Dave Littler's Tall Blog of Strength!

The Curse of the Rhino King - Now presented in astonshing AUDO-RAMA format!

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:39:57 GMT

I have noted with some considerable distress that the various chapters of The Curse of the Rhino King have received somewhat less n the way of accolades than would seem its due. I don’t now exactly what to attribute this dearth of positive attention to; certainly no lack of quality on the part of the narrative itself. I’ve read it aloud to any number of friends and seen with my own eyes that they’ve enjoyed it. I’m willing to entertain the possibility that there’s a large number of you who have something physically wrong with the pleasure centers of your brains which renders you incapable of experiencing joy, but for the many times you’ve expressed it at other appropriate times.

To me the most likely scenario is one which revolves around the labour involved with actually reading large blocks of text. Peter David on his blog has lately been running a serialized story entitled “Potato Moon” which is up to something like chapter 55 now, and which I have yet to read even a single chapter of; when I’m reading my friends page I’m not necessarily in the right mood or head-space to entertain that sort of focus or effort. It is my expectation and hope that some significant portion of those of you who have not been reading or commenting upon this opus are of a similar mind-set.

There is a ready cure for this deficiency, however! A detour around this speed-bump. A monkey wrench by means of which this nut may be tightened. A lubricant by means of which this penetration may take place with a minimum of tearing and strain. In this I speak of the magic of audio. For some time I have planned to re-create my narrative success in reading these thrilling tales aloud to my friends for the benefit of my readers and indeed had enlisted the aid of my good friend lenimonkey in narrating those parts which are too feminine for the booming issue of my own throat to manage.

I had at one time planned on creating YouTube videos from this material (with some minimal graphics to supplement the audio) and I may yet do so (which would also serve the purpose of giving those dozens-or-hundreds- I -don’t-even-now-anymore of people who subscribed to my channel after my penis videos something to loo at). However, with the discovery of this delightful audio tool things become a great deal more streamlined and convenient for all involved.

Anyways. if this is more warmly received than the text-only versions (which is explicitly meant to be read as “If I receive more comments posted) then you can be certain that more will be forthcoming.

This having been said, and without further ado...

Future, and It Doesn't Work

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:29:59 GMT

I know I've recommended stuff from 8BitPeoples before, but this stuff really stands out for me. I felt I ought to share with you a sample from the new album, "Future, and It Doesn't Work", by Starscream.

You can downlaod the whole shebang freely and legally here.

I would also strongly recommend this album here, which has lately had a prominent place in my ipod's playlist.

Audio experimentation

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:26:42 GMT

For the benefit of those of you who for whatever missedyesterday's post, or else didn't pay it the attention it only-in-the-loosest-possible-of-terms-deserved, I present it once again, in a much more easily-absorbed form, since I have just now mastered a charming little applet which ought to make these audio posts significantly more satisfying for all involved.

Audioblog #5 - Look!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:19:32 GMT

In an act of nearly unmitigated cockpunching irony, I shall require my readers in this singular instance not to look, but to listen, as I wax poetic on the topic of looking, rather than listening.

Oh, what rapture!

Edit: Upon review, I do believe this may actually be my most bizarre blog post ever, finally displacing my previous title-holder, which among other things contained visions of a giant, orgasming space-bear made up of stars and human souls.

Anyone in the greater Vancouver area up for a game of Dark Sun?

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:45:40 GMT

It seems that my regular gaming group has taken a little bit of a hit, having lost two previously- regular players to various uninteresting fates. This leaves us in a trifle of a lurch, as we find ourselves with but three regular players in total. As anyone with any experience in the fine art of Dungeons & Dragons is concerned, this is an entirely unacceptable number. We’re hunting around for two more players to fill this gap for our every-second-friday gaming sessions at my place.

Dark Sun is the greatest D&D setting ever created. No, I’m serious. Get out of my face with your Forgotten Realms, shut up about Planescape, and if you dare to bring up Eberron, I shall have no more to say to you. Dark Sun was created late in 2^nd edition, and while for some reason it was never published in 3^rd edition, there was an officially-sanctioned 3^rd edition version created online, which can be found at http://athas.org , which has been updated, added-to and otherwise built-upon for the past decade or so.

Basically, Dark Sun is the D&D setting where the bad guys won. Some 2,000 years back, there was a horrendous war, during which a cabal of evil wizard/psionicists essentially conquered the world, despoiling and ruining it in the process, fell upon each other (as villains who come upon good fortune are wont to do), and then the winning faction – some seven of these beasts – divided up the spoils between them and each of them settled in as the immortal god-kings of their own various city states. Two thousand years on, they’re still secure in their rule, the world is mostly desert wasteland (with seas of silt, plains of salt and obsidian, and the odd jungle filled with savage, man-eating Halfling barbarians), and mere survival is a brutal trial.

Few forests remain, and most of the metal has been mined out, so most equipment is made of bone, stone, obsidian, etc. There are no gods to appeal to, only blind elemental forces. Clerics serve either the elements themselves, or – more horribly – the Sorcerer Kings themselves. Unlike most D&D worlds, there’s no innate magical field upon which wizards can draw for their spells; they literally drain the life out of everything around them in order to cast their spells, leaving ash and ruin in their wake (which is essentially how the world ended up this way). Most typical D&D humanoid races are long since extinct; there are no gnomes, orcs, gnolls, pixies, ogres, etc, but those races which have survived are hardened by natural selection into some of the most rugged beasts in the cosmos. All sentiments have psionic wild talents to draw upon, and psionicists are as common as fighters. The timeline of the game begins at the point where a handful of the Sorcerer Kings are killed in an epic war, plunging the world into chaos; after millennia of grinding servitude, it’s suddenly possible – just barely possible – to win something like freedom, or else to fill the power vacuum yourself and become a warlord over this bleak and blasted world.

It’s just such an amazingly rich and gripping setting. So novel and unique, and with so many opportunities for high drama. It’s dystopian and post-apocalyptic, and I absolutely love it.

We’re using Iron Heroes as our base rules set, which is a very Conan-esque variant on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which I find to be charmingly cinematic and brutal, with a few obvious alterations made to fit the setting.

If any one of you fine people among my readers who are in the greater Vancouver area should be interested in joining our little band, let me know. Obviously there are other avenues to be explored in terms of finding players, but it seemed the smartest move would be to ask around among people who I know are at minimum interested enough in the same crap that I am to subscribe to my journal.

Some old art I forgot to post.

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:00:38 GMT

A year and change ago, my friend Ray commissioned me to produce some artwork for me. The payment came not in the form of cash, but rather a ticket to a live performance by Sarah Silverman, which was to my mind as good as cash, in that I had already committed myself to buy said ticket.

The commission was on its face a ridiculous one, but one cannot pick and choose, and besides which, the challenge of drawing something so outlandish was one which appealed to me. He was running a Dungeons & Dragons game - and this was back in the days of 3rd aedition, not this "4th edition" abortion these kids today have the audacity to call "Dungeons & Dragons"... the only people I hate more than those whippersnappers are those fucking 2nd edition fossils who doggedly refuse to stop enjoying their antiquated fossil of a system - and needed an illustration for his ultimate evil monstrous encounter for his epic-level party.

His description, as best I recall it, was "A red half-dragon, half-Mind-Flayer blackguard in full plate armour, wielding a lance and a whip, whose mount is a black half-dragon, half-beholder". To those of you not versed in the arcane secrets of D&D, allow me to translate: "One ridiculous monster thing riding another ridiculous monster thing."

I spent quite some time working on the line art for this one, before Ray sprung it on me that I had about two days to do all of the colours, both of which were days when I would need to sleep and work. I decided I could maybe miss some sleep, and maybe not some work, and embarked upon a cockpunchingly vigorous schedule of colouring in order to get it to him on time.

The result was... not bad. The armour was a little plastic-y looking, and some of the scales on the head were less detailed in their texture than I would have liked, but for the time allowed, this, my final result, was basically okay:

I will say I'm fairly proud of the yellow light coming in from the left, at the very least. I had considered going back in there and taking another pass at some of the light and shadows before posting it, but ultimately decided it was a finished work as it was, and I ought to simply post what I got paid for, for good or for ill.

If this is a spam bot, it's an impressive one.

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:32:00 GMT

I just received an anonymous comment on a post from some months back which comes across as utterly puzzling on a number of levels. First is the fact that it's a comment which has no bearing upon the post it was left on. Second because this is the second anonymous comment left on that post in the last day. Third because, although it has the broken, gibbering cadence of a spam bot, there exists within it JUST enough valid information to make me wonder.

---

I just left a bad, blog on jonny's comic store page, it was postivly negitive, I see you around high gate. say comments about people that cant defend then self like geoge lucas, mcg , really lets see some of tese people do a mvie. I know who you are thrugh billie... the my way or the high way guy, i live with kyle the guy you through ice at. anyway you've tot me about satan who he is, and I know you love art so, check out my movie on you tube, [I'M NOT GOING TO POST ITS TITLE SO AS NOT TO ADVERTISE HIS PRODUCT, LOL], as far as jonny he's way smarter than me I'm a heavy metal comic guy. I got a grade 10 education but i get things done. fuck fanboys that cry. i'm actually a musician first,anyway dude if it sucks oh well....

---

I do live near a mall called "Highgate", where I do indeed spend a good deal of time. I once had a casual acquaintance named Kyle who I did indeed speak ill of, and who I knew through a fellow named Billy. There's bits and pieces of other factual or near-factual stuff in there. So is this the product of some complex data mining software? Just random chance that it happened to score some hits? Or a genjuinely deranged and incoherent person hammering away at his keyboard in a drug haze, trying to recall any little tidbit he knows about me?

And again, having had two different anonymous comments on that one post - neither of which had to do with the contents of that post - is too much to be coincidence. Something about that post - and it's neither a recent nor particularly interesting post - has attracted some interest or something.

