insufferable social gaffe of spreading good will. Specifically, while meeting Japan’s emperor, he
bowed at the waist in an approximation of the traditional Japanese gesture of greeting for a respected
figure. I say an approximation because, traditionally, one does not also shake hands while doing so,
which Obama did in this instance, but neither he nor the meaningless figurehead monarch seemed to
mind the fact that Obama bowed any more than the Emperor minded shaking hands. It was very much
a meet-you-half-way sort of gesture of politeness which no reasonable or rational human being could
honestly find fault with.
The OUTRAGE!
It should therefore come as no surprise, then, to learn that former US vice president and current
professional whiner, Dick Cheney, found fault with this, saying that America’s enemies would see in
this simple gesture of politeness a weakness which they could exploit. How demeaning and belittling
the sitting US president in this way is supposed to have weakened America less than seeing him act in
a polite manner is a little bit vague, as is the question of why, if Cheney is so concerned with
America’s president appearing strong, Cheney does everything in his power to weaken him a little bit
more each day. How, also, these un-named but presumably dark-skinned enemies might go about
exploiting this weakness is not a detail which he saw fit to elabourate upon; perhaps he envisions them
sending a group of Japanese emperors into the battlefield, and then, when American forces, emulating
their Commander In Chief, bowed before them, the enemy forces could take advantage of the
momentary distraction by opening fire upon them.
The more realistic* scenario is that Cheney woke up in the morning, rose from his coffin, ate his
traditional breakfast of freshly-plucked baby hearts boiled in a broth of virgins’ tears, and then
searched “Obama” on Google News to see what specific act there was in the news that day which
Cheney could publicly criticize. Finding Obama bent at the waist in one of the photographs, he grunted
“Guess that’ll have to do”, and had his bug-eating manservant call around to the usual media outlets to
see who would give him a platform for the criticisms he was even then formulating.
Indeed, I envision a parallel universe which is in all way identical to our own, save that at that moment,
Obama chose not to bow, but rather simply to shake hands. I envision, in that universe, Cheney having
words somewhat along these lines:
“President Obama’s failure to observe something as simple but as important as this culturally-
significant gesture indicates precisely what myself and others have been saying about him for some
time now. It shows his ignorance, his arrogance and his elitism. I think that America’s enemies will see
this failure on his part as a sign of weakness, if you will, and one which they can exploit. A president
which cannot be bothered to understand foreign cultures, as President Obama has shown himself to be
today, is one which will also be unable to understand the threats posed by certain radical elements
within foreign cultures. It is precisely this sort of inexperience that should have precluded him from
holding an office he is plainly unqualified and unprepared to hold, and this sort of hubris and self-
importance which keeps him so out of touch with the world around him.”
In two other, somewhat more distant parallel realities, in both of which John McCain won the 2008
presidential election, wherein McCain met with the emperor of Japan and, in one, bowed before him,
and in the other did not, the Dick Cheneys of these worlds had nothing whatsoever to say on the topic,
recognizing it as so trivial as to be unworthy of comment.
*It's all relative, really.
***
Dear Mr. Comfort.
Earlier today, I read an interview with you on the topic of your abridged version of The Origin of the Species, and specifically your introduction to the book. In it, you made reference to the science of evolution's “undeniable connection” to the holocaust. This is not a new claim, and not one that I am not unfamiliar with, but on this occasion, I felt motivated to investigate the claim for myself. I found that, broadly speaking, there is some truth to what you say; some of Hitler’s stated justifications for the holocaust do indeed include his misinterpretations and misapplications of the science of evolution.
This says nothing whatsoever about whether or not the science of evolution is valid or true, though; merely whether or not it is of benefit to society that people be aware of it. Assuming, for the sake of argument, then, that you are correct, and that without having this body of knowledge to misinterpret and misapply as Hitler did, the holocaust would not have taken place (which I am dubious about; it seems to me that he would have found some other justification to hang his irrational hatred of “the other” on, just as so many creeds, philosophies and religions have been abused for the purposes of over the course of human history), I wonder if you will then apply this same standard to other bodies of knowledge without which he also could not have accomplished the horrible deeds that he did?
For example, will I hear a similar denouncement of the science of metallurgy for its undeniable connection to the holocaust? Without access to this body of knowledge, Hitler’s forces would have had no train tracks, no trains, no bullets, no gas chambers, no metal fences, among many, many other implements which were critical to his execution of the many “undesirables” during the holocaust.
