to wake us up while locked out.

Pancakes have now started being traditionally followed up by a batch of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Today we picked a lovely film called Robot v. Aztec Mummy. That film isn't what caught our eye today. It was the short serial at the beginning. Episode 1 of Radar Men from the Moon, The Moon Rocket. Let's just say once it was over we went online to find the other episodes. It is beyond brilliant.

Pictured: Genius

The commentary from MST3K was almost nonexistent during this segment, it was unnecessary. What needed to be said was said by the actors. This show was just amazing. It opened with several bits of stock footage of things blowing up. When the main character, Commando Cody is revealed, he has it figured out in under 1 minute. I checked. From the fact that the explosions were of an atomic nature, but without the really big boom. So it must be an "atomic beam". Which no one on Earth has. Since Commando Cody has just built a moon rocket, it must be some one from there. Why else would he have built the convenient transport?

Pictured: Convenient transport

While we were laughing and enjoying the exploits of Commando Cody, I can't deny that I wasn't taking notes. The music, cinematography and script were all noted and cataloged. For those of you who know me, you may know that last year I began working together a script for a bad 50's sci-fi sppof. Lord Victorian v. The Robot-Pirate-Bear-Ninja-Monkey-Vampires from Space. Long title, easy concept. Steampunk British nobility with a steam powered flying pennyfarthing and steam powered gatling gun for an arm fights giant space monster/internetsworstnightmare. If I ever do finish the script, it will have a Commando Cody noted in the credits, because his influence is undeniable. The thing is going to be no-budget, except I need to make a penny farthing, big one or model one, all options are on the table.

Pictured: Hope

If your intrigued by the amazing adventures of Commando Cody, well thats why Jesus invented Google Video.

Tis the 43rd Day of the Bureaucracy

2010-09-10T12:09:00.000-04:00

Folks, I have once again been away from this place that I write pointless unread drivel that I feel an obligation to post for reasons I don't think I'll ever truly understand. Since last I spoke we are all 25 days older and $78,361,331,988.99 deeper into debt.

That being said, I noticed something while looking up that number, we are only a trillion dollars short of our gross domestic product. Now years ago, I promised a big ass party when the two numbers hit a point of equivalence. A celebration of the excess we will no longer enjoy. It's kind of like Mardi Gras, except instead of celebrating before getting rid of meat, we're celebrating just before our national economic collapse. So it's the same idea really. This is similar to the promise that I made in 7th grade, that I would throw a party if/when Dr. Phil and/or Oprah end up in prison for some reason.

So just reminding you, watch the debt clock to know what time the party starts.

Or Court TV, whatever happens first really.

10/21/06 NEVAR FORGET!!!111one

2010-08-16T21:00:00.002-04:00

I really need more of my MSSM friends to tell me about their experiences with Braveristan, so I make video.

So here is a few topics I am looking for,

-The word Homework.
-Stories I may not know.
-Mall-Movie trip to Lowes
-Description of Sunday's Brunch and Battle
-Refresher, the battle was very short and marked by a
resounding communist defeat. Painful even.
-The reconstruction of Braveristan
-The construction of Castle Commie
-Wargames out in the field
-Aftermath
-Popularity of Boffer club
-Braveristan 2.0
-Sean Lynch

Also I'd like more stories from the first 3 episodes, that I could use to improve them for the full-length movie.

Also if you have photos and videos you think I could use, email is tylerbeaulieu@gmail.com

Thank you,
The Tyler

All we got to do is hold on to JESUS

2010-07-31T01:06:00.002-04:00

So I'm on lunch break, eating at my mom's office as there are a couple internets here. So I was wondering what I was going to do to kill an hour. I resorted to what any fine upstanding American would do, I'm gonna look up Facebook comments on CNN news stories and analyze them. Duh.

I chose an article from a couple days ago. It was another lame human interest story CNN posted on Facebook for reasons I barely understand. The title, "Cooking fries? Cleaning hospitals? Executives reflect on their first job". I read the article, best part is the story of the Walmart CEO, who's first job was unloading trucks for Walmart and crashed his Honda Civic into his bosses car on the first day of work. The article was alright, still don't know why it deserved breaking news status on Facebook, but I digress. Let's dive into the comments section!!!

Our first contestant is Nickolas, a 2009 graduate of Papillion-LaVista South High School. Nickolas writes, "no fucking way! i wonder if steve jobs had to suck off bill gates to get where he is?". Haha, nice try Nick, but the correct answer was Nolan Bushnell, he sucked off Nolan Bushnell.

You don't even know who I am, do you Nick?

Our next contestant is Nikki, a 1998 graduate of Licoln west high school, Nikki likes Mr. Scarface and loves to kick it with her husband and family (all caps). Nikki writes, "i am writing in concerns of the new crack cocaine law it should only apply for the young mens and womens,that's been locked up in federal prison fo r5years or better." Hate to break it to you Nikki, this article has nothing to do with crack cocaine, thanks for playing.

Our next contestant is Mark, who is best known for actually knowing how to use Facebook privacy settings, though I was able to learn that he is in fact male. Mark writes, "Now all these jobs are TAKEN by fucking ILLEGALS...;] Now the "O"regime wants to fingerprint and register morgage brokers... NOT the fucking illegals...". Hard to tell what you said there Mark, but I take it you don't like immigrants. Your right, clearly illegal immigrants with no official status as a U.S. citizen are going to make it and become CEO. I mean, duh.

Next up is Michael Mwendwa Cartman who writes, "Good stuff there, i wanna invite y'all to Kenya and experience the diverse culture we have here. Animal and bird view, awesome climate and people. Hola". Not much to add there. Suddenly want to visit Kenya though. Hola.

Now we have Sam from Fresno, CA. He is a peace keeper whose current employer is God and his profile is of him drinking and playing guitar, so I will assume he is unemployed. Sam writes, "they can eat my dick..." Ooh, I think your boss would have something to say about that. Theoretically they could though, and you could charge. This is how economics works Sam and the profession of prostitution is one of the oldest in the world. Thanks for playing.

For our last contestant I used CTRL+F and the word ""Christ". I found Joel who claims to teach college in Lagos, Nigeria and enjoys Lil Wayne and the Oprah Winfrey Show. He had three comments.

I NO, RIGHT?!

This brings me to my final point. On these comment threads you have several types of people, spammers, all cappers, bible thumpers, grammar failures and just dumb people. So I decided to join the conversation as all of the above.

BY MY SHIT

hAV A NICE WEEKEND!1

Smile And Greet The Customer

2010-07-30T10:54:00.004-04:00

Do you have a friend who does or has worked at Walmart? Were they trained for the register at any point? Was it a computer-based learning course? Please say the phrase that is the title of this post to them. Their instinctual response will probably be to scream and rip out your jugular because that phrase starts out the steps for EVERY SINGLE LESSON.

The cashier lessons haven't mattered much to me, as most days I man The Door. Yes the capitals are necessary, because I am actually capable of hearing them every time The Door is mentioned. See in Lawn and Garden you either work register or watering plants or zoning/stocking shelves or you work at The Door. Working at The Door means you stay at The Door, you never leave The Door for any reason, ANY REASON. You smile and greet the customer on the way in and check receipts on the way out. If you do any more than that so help you God there will be consequences. Occasionally an on-duty police officer even shows up to make sure that The Door is being manned all proper like.

I am good at my job. I am brilliant at standing around and doing nothing, not moving, and I am very prompt about taking and utilizing my fifteen minute breaks as well as my hour lunches. This apparently makes me an ideal employee. If there is anything they hate more than anything else it's overtime, and let me tell you, you will not catching me working more than I am asked to.

The most awkward part of my job is the stragglers, people who end up stuck at The Door with me, waiting for a ride or chewing tobacco or something. The conversation is usually about the weather, perpetually about the weather actually. In fact it's so often about the weather that it's almost maddening. It feels like we still haven't evolved above pointing at the sky and discussing the obvious.

Oh not rain again...

Though sometimes they get stuck longer. Then they start discussing religion or politics, and I am supposed to be the positive feelings door greetery guy. I tend to just agree with what they're saying, even if I disagree, because I'm just there to make them feel good. If I argued with them they can report me, if I agree with them, they come back. The problem will only arise if they ever talk to each other.