Anyone have any insight? Anyone got similar comments recently?

EDIT:

I've done some digging, and it seems this IS in fact a local film, and the Kyle which I mentioned above is indeed involved in it, which would seem to indicate that someone involved in the film specifically tracked down my blog and posted an anonymous comment to a months-old post in this manner in order to convey this information to me.

I wonder what it says about the changing face of information technology that the spam-bots are getting eloquent enough that we can mistake them for people, and the people are getting inarticulate enough that we can mistake them for spam-bots. Are we on our way to some point of convergence? Or will we eventually be able to spot spam-bots on the basis that they're inhumanly eloquent; well-spoken and well-mannered in a manner which no human being can be...?

Edit 2:

Somebody - presumably somebody connected with the above post - keeps on posting anonymous comments here which speak at great and venomous length against them. Not that I view myself as above criticism, nor that I view this particular criticism as being altogether invalid, but I make a point of not addressing criticism which comes from anonymous sources. Sign your name, and we'll have a discussion. Leaving off by calling yourself "THE ICEMAN, HUNGOVER PROPHET OF YMIR" isn't going to cut it.

"West"

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:32:20 GMT

I’ve long been aware of certain irregularities with regards to the things which people call places, and it has long bothered me.

Some years ago, I had it explained that the barbarians and lunatics down south of the border refer to the region of their country clustered around the Great Lakes as the “Mid-West.” This immediately rang false for me, looking at a map of their country; the entire region was plainly in the eastern half of the country, albeit somewhat bumping up against the mid-point of the country, in such a way as to come as close to the west as one could come without actually BEING west in any meaningful way.

I offered up the observation that, being in the eastern part of the middle of the country, it could reasonably be called the “Middle east”, or “Mid-East”, if you prefer. Indeed, a case could be made that in that it’s on the far western edge of the eastern half of the country, I would even accept the idea of it being called the “Western-East”. Though I acknowledge that doing so brings with it a certain amount of confusion, at least it is a confusion which could be dispelled with a reasonable explanation, in which sense it has a leg up on the current “Mid-West” fiasco.

Not to be entirely culturally elitist, I must admit that this is a problem which exists even in my own country, and nowhere more glaringly than in the apocalyptic wasteland of the mind which is Alberta (or “Cold Texas” as I like to call it). There’s a conversation I’ve had a number of times with various Albertans which has had only minor variations from person to person, which can best be characterized by one particular instance from a couple of years ago:

I had ordered a couple of small pizzas at work, and one of which was of a type with three tangible toppings and one intangible topping, each of which are vital to the appeal of the dish. The tangible toppings were and are green pepper, feta cheese and shrimp. The intangible one is spite. This came about as something of an unexpected surprise; some years earlier, I had been forced to spend time with an appalling toad of a man named Alex, who claimed to be allergic to all sea foods. I came up with what I thought would be a deliberately disgusting combination of toppings which I had planned to eat with exaggerated relish in front of him in an effort to offend his sensibilities. To my considerable surprise, the pizza was conspicuously awesome. I credit this, as earlier-implied, at least in part to that fourth intangible topping, but the merit of the first three cannot be under-sold either. I’ve introduced a great many people to this combination since then, going about it with a sort of missionary zeal, and it was on one such an occasion that I attempted to get an Albertan to eat some.

“Naw, I don’t eat anything that comes out of the water. I guess my tastes are too Western”, he droned. The capitalization of the word western here is deliberate; it plainly couldn’t have been a reference to a direction so much as a named culture, for reasons which I articulated thus: “If you go far west enough, you know where you end up? In the OCEAN. Seafood is thus the most definitively and inarguably WESTERN food there is! If your issue is one of ‘western identity’, then I can assure you that you stand no risk of betraying it by eating sea food!”

He would have none of it, though; to him, as to many Albertans “Western” had nothing to do with concepts as concrete as longitude or geography. It was just something they felt, somewhere deep in their skulls, where the brain would in any other case be located. It was a brand name, a label, a state of mind. The Albertans had long ago claimed for themselves the identity of “Western Canada”, and fuck anyone who claimed to be more western than them based upon evidence as flimsy as a compas’s wavering needle. To be more western was to be more definitively Albertan, which meant among other things being more closed-minded to ideas such as that “west” was an indication of direction which was relative to the actual spot where you happened to be standing.

He ultimately refused to taste my cockpunchingly awesome pizza, and in retrospect, there’s a part of me that’s glad; I’m not sure I would have wanted to share it with someone whose concept of direction was as arbitrary as a man standing at the north pole’s might be. I feel it would have sullied my awesome Spite Pizza in some way, and then it would have been cursed with the presumably-less-delicious second intangible topping of dismay. And I know for a fact I wouldn’t pay for a Dismay Pizza. The very thought of it fills me with a certain nameless sense of agitation, alarm, anxiety, apprehension, and so-forth on down through the alphabet.

tl;dr: Stupid people shouldn’t get to name regions in ways which involve directions without first consulting a map of the landmass they’re standing on and a geography teacher capable of explaining the concept of longitude to them.

Cockpunch

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:46:02 GMT

In my last post, astute readers will have taken note of my use of the term “cockpunchingly”, and taken a moment to marvel at the nearly crystaline clarity of the term and its implications. Less astute readers may instead have stopped and scratched their heads for a moment at it. Less curious ones may have breezed right past it without a second thought. For the benefit of these latter two groups, allow me to clarify.

“Cockpunchingly” is a conjugation of the word “cockpunch”, which I have employed in a novel fashion here. Whereas the word has been employed and defined in a literal sense before (such as in the definition at urbandictionary.com, which in part reads “A closed fist hitting of the male genitalia, meant to evoke surprise and/or pain.”), I wish and endeavour to expand upon this rather pedestrian definition, and in so doing stride boldly into the realm of neologism.

We are all familiar, of course, with the term “kickass”, which is used in order to express strong approval for a given person, object or phenomenon, such as in the sentence “That was a pretty kickass cockpunch you gave that guy, buddy!” And indeed, this term is not without its merits, in that it evokes an action which is both aggressive and contemptuous, thus demonstrating both a decisive and entitled position.

However, it occurs to me that to kick one in the ass also carries with it a connotation of cowardice; coming up to one’s foe from behind, skulking and craven. And a kick? A kick is delivered by a foot. And do you honestly mean to tell me that a foot is ever as awesome as a fist? If you do, then I decry you as a liar and/or a fool.

A punch to the cock, then, to me, is the next step beyond a kick to the ass, and excelling in ways which a mere kick to the ass can never excel. Braver, more forthright, and above all, more fisty. On that grounds, I would like to put forth “cockpunch” as a word which can be understood to mean “Like kickass, only better.”

In the coming days, weeks, and even months, I expect and intend to make use of this term frequently, both in service of purposes of demonstration and description. It is my sincere hope that you will all come to see the merit of this term and take up its torch, then use it as it is intended; to set fire to the very culture of the english language itself, that your very conversations themselves may be a vast, cockpunchingly great sacrificial pyre to the greatness of this new term.

Pants

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:25:59 GMT

Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine on the topic of fashion.

As anyone who knows me knows, I dress exclusively in black, about 99% of the time. This is not a question of slavery to some external trend or movement; I’ve never considered myself a goth, for instance; I realized in high school that, as much as I liked the way that goths dress, it’s mostly about a music style which doesn’t speak to me in the slightest, and that in any case the idea of suborning my own sense of style to anyone else’s expectations of what I ought to look like or present myself was just sort of fundamentally ridiculous and loathsome to me.

Similarly, anyone who has known me for more than ten years – which is admittedly a vanishingly small list at this point – knows that this has not always been the case; my later days in high school were a process of experimentation for me, as they were for many people. In my case, I worked very aggressively to define myself along very personal lines so as to prevent anyone from being able to sort me into any group or clique at the time. One day I would show up in a suit and tie, wearing leather loafers and a briefcase. The next day, I would be dressed head to toe in bright green, including an elabourate facepaint design (which would come to be the foundation upon which my body painting skills would later be built). The day after that, a blue housecoat, tattered jeans, orange reflective safety vest and floppy brown leather hat. It was only very gradually that I fell into a single style which I felt comfortable with and which I felt represented me well to the world, and this is a style which to one extent or another I’ve stuck with ever since.

I’ve had any number of people attempt to dissuade me from this course, of which the most laughable was a horrendous little cretin named Jason Engel, who worked day and night to conform to every “goth” stereotype he could, and was among the most superficial adults I’ve ever met. He viewed my dressing exclusively in black as a sort of trespass into “his” territory, and one I wasn’t entitled to. He attempted to get me to dress more colourfully in the service of his own vanity. I laughed in his face and remained steadfast.

Today, I’ve had a friend attempt to get me to wear colourful t-shirts and bluejeans so as to make myself more superficially appealing to women. The thought was utterly repulsive to me; being told that in order to find that right woman, the thing to do was to toss aside my own individuality and sense of visual identity in favour of a sort of generic mediocrity; blending in with the anonymous and faceless crowd. I don’t deny that this might be effective if my intent was to find some woman who were attracted to the bland and the generic, and I needed some camouflage or disguise in order to deceive her into believing that I was one such person, but I daresay that this illusion, and the feelings built thereupon would be shattered quite swiftly the moment that I began to discuss virtually any topic with her. Besides which, what use would I have for such a woman? It would be a trying ordeal for me to be involved with such a lady, I fear, and a trying ordeal of a relationship, startling as it may sound, is not actually something I’m actively seeking out.