Will I be hearing of your outrage at the science of masonry, and its undeniable connection to the holocaust? Without the ability to produce bricks and construct buildings of them, the nazis would have been unable to house the infrastructure of their murderous war machine, and their death camps would surely not have been the inescapable prisons that they were. Nobody will claim that masonry is not a valid field of knowledge, but neither can the claim be made that without it, the nazis would have been all but powerless to carry out their extermination regime.
Indeed, even the body of knowledge of language itself has the very same undeniable connection to the holocaust that the science of evolution does. Indeed, it has an even deeper and more fundamental connection; without knowledge of language, Hitler would never even have had access to the ideas that he did, would never have been able to convey them to the German people, and would never have been able to conduct his orders to the countless thousands of devout Christians who worked as death camp guards and operators*, without whose enthusiastic support, Hitler’s will could never have been executed. Will I therefore be hearing you tar language itself with the same brush that you apply to evolution? And if so, how do you plan on doing so without employing the Nazi-related science of language?
I ask these questions because I know that as a man of god and as a man of learning such as yourself, honesty, integrity and consistency are indispensable and invaluable, and that your condemnation of these bodies of knowledge must surely be merely waiting in the wings alongside your condemnation of the body of knowledge which is the science of evolution, and that you have simply not found the time or opportunity to make clear your moral outrage that these knowledges should be allowed to be taught, given their shared history of nazism. If this is the case, I am more than prepared not only to hear this condemnation from you, but to tell all who would listen that you are indeed a man of conviction, of principle and of integrity, and that you are willing to apply the same standards to all of the sciences which Hitler and his forces made use of in the same manner and to the same extent, and indeed for the same reasons.
I thank you for your time and attention, sir, and eagerly await your reply.
• I realize that a lesser man than yourself might be tempted into falling prey to a “no true Scotsman” fallacy in responding to this point, but I have every confidence in your ability to rise above such obvious traps.
Rather, my landlord was apparently held to blame for not making any effort whatsoever to control his unruly tenant, Vince. I had expressed a similar sentiment, of course, pointing out how deeply I resented the fact that I had not had it relayed to me that Vince was doing all this terrible crap, and thus was unable to do anything about it. But my landlord simply did not care to become involved, and so let the matter fester.
And so the decision was made to kick out my landlord's remaining tenant - that being me - in order to punish him; he would lose the rent revenue, and need to go to the time, trouble and expense of preparing the suite for a future tenant.
The ironty here is that he was planning on selling the place some time next year anyways, and he likely views this as a blessing; he can now do so earlier, and get out of this landlording business that he had plainly grown bored of anyways.
And so, a punishment comes down solely upon my head to punish two people who will feel no ill effects from it, and who stand to learn nothing from it. Meanwhile, I lose my home of six years.
I can't pretend not to feel a little on the bitter side from all of this.
Another tidbit which has come out of this seems to serve as the final puzzle piece which reveals the whole puzzle to me; I'm told that Vince told someone on the Strata Council about the bedbugs before I did (which, it was suggested, might mean that I was trying to keep secrets and thus deserved to be kicked out on my own faults). This startled me as I recalled clearly going and talking to the noxious president of the council the very day I first learned I had them. So when did Vince have the time to tell anyone?
As it turns out, he knew about them long before I did, but never told me about them, but DID tell others about them. When I told him I had discovered them, he claimed not to have any in his room and affected surprise. Later, when exterminators came around, he still claimed to have none, and so there was no reason for them to enter his room. Later still, when I confronted him about their re-appearance, he again affected surprise, claiming never to have seen them.
During my cleaning out of his crap, I not only found nests of them in his room that plainly went back a very, very long time, I found dozens of empty tubes of hydrocortisone cream (which I may be mis-spelling, but I don't have a spell-checker at hand here and now). This is an itch cream.
It now becomes clear: He got them before I did, and did everything in his power to hide this fact for a full year and a half, even if doing so meant preventing them from being eliminated and meant constant itching for a year and a half.
It's never been more clear that he is actually mentally ill.
Now I just need to exterminate them all in the time I have left before I have to move, in order to make sure I don't carry Vince's curse with me to my new home. Because if even a couple of them cling to any bit of furniture I bring with me, I could continue to syffer from Vince's madness for many, many months to come.
It’s been a week and a half now since my erstwhile former Room-mate, Vince, vacated the premises, and believe it or not, the hits keep on coming.
I realized, naturally, that he would steal a certain amount of my stuff on his way out. Whether out of vindictiveness or simply out of selfishness and greed, he would take things he thought he might like. Naturally, I was correct, though the list of things that have gone missing is as mercifully short as it is baffling. I had recently acquired a large vacuum cleaner which I’m rather fond of, but retained my smaller, older one to get into the small spaces which my behemoth of an upright could not get into. Vince, in an unmitigated act of irony, decided that even though he had gone two years without ever so much as touching that smaller vacuum for anything other than his own bedroom (and only then when he was bringing a girl over), evidently decided that he was somehow more entitled to it than I was and made off with it. The other items I’ve found him to have taken – a couple of DVDs, my tube of toothpaste and one of my PS2 memory cards – are just small, pathetic acts, but in aggregate still serve to aggravate.