Person: Are you a man of faith.
Me: I'm baptized Catholic.
Person: Faith is important, theres not enough in this world today.
Me: People are really falling away from religion.
Person: I know it. If it wasn't for religion I know I would have died of the stroke I had last year. I just know that God pulled me through.
Me: Faith is very important

Later that day...
Person: You know what the problem is with the world, religion.
Me: Tell me about it.
Person: People ignoring the objective information in front of them and embracing some deity, fighting in the name of some imaginary person.
Me: Too many wars are fought over religion.

I'm an atheist, though technically I didn't lie anywhere above. I know a lot of ill people who attribute faith to their healing, and killing in the name of religion does not sit well with me, but still. It gets worse.

Person: You've got all these people out there who are perfectly capable of working and choose not to.
Me: People don't know the meaning of an honest days work anymore.
Person: They're lazy, this whole generation is lazy. It's the drugs I tell you. They need to crack down harder on that.
Me: They are the bane of society.

Later that day...
Person: They need to legalize marijuana already.
Me: It's a war on the culture, not on the drug.
Person: Exactly, it makes no sense to spend all this money on a drug war when they could reap the benefits of taxation and regulation.
Me: Not to mention the boon to the snack food industry.

Then there is just the weird ones...

Person: I miss the twist tops.
Me: The twist tops?
Person: For beer, you have to use a bottle opener now.
Me: I see.
Person: I makes it harder to open when I'm driving.
Me: They might be on to something.
Person: And they don't fit in the cupholders right.
Me: Still think they're onto something.
Person: I can still get them off, but it's hard when driving.
Me: You really shouldn't be opening them when you're driving.
Person: What am I supposed to do, I don't got a passenger to open them.
Me: ...
Person: Got you there.

Later that day...
Person: You hear all these people saying they aren't capable of killing a person. Of course they're capable of it.
Me: It just depends on the moment I guess.
Person: Not even, I bet I could kill someone right now and sleep soundly tonight. As long as I can justify it to me, that is all that matters.
Me: ...
Person: I bet this automatic wood chopper could do some serious damage to someone.

I would like to note that these are real conversations with customers who've chosen to remain anonymous, paraphrased and shortened, but the content remains. Anyway, I plan to stay at The Door, you meet a lot of interesting people. Plus the weather has been nice lately, or so I'm told...

Twigs in Glass

2010-07-03T22:34:00.006-04:00

There has been a disturbing thought plaguing my mind for months now. It is a result of the "Nobody knows how to make a pencil" speech we heard in economics. It is the realization that all of the man-made things around me are, in fact, made by some human being or machine out there. All of it. I say disturbing because when this realization hits full swing, the whole world seems to be utterly mad.

This all culminated into a recent trip to the grand opening of my local McDonalds. There my brother and I sat down and enjoyed the greasy goodness, until I began to look at the decor. I saw that the new establishment was aiming for a modern cafe-style set up. The thing that caught my eye was the booth dividers.

They were sheets of glass, with twigs cast into them.

Pictured: McDonalds vaguely similar to ours from Attleboro, MA.

Not Pictured: Twigs in Glass...

At first I shrugged it off as modern artistic bull shit, but then I thought about it. I thought about it in the context of the previously mentioned disturbing thought. I realized that several other McDonalds must have these, I doubt they're hand made, nothing at McDonalds is. So what I'm realizing is somewhere there is a facility, with a room or a machine or something, that specializes in placing aesthetically pleasing twigs inside of sheets of glass. There has to be multiple people working there, and thats what they do. They are professional twigcasters.

I began to consider all the implications of this. What do these people claim to do at High School reunions?

Man 1: So I've went on to do some venture capitalism, pretty profitable stuff. Also been dabbling in Real Estate. What have you been up to?

Man 2: Oh me, I put twigs... in glass.

Man 1: ...

Then I imagine the board meeting, where some young hot shot industrial designer, had to convince a company to set up a division dedicated to the art of placing small aesthetically pleasing twigs inside of glass. The presentation was a hit and an ad hits the newspaper, asking for people with knowledge of glass casting and an overly zealous passion for twigs. Machines were designed, a workplace protocol established. Engineers worked on making the most cost-effective twig-glassification device.

Then when this Caribou McDonalds was built, some office assistant in McDonalds called and made an order for 8 sheets of twigged glass. The order was processed and loaded onto a truck and driven, to Northern Maine and dropped off where construction workers opened the box and I'll be damned if one of them didn't ask "What the hell are these for?".

Are the twigs real? If they are real that opens a whole new vista of ridiculousness. They have to find a perfect variety of twig producing plant. At some point there was probably an executive, calling a biologist, wondering about twig genetic engineering. Can we make them straighter? Fewer defects? More... twiggy.

It also means that the holy grail of twig-related careers is listed in the classifieds somewhere, "Twig Inspector". The person's job is to spend the whole day being judgmental, of twigs...

What sort of education does that involve? Would one consider it a job or a career? Then I can't help picture him being one of those passionate workers, someone who ends up taking their work home with them. One day there is a family BBQ, everyone is out back, listening to music, eating grilled meats and assorted salads. Children are laughing and playing in a sprinkler. The adults sit around a small fire pit, drinking wine and talking about the good ol' days. Then a twig falls from the tree. The man, we'll call him Randy, looks at it from his $10.00 lawn chair from the local Walmart and says,

Randy: That twig is rubbish, I'd never put it in glass.

Sharon: Honey don't bring work home with you.

Steve: Randy, your job is oddly specific.

Randy: SHUT UP STEVE.

A fight breaks out, a friendship is shattered. Years down the road his obsession with twigs leads to a divorce. The children can't stand him, as his twig-related Christmas presents prove lackluster as they grow older. At the age of 47 he is found dead in a pile of twigs just off the highway. No one knows how he or the twigs got there or what killed him, as an autopsy is deemed unnecessary. Case closed, so ends the life of Randy, Twig Inspector. His gravestone is placed in a cemetery five miles out of the town he grew up in. It is placed under a tree that is known for shedding twigs. The gardener at the cemetery has always been annoyed by this tree. Then one day as it began to rain and the gardener began to pack up his equipment, a lone woman arrives, she is dressed all in black. She stands in front of the grave for five minutes, only letting a single tear slide down her cheeks in that time. She then leaves a bouquet of the most perfect twigs ever gathered, some from Randy's own collection. She kisses her hand and lays the hand reverently on the gravestone. She gets inside her maroon Subaru and rides off. She was never identified, never seen again. The gardener made the decision not to bother picking up the twigs next to the stone from there on out.

All of this flashes through my mind and I take another bite out of my Angus Bacon and Cheese. I talked about it for a half an hour with my brother. This train of thought has plagued me for days. More question keep popping up. Is there a lobbying group for twig-related industries? What kind of regulations must a twig glassification operation deal with? Are there more than one twigging glass company? Is the competition stiff? Are they geographically near each other? Do they ever play each other in competitive sports? Are there small towns out there supported by their twig and glass industries? I can go on. The point is, I'm going mad, and I blame Milton Friedman.

Note: I did a quick Google search, there is a website called twigsandglass.net. Not related to the twigs IN glass mentioned in this article, but I giggled none the less.

E3 2010: From The 2015 Perspective

2010-06-29T17:42:00.004-04:00

To those of us select few who view this trade conference as the super bowl of the gaming realm, E3 2010 was a bit lackluster. There is this mistake we make as gamers, that watching this 20-30 hours worth of coverage is going to be entertaining for every second. Yet we watch it anyway to analyze and learn about the gaming industries future and eventually select winners based on our own subjective viewpoints (I don't care what you think, your emotions cloud your judgment).

Despite its lack of entertainment value or wow factors, I have to say that what I saw there was the future, you know, the one Marty McFly visited. The gaming industry was demoing the everyday stuff from 2015, as Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly saw it.

E3 2013 has a lot to work towards.

For instance. Lets think to Marty's walk through downtown Hill Valley. After pulling his pockets inside out like all the cool kids, he saw a hologram of Jaws come out to bite him. Now there were no holograms at E3 this year, but there was one technological breakthrough, the 3DS.

And sharks apparently...

3D without glasses, that is the handheld device of the future. Knowing how technology advances, how long are we from large scale 3D that is glasses free? The technology Nintendo is bringing to the table is only the beginning of this 3D revolution, and Jaws is overdue for a remake.