Besides which, there are practical concerns, ranging from the physiological to the psychological. My legs are twin pillars of rippling muscle, bulging against the world with seething power. There is a terrible cost to this, however; they also bulge against one another in a manner which is fairly destructive; as my thighs press against one another, the friction caused ends up destroying the inner thighs of any pants which I wear. Even this, though, is preferable to the fate which awaits me if I were to wear more durable pants; a pair of blue jeans would rub against my legs no less than my preferred slacks, but whereas slacks would give way, the heavy weave of jeans would cause my flesh to be worn away, leaving a pair of oozing blisters in their wake. Not only is the agony of this sensation – which is all too well-known to me – a significant disincentive to following this advice, there is the question of how attractive oozing and infected sores on my inner thighs would be to that prospective Miss Right.

Then there’s the psychological, and here I cite no less an authority than one Mr. Albert Einstein. Einsten decided early on in his life what fashion was comfortable and serviceable to him, and he stuck by it. So consistent was he, in fact, that he came upon a startlingly utilitarian approach: He simply bought dozens of identical suits, and they formed the entirety of his wardrobe. Every morning, he could simply pick any shirt, any pair of pants, any jacket, and not waste so much as a single moment, a single spare thought on the topic; there was no question of what mood he was in, what went well together or what the occasion was. This was a guy who had bigger fish to fry with his brain than a question of what to wear. “But Dave”, you may ask, “What about the ladies? What about making a good impression with the ladies? Don’t they demand of their suitors a sort of blind adherence to an arbitrary sense of style chosen for them, against their will, by the mindless pressures of the society around them? How could a man of even Einstein’s towering intellect possibly be a role model for you in this regard, given that he must logically have been a romantic failure in light of his decision to be happy with his own appearance, rather than abandoning his own principles in an effort to satisfy the mindless shrieking demands of the collective unconscious?”

Well let me tell you a little about that. Albert Einstein married his cousin Elsa. Most women would be like “Ick, no! I will not grant you access to my vagina! Incest is disgusting and wrong!” But Einstein, being the cockpunchingly pimpin’ guy that he was, was able to brush that shit aside and be all like “Shit, bitch! I’m Albert motherfucking Einstein! You gonna let a little thing like THAT get in the way of you gettin’ with my fuckin’ same-suited, no-haircut-gettin’, not-shavin’-my-moustachin’ self?” And she was all like “Aw, what the fuck.” Cause you know why? Because chicks dig confidence, that’s why. And a guy like that, as confident as he was of the way he looked and dressed and groomed himself had a lot going on in that regard.

I’m not trying to put myself in Einstein’s bitch-gettin’ league or anything here; he plainly had a great deal else going on that I could only ever asprire to. Why, he once had a three word conversation with William Golding!* What have I done that can compare to shit like that, right? But as far as role models go, I figure I could do a lot worse.

* This conversation, retold in Golding’s essay “Thinking as a Hobby”, took place atop a bridge over a small river at a time when Golding knew about one word of German, and Einstein knew about no words of english. As a fish swam under them, Golding remarked “Fisch”, thus expending the bulk of his german vocabulary. “Ja, fisch”, Einstein responded, entirely accurately (one presumes; in fairness I’m actually giving the two of them the benefit of the doubt here; they could have as easily mistaken a bit of garbage for a fish, in that neither of them are known to have been marine biologists of any repute).

2 Girls 1 Sub

Thu, 21 May 2009 07:34:04 GMT

Every so often, you'll come across an advertisement or production from some fairly mainstream company which is so outlandishly ill-conceived that you cannot help but stand back in wonder and ask yourself how nobody in a decision making position could have at any point said "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not going to allow this to happen" before the advertisement or production in question reached the market. I heard of - though did not see - a commercial for Telus (the dominant local telephone/ISP company), which is known for quirky commercials featuring animals on a pristine white backdrop with oddly-chosen pop music background doing peculiar things, which featured a horse dancing about all clippity-clop style to the song "American psycho", which my friend Ryan described as "a song about deflouring virgin teenagers and then murdering them". As odd a choice as this may have seemed, it pales before this latest oeuvre.

Quizno's - a submarine sandwich company - has evidently decided it would be a fine notion to create an add campaign called "2 Girls 1 Sub." For those of you who get the reference, yes, this is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

For those of you who do not get the reference, I will say now that you do yourself no favours by continuing to read this post, nor do I do you any favours by writing it, but in the interests of documenting the unlikely and bizarre, I will persist, and invite you to do likewise only with a spirit girded against the unimaginably unpleasant information to come.

The commercial is modeled after a viral video called "2 Girls 1 Cup", which is one of the internet's most notoriously unpleasant spectacles of all time, standing confidently shoulder-to-shoulder alongside Tubgirl and Goatse (those of you unaware of 2 Girls 1 Cup will likely also be unaware of these. In the interests of discovery, I encourage you to go and google them yourself, and make sure the safe search feature is turned off when you hit the images tab). Indeed, the video is so graphically unpleasant that even videos of people reacting to seeing this video are often hard to bear. Here's a Wikipedia article devoted to it here which should bring you up to speed.

This having been established, have a look at this new ad here:

For my part, I was actually unable to watch it all the way through on first viewing, and even on a second attempt, at which I went into it knowing what I was getting into, I had by the mid-way mark a mask of horrified astonishment on my face which did not fall from my features until well after it had run its course. It is so effectively evocative of the source material that I found the concept of eating a Quizno's sub to be a nauseatingly unpleasant one somewhere around the 20 second mark. And what possible point could there BE to this video aside from evoking thoughts of "2 Girls 1 Cup"? To people who have not seen this video, the ad in question would only be confusing. To those who have seen it, which one presumes are the target market, it can only bring about a reaction of horrified wonder.

Was this an elabourate letter of resignation on the part of some mid-level Quizno's executive, who decided this joke was so funny it was worth tossing his job away by green-lighting a project which he figured his superiors were unaware of the reference of? Was this some elabourate ploy to entice the interest of irony-loving internet hipsters? I'm aware that this wasn't Quizno's doing per se; it seems to have been produced by Playboy (who I can actually not only forgive but applaud for this bit of lulz-inducing madness), but someone at Quizno's plainly signed off on this in the hopes that doing so would reflect well on their corporate brand. The final scenario, which I find hilarious to contemplate, is that someone at Playboy pitched this to someone at Quizno's, who was unaware of the connotations of the video, and signed the papers to approve this product placement without ever grasping exactly what it was they were associating their product with, and that ballsy Playboy employee in question managed to sneak it by them, giggling in private the entire time at the insanity of the ploy.

If this is the case, I applaud that magnificent bastard for tricking Quizno's into agreeing to an ad which is the most effective counter-incentive to eat at their restaurant I can imagine, and I hope the executives at Subway are smart enough to send this fellow a nice gift basket in return for his efforts.

Posted wihout comment

Wed, 20 May 2009 04:18:02 GMT

Crazy old asian pot-heads

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:38:28 GMT

Sorry I’ve been a bit on the quiet side of late, all. I have fallen, it seems, into a trap I have fallen prey to often enough that one might think I’d have learned a thing or two about the follies of it. I speak of that poisoned fruit which is “collaboration.” It seems that any time I need to rely upon others to get anything done, that thing, whichever “any” it might be, it tends not to in fact take place, and stagnation sets in.

See, for example, the last few weeks.

Nevertheless, I have – with great effort – managed some level of inter-person production, and I have some goodies set up for the next couple of days. In the mean time, I figured I would clear out the backlog with an anecdote I’d been meaning to share for a couple of months now and which I kept forgetting about when it came time to write.

This past winter, my friend Paul was very briefly in town, and as I was on my way with him on his way to the airport, we passed through Joyce Skytrain station (for those of you unfamiliar with Vancouver, Skytrains are our Bizarro-World counterparts to subways; magical trains which soar through the very air itself, supported by nothing more than giant raised concrete tracks on huge pillars of stone and steel) at something like 6:00 in the AM (Paul’s flight was leaving rather early in the day, and I was willing to sacrifice some sleep to send him off in something approximating style).

While there, I saw this old Chinese man. I assume he was Chinese. I could be wrong. It’s a pretty Chinese neighborhood, but I don’t claim any special insight into the nuances of crazy old Asian man culture. And crazy would indeed seem to be the case. Crazy in that very classic sense of the word. And how do I know? Upon what do I base this snap judgment? I base it upon the fact that he wore a shiny metal pot on his head.

This, I feel I should stress, was not a situational thing. I know this because I had seen this man before, at this station, wearing this pot – or one very much like it – upon his head. Or perhaps not “wearing” it per se; he was clutching it with one hand and thus holding it in place. The outer dimensions of his head and the inner dimensions of this pot were not so closely similar to allow this to work otherwise. This was months ago; months and months, which led me to believe he had essentially committed himself to the pot-head lifestyle, and would thus in all likelihood have some great insights into the merits of the arrangement, which I was all too eager to hear. When I had seen him before, I had wondered what his deal was enough to inquire as to his distinctive habit. His response at that time had been to apologize, bowing his bepotted head in a baffling gesture of contrition and then flee the station.

This time, deciding that there was every chance I had in some way given the false impression that I was somehow offended or put out by his presence or headgear (thus necessitating the apology), I approached him with a good deal more deference and humility, asking “Excuse me, sir, but I was wondering: Might I ask why you wear a pot on your head?”

His reaction was in some sense more satisfying but no less baffling. He shouted “It’s more convenient!” and then fled the station, running down the street and away as I stood there, bemused.

I went back to Paul and relayed our brief conversation, adding “I have difficulty imagining what it could be more convenient THAN.” We spent some time speculating about this, and my favourite theory that I can recall having come up with at the time was that his skull had long ago been shattered but never healed over, and now wearing a metal pot on his head was more convenient than leaving his brain open to the elements, thus inviting the near-hourly task of swatting away flies and birds who would otherwise be attempting to devour his delicious think-meats.

I, however, do invite speculation as to what it could be more convenient than.