( Read more... )
Obviously, in the past ten months, I’ve told the story of Vince to a lot of people in a lot of different situations. While the reactions I’ve received have typically ranged from shock to disgust to pity, there was ONE which stood out as uniquely distinct, because it and it alone managed to cast Vince in a favorable light.
Not all of the gods dreamed up by the various cultures of mankind have been benign or even admirable figures. Plenty of cultures have devised gods of disease, filth and decay. I believe, upon reading this one reaction, that I have located the god which Vince worships. He at whose alter Vince is a mere supplicant, and who Vince attempts to emulate, but before whose majesty, Vince’s own accomplishments pale into insignificance.
A being whose devotion to degradation, madness and squalor are truly superhuman in scope. A being whose contribution to the world is like unto a branding iron, for the indelible mark it leaves upon the minds of all against which this vicious knowledge is pressed.
I speak of a man named Jed. And I speak of the Shit Lasagna.
Read at your own peril, dear readers. For only now that the story of Vince has reached its conclusion do I feel that you are ready for the brain-searing force of this epic tale of room-mate related horror. Say not that you haven’t been warned.
Vince’s shoes were all gone from the front hall.
My heart leapt in my heart. Dare I hope? Dare I dream? I dashed about the apartment, and my spirit soared: His DVDs were gone (minus those I had set aside the day before so that he wouldn’t “accidentally” pack them when his belongings)! And on his bedroom door, the following note:
Vincent H-a-v-o-k (edited to evade Google), by the way, is his wrestling name. Have I ever mentioned that before? He’s a professional wrestler, and this is his wrestling persona. Yes, he signs stuff like this with his wrestling persona.
( Read more... )
On a separate-but-related note…
It's been a wild ride, folks, and I'm not going to lie: As much as I'm glad he's gone, there remains a small part of me which is almost sad that I won't have him to blog about anymore. The guy was scum, but as you all made abundantly clear in your comments, he was SUCH scum that he at least made an engaging antagonist in this grand drama. But all vile, horrific, unbearably unpleasant things must come to an end.
I just got this letter in the mail earlier today.
It seems that Vince has decided that if he's being forced to go, there's no reason to have any dignity or composure about it, and to take out his frustrations with having received the just rewards of his own past bad behaviour with even worse behaviour. Perhaps he's decided he has nothing to lose, so why not?
Oh, man.
Man, oh, man.
I’ve been pretty active in the online atheist community for the past ten years or so, in one form or another, and in that time, I’ve heard all sorts of arguments for and against all sorts of crazy religious beliefs. I had a thought, today, which I realize that I’ve never, in all of those years, heard brought up, and that surprises me a great deal. I’m sure if I looked around a bit, I could find it being discussed somewhere, and perhaps I will later, because I would love to hear what Young Earth Creationists would say about this one.
Okay, so Young Earth Creationists (hereafter referred to as “YECs”) say the world was created about 6,000 years ago. They have a specific date, but I don’t care quite enough to check it out. 6,000 is close enough for my purposes here. Now, let me paint a little picture of what, if they’re correct, a certain element of human history would have looked like:
In the beginning, there would have been not one single star visible in the night-time sky, because even the nearest star to the Earth (aside from the sun, obviously) is about 4.37 light years away. This means that, some four years and four months after the creation of the Earth, a little speck of light would have appeared in the hithertofore nearly-empty night sky, as the first rays of light from our nearest cosmic neighbor finally reached us. Gradually, as time went by, one by one, more and more stars would have begun to appear, as the light from them, travelling at a known and constant speed, arrived on Earth.
Throughout history, astronomers should have been reporting more and more new stars appearing in previously-empty spots in the sky, the heavens seeming to populate themselves more and more densely with each passing day. But this is not the case: the star charts of astronomers from thousands of years ago are remarkably consistent with what we can see today, and there exists no record of a gradually-decreasing black void in the sky.
Today, with our marvelous telescopes, we should be able to see the light of stars which are 6,000 light-years away burst into existence in real time. Indeed, since the bible teaches us that Yahweh created all of the stars in a single day, we should be seeing a black shell of nothingness all around us, some 6,000 light years in radius, gradually retreating at a rate of one light second per second. If we did see that, it would be pretty much impossible to make a serious argument that the universe were more than 6,000 years old, or that it wasn’t all created in one day. The evidence would be conclusive and irrefutable.