Then Marty heads off to the Cafe 80's. There he plays a classic 80's video game because the kids can't figure out how to use it. This is because the idea of the controller, was foreign to them. Somewhere, Don Mattrick is grinning like the fucking tool that he is.

With Kinect, Microsoft's XBox 360 is going to take the console war to a new level. I don't care what your opinion on the matter is, I don't care that the opening line up is lame, that is a fact. When the average mom and dad sees that thing demoed on the Early Show, it is going to be the console in every families home before Harry Smith finishes dancing. It's lack of controller and voice control interface is going to be big.

So E3 2010, showing us how brilliant Robert Zimeckis really was.

Note: Just putting this out there, every celebrity in the Cafe 80's is dead now. Think about it.

Stereotypical Damn-I-Haven't-Been-On-Here-In-A-While-Post Post

2010-06-24T20:31:00.000-04:00

Holy hell. It's been like two months. Since my last post we are all 51 days older and $210,656,539,955.25 deeper into debt.

Too bad, I was doing well, and to think at the time I wasn't even attempting to do well, just had a lot of material. Since then I had finals and then a job at Walmart. The job is good and pays well enough for my ends, but I have to say it is a creative black hole.

So is this me saying that I'll be posting more often again, no fucking idea. We'll just have to see. Probably will embarrassingly put up another post like this in a month.

I have been writing down a lot of youtube video ideas of late and I will post them on here if they happen.

Have an awesome summer everybody.

Gears of War 3

2010-04-13T17:26:00.008-04:00

So today I was scrolling through the Google, and it revealed to me a pretty important piece of news if you follow the entertainment industry. It read, "Gears of War 3 trailer, release date announced on the Jimmy Fallon show". Now those of you who have known me for some time know how I must have reacted, with my extensive history with the Gears of War franchise and all. That reaction of course was, "Jimmy Fallon has his own show?!?!?"

Inconceivable!

This was very similar to my shock about three years ago when I found out Carson Daly had a late night show. I was surprised when I found out that he had not, in fact, been killed by the nineties.

Inconceivable!

I just don't understand why such a major video game announcement was made on the Jimmy Fallon Show. I mean the audience probably couldn't even hear the trailer over Jimmy Fallon giggling to himself. To think, Conan forced to wander into the realm of cable while Jimmy Fallon sits there laughing away at himself. The only word I can use to describe this travesty is,

Canadaland and the Kingdom of the Crystal Hockey Puck

2010-04-13T16:45:00.007-04:00

"UUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuasdlkfjasdlfkjasdnkvbdfakfjsdlds..."

I'll be honest, I'm paraphrasing that last bit, but it was a lot unintelligible blather anyway. I ran as if a giant beast that could eat me and shit out a gold brick was chasing me. I ran that way because that was exactly what was happening. For something the size of the god damned pentagon, it was fast.

"Keel dee humon, ehhhhh."

Even the god damned Aurum Fecalis says eh. I hate this place so much. No amount of money was worth putting up with these pinkofrostbacks. I ran down the sewers, nearly slipping on the remains of some canucks poutine, I ran into that stinky cavernous horror hoping that the marines were at the other end with a black hawk. A black hawk with a towel and some soap, and perhaps a nuclear weapon to destroy this god forsaken excuse for a magical wonderland.

Well I didn't get that. Just as the Aurum Fecalis was about smelling distance away (and let me tell you, not a distance you want to be with in), Keanu Reeves came bursting around the corner dual wielding uzi's and let the Aurum Fecalis have a face full of lead.

"Woah, eh."

"What the flying fuck are you doing in a sewer and why are you dressed like Neo."

"Inaudible gibberish, eh."

Once again I paraphrased, but he has this amazing ability to make a whole sentence just sound like an extended woah. I stopped asking questions, an unspeakable move for a detective, but the use of logic was going to be useless here. I just nabbed an Uzi from the Woah-master and began to hunt for an exit. That didn't take long as soon the ceiling was lifted off of the place and several members of the Edmonton Oilers repelled in armed with sharpened hockey sticks. They grabbed Keanu and I and we were pulled to the surface. There we saw Tim Horton and a small contingent of Canucks waiting on the surface.

"Welcome back, eh?"

"I am not talking to you, this is all your fault you massive pile of douche. And how the hell did you lift the roof off down there?"

Timmy just pointed up. What I saw left my jaw a little slack.

"Since when did you enlist Paul motherfucking Bunyan?"

"Last week, eh."

"What are you guys doing?"

"We move on Quebec in the morning, eh. We're just waiting for our Navy to get here from Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, eh."

"Navy? You mean a couple of fishing boats with a potato gun glued on."

"Do not insult hundreds of years of Canadian Naval Tradition, eh! There are aboot seven on there way, eh!"

"Okay, 20 canucks, Keanu Reeves, Paul Bunyan and 7 barely modified fishing boats versus the rest of Canada."

"We also have a couple hunded Moostauros, eh."

"A couple hundred whats?"

A stampede of moose joined the party, except they weren't any kind of moose. They had a lumberjack for a head, a lumberjack dual wielding axes. I was left speechless, they were just so awesome. All of their axes were covered in blood, lots of blood. Their manly beards in combination with their flannel shirts running into the body of a fucking moose made them look like unstoppable killing machines.

"Okay, that'll be handy."

Suddenly the camp was ambushed by fifty French Canadians. They sprang from the bushes with baguettes held as if they were foils. Some of them even had emptied bottles of wine that were broken to make a sharp pointy bit. A battle was about to break out, of epic proportions. I'm talking like Kingdom of Heaven proportions, like Lord of the Rings proportions, like Pirate of the Caribbean 3 proportions if both sides hadn't pussied out so two ships in a whirlpool could kind of fight. Like seriously, what the hell? That scene had potential! It would have...

Long story short, Uzi's are effective weapons, and so far everyone was all prepared for hand to hand shit. Like, one magazine and they were all pretty dead. Like pretty damned dead. Like, baguettes do not block bullets very good.

I just looked back at Timmy. Keanu was standing next to him, gun on the ground. He was going to try and do Kung fu to them!

"Seriously. You guys never thought to use a gun. It was really easy."

There was just silence. Finally Timmy simply just said, "Huh, eh."

A Green Revolution (Fueled by Christian Morals and the Wachowski Bros.)

2010-04-11T18:54:00.015-04:00

The following is a modest proposal for green energy.

In spite of my current religious beliefs of science and FNORD, I do come from a Catholic upbringing. I remember reading about the exploits of Jesus H. Christ as he used his magnificent God powers to make zombies and mass produce the ingredients for tuna fish sandwiches. I read them all in my Bible Picture Book, which had few words and just a lot of pictures of Jesus doing his thing. The thing is, Jesus always seemed to be all glowy. This was always very distracting to me when I was younger. Jesus and many of the saints always seemed to have a light bulb for a head. As a scientist I begin to wonder if they are sick or irradiated, maybe Jesus stumbled into one of the Roman Empire's notorious toxic waste dumps and there gained his super powers.

After discussing the phenomena with colleagues, we came to the conclusion that he was emitting pure, purity. Then I began to wonder if there was someway to harness pureness. Comparing the luminosity exuding from the head of Jesus Christ, it is approximately equivalent to the light output of a standard 100 watt light bulb. So if we had a spare Jesus kicking around, we could potentially draw 100 watts of power from pureness output. Unfortunately we don't have a spare Jesus, and I hear we still have a bit of a wait before he comes back to say howdy.

Sup guys?

So, where does one get purity in this impure age. All of us are plagued by sin thanks to modern society and the internet. There is only one true source of purity in this day and age, devoid of original and all them other sins. Recently baptized babies. Now considering they are not Jesus, we should probably expect about a half a Jesus worth of power output. There is also the problem that moments after baptism the baby is bound to offend the Lord by pooping in his pants or accidentally yelling a curse word they learned from their parents to the church.

Science has provided us with a solution to this inevitable purity reduction anomaly, hydrogen sulfide. Scientists have been working with hydrogen sulfide as a means of putting human beings into a metabolically inert state. This means that if we can develop a process of injecting the recently baptized young with hydrogen sulfide, we could have religiously fueled power output that will not diminish and will not require feeding. They will be trapped in a permanently pure state for as long as we need to hold them there. And since the babies won't need to breathe, we could have limitless power with a carbon footprint of zero.