(incidentally, I posted the meat of this post in the Vancouver community last night, and got some worthy responses from some people, and some mindless jabber from word-hating misanthropes)

The Curse of the Rhino King - A Ripping Dr. Sir Reginald Kingsley II Adventure (Chapter 4)

Tue, 05 May 2009 21:16:39 GMT

After far too long an absence (for reasons which a handful of my friends and readers know, and which I yet hope to see bear fruit), Dr. Sir Reginald Kingsley II returns.

Where last we left our hero, he was recounting a tale of his youth, during an island expedition in the south Pacific, during which he found himself an unwitting participant in one of the islanders' most sacred rites, and was about to learn first hand the secrets of the dreaded martial art of Mookalakapeekapo.

(previous chapters can be read here)

The Curse of the Rhino King

A Ripping Dr. Sir Reginald Kingsley II Adventure

Chapter 4

I found myself separated from my father and my guide, both of whom looked on with considerable distress at the dire straights which fate had guided me into. All around me, short, sweaty men stood about me, looking upon me with an air about them which bespoke hostility less than it did a fierce expectation. This latter I would under ordinary circumstances have been quite comfortable with, but my calm in this respect was somewhat marred by the fact that I did not for the life of me know what was expected of me.

A dozen or more of the islanders who surrounded me had their fists raised in what I recognized as their "Koolookoo" stance, and yet, though each of them breathed heavily and was plainly quite agitated in their own way, not a one of them made a move to strike me. I looked about to my left and my right, desperately hoping that I would see some sign - some gesture, some movement, some written instructions - SOMETHING - to indicate what I was to do. All the while, I was busy shedding my jacket, my tie, my cummerbund, my white silk shirt, my dinner gloves and my top hat, placing my spectacles upon the ground at my feet and adjusting my cufflinks for maximal ease of movement and dexterity. All the while, an elderly villager who I had taken to be some sort of headman or witch-doctor or some such was chanting in a low, guttural voice. I noticed, to my surprise, that not only were the men in the circle surrounding me swaying about in time with his chanting, so too did I seem to be. What witchcraft was this, that I should be compelled to such alien movements by nothing more than the sight of a dozen other men doing exactly likewise in the presence of a compelling rhythm? I knew then - if it had ever been in any doubt - that there was indeed foul magic at play here, and I would be its helpless victim if I allowed myself to be.

Well, I was having none of that. I turned to my guide, who stood well outside the circle of men, but was watching the proceedings with rapt attention. I shouted at him "What in the name of the Lord's bastard son Jesus is that old one chanting? I require you to make use of your knowledge of his monkey-tongue, dash it all!" I shook my fist at him so as to convey to him the violence I intended to inflict upon him if I should be beaten to death by these natives, and as I did so, I noticed with a start that the savages which stood between he and I seemed half-prepared to lunge at me like cobras, in the admittedly unlikely scenario that these cobras were to be magically transformed, perhaps by some island curse, into island men who were versed in the art of Mookalakapeekapo.

The guide, quite cowed by my threats, stammered in incoherent dread for a few moments before beginning to repeat, hoot-for-hoot and grunt-for-grunt, the chant of the witch-doctor, thus conjuring a sort of echo-like effect which, although not altogether unpleasant, was sadly altogether useless to me. I shouted at him once more, this time taking care to keep my posture essentially neutral towards my tormentors, lest - like the wild dogs they all-too-closely resembled - they should descend upon me as a pack. "In English, blast your eyes! Tell me what he is saying in the king's good English!"

My guide looked startled, his eyes betraying an air of confusion and perturbation. "Sir", he shouted uncertainly, plainly trying not to offend with his correction, "surely it's plain that he is saying nothing at all in English! That is his own native tongue he is chanting in!"

I had to grant him this point, though I would have rather shined the devil's own shoes for a nickel than admit this to him. Instead, composing myself so as to mask my embarrassment at having been caught out by him so, I replied "I had rather hoped for something more in the nature of a translation!"

"Well, you should have said so, sir!"

"Yes, I suppose I should have been somewhat more precise! I can see now that I was insufficiently clear in my intent!"

"It takes a big man to admit that, sir!"

"Yes, rather!", I shouted, raising my voice still further. The village witch doctor's chanting was becoming increasingly loud and insistent, and it was becoming ever more difficult to make myself heard over him. I shot him a dirty look, as though asking him to pipe down a bit so that I might carry on my conversation like a civilized man, and was lucky to do so, as in that moment, one of the savages standing behind me took a savage swing at me which I would have failed to notice otherwise. As it was, I was able to dodge only to the extent that I took the blow upon my shoulder rather than my firm, patrician nose. Shielding my face from further assault with my forearms, I shouted at my guide and clarified my point yet further: "Now, if you would be so kind as to translate his gobbledygook into English...!"

"Ah, yes! Of course, sir! It's a sort of invocation to action, sir! Some of the concepts are too foreign to translate precisely, but if I were to provide a crude notion of their intent, it would go somewhat along these lines: 'Fight! Fight! Fight!'. If I might be so bold as to offer an opinion, sir, I believe they intend you to do battle with them!"

"Very good," I replied, frowning tightly. "I feel I would surely be lost here without this keen insight into their motives."

The guide beamed at me, positively radiating with job satisfaction. "Thank you, sir!" he replied, evidently without expression nor comprehension of guile.

I turned my attention once more to the savages surrounding me, each of whom seemed to have grown ever more savage in mein, baring their teeth at me in sinister grins, perspiration now beading heavily upon their bare skin with barely-contained enthusiasm. My odds, I had to allow, seemed rather on the long side here. However potent these islanders might have seemed, though, the fact remained that they were yet primitive beasts without the wits of modern man, and thus it was not impossible that I might yet gain the upper hand in the struggle to come by means of my towering English intellect. I shouted at my guide "Quickly, now! I need to convince them that I am a god, come among them to teach them the folly of their ludicrous foreign ways! What do I need to say in order to convey to them a sense of their innate inferiority and heathen barbarism?"

"An excellent plan, sir!", he shouted, clapping his hands together in a manner which would have seemed charming if demonstrated by a five year old girl on Christmas morning. "Simply repeat after me!" He then let loose a string of hoots and grunts in the islanders' native tongue, which I struggled to memorize, their beastly syllables like a tarnish upon my sterling mind.

As ingenious as my plan was, though, it seemed I had underestimated their low animal cunning; it was with some considerable distress that I saw them turn their eyes en masse towards my guide, and then back towards me, their look of feral rage replaced with what I would, in thinking men, have called amusement. Too late I realized the flaw in my ruse; against all odds, they had managed to discern the intent behind my guide's shouted words in their own language, and my brilliant deception was in a moment undone. I knew with shattering clarity in that moment that if I were to make an escape, it could only be now, while their aggression was momentarily leavened by their tittering reaction. I lunged for a space betwixt two of them, shielding my face with my arms as I did so, valiantly striving for the freedom which was my birthright.

Too late, though! Too slow! The legends of the deadly art of Mookalakapeekapo were all too true, as I learned to my horror and dismay. Faster than the eye could discern the transition, their laughter transmuted itself into aggression once more, their fists arching once again over my head like a ring of five-fingered, sweaty swords of Damocles, and then like lightning fell upon me. Stars seemed to be sprayed across my field of vision and the tang of blood filled my mouth. I felt the grit of sand and dirt impacting upon my face only distantly as I fell to unconsciousness.

It was only then that the true inner mystery of Mookalakapeekapo was made evident to me, and the very course of my noble life was changed forevermore...

(To be continued in chapter five!)

The Drowning Moron

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:20:32 GMT

A few years ago, I was living with a colossal douchebag named Aaron. He and I eventually grew sick and tired of one another (because this is the function of a room-mate), and he moved away to become a harbour hobo.

A harbour hobo is someone who lives in a boat and floats that boat just far enough off-shore that they're in, shall we say, communal waters, and as such doesn't need to pay rent to anyone. His theory was that he could get a loan, buy a houseboat, pay back the loan instead of paying rent, and then, once he had the boat paid off, he could live rent-free and have some collateral towards buying something which someone might conceivably want to live in. In the mean time, he would live in a little thirty foot box with his thirteen year old yowling, shitting, puking beast of a cat, floating out in the middle of the harbour for several years without electricity or the ability to have people over.

Aaron was kind of an idiot.

Amusingly enough, it seems that, as has so often been the case in his life, he's vastly overestimated his own abilities. In this case, predictably enough, he seems to have realized living in a floating box with no power and nowhere to dock kind of sucks, and has rented out some space at a marina. I know this because I've been getting mail from his marina at my place, some year and a half after his departure. I find this a trifle puzzling in light of the fact that he LIVES at the marina, and one would think that whoever is sending this mail could walk from the office to the boat and hand him the letter, rather than paying to have it sent to another city, and one which - and I feel this is an important element here - he does not in fact live in anymore.

In a fleeting moment of curiosity, I decided to try to figure out where he actually lived so I could have his letters and such sent there, and in the process of this, I checked out the marina in question and discovered, to my combination of amusement and seething contempt, that he's named his boat after his putrid, dying cat, after a fashion, and called it "The Cat's Meow." This, to me, is around as clever as naming his cat "Tigger" in the first place.

It did get me to thinking, though: If I were a boat owner, what would I call my own vessel? The answer came to me in a moment, and was blinding in its obviousness. I would call it "The Drowning Moron". I would then have a wooden masthead carved in the image of a drowning man, flailing about in the water, eyes wild and unfocused, and I would have it affixed to the front of my boat in such a way that the water line would be right around the mouth of the masthead, so that as my boat bobbed gently in the water, he would periodically surface and submerge in the water, his desperate, pleading eyes only occasionally meeting those of passers-by, his hands reaching out for aid he would never receive, because he is made of wood and physically connected to the boat along his hypothetical spinal column.