Now unfortunately, here in the United States, we have a rather annoying sense of morality that could prevent this fantastic technology from taking off. But I think that there is one nation that could fulfill the dream of Pure Power Conversion Processes, China. With their major steps in population control and belief in the idea of the greater good overriding the rights and happiness of the individual, they are a remarkable candidate for this technology. Also they are the worlds second highest consumer of electricity, at 3,640,000,000 MW*h/yr.

So how to implement it. Well at half a Jesus worth of output, we'll need over 9000 recently baptized Megababies (1 Megababy = 1,000 babies) to produce the power needed to fuel China. So if China makes an exclusive deal with the Powerthirst Corporation, they only need about 22,500 Catholic couples to produce the necessary number of babies to be baptized and then plugged into the Glorious National Power Grid of the People. Once the other nations of the world begin to see the wonderful benefits of this system, many more will follow in Chinas footsteps.

A Loss of Essence

2010-04-09T14:32:00.013-04:00

Last November I posted about the 2010 ballot situation. There were a lot of very scary measures in circulation and I am glad to say the worst of them didn't seem to get the signatures. Just in case you forgot though,

Michael S.Heath

70 Sewall Street

Augusta, ME 04330

(H) (207) 445-4929 (W) 622-7634

That is the address of Hitler. My Discordian fellows know what to do.

So, what's left of that mess? The two measures currently in circulation involve fluoridation of water and a casinos in Oxford county. I find the fluoridation of water measure very funny thanks to Dr. Strangelove. I decided to send a letter of approval to Jacqueline.

For Glorious Man Night

2010-04-08T14:23:00.003-04:00

As many of you know, I am a huge proponent of nights of manly excess. During my tenure at the Maine School of Sleep-deprivation and Malnutrition, I ran a series of Man Nights, where manly men engaged in gross displays of carnivorous feasting whilst watching films of a generally explosive and plotless nature. Knowing this I was very interested when Mr. Victor Tardiff introduced me to The Expendables.

I was reminded of this movie again today when Hijinks Ensue covered it. It's true, the movie has a fuck load of actors. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. Arnold Schwartzenager is in it, in spite his gubernatorialness. Brittany Murphy is supposedly in it even though shes been dead for like a fucking year. I am sad Segull and Van Damme turned it down. The idea of one big grandiose tribute to all that is manly and bad ass would be beautiful. At this point I'm waiting for them to announce that Bruce Lee and John Wayne are going to be digitally rendered into the cast and that Chuck Norris is going to fight Mr. T, I mean it's getting close to that in the ridiculously over the top nature of this casting roster.

With this and the A-Team movie (seriously, fucking tank-parachute), this is going to be a good summer for men.

Canadaland Revolutions

2010-04-06T23:55:00.000-04:00

If your just catching up, this is part 3. Part one is here.

I want to start writing this part of my tale by saying this. I really, really, really hate communists. I am so glad I got that off my chest.

"Timmy."

"Yes, Mr. McClane, eh?"

"I quit."

I started walking away from the waffle stick town. I'm a private detective, I get hired to find a missing cat or look into adulterous couples or be a comic relief for Mel Gibson. That is the job of the private detective. Nowhere does it say that I have to fight my way through the French-communist wasteland of Quebec to fight William Shatner. Although I'm almost certain I could kick his ass I needed to get back a place where everybody hates your guts and where everyone has grown plenty of a gut to hate. The good ol' U S of A.

"We have an agreement, eh. You find my kingdom, I give you one hundred thousand American dollars, eh?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, you frenchfuck. I do not take monopoly money. Besides, the moneys been circulating in Canada. It was probably used in your socialist plots! Like water fluoridation or socialized medicine. I don't want your dirty pinko-mon..."

At that point I tripped on one of the many syrup puddles and fell down a hill. At the bottom my arm hit a maple tree and I heard a loud snap. Now seeing as the tree wasn't falling over and didn't seem to be screaming in agony, unlike myself, I came to the conclusion the snapping sound had come from me.

Instantly, and I mean instantly, like Δt = 0 seconds instantly. Like the amount of time Stephen Hawking has spent as a mountaineering tour guide. I'm talking about the amount of time it takes for a photon to stay in the same fucking spot. Zero seconds after my injury a helicopter was in the sky. I knew what it was, I had learned the smell it emits long ago. It was the smell of dirty communist doctors, flying their helicopter fueled by sunshine and farts, lightly diluted with ethanol and twigs.

"No you bastards! I am a god damned patriot and I will suffer due to my lack of insurance! I will not ride with you! I will go home and wrap this up with duct tape as Uncle Sam and Jesus intended it when they wrote the Bill of Rights!"

"You just relax, eh."

I don't really know what happened next. These commie hosers drugged me up and loaded me into their pinkocopter and flew me straight to the nearest St. Comrades Glorious Health Center of the People. It flew me right into the waiting room where I spent the next 3 agonizing days reading the same copy of Highlights magazine. Then I was moved to triage where I was injected, inspected, detected, infected and neglected by an android nurse hooked to the complicated matrix of information at the Canadian Department of Life and Communist Affairs. Then, using money from who knows where, they patched me up, drugged me up and put a cast on made of recycled fabric. They even printed a joke on it,

Q: How do you stop bacon from curling in the frying pan?

A: Take away their brooms!

I didn't get it. Do these people use brooms to fry bacon? I didn't have long to ponder it though as my frostback doctor came in.

"It seems you had a bit of a spill there, eh?"

"Why the fuck would you use a broom to fry bacon?"

"Eh?"

"And for that matter, how are wafflesticks considered decent lumber? While we're asking questions, who the hell is the payer in a single payer system?"

The doctor suddenly lost the perpetually friendly complexion that plagued everyone in this winter horrorland. "That is a question best left alone, eh?"

"No. I'm on to something, I'm a detective, I see when there is something you don't want me to know. Who pays for this?"

"You ask too many questions, eh." He reached for a large lever and pulled it. My bed fell into the abyss. And by the abyss, I mean the sewage system. I floated down this horrible river of unmentionables on my bedyacht until I reached a coliseum sized room. There I saw it. A man stood on a pulpit and yelled.

"THERE STANDS A CHALLENGER TO THE AURUM FECALIS, EH!"

I got off my bedyacht and stood before the beast. I was given a hockey stick to defend myself. Of course, it all makes sense now. The only way this single payer system could work. They've got a god damn 200 ton troll that eats refuse and shits gold!

It just sat there on top of a pile of gold the size of the god damned Pyramids of god damned Giza. Then it roared at me and began to charge. It was then, that I bravely ran away.

"FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...."

TO BE CONTINUED

Live Blogging from Intro Psychology.

2010-04-06T15:48:00.016-04:00

3:30 - Just got back my paper. 30/40 at the bottom, but all the criteria above it total to 35/40. Not losing twelve and a half points to bad math.

3:45 - Talking about how only psychologists ask questions about how things work, the physicist inside of me disagrees.

3:50 - She just said Darwin founded gravity.

3:51 - Oh dear, she is trying to use Spock as an example.

4:12 - I believe she just had us all doing awesome face.

4:16 - Ahhhh, break.

4:28 - Teacher still not back. Masses have resorted to playing with thermostat and make it go psssshhhh.'

4:45 - Fun candid camera video. No idea how it is relevant, at all.

5:02 - Out early!

The Eleventh Hour Review

2010-04-06T14:41:00.005-04:00

First of all I'm not here to cry out that "Matt Smith is the Doctor!" as several UK sources are screaming into the sky. I was impressed and he did far better than I had imagined. I will say this, Steven Moffat is the writer. I am a long time fan of Moffat's work, his Doctor Who episodes in the first four seasons are all in my top ten and his nineties spoof, Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death was hilarious. Ashley recently introduced me to his show Coupling and it was also fantastic and very funny.

When he was announced to take over for Russell T. Davies as head writer, I was ecstatic. I can't think of anyone better than him. Of course, at the time of that announcement, Tennant was still going to be the Doctor. When he announced his departure, I became very worried. But then I remembered, Moffat controlled his destiny. I became a bit more at ease.

So here we are in a whole new Doctor's world. New TARDIS, new companion, new screwdriver, new production team and new Doctor. That is a whole lot of new to get used to at once. This first episode was crucial and if I were in Steven's position, I would've crumbled. The point is, he had the monumental task of taking all of these Doctor Who fans who believe David Tennant was the greatest Doctor since Tom Baker, and making them believe that Matt Smith wasn't horrible. A hard task considering most came in to this series hating Smith because of the fact that he wasn't David Tennant. Moffat had one episode to convince everyone that it would be alright. One episode to convince the masses that the Doctor was still alive and kicking. In that respect, I believe he has done his job.

This isn't so much a review as it is a vote of confidence in this new crew. I miss David, I think we'll all miss him, but this new show is still the same old fun and adventure we expect. I believe Matt Smith is full of potential and I quite like his take on the Doctor. That and I love the new TARDIS. It's a strange mix of old series and new series with a lot of steampunk splashed on for good measure. Kudos to the people who designed that set, I've already gotten used to and fallen in love with it.

All that praise being said, please get the intro music fixed for next season.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

2010-04-04T16:58:00.001-04:00

Abridged version of my Utopian Literature paper (2008).
My Utopia is not on a small island; it does not follow any specific form of government and its structure is unknown to me. It is not a place, but rather it is a time. My Utopia is quite simply the future. I am not talking about the future of a hundred years from now, but rather the future of billions of years from now. Imagine the most distant future you have ever even attempted to conceive, and then go further, much further. Look past our galactic collision with Andromeda, past the destruction of the sun, past so many things that we figure to be beyond the scope of humanity. It is a time when diverse beings of profound intelligence roam the galaxies, beings descended from us. The beauty of the future as a Utopia is that it is so very possible. To bring forth this divine future, all we must do is survive and contribute constructively to progress of humanity.

The basic principle of the future as a Utopia was outlined in an essay by Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The essay was titled The First Coming, and opened with the sentence, “I am optimistic that God may come in the end”. There are two things that are very provocative about this sentence. The first of these is that God does not come in the beginning as the creator, but rather at the end of time. The second and most important point however, is that this sentence was written by an atheist. Seligman is not referencing the Judeo-Christian God, he is instead referencing “an alternative notion of God relevant to the secular community”. The first point he makes is to abandon the idea of God as the original creator of the universe, for this is what makes God so hard to accept for the secular community. He asks us to forget the creation aspect of God and to “let the mystery of creation be consigned to the branch of physics called cosmology”.

Without the aspect of creation, that leaves us with three characteristics of what makes God, omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence. Seligman asks the question, “Does this God exist?”. If God is to be defined as a being that is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, it would seem impossible, with the science and technology of today, that this God could develop naturally. Then we must consider the astronomically immense future that awaits us if we have the persistence to meet it. Over this extensive period of time, biological and cultural evolution is always progressing towards greater complexity. Billions of years ago our ancestors were bacteria. So we can assume that billions of years from now, our ancestors will be as different from us as we are from bacteria. As our technology, knowledge, and positive institutions expand, we become more and more powerful. Seligman looks at this immense future and then references the list of the characteristics of God. “A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence and goodness. Omniscience is arguably the ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is arguably the ultimate end product of technology. Goodness is arguably the ultimate end product of positive institutions…So in the very longest run, we have a God who is not supernatural but who has acquired omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence through natural processes”. Simply put into mathematical terms, as the limit of humanity approaches the end of time, we constantly approach divinity.

This is similar to the Isaac Asimov short story, The Last Question, which helped inspire Seligman’s essay. In it, humanity has designed a supercomputer known as Multivac, which answers any question given to it. Multivac gives humanity the plans to directly power all of Earth with the sun. Some technicians at Multivac begin to discuss this. One of them makes the claim that humanity can run off of the Sun’s energy forever. The other reminds him that in a few billion years, the sun will burn out. He reminds the technician, “Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all”. So they ask Multivac if entropy can be reversed, to which Multivac responds “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER”. The story progresses until after humans have used up the sun, and the computer gives the same response, this is repeated once humans have used up all the space in the galaxy and again when humanity has spread to every galaxy in the Universe. Then entropy continues to progress and the universe begins to burn out, the computer continues to give the same response. Then humanity fuses itself into the computer, which is now built outside of space and time and works to figure out the answer to the question, “Can entropy ever be reversed?”. Finally they arrive at an answer and this being which was created by humanity and sitting outside of time says, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” after which Asimov writes, “and there was light”. Asimov portrays humans and their technology as a God through their ability to reverse entropy, which creates a new universe.

This belief of humanity infinitely approaching divinity makes every human being very important, because we are all building blocks towards a better future. As Seligman put it, “I am optimistic that this is the door through which meaning can enter our lives…that as individuals we can be a tiny part of this process, which has at its ultimate end the bringing of a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent”. But to reach this dream, to approach the limit, we first must survive to see it. Survival is a game of problem solving on our part, but it is also a problem of probability. I tend to lean towards Sagan’s philosophy of survival, which lies in decreasing the probability of annihilation by expanding human civilization into space. In his book The Pale Blue Dot, Sagan suggest that "if we were up there among the planets, if there were self-sufficient human communities on many worlds... then the safer the human species will be”. It is our duty to survive so that the intelligent species who descend from us can continue the journey towards omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent beings.

The dangers of our extinction are more prevalent now than ever, especially as we are now entering a century when our self-destruction is becoming more practical than ever. Sir Martin Rees talks about this in his book Our Final Century in which he predicts that we have a 50% chance of surviving the 21^st century. Rees believes that “in this century not only will our world be changing faster than ever, but in new and different ways”. He goes on to discuss how technology is going to speed up our evolution. He notes that through AI and genetic enhancement, “human beings, their physique and character, have not changed for thousands of years, it may change this century”. We have great challenges ahead; for, as our world becomes more connected, a computer virus begins to have the ability to cause disaster, “indeed catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure, error rather than terror”.

Humanity has a lot of challenges to face if it is going to survive to see the distant future, but humans are up to the task. Humans are not ones for lying down and accepting death. “The brain stem and amygdala will always do their job of struggling to preserve life at any cost”. When catastrophe strikes, we will fight for the preservation our species and we are intelligent enough to succeed. Sir Martin Rees, although predicting a low probability of survival, believes that we are more than capable of making it. Rees recognizes that “whatever happens in this uniquely crucial century will resonate into the remote future and perhaps far beyond the Earth”. Carl Sagan knows that the next few decades will be a challenge, but he also is confident in humanity because “we humans also have a history of making long-lasting social change that nearly everyone thought impossible”.

We humans tend to think in the short term, and have a hard time imagining many thousands of years, let alone billions. I’m sure many people will look at this and think that the notion of the intelligent beings of the Universe becoming God as blasphemous or impossible. For those who see it as blasphemy, that is their religious view and I can respect that. For those who think it impossible, they are underestimating the grand scale of the future. There is plenty enough future left for an intelligent species to evolve and constantly approach a definition of God. Such beings would hold so much power in the Universe, that they could mold the entirety of space into their own personal Utopia. This is an important idea for us, because being alive in the twenty-first century means that we will be some of the most crucial building blocks to bringing about this future. It is time to take the first steps towards the future by insuring our survival. This is a fight we must begin here and spread into the cosmos, or as Dylan Thomas writes, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

Canadaland Episode II: Attack of the Scones

2010-03-30T21:36:00.001-04:00

This is a continuation of the short fiction piece I'm putting together for Blogagon.

"...CKER, EH!" I screamed as the coach flew at what felt like Mach 1 over the beautiful landscape below. I was utterly confused why I said "eh" at the end of that sentence; it felt strangely necessary. I didn't ponder it long though, as this crazy flying coach was scaring me shitless with its reckless maneuvering.

We passed over more hockey arenas and molasses distilleries as we went screaming through the air. To be honest it looked like candy land if someone had spilt their breakfast on it and threw in some moose for good measure. I believe at one point I saw a forest of waffle sticks next to a lake of syrup. It didn't help that Jacques sat over there on the other side of the coach laughing like a madman.

"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING SO HARD, EH?" Once again that last bit was involuntary, "AND WHY THE FUCK AM I SAYING EH SO MUCH, EH?"