"Cat's Meow", indeed. Have a little dignity, you jackass. Name your boat something awesome or don't name it at all. If that's not one of the laws of the sea, if fucking well ought to be.

Best of Craigslist

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:04:09 GMT

Last night, my friend wronske came over to my place to hang out, and we decided at one point to go through Craigslist's local "Adult Gigs" section for shits and giggles. In spite of her own fairly extensive knowledge of Craigslist, she had somehow failed to notice that this often hilarious section even existed. For my own part, I had discovered it while trying to discern which section I ought to post a want ad for body painting models in (and quickly discovering this was not the one), and every so often, I poke my head in just to see what wonderful "adult" things people are looking to pay one another for.

Presented for your consideration, then, are the fruits of our labour: The best of the craziest from the past week or so (with my commentary in italics).

***

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1136284256.html

Looking for an offpring (Burnaby)

I have a place to live, it's newer, the Child will be taken care of. I have some equipment that needs some up
keep and working on other things, and don't have time for much else.

Location: Burnaby
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: have a place to live and stuff like that, and money too

This is actually one of the best ones of all. The fact that he doesn't specificy what kind of equipment he has, what it has to do with the "offpring" in question, and what "other things" he vaguely alludes to is, altogether, a pretty good indication that this guy will be a pretty good father.

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1137945453.html

wanted: obedient, submissive sex slave (vancouver)

looking for obedient, submissive sex slave to satisfy my voracious sexual appetite. I am a powerful supergenius ascending to a higher state of humanity. I must be worshipped through sexual celebration of Life. Do you deserve to serve Me? tell Me why ...

Location: vancouver
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: no

What I find most interesting here is that this doesn't even look like a paid gig per se; more like a barter type of arrangement in which you would be exchanging sexual favours in return for sexual favours. But perish the thought that this is just some kind of crazy personal ad posted in the wrong section. This is a business deal, plain and simple!

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1135270473.html

What I Can Do For You?!?! (everywhere)

Hi;
I'm selling my used panties, dvds & photo cds of myself. Will consider custom dvds & pics. Also offering phone sex at $1 a minute.

Location: everywhere
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: pay

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1134167728.html

p*Y 2 pL*Y SUGAR BABY! (VANCOUVER)

I LUV DRESSES..... CARS.... PERFUMES.... & JEWELS..
I LUV.............MONEY....... POWER!.......
AND I LUV MY S - X !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Location: VANCOUVER
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation:

I don't have a lot to say about this one except that - as hilariously ambiguous as this one is (it doesn't even indicate if this is a man or a woman, nor yet what he or she is offering PER SE) - it's about a hundred times funnier if you read it out loud as a sort of breathy and full-throated shout, with all of the pauses indicated by the "..."'s intact.

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1133375143.html

ladies are you exhibitionist at heart please read even if not (lowermainland)

every night on my ride home from work I stop for a bite or coffee and find myself looking for entertainment and people watching. especially this time of year as i have a thing for womens feet, well more than a thing a full blown fetish. all the sandles and heals with shorts and skirts at this time of year lol , I find myself stareing at the loveley girl across the resturaunt dangling her mules of her toes seeing those lovley arches. I am looking to stage something i would like to have someone there to tease me at a location on purpose. if you are a non pro and cute and think you can tease me from across the room with your feet get intouch. mabey you and a friend. or ultimate fantisy you catch me and as if i like what i see discretely of course then say come show me where we retire to my car and you have me massage and lick them ok far fetched i know. i am also interested in worn socks you just pealed off. please send pic for details i am serious and looking for tonite finish work at 11pm who knows could be great for us both not wanting sex i repeat no sex

Location: lowermainland
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: to be discussed

"Mules?"

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1132421908.html

Looking for a baby factory (Burnaby)

I've been told by god to knock some one up so that he or she can help save the world. I think
thats the best way to describe it. I have other plans.

I have a place to live, and help for this child to be taken care of.

Anyone interested can send a picture would be nice? Any one want to be taken care of, kinda ?
I'll try to be around.

I prefer hot blondes, but I'm willing to take a look.

Location: Burnaby
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: no pay

Logically, this is probably the same fellow from the above entry, but I actually like to imagine that they're two COMPETING guys, both with their own agenda. One needs a baby in order to operate his special equipment (with sinister goals), and the other one has been instructed by his god to produce a child to help the world by stopping the sinister first baby from wreaking destruction by means of that equipment.

Also, my guess is that his god likes hot blondes especially.

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1130090552.html

MAN FOR HIRE (VANCOUVER)

DO YOU NEED A MAN - HIRE ME

Location: VANCOUVER
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: $$$

By all means, good sir. I will gladly pay you three dollar signs to have a man come over and scrub my floors. That IS what you had in mind, isn't it? You left is so vague, I was forced to guess what it was I was hiring you for...

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/adg/1128972132.html

Need temporary girlfriend for a day (van)

i need temporary girlfriend for my family reunion tomorrow for two hour .no sex involve just probably kiss lips or cheek. and if there would be sex involve we could settle in a agreement on how much you'll charge me.I'm 25yrs old.looking for age 19-30 pls send pic and how much you'll charging me

Location: van
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: compensate

I love the fact that he's prepared to compensate you with "compensate". It occured to me that a man as obviously incoherent as this poor chap is likely to have a tough time selling this ruse to his family on such short notice.

The World's Most Terrifying Penises, Part 8 - The Giant Squid

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:17:06 GMT

I feel we've spent enough time up on dry land with our past few entries in this series. While the beasts of the land may provide a certain familiarity and concomitant horror for it, everyone knows that the sea is a multi-strata stew of nightmares and madness, and if you really want to injure a human mind, it is visions of the ocean and all that swim, squirm, scuttle and spawn in those terrible depths that we must turn.

The giant squid, captured - in a delicious bit of irony - in the act of attempting to capture a less-giant-squid. How the tables have turned, Archeteuthis.

It is thus, then, that we examine the terrible tubule of tumescence which is the male organ of the Giant Squid, known to scientists as the Architeuthis, and known to myth and legend as the mighty Kraken, in order to shed light on a subject which the ancient gods saw fit to cloak in the darkness of the sea, and in so doing, discover one of...

Squids are different. They're not like you and I. Unless you're a squid, or something else which is like a squid. Perhaps an Octopus, or even a Vampire Squid From Hell. And if you are and have somehow managed not only to pierce the barrier of the sun-lit world but master the language of man, then allow me to bid you a hearty IA, IA, CTHULHU FHTAGN!, and perhaps could you put in a good word for me with the big guy next time you swing by the sunken city of R'lyeh? Giant Squids are even more different, and not just in terms of their size - after all, they share their plus-sized dimensions with the similarly big but lesser-known Colossal Squid. They're different from their fellow squids in that their mating habits are particularly unpleasant, in ways which perhaps not surprise those ancient fishermen whose nightmares they haunted for the many centuries during which they were held in a deep and superstitious dread; specifically, they're apparently quite violent, though many of the specifics of the process still elude us today.

For context, let's have a look at one of the constants that remain true of the mating practices of all squids (and indeed even the horrifying and mysteriously-though-whimsically-mis-named Vampire Squid from Hell). I speak now of a structure called "Spermatophores".

Squid spermatophores, in their "comin' at ya" sausage-state (left) and "all up in your business" unpackaged state (right)

Spermatophores are essentially packages of flesh-like wrapping containing vast numbers of sperm, as well as a sort of nutritious chemical "yolk" which serves to keep the sperm contained within the spermatophor alive and healthy for some considerable amount of time after the male squid shoots his load. Since squids don't exactly have penetrative sex in the way that we tetrapods tend to, but rather, sort of aim their dicks at their intended mate and then fire off a stream of spermatophores in a manner not dissimilar to one of those baseball pitching machines which unpopular and lonely rich kids who can't find a friend to pitch to them use. Only with sperm. At least it's my assumption that rich kids don't have machines to pitch sperm at them. I don't actually know. And like they say, "When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and motion". Anyways, the spermatophores keep the sperm on-target, instead of swimming off in random directions in the water, and have a few ancillary benefits as well, which vary somewhat from one type of squid to another.

Some of them have a sort of enzyme on their surface which - upon contact with flesh - will cause them to burn a hole through said flesh and then embed the spermatophor inside of the body, where the sperm can get to work. The Japanese - whose cultural infiltration some decades ago by Mind Flayers has dulled their instinctive loathing of the horrors of the ocean - provide us with a wince-worthy anecdote in this regard, as a Japanese man some years ago ate a quite-recently-deceased squid which still had active spermatophores in its systems, and ended up having one of these things attempt to impregnate the inside of his throat, burning through the flesh of his esophagus and deposit its rich load of swimmers into the soft tissues of his neck. Unsurprisingly, surgery was called-for here. If it has not already done so, I fully expect this to inspire in the twisted and only marginally human brains of the masters of Japanese culture the notion of zoophile guro bukkake (look these terms up for yourself, kids! Learning is fun! Make sure google's safe search feature is turned off while you do so, or you might miss the really interesting bits that grownups think you're "too stupid" to understand!). Nor are Japanese epicureans the only unexpecting and less-than-thrilled recipients of these little bundles of chemical joy: Certain fish and other aquatic life which are known to prey on squid have apparently been found with scars all over their faces which are evidently the results of them getting face-fulls of spermatophores voided from the bodies of squid as they were being devoured.