"That is something I never understood about your world, eh. How do you know when your sentences end, eh?"

My good lord, they actually vocalized punctuation here. I realized my anger was getting me nowhere. This Canuck just found it funny. I realized I had to calm down if I ever wanted to get out of this place. "So I'm here for a case, right..." I tried to hold it off, "...eh." It came out like a sneeze.

He stopped his giggling and fell back into a reserved smile. "Yes, I told you I lost something valuable, eh? What I lost was my kingdom, eh"

"Your kingdom, eh?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I have not been totally honest with you, eh. My name is Tim Horton, former King of Canadaland, eh."

"Tim Horton, like the coffee shop, eh?"

"I am assuming you are referring to my foreign embassies, eh? Yes, the delicious Canadian food and drink seems to have reduced anti-Canadian sentiment amongst your people, eh."

"So, who took this government away from you, eh?"

"William Shatner, eh."

"WAIT?! WHAT? EH?!"

Hundreds of miles away in the Castle of Ottawa, sat the new King of Canadaland. "So...whenwill this...castlefly, eh?"

"My lord, this is a castle, it has difficulty going to space, eh."

"Indeed, eh! But, Iwill...soon...have my placeamongst... the cosmos, eh. Is...theCanadaArm, ready, eh?"

"We now have full access my lord, eh."

"Fire photon torpedoes, eh."

"Sure, eh." said his servant as the monitors in the King's chamber showed members of the International Space Station being thrown into space by the CanadaArm.

"Beam me up, eh."

"Sir, how many times to I have to tell you that you'll be flying up, eh."

"There will be more time for questions later Mr. McClane, eh. We are touching down here to transfer airships, the moose require their rest, eh."

We got out of the flying carriage in a town that literally had houses made of molasses cookies. The smell was intoxicating, the cookies were seemingly kept at their fresh-baked odor. "Look, Mr. Horton, I get you have problems but how the hell is a private detective supposed to help, eh?"

Suddenly a baguette went flying past my head and stuck into the wall next to me. I turned to see dozens of people jumping off rooftops and heading towards us. They were, well, they were fucking French. More French than a curly mustache. More French than a beret. More French than socialized medicine. More French than banana tarte tatin. How did I know? They had all of those things.

"You really should not have said my name, eh. The King's agents lurk everywhere, eh."

"Are they all this French, eh?"

"Le Quebecois have been sympathetic towards King Bill, eh."

They were running at us waving their delicious looking desserts threateningly and something inside me snapped. First of all, I hated the French, it's built into by red, white and blue DNA. Second, my anger over Timmy dragging me into this dream world had not receded in the least. Now this hellscape provided me with something to take my anger out on, and bless God they were French!

I tore the baguette out of the wall and met their charge with my own. I yelled as I ran at them with anger, pride and passion mixed into the beautiful sound of glorious battle. "YOU FUCKING FRENCH COMMUNIST FAGGOTS! HERE COMES UNCLE SAM TO EQUALLY DISTRIBUTE YOUR PETITE ASSES ALL OVER THE PAVEMENT!"

They suddenly stopped. "NOUS NOUS REVENONS, EH!" I only understood their surrender based on my own prejudice and the white flag they produced. They ran into the night whimpering in their silly hats. I turned around to find the whole town bowing to me.

"Okay what the fuck? That cannot be the first time you've seen the French surrender."

"ALL HAIL THE ONE, EH!" said the crowd in a very creepy monotone. This must be what it feels like to be Pope. The only one not bowing was Horton.

"What are they doing?"

"I knew you were the one all along, prophesized to save this land, eh."

"The who?"

"The One Who Never Finishes His Sentences, eh."

"Never finishes his wha... Oh I stopped saying 'eh' didn't I?"

"And now you are ready save the world, eh."

TO BE CONTINUED

How Does One Live Long and Kick Ass

2010-03-28T23:57:00.000-04:00

MISSION STATEMENT

So I basically made this blog because I thought of the name while talking to Elliot. That is the only reason. I liked the name. A lot...

That being said, now that I've made it I feel a need to post. How have I fulfilled this need? By scouring Facebook and my computer for writings of mine I like. Also I am a member of Blogagon, which is the child of the failed Alfred Writing Club. Instead of meetings we're just all obligated to post weekly writings and this is working for us. I'll be copying writings from there to here as necessary. I'll also post writings that are obscenely big here, so as not to block out others writings on there.

Pic unrelated, but totally badass.

I'll probably also post life stories when it seems relevant. But the main purpose I think is just to get an internet backup and collection of shazzle I find amusing or thoughtful, but usually just absurd and lulzy.

And since this is my blog, occasionally I'll post irrelevant shit. Like the previous post. It amuses me, and I don't need it to amuse you. Whiny bastards. If there even is a you. Personally I'm fine with 0 comments/0 views, I just like the name. That is why I made this. Because I liked the title.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not a big fan of Hemingway.

BABIES

2010-03-24T00:09:00.000-04:00

That is all.

Canadaland (A Tale About Violence, Conspiracy and Poutine)

2010-03-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

This is a short fiction piece I'm putting together for Blogagon.

I pulled up to the McDonald's in Fort Kent, Maine with a bit of an icy slide from the barely plowed roads. The wind howled with the anger of being so far from decent civilization. I couldn't believe I drove all the way up from Manchester for this. Here I was, an accomplished private detective with a double degree in Badassery and Kicking Ass Whilst Taking Names (individually structured majors taken at the School of Hard Knocks) freezing in this winter hellscape on the edge of the Canadian wasteland.

This town was so close to the border that the McDonald's was actually owned by the Canadian branch of the corporation and the town was officially bilingual. I walked inside where the cashier looked up and said "Bonjour!"

"Parlez-vous anglais, frenchfag?"

She took on an offended look, "This is a bilingual establishment, sir. I understood that."

"Well than Jay swiss day-soul-eh my dear. Just give me a numero un with a coke and make it snappy amigo."

"Would you like poutine with that?"

"I get this place has caught the CanadAIDS, but why would you put pudding on a Big Mac?"

"No sir, poutine. It's french fries with gravy and cheese poured over them."

I must admit I was taken aback by this. Of all of the horrible pinko-French-commie Canadian bull to infect it's way over our precious border, Shania Twain, Mike Myers, that Asian chick from Grey's Anatomy, how has this glorious, all-American, artery-clogging gift of the gods remained trapped in this frozen hell?

"Yes, I would love some pudding. Actually, my fine madam, I would like to order three, extra large. Actually just pour it into the largest Chicken McNugget box you've got back there. Scratch that, I'm going to need a feeding tube. You know, who needs a Big Mac?" My blatant Americanism was consuming me with desire. My exaggerated gesticulations and loud voice were not enough to express my wish to eat this grease pile until my heart literally fucking exploded. I would've probably kept this rant up had I not been tapped on the shoulder.

"Hello, are you Chuck McClane."

"Hell yeah."

"My name is Jacques."

"Commie."

"What?"

"Nothing."

He took a moment to recoil but got back to the point. "I'm the one who hired you. I've lost something very valuable to me and your assistance would be much appreciated."

This communist was talking like I was offering some sort of charity, "Look, I don't take monopoly money Jack."

Jack's palm made swift contact his face as he let out a sigh. "I can pay you in American currency, one hundred thousand dollars of it to be precise."

Well right then Jack gave me one hundred thousand reasons to start being a bit more polite, "So what is it that you are looking for sir?"

"I'll tell you in due time, but first you must come with me." He grabbed my hand and pulled me outside where a horse-drawn carriage awaited us. I almost dropped the approximately two and a half pounds of poutine I'd ordered in the rush.

"Oh what the hell Jack? It's like forty below zero out here, it's so fucking cold you actually make Fahrenheit and Celsius agree with one another! Those horses should be legally dead!"

"Those aren't horses." said Jacques with a slight grin on his face. He was right, this man was putting me in a moose-drawn carriage. The carriage itself was covered in sticky black goop that seemed to have frozen to outside. I got inside and found it to be warm and comforting even though there was no discernible heat source. The smell of maple and molasses thickened the air.
I looked Jackie-boy right in the eye when he got in the carriage, "Okay, what the hell is going on here?"

"We're off my good boy! Off to Canadaland!"