The Giant Squid is not known to produce these flesh-eating spermatophores, but nor are they known NOT to; their spermatophores, at the very least, CAN be said to be coated with a gelatinous sheath of ooze of unknown but presumably disgusting purpose. Moreover, their spermatophores HAVE been found, a number of times, sunk deep in the flesh both of females and males of the species. The latter in particular is a source of lurid speculation: Are these the result of deep-sea homosexual trysts, or are they the result of the males attempting to shoot their loads into the waiting flesh of a female and missing, hitting themselves by accident in the process? To this day, we cannot know. Certainly this latter scenario is leant a certain amount of strength by the fact that the Architeuthis is known to have long, muscular penises, sometimes up to THREE FEET IN LENGTH, and it seems that the process of controlling ten limbs, each of them several meters in length as well as coordinating the discharge of this penis during the evidently violent struggle between a male which is itself the size of a big rig and a female which is around 30% larger than themselves might be a bit much of a feat for a creature even with the large and well-developed brain of these kings of the deep.

A slightly mangled and fairly dead, but nevertheless demonstratably manly giant squid.

Possibly complicating this delicate dance of deep-sea desire even further is the fact that these spermatophores have been found in deep wounds along the tentacles of the females in question, suggesting that the males may actually need to slash open their mates' flesh before shooting these sausage-like bundles of love down the length of their firehose-like dongs AT the wounds that they have just produced, all the while thrashing about in the blackened depths of the ocean. How they make their way from these wounds up to the pouches of eggs which the female giant squid is as of yet any one's guess; the various squids of the world do so in any number of different ways, ranging from internal insemination to firing off a mucous-covered sack of eggs in the direction of an attached spermatophor and causing external fertilization, only then to attach the glob of fertilized eggs to the squid's own mantle until they're ready to hatch. There's no one consistent model that they seem to follow.

So, let's review in brief: A giant squid swims up to its corresponding and even-more-giant lady-type and begins to wrestle with her, slashing the shit out of her arms and legs in the process. He then aims his three-foot-long dong at her and fires a swarm of love sausages full of his jizz into the wounds he's creating, where they root themselves, maybe by burning and melting themselves into the ravaged and shredded flesh of her wounded limbs. He then takes off, swimming for his life, after which, the female does whatever mysterious-as-fuck thing she does with these horrible things to make more of herself.

Now I want some fucking calamari, and you do too.

I met a mormon!

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:45:30 GMT

So the other day, I had my first encounter with a Mormon. Mormons are pretty rare here in BC, and for most British Columbians, our main exposure to them is reading about that Mormon splinter group that lives up in the mountains and still practices polygamy, and so I’ve sort of wanted to have a chance to play with one of them for some time now. Predictably enough, it didn't go so well for him.

I was walking down the street quite close to where I live, when I was stopped by a young Mexican man in a suit and tie, wearing a name tag identifying himself as "Elder Gonzales". He told me he was looking for Spanish-speaking people to speak to, and that he was having some difficulty with this. I let him know that he was probably in the wrong neighborhood for that; we're mostly Caucasians and African immigrants in this area. Having hooked me into a conversation with his clever ice breaker, he then entered into his spiel.

"I've met a lot of people in this area who want to learn more about god."

"Funny you should say that", I replied, wise already to the nature of his sales pitch, "I've looked into the demographics of this area, and it's interesting: You've got, say, 20% Catholic, 18% Protestant, that sort of thing. But the largest group - some thirty per cent or whatever - is 'no religion'. I actually take a lot of pride in that."

"Are you an atheist", he asked me.

"I am."

"And why do you believe there's no god?"

"Why do you believe there's no Osiris?"

"Uh..."

"Why do you believe there's no Thor? Why do you believe there's no Tezcatlipoca?"

His eyes lit up at this, having something to latch onto. "I'm from Mexico, actually, and you know about Tezcatlipoca's brother, Quetzalcoatl? He was a lot like Jesus."

"In that Jesus was a giant feathered serpent?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Well, the serpent is a symbol for life..." he began, regaling me with a tale of Moses waving around a snake on a stick in some story which I was only vaguely familiar with, but which had a much different meaning for me than it did for him.

"Are you familiar with the name Asherah?" I asked him.

"No."

"She was a goddess worshipped by ancient Canaanite peoples, and in various guises, various names, like Ishtar and Astarte, throughout the middle-east in the years before the dawn of Judaism. Basically a mother-goddess and a goddess of wisdom. And in the way that a lot of gods back then had all sorts of symbols which represented them in different ways, she was symbolized by serpents and trees."

He actually seemed pretty sincerely curious about this, and I continued in earnest. "Now, you know how in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, the Christian god is like 'Let us create them, man and woman, in our images?' but it's not exactly clear who he's talking to? Well..." I went on to explain the case which I more or less laid out in this post over here. I was surprised and a little impressed at how receptive he was to all of this.

"So you're saying that the story changed over time," he concluded.

"Basically, yeah. The first five books of the bible are sort of a hodge-podge of different stories, different myths, all woven together into one Frankensteinian whole. The Asherah bits sort of got left in the beginning of the bible, but her name got removed. But that's where the serpent imagery comes from, and I think that's what was going on with Moses in that story you mentioned. It's not a Quetzalcoatl thing, it's an Asherah thing."

He went on to ask if I thought that anything in the bible was true. I told him that I thought that, after the first five books of the bible were woven together in the time of the Jews' exile in Babylon, they started writing their new books in ways which incorporated actual things which were going on in their lives, but mythologizing them as they went along. He then asked if I knew about all of the prophecies which were written about in these books and which were later fulfilled.

"A lot of those are what's called Pseudepigraphal writing'", I replied, "Written as though they were the words of some guy, but long after he actually died, and long after the events supposedly being prophesied. Like, imagine if I were to prophecy right here, right now, that on September 11th, 2001, a couple of planes were going to slam into the World Trade Centre. Would that make me a prophet? Of course not. You know how language evolves over the course of centuries, right? You can look at Shakespeare’s works and say 'okay, this was written in the 16th century', based upon the language being used. The same is true of ancient Hebrew. A lot of those prophecies were written in older versions of the language than were being used in the lifetimes of the guys supposedly writing them, and so we know that they're not legit."

He plainly saw that he was getting nowhere with this tactic, and shifted gears a bit, offering up that "You know, when I pray to god, my prayers are often answered. I know he's taking care of me."

"A lot of people in other religions, who worship other gods, could say exactly the same thing. Do you accept this as proof that their gods are real?"

"I think that god is merciful, and sometimes he'll look down upon them and decide to grant their prayers."

"Ah, but don't you see?" I asked, "If you're willing to accept the idea that sometimes a prayer to 'God A' can be answered by 'God B', then it seems JUST as likely, given what you're saying, that your god isn't real, and you're praying to nothing more than an empty spot in the sky, and some, say, Hindu goddess up there is like 'Oh, look at poor Elder Gonzales down there. He just has no idea, but he means so well. I'm feeling generous today. I think I'll grant his prayer.' I'm not saying," I continued, "that I believe this is the case, just that your premise does not seem to support your conclusion."

"Do you believe", he asked me, "that if there were a god, one god, that he would be the same for everybody?"

"If such an entity existed," I allowed, "then, yeah, he would have one mind, one set of experiences, of emotions, and all that. He would be a single distinct being, and would be the same to everyone to the same extent that I am the same me to everyone".

"The same being", he clarified (I guess), "unchanging, forever?"

"Well, I don't know about that", I said. "It seems that even if such a being existed, he could change over time. Perhaps be a bumbling toddler, uncertain and unsure of himself in the time of the Garden of Eden, an angry teenager around the time of the flood, a jealous, bloodthirsty, vengeful tyrant of a god throughout the rest of the Old Testament, then mellowing out in the New Testament, and then, I don't know, retiring in his old age, gradually going senile and then passing away comfortably in his sleep, surrounded by family and friends some time in the 17th century." I wish now in retrospect that I had thought to throw in a 'mid-life crisis in which he attempts to recapture his youth by becoming a baby Jesus at one point', but maybe I'll remember for next time.

"That's... a different point of view", he replied, smiling uncomfortably.

"Well, if we're entertaining the idea that such a being exists, then it seems it's fair game to entertain the idea that there's such an arc to his life."

He spent a little time trying to extol the virtues of faith, which I dismissed roundly in favour of evidence-based thinking. Peculiarly, he answered this by talking about how we can know that there's a Holy Ghost without needing evidence. I disagreed with this point. He then went on to talk about the spirit or the soul. "Don't you believe there's something inside of us that we can't see or measure, that survives after we die?"

"You know how, when the brain is damaged, the intellect is damaged as well sometimes?" I asked, "Memories, emotions, computing power, whatever? Your mind is diminished by damage to the brain, right?" He agreed that this was the case. "Well if that's the case, then doesn't it seem that if the brain is damaged ENTIRELY - as in, destroyed, killed, etc - then the mind, the intellect should similarly be destroyed?"

He evinced some confusion on this point, still trying to assert the existence of this soul, saying it was in some way separate from the functions of the brain. I replied "I just don't see that there's room for it. I don't see that it has a place. It seems to me that the brain accounts for the intellect pretty well without needing some invisible and ephemeral counterpart."

He changed tactics again around this point, talking now about the founder of his religion, Joseph Smith, with whom I was not entirely unfamiliar, though I concede that I've always viewed him as a marginal enough whack-job that he didn't deserve too much attention from me. I didn't make this point clear to Elder Gonzales, mind you, since he seemed like such a nice youngster.

He talked about the supposed oracular and prophetic powers of the man, citing a number of examples, most of which struck me as a trifle picayune, and which at any event - and I pointed this out to him - I didn't know enough about to be able to comment on with any confidence. He then went on to ask if he had all of these accurate prophecies, was this not proof of god?

"Well, again," I answered him, "It seems to me that your conclusion does not necessarily follow from your premise. Even if I did allow that the man had these oracular abilities you say he did, and that they had some supernatural source, how do we know he wasn't... say, a witch? It could be he derived his powers from witchcraft, and just lied to his followers about the god business because he knew that's what they would listen to, and that's what would win him all the followers he wanted, and by extension, all the wives he could handle?" I refrained, by a massive exertion of will, both here and throughout the rest of the conversation, from making reference to Joseph Smith being "balls-deep in bitches", because, though I thought it would be funny, I was enjoying the conversation and didn't really want to insult him.