As soon as he finished that sentence the carriage physically lifted off the tarmac and we began to fly toward the Canadian border. "HOLY HELL!" I exclaimed as we began a nosedive into the St. John River. "FOR FUCKS SAKE, IT'S FROZEN YOU CRAZY CANADIAN PINKO-COMMIE BASTAR...."

We hit the ice and passed right on through to the other side. The carriage filled slowly with liquid and I began to panic. Soon I was completely engulfed in it. I thought for sure I was going to die. Then I tasted the liquid and realized it was far too sweet to be water. It was then that I realized that I was drowning in a river of maple syrup.

Suddenly the liquid poured out and I looked out to see it was now a beautiful summer day. The landscape bore the same geography but reversed. The frozen river replaced by a stream of sweet maple syrup. The trees were no longer frozen and dead but vibrant and bearing crepes for leaves. The town below was now a hockey arena with an ecstatic crowd cheering as they drank their Labatt Blue. Jack cleaned off his face of the maple syrup and laughed. "Ha ha, welcome my good sir, to Canadaland!"

"MOTHER FU..."

TO BE CONTINUED

Hello World!

2010-03-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

Greetings cohorts, and stuff.

Hmmm....

This is a picture of orange soda in a toilet.

Good day.

Psych lol, I mean 101

2010-02-26T01:23:00.000-05:00

4 Cylon Basestars hover over a planet where Lee Adama is preparing to defend against centurions while above his father decides whether or not to fire nuclear missiles down on the planet his son is on.

FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...

But, but, but I want to know what happens next! Yet I do not have time for the next episode, for I have to head to my horrible excuse for a psychology class. GOR-FRAKKIN-RAMMIT! (thats right, two sci-fi franchises, one lame fake curse word) So I swallow the fact that I will have to wait until later in the night and head to the class.

I arrive at the science center, fetch some Code Red out of the vending machine and proceed into the classroom. A quiz has been doled out and I sit down and bust it out. When everyone is done, the "teacher" inexplicably waits five minutes, reading a book and not looking up to see that we are done. Then she instructs us to write our thoughts on the back of the quiz to clear our heads. So I write about the cliffhanger ending, and then I take a moment to transcribe the lyrics to the Physics Guy Rap, as is was thoroughly stuck in my head. Upon completion of that I decided to draw a penguin doing a space walk.

An example of a productive psychology class.

So we had to clear our minds because today we were going to be "meditating". She reached for the computer where she had a meditation music youtube video loaded. I got a little excited because there in inextricable link between my psych teacher and computer failure. I closed my eyes, breathed in and out and was interrupted by an overtly loud Windows BOOP. I laughed out loud, and caught myself just in time for a second BOOP to bring me back to full laughter. I caught it again out of respect, but it was hard as the computer kept BOOP-ing, which is not conducive to successful meditation.

She decided to ignore the incessant BOOP-ing and read the meditation script. I tried to play along and began to breath deeply. I begin to breathe out, she says breathe in. I try and correct myself but shes already saying breathe out by the time I'm breathing in and vice versa until I look less relaxed and more like I'm hyperventilating. Good start.

She then says to imagine we are walking down a wooden staircase. So I once again try and play along, I picture myself on a wooden staircase heading down into a study. It was intensely relaxing, there was a fireplace and books and mahogan....

"You follow the staircase down to a beach."

First thought: "What the f*** is a beach doing in my library?!?!"

Notice how distinctly not a beach this is.

Once again I was no longer relaxed, I was worried about salt water getting on my books. But I forced myself to try, try to relax and meditate damn it. So I placed my mind on a beach. So naturally my mind went to the last beach I had been too, on MDI with MSSMers last June. Which means it was cold Maine beach water, which I don't think is what she was going for. But I tried, I tried so hard to warm the beach up in my mind, tried to get rid of the feeling of seaweed wrapping around my legs while I was in the water. Soon I actually began to relax, I was on a warm beach, a nice day, I was doing good.

"Now imagine you look up and you see two seagulls circling above you."

This was supposed to be calming and for a moment it was. But then the seagulls started to kick each others ass.

Because, F*** YOU!

This was less than favorable because I started to laugh. Which than put me in a Giggle Loop.

The following is the urban dictionary definition. Remember, to know of the Giggle Loop is to be a part of the Giggle Loop.

You are surrounded by people for a moment of silence when the Giggle Loop begins...

Suddenly out of nowhere this thought comes into your head: the worst thing I could possibly do during a minute's silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do laugh -- automatic reaction. But you don't, you control yourself, you're fine. Whew.

But then you think how terrible it would have been if you laughed out loud in the middle of a minutes silence. And so you nearly do again, only this time it's a bigger laugh. And then you think how awful this bigger laugh would have been. And so you nearly laugh again, only this time it's a very big laugh, it is an enormous laugh. Let this bastard out, and you get whiplash. And suddenly you are in the middle of this completely silent room and your shoulders are going like you are drilling the road. And what do you think of this situation? Oh dear Christ, you think it's funny!
Coupling - Series 1 - Episode 'Sex, Death & Nudity'

It just builds higher and less stable.

It only got worse, the images in my head began spiraling out of control. Soon Mike Brown and Pat Brown were there talking about bad-ass this sea gull fight was and Mike bet twenty bucks on the one to the left. Pretty soon more people and inanimate objects were there and they were all concerned one thing, kicking each others asses. This beach became a powerthirst commercial in five seconds flat and I wanted to laugh. The longer I sat there I just wanted to laugh more and more and more. It got unbearable.

I went through a ten minute giggle loop, everything she said to relax us only piled more fuel on the fire. Everything on this beach was cursing and kicking-ass. I finally figured it out and opened my eyes, which allowed me to remember how boring this room actually was and saved me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I hate psychology.

Funnier if it wasn't true. Maine 2010

2009-11-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

So 2009 has come and passed and now marriage is officially restricted to a man a woman and a bong. And although the results on number one were not what I wanted, in fact they down right infuriated me, I will move forward, hope for the future and be proud that we got as far as we did. The battle is lost yet the war rages on. Speaking of the war, next years ballot is truly hilarious. These aren't guaranteed to be on the ballot, but they are approved for circulation. If half of these make it we have one juicy election coming up.

An Act to Remove Protections Based on Sexual Orientation from the Maine Human Rights Act, Eliminate Funding of Civil Rights Teams in Public Schools, Prohibit Adoptions by Unmarried Couples, Add a Definition of Marriage, and Declare Civil Unions Unlawful

Michael S.Heath

70 Sewall Street

Augusta, ME 04330

(H) (207) 445-4929 (W) 622-7634

Did Hitler write this? Okay, so I am almost certain to write this type of legislation you would have to have killed either a kitten or a puppy or a baby at some point in your life. If this happens to pass next year I will shit a brick, literally. I'll eat one and push my body to the limit to excrete it.

That being said, I think we have a candidate for a flaming bag of poo on the door step, I have never met a more willing candidate.

Resolve Calling Upon the Congress and the President of the United States to Enact the United States National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676

Jerry Call

137 Waterman Beach Road

South Thomaston, ME 04858

(H) (207) 596-7784

We could pass this every election and Washington wouldn't listen.

An Act to Regarding Possession and Cultivation of Marijuana For Medical Purposes

An Act to Repeal the Prohibition on Cannabis, Hemp and Marijuana

Donald Christen

65 Shusta Road

Madison, ME 04950

(H) (207) 696-8167 (W) (207) 696-4444

They are written by the same guy so I'll just do these in one go eh? I do on political grounds believe that the government has no right to tell me what goes into my body, kind of my own damned decision. That being said, not sure if I want Maine to stop being Lobster capital of the world and start being the Amsterdam of North America.

An Act to Prohibit Fluoride in Public Water Supplies

Jacqueline Sorenson

81 Falmouth Street

Westbrook, ME 04092

(H) (207) 854-2453

RIPPER

(through his cigar)

Mandrake.

MANDRAKE

Yes, Jack?

RIPPER

Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?

MANDRAKE

Well, no I... I can't say I have, Jack.

RIPPER

Vodka. That's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?

MANDRAKE

Well I... I believe that's what they drink, Jack. Yes.

RIPPER

On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.

MANDRAKE

Oh, ah, yes. I don't quite.. see what you're getting at, Jack.