This did lead to him trying to defend his religion's founder's polygamy, saying "In his journal, he talked about how much it hurt him to have to hurt his wife by taking other wives..."

"Well, that's what he said in his journal, which he plainly didn't mean to keep secret, or else we wouldn't be discussing it today. Maybe he wrote it there so if his wife found it..." I shrugged, grinning meaningfully.

"But it didn't benefit him to have all of those wives, it caused him nothing but trouble. Why would he want it unless god told him to take them?"

"YOU can't understand how it benefitted him," I replied, "because you're not a megalomaniac. To a megalomaniac, controlling as many people as possible is its own reward."

He expressed a little confusion as to the term, but seemed to pick it up quickly enough when I explained it. "He was able to control all of those women, and all of the men who followed him by rewarding them with women. Those he didn't like, they got no wives, because there wasn't enough to go around, and so all of those male lines were allowed to die out."

Elder Gonzales was getting pretty uncomfortable with this kind of talk. I suspect he sort of understood that I was right - modern-day Mormons aren't raised with the idea that Polygamy is something to be proud of - and so he was in the awkward position of defending something which he felt was wrong, but which paradoxically his god at one point had supposedly said was right. Naturally, I capitalized upon this.

"Of course, your church dropped that commandment from god once it became expedient to do so because you'd be unable to join the United States unless you did so. Unlike that splinter group up in the interior of BC that still practices polygamy..."

"They're no longer a part of our church" he firmly asserted.

"No, no, of course not. Because they never forsook the word of their god for the sake of political convenience, right?"

Characteristically, he shifted gears again here, deciding to discuss Joseph Smith once again, telling me about how he was gunned down by an angry mob, and had prophesied that this would happen.

"Doesn't that seem more like a keen and insightful mind to you?" I asked, "I mean I could prophecy that if I were to poke you in the eyes enough times," I pantomimed doing so, repeatedly, "You'd eventually get pretty mad at me. I don't think that predicting that the people you keep on pissing off will eventually take it out on you is necessarily supernatural."

There was some more talk of Smith's supposed oracular abilities, which I began to gather was probably one of his favourite things to talk about, coming back to the topic of his death. "You know, he had a militia that he could have used to protect himself, they were much larger than the authorities that were holding him, but he didn't, because he didn't want there to be any bloodshed."

"Hold on, wait a minute," I said, thinking this over quickly. "You're saying he prophesied that he was going to be killed by a mob, and then went ahead and pissed them off, and then didn't do what was in his power to stop them from killing him? That sounds to me a little like he created the very situation he prophesied, or at least did nothing to stop it from happening. If he had used this militia to protect himself, he would have been disproving his own prophecy and thus making a liar of himself, right?"

This really flustered the young Elder, and it was around this time that he decided that maybe he was wasting his time - or worse, allowing the seeds of doubt to be planted in his fertile imagination - and decided to cut me loose. "It was nice meeting you", he said.

"Well, I would imagine it would be!" I shouted, grinning from ear to ear.

"You have a good day", he replied, not unfriendly.

"I will endeavour to do just this! I shouted as I began to walk away. "You do the same, you hear?"

I hummed happily to myself as I resumed my journey down the street. All told, it had lasted half an hour or so, and I feel it was time well-spent.

I find it interesting, in retrospect, that he spent as much time on Joseph Smith as everything else combined, and that moreover, although he was willing to entertain my discussion of his god being a mythological figure and joshing about about him, but doing so with ol' Joe Smith didn't go down so well. I wonder if this is representative of the worldview of Mormons in general. What little I've seen of them seems to suggest this, and if so, I wonder what it says about Mormonism that the thing they're mainly excited about is the personal mythology their founder invented about himself.

Edit: I also posted this in the atheism community, where there's some decent discussion in the comments worth checking out: http://community.livejournal.com/atheism/2043912.html

Crashman

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:53:43 GMT

Some year or so after I recorded the voice acting for this vieo game character, apparently he's just about ready for release, and I must say, I'm pretty happy to see how well he's turned out; a very smooth-playing and well-realized effort here.

As with one of my previous efforts in this field, Crashman here is a character who originates with Mega Man 2, which was the first Nintendo game I ever bought, back when I was a wee tyke of 12, and as such, there's some considerably pleasing nostolgia involved here.

Dave's Big Page of Links

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:15:39 GMT

Today, I have a gift for you, and one which I've been meaning to give you all for quite some time now. I don't ordinarily post links to sites I like very often, but here I make up for that in spades, in a sense.

While any internet browser worthy of the name is capable of organizing ones favourites or bookmarks in an adequate fashion, I realized some years ago that there was a better, more immediately visual way to go about this task, and all it takes is a modicum of ability with the coding of HTML. What I did was, I created an HTML page which is comprised entirely and exclusively with links to pages which I visit daily, weekly, or at any event regularly. Rather than uploading it to my server, I plunked it down in my descriptively named directory "D:\blop\", opened it up, set it as my homepage for internet explorer, and from that day forth, every time I've opened up my browser, I've had some forty or so sites that I might like to visit just a single click away. I've updated it many, many times over the years, as various sites have become defunct and/or uninteresting, and so in its present state it at all times reflects my present browsing habits and tastes.

I offer it in its present form to you, my loyal readers, that it might serve you a couple of purposes: (1) A host of links to sites which you might find interesting, and (2) A template, of sorts, from which you might construct your own "Big Page of Links" which I hope will benefit you as much as "Dave's Big Page of Links" has benefitted me over the years.

www.bjorn-comic.com/temp/dave_link_page.zip

"Barack the Usurper"

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:39:18 GMT

It seems that the other day, it somehow made the news that some US serviceman out there somewhere had bought into the tired old "fake birth certificate" meme that has been floating around in the American right-wing media for the past year or so and referred to President Obama as a "Usurper". While this would not under ordinary circumstances be of any interest or note beyond a sort of "Hunh. Slow news day, I guess" reaction, it HAS had the delightfully unexpected consequence of giving rise to some of the best darned fanfiction I've ever read.

I take no credit for the following, but post it in its entirety and with credit given.

Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- France, Germany, Russia, Japan with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, England with its chivalry, Italy that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Canada with its shadow-guarded tombs, China whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom was America, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Obama, the Chicagoan, black-skinned, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a demagogue, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."

In the cavernous halls the the White Palace, marble pillars reaching toward the heavens within the alabaster halls, the king of America sat sullenly upon the opal throne, no mere lethargy borne of privilege, his is the rest of panthers, attentive, serene, prepared. Listening to his vizier, Bideneus, detail the state of the great, but weakened kingdom Obama, the Chicagoan, had laid claim to. His dark frame sprang with restrained power as he rose to address his friend.

"Bideneus, these affairs of statecraft weary me. At every turn in the senate I am being hamstrung & obstructed. When I came to Washington & tore the bloody crown from the Mad King Georg, the people hailed be a hero, savior, liberator! But still some rage & gnash their teeth that I now sit upon the opal throne. Have I done enough to assuage them of my intentions?"

"Put them from your mind, m'Lord." Replied the vizier, Bideneus, once a seasoned veteran of the senate, but scorned for his often foolish behavior. "Such dramatic change in regime always rile those whom the old power favored. I have advised you to hang them from the gibbets on Traitor's Row."

"That is your way & not mine. I wish to show these people that I am not like that craven king, methinks sometime I may come to value their wisdom, be it as it may."

"And yet, you may regret not letting the crows feast upon their eyes. At least that agitator, Limbaldo! Mitra blast his eyes! May Ishtar spoil his seed!"

"Ha ha, what mighty curses! Nay, Bideneus. Limbaldo is no fool & he may yet prove dangerous, were I to silence his tongue it would only serve to increase his power a hundredfold."

"But such slander! They think you to be a petty warlord from the black continent. A secret Setite, even! A left-handed barbarian, who would throw open the gates of the city & let in the heathen hordes of the great wastes!"

"I have heard their cries, Obama the Usurper, they call me. Ha!"

"Your majesty, I dread these murmurs can only be the work of... I fear to say his name, lest I draw his attention."

"The dark wizard Chenei, eh? I only wish I had strangled that dog, when I did his puppet king. No natural creature has the right to live as long as he."

A bodiless voice rang out from the dark hall, a dry, stilted cry like a vulture.

"Methinks he may yet still outlive you, Chicagoan!"

With serpentine swiftness, Obama snatched for his blade, Hope.

"What devilry is this? Show yourself!"

Cloaked silhouettes appeared from behind the marble pillars, each clutching blades promised for Obama's heart.

"Death to the Usurper!"

The assassins sprung upon the king from all sides, harrying him with blows & stabs. With a blue flash of steel, Obama tore into the breast of his nearest for, a turgid, shapeless mass with beady eyes collapsed into a bloody heap.

"By Mitra! Rovius!" he exclaimed upon recognizing the former tyrant's kingmaker.

Obama's lithe body twisted out of the path of a cruel battle axe. It could had been a finishing blow, easily parting Obama's head from his neck, but the hooded menace peculiarly couldn't lift his arms high enough to bring the axe to any proper use. Swinging around, Hope sliced into the legs of the assailant, dropping him screaming to the floor.

"Captain Jommicain!" His chief rival for the throne of America, what foul mind had brought these forces together?

"Where is your slattern she-devil, Jommicain? Will she feel the bite of my steel this day?"

"Very well, I reveal myself, barbarian!" She said, flinging back her cowl. She held a cold beauty, like her native land, it stole the warmth from the blood & drove ice into the bones.

"Zarapalin, I wish not to battle a woman. Drop your poniard, & I will exile you back to your Hyperborea, with all of your thousand young."