RIPPER

Water. That's what I'm getting at. Water. Mandrake, water is the source of

all life. Seven tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, you realize

that.. seventy percent of you is water.

MANDRAKE

Uhhh God...

RIPPER

And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our

precious bodily fluids.

MANDRAKE

Yes. chuckles nervously

RIPPER

You beginning to understand?

MANDRAKE

Yes.

(chuckles - begins laughing/crying quietly)

RIPPER

Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled

water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?

MANDRAKE

Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes.

RIPPER

Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?

MANDRAKE

Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.

RIPPER

Well do you now what it is?

MANDRAKE

No. No, I don't know what it is. No.

RIPPER

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and

dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

MANDRAKE

(laughs)

Jack, don't you think we'd be better off in some other part of the room,

away from all this flying glass?

RIPPER

Ah, naah. We're ok here. Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to

fluoridated water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt,

flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake.

Children's ice cream?

MANDRAKE

Good Lord.

RIPPER

You know when fluoridation first began?

MANDRAKE

No. No, I don't, Jack. No.

RIPPER

Nineteen hundred and forty six. Nineteen fortysix, Mandrake. How does that

coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious,

isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily

fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any

choice. That's the way your hard core commie works.

MANDRAKE

Jack... Jack, listen, tell me, ah... when did you first become, well, develop

this theory.

RIPPER

Well, I ah, I I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act

of love.

RIPPER

Yes a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I

was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence.

MANDRAKE

Yes...

RIPPER

I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women... women sense my

power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but

I do deny them my essence.

MANDRAKE

Heh heh... yes.

Another Fine Tale of Sir Lancelot du Lac

2009-01-20T21:04:00.000-05:00

A Tale of Lancelot du Lac
By Tyler Beaulieu
Edited by Cheney Larock

And thus did Lancelot twice lay the fair queen, and she said that it 'twas good. Once again did
Lancelot hastily flee Camelot so that he may further quest the Isles of Briton. He went forth into the forests of Northumbria, where I am sure many dragons were slain and many damsels were rescued and many prisons were escaped. He did successfully quest throughout this wilderness for many a fortnight.

Then did Lancelot come upon the Dolorous Castle. Both Lancelot and the Dolorous Guard took a moment to exclaim “Oh, not again!”, before the fierce battle did ensue. And it was then that Lancelot did slay twenty-four knights. His shoulder was wounded, but he continued to wage war on these foes for reasons neither Lancelot nor the Dolorous Knights could truly understand. He headed towards the gate and commanded it be opened. He then realized that the porter had come out to try and stop the fierce battle and had been slain by the White Knight. Thus did Lancelot forever lock Dolorous Castle to outsiders. Lancelot was disappointed, and rode away grumbling about the terrible loot system on that map.

As he rode away, Lancelot did hear the sound of trees snapping in the distance. He looked into the cloudless sky, and there did he see naught but the legendary Dolorous Fucking Gundam. Lancelot then entered clan chat and tried to request help for fighting the fell beast. Unfortunately Sir Gawain was AFK, good King Arthur was busy questing in Scotland and Bedivere was tanking for Sir Percival. Lancelot came to the grave realization that he would be fighting this fucking gundam on his own.

Thus did Lancelot engage in combat with the Dolorous Fucking Gundam. Though he sustained a wound to his shoulder, he did not back down from this most awesome engagement. After many hours of battle, Lancelot did climb into a tree and bravely hid from the fucking gundam. He stayed there for a fortnight, but being a fucking gundam, and not knowing fear or impatience, it continued its search for our hero.

Then, on the fourteenth night of this most unlikely engagement, Sir Lancelot did see an opportunity and jumped from his tree and onto the shoulder of the Dolorous Fucking Gundam and immediately wounded it. He then ran down the arm of the fell beast, and although sustaining a shoulder wound again, continued to storm down the arm of this fucking gundam until he reached its wrist and slit it, causing the fucking energy sword to be dropped. The mighty knight then ran back up the arm and stabbed the fell beast in its weakest spot, its other shoulder.

And thus did Lancelot defeat the Dolorous Fucking Gundam, and there was much rejoicing. He then journeyed back to Camelot in spite of his wounded shoulder. Shortly after arriving, the Queen expressed extreme approval of his defeat of the Dolorous Fucking Gundam and thrice laid him that night. Lancelot wounded his shoulder in the process but proceeded to thoroughly bed the wife of his good friend.

THE END

The Death of the Ford Tortoise (May it rest in many pieces)

2008-09-10T00:23:00.000-04:00

So I am currently at home to attend my aunts funeral and thought I'd give everyone an update on my super fantastic car (For those of you who didn't get to experience the wonder that was my car, you probably didn't catch the sarcasm). So I headed out after lunch on Monday for the 'bou in my 1994 Ford Topaz. As is usual with my car, it took over a minute to start, was loud as hell and had a decent amount of smoke coming out of the hood, which means it was working as usual. As is usual with my fantastic ride, the engine shut off at the first stop sign, a quick restart and I was off again. It was running pretty well for the piece o' crap on wheels that it is, until I got to the first hill. Once there, I found that my car wasn't able to go over 30 mph on an incline, a new and exciting flaw that left bystanders lol-ing and traffic crawling. Well after a grueling journey I eventually arrived at the Caribou Burger King. I waved to the inexplicable flock of seagulls in the parking lot as my loud loud car scared them all into early migration. When I stopped at the menu, my car shut off which was preferable so that the lady could actually hear the words coming out of my mouth. It was after I ordered my delicious and calorie-filled Triple Stacker meal that I noticed that a slightly larger amount of smoke then usual was coming out of the hood. The lady at the window up ahead noticed too and had an expression on her face that can only be described as a Kodak moment. I began the process of restarting my car, which decided to be particularly loud and broken and didn't restart for three minutes at which point it allowed me to travel five feet before immediately shutting off and making a very loud noise that can only mean that it was dying a very painful death. The car hadn't stopped, so I let my dead and dilapidated piece of crap coast right on by the window as I gave my friendliest wave/shrug I could manage to the lady holding a bag full of food out the window. I was able to roll right into a parking space with the help of a friendly pedestrian who gave me a quick push. I got out and waited in the drive thru line on foot. After receiving my delicious cholesterol filled meal, I set up a picnic on the hood of my car and called for a ride and a tow. If you have to break down, I do recommend Burger King. There's food, bathroom, free refills and even seagulls to keep you company. I sat on top of my smoking wreck of a car and waved at passing traffic for 10 minutes enjoying my meal and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. My mom was surprised to find me with a smile on my face, but I found the entire incident very amusing. We got a call from the garage later informing us that the car would be more expensive to fix than the car was actually worth, so it's probably going to get junked.

P.S. Could someone talk to Dougan. First year we asked if he could reenact the Brainiacs episode where they put thermite through a car and he said 'get me a car'. Could anyone ask him if that offer is still open? Heres the vid,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdCsbZf1_Ng

Rock Band

2008-04-26T03:31:00.000-04:00

So I've been playing Rock Band a fair amount over break so my break is going according to plan. The thing is is that using the rock band guitar for days has given me a deep-seeded anger regarding it's strum bar. So I put together an e-mail for the fine folks at Harmonix that I thought I'd share.

Dear Harmonix,

I would like to start this email by first of all congratulating you on making one of the funnest games I've played in some time. That being said I've noticed a slight design flaw in the guitars that you ship standard with the Rock Band package. It would appear that you've been building your guitars out of feces. Now I understand where your designers are coming from, we're in a recession and it's understandable that human waste is pretty cheap and easy to come by. I will admit that it is a bold move against the conventional wood/carbon composite/metal/plastic design of a guitar and I admire your willingness to take a creative view on things. That being said, fecal matter just doesn't work well as a musical instrument. It makes for a shitty strum bar and crappy fret buttons, no pun intended of course. Really I was surprised how this guitar, which looks so snazzy, could stink so bad that I'd begin to miss my squeaky Fisher-Price toy SG Guitar from the Playstation 2 days. Once again I don't mean this to be offensive in anyway, I'm just providing some creative input for your next guitar design. Perhaps make it out of plastic or maybe even metal, that'd be worth a buy even if it were a bit on the expensive side. Really, most things would do a good job, you know, besides crap.

Yours Truly,
CalcToaster

I really hope they don't take it the wrong way.