"This dagger has yet to taste blood, it will drink yours within this hour, black spawn of hell."

A fire spread in Obama's chest as the remaining assassins closed in, beaten & bloodied, he held his gore-drenched sword firm. The red mists invaded his vision, and he felt a surge of vigor in his limbs. His sword lashed out with blinding quickness, spilling the entrails of a foe as he clenched the throat of another. He felt the life slip away from the traitor and with a mighty heave threw the cur into one of his brethren. Drawing up his sword to its fullest height, he drove the blade with all the power his thew could muster and split the Hyperborean she-devil's skull to the teeth.

"It's over, Bideneus, you can come out."

Slowly the vizier crawled out from beneath the gold-leafed desk.

"And to think I believed I would be a better king than thee..."

"Fetch the royal physician, Bideneus, lest I stain the marble red."

(taken from http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?pi=1001962752 )

Oh! And I would be remiss if I did not also mention THIS:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/030931-DDP-Obama.html

It seems that Devil's Due Publishing is producing a very similar comic book series, hillariously entitled "BARACK THE BARBARIAN: QUEST FOR THE TREASURE OF STIMULI", which I fully intend to procure when it's released. It sounds so amazingly, balls-to-the-wall crazy that it HAS to be worth at least a look.

Tales of Vince: A breaktrough!

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:13:35 GMT

I wouldn't keep posting about my semi-functional beast of a room-mate, Vince, if not for the fact that people seem genuinely fascinated by this situation. As it is, I find myself in an interesting state of mind on the topic; for months now, I had been... well, not content, obviously, but at least WILLING to sit back and observe the sloth of the man-child with whom I live and merely document the ongoing trainwreck which was and is his domestic existence. All of this attention you folks have been paying this saga, however, has motivated me to see if I can't make some progress here, as much for my own sake as for the sake of the audience which I know now waits with baited breath for each new installment in this drama.

I seem to have reached a small breakthrough today, and one with possibly far-reaching consequences. You may recall a post from a few weeks ago in which I spoke on his ever-accumulating pile of filthy dishes in this sink. The resolution to that one came around a week later, when I confronted him on the topic and he claimed that the reason why he had gone more than a month without doing his dishes was that he simply "hadn't noticed" that they were there. I at the time expressed some skepticism on this count; how could a man who was attentive enough to consistently remember to get dressed before leaving the appartment not notice the pile of disgusting, mouldering dishes in the sink for over a month while continuing to pile new ones on top of them? Nevertheless, I decided today to test the theory here a little bit. We have a recycling bin which we keep on the balcony, and which theoretically we're supposed to take turns taking out whenever it gets full. In reality what takes place is that I take it out one day, and then, two or three weeks later, when it gets full, I point out to him it's his turn to do so, at which point it promptly begins to overflow all over the balcony for a month or two, during which I point out to him four or five times that it remains his turn to take it out. This time, however, proceeding from his premise that he lets these things go for so long because he doesn't notice them, I took the full bin, placed it directly in front of his bedroom door, and then stood back and listened.

A few hours later, he returned home and evidently noticed it almost straight away, and indeed, actually took it out almost immediately. A remarkable accomplishment! I was so proud of him I almost considered breaking my personal "never speak to Vince about matters not pertaining to bills" rule. It did put me in mind of a few additional applications of this tactic which in the coming days I plan on testing; placing the kitchen garbage bag in front of his bedroom door; possibly hanging from his doorknob. Placing his dirty dishes in a bucket outside of his bedroom, perhaps. And yet, there feels to me as though there may be limited applications here. How do I get him to vacuum up the piles of crumbs and leavings he leaves after eating on the couch in the living room? Do I pull up the carpet and place it, along with the vacuum cleaner, in front of his door? There comes a point where the impracticality of it stands in the path of my curiosity.

And how do I apply this to his other foibles? How do I put "Don't bring around your imbicile of a girlfriend" in front of his door? How do I put "It's your turn to buy the toilet paper, you unhygenic pig" outside of his door? How do I put his-not-falling-asleep-watching-DVDs-in-his-underwear-on-the-couch in front of his door?

Well, alright, I suppose the answer to that last one is fairly obvious, but the notion of my taking it upon myself to carry his slumbering form from the couch and tucking him into bed is as repulsive as any four of his other shortcomings put together.

In the mean time, I do seem to have limited his DVD viewings slightly by keeping any new DVDs I purchase hidden in my living room after a debacle some weeks ago in which I bought a DVD of a comedy I'd wanted to watch and he managed to lose the disc - inside of the DVD player, I might add - before I ever got a chance to watch it, and then lied to me, pretending he had no idea where it went. I realize that to some extent I'm living in a fool's paradise here; I'm never going to keep him from this habit by limiting his available DVDs. If he had a single DVD - even one he dislikes as much as, for example, the Sarah Silverman program (whose depiction of women as being essentially equal to men repulses and enrages him) - he would still watch that one DVD five to ten times a week because he needs that sensory imput to drown out the howling void inside of his skull. All I'm doing here is denying him NEW motives to do so, though the 10-20% decrease in his viewing times is an acceptable pay-off as far as this goes. The fact that this also prevents him from ruining these new things I enjoy the way he's ruined so many others by watching and re-watching them so many times per month that I can no longer stand the sound or sight of them is a significant bonus.

A snippet of conversation: Moralometers Vs. Dolphin Judges

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:32:06 GMT

Some years ago, my friend Paul was visiting Vancouver, and he and I found ourselves at my best friend BJ's place. We were having a fairly weighty discussion about morality and government, revolving around whether a government ought to have a greater responsibility to its people or to the cause of justice as a whole, and what, ultimately, one ought to expect out of a government in this arena. BJ, who had in large part been quiet and a little disengaged up to this point, tossed in his two cents, which derailed the conversation, but in this very act spawned a much more interesting conversation. It's been long enough that I'll have to be just a little creative in re-creating the conversation from memory, and indeed after a certain point I remember the flow of the conversation better than which contribution was made by which specific person, and so I might be slightly inaccurate in my attribution.

"Just to bring this conversation down to my level, you know what I think society knows? Every community ought to have, like, a guy with a dolphin in the place of his head to make moral judgements over the community. Dolphin Judges."

Me: "An entire dolphin? Not just a dolphin's head, but like a reverse-centaur sort of arrangement, where it's a complete human body up to the neck, and then from that point up it's an entire dolphin, minus the tail or something?"

BJ: "Something like that, yeah! Dolphins, you know, they have a much simpler and less-complicated view of the world, but they know right from wrong, and they could communicate this through clicks and whistles and stuff."

Me: "You know what I think would be even better? An old village wise man who has a machine affixed to their head, with a big LCD display screen on it, and they hear peoples' grievances, and then the device on their head measures the relative morality of one path or another and then reads out and displays a numerical rating for them. Like a... a 'Moralometer'. And that way, if someone has a problem with a ruling, you can be like 'Hey, listen, man, one option has a morality rating of 4.3, and yours only has a 2.7. You want to tell me 4.3 ISN'T higher than 2.7? You go get me a calculator and I'll show you, buddy."

Paul: "But then someone says 'Oh, these moralometers are all well and good, but where's the HEART? Bring back the dolphin judges, I say!'"

Me: "Why, they have TWO hearts! One in the dolphin torso, and one in the man-torso! You want to tell me two isn't larger than one? Go get a calculator! And the old men with the moralometers are all desperately pointing out that bringing back the Dolphin Judges has a much lower morality rating than keeping the Moralometer Judges, but nobody is paying attention, and anyways they're drowned out by the delighted clicks and whistles of the Dolphin Judges, who are being brought back in from the wilderness after their long years of exile."

An inquiry about LiveJournal culture and Mutual Friends

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:27:05 GMT

Here's a question for anyone and everyone with a Livejournal account to perhaps shed some light on for me. This has been nagging at me for quite some time now, but I've never QUITE cared enough about it to actually seek to understand it until last night as I was speaking to my friend BJ about the nature of LiveJournal, vis a vis friends and communities and such.

I frequently check out the user profiles of people who post interesting comments and such, just to get a sense of who they are and what their angle might be. And while doing so, I'll see these people with, like, THREE HUNDRED MUTUAL FRIENDS. And I just sort of squint in astonishment, asking myself a number of questions:

1) How in the world can they be interested in the personal minutiae of THIS many people?
2) Why are three hundred people interested in the journal of a person who apparently only posts about the personal minutiae of their own lives?
3) Is this just some sort of etiquette issue I'm unaware of, where one person friends you, and you just feel compelled to friend them back, regardless of whether or not you're interested in what music they're currently listening to or what cute thing their little sister just did?

I'm just absolutely puzzled by this phenomenon. You'll look at my profile, and see my mutual friends list is teeny-tiny, and MOST of these are people I know personally, and most of my non-mutual friends are the blogs of authors and artists and such whose work I like. Even the list of communities I actually watch is rather slender. My friends list is utilitarian and sleek. So, I suppose the core of my question is, to you people with hundreds of LJ friends and indeed hundreds of mutual friends, what in the world is going on here, and what do you get out of it?

A snippet of conversation

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 06:05:34 GMT

My best friend BJ is over at my place, and we had one of our characteristic screaming matches just now. About gum. because BJ is a son of a bitch about that shit, and he doesn't treat a man with the respect he deserves in his own house.

BJ: "Where's my gum!?!"
Me: "I've got gum right here, you son of a bitch!"
BJ: "No, I want MY gum!"
Me: "It's my place, and you'll chew my fucking gum if I tell you to!"
BJ: "I won't owe you anything!!!"
Me: "Oh, if I could only breath flame at you right now...!"
BJ: "I'd be smoking hot, that's what!"
Me: "...YES! But not in the good way, not like you're talking about!"
BJ: "I don't know how being smoking hot could ever be in a bad way... unless you're talking about breaking hearts!"