But of course, that’s not what we see, is it? What we see is the light from stars which are more than 6,000 light years away. Much more. Thousands of times more. Millions of times more. This should not be possible if YECs are correct. Indeed, if they were correct, to be able to see light shining from stars which are more than 6,000 light years away, that light would literally need to have been created, in-transit, between the stars which supposedly emitted them and the Earth.
Think about what that would mean: As we watch what we think is a star located more than 6,000 years ago, what we’re actually watching is an elbourate illusion created by Yahweh, of a history which never took place, of an object which did not in fact exist at the time we think we’re seeing it. We believe we’re seeing the story of a star which is, say, 7,000 light years away, but what we’re actually seeing is 1,000 years of bullshit and deception before the first ray of light from that star ever reaches us.
In fact, the christian god would not only have needed to spin this elabourate lie in order to beguile and deceive us into believing that the universe was more than 6,000 years old, he would have needed to create a consistent illusion, with rays of light carrying illusions and lies to us from every point in the heavens in such a way as to consistently indicate and provide evident support for a history which never took place.
It seems like a lot of trouble to go to just in order to dissuade us from believing in him. One would have thought that planting all of those false dinosaur fossils would have been sufficient, but I guess he’s a perfectionist when it comes to trying to prevent us from believing in his own inerrent word. It just seems like it’s desperately important to him that we don’t believe in him.
And of course, many YECs are really very preoccupied with finding evidence for their specific and literal interpretation for the bible. You can go to one of their hilariously Flintstones-esque “Creation Museums” and learn all about how the Grand Canyon scientifically proves that the story of Noah’s Flood is real and proven history. Physical evidence is extremely important to them, even if it needs to be massaged and twisted and distorted until it suits their specific purposes. So I wonder what they say about this matter of physical evidence...?
Part 2
Okay, so since writing part 1, I’ve spent several hours looking into this topic, and as I’ve surmised, there’s a lot written and discussed on this issue. A whole lot. Like, “hundreds of thousands of hits on Google” lots. I’m frankly kind of stunned that this has never once been on my radar, so to speak, but what the heck. Better late to the party than never to show up, right?
First off, it seems that, as I guessed, the “light created in-transit” idea was in fact in vogue for a while among YECs, until they realized that it did in fact seem to implicate their chosen deity as a kind of mischievous trickster-god. They didn’t care for this notion too much, and so discarded it as inconvenient to the point they were trying to make.
There followed a number of other ideas, which I won’t touch upon beyond saying that they eventually realized that the facts did not seem to support these notions, and so they too were discarded. Bully for them, I say, for having the wits and character to do so.
The current popular notion is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, and one I’m going to have to look into a bit more deeply when I have the time. Basically, as I understand it, the concept goes like this: The Earth is the centre of the entire universe (as befits its place as the cornerstone of their god’s creation), and therefore has around it a massive gravitational field, caused by a ginormous white hole spewing out all of the matter and energy which comprises the rest of the universe (but which is not visible to us and which has none of the “wiping out the solar system and all of its contents in a matter of seconds” sorts of effects that such an object would, one would expect, actually produce). From what I’m reading, it seems that white holes are not understood to actually have this sort of effect on gravity, but here I concede that I am simply over my head, physics-wise. At any rate, the effect of this, they claim, is that time is dilated in the neighborhood of our solar system, such as that, while the rest of the universe experiences the many billions of years which the evidence tells us that it has, LOCALLY, here on Earth, only 6,000 years have passed since the beginning of time.
Physics, as I’ve said, are not my strong suit, and astrophysics even less so, but I can’t help but think that this is the sort of thing that doesn’t really work. My first impulse is to ask if, if we assume this concept is correct, they’ve considered the idea that a super-dense gravitational field around our solar system would seem likely to cause all of the matter in our immediate vicinity to collapse into a black hole. My second impulse is to wonder if, if this is the case, whether or not they simply declare “god doesn’t want for that to happen, and so he waves his magical wand three times and causes it not to happen.” From what I’ve been able to discern, there seems to be a certain amount of deliberate hand-waving on this count, of the “this theory does not address this point in a meaningful way” variety.
My third impulse is to chuckle bemusedly. Because it seems to me that even the YECs have been forced to retreat in the face of the available evidence; they concede that, yes, the universe is billions of years old, there’s no more denying that. But we can still say that the Earth itself is only a few thousand years old, because – due to this relativistic effect – we’ve missed out on most of those billions of years, and indeed, it’s not even that the rest of the universe is billions of years old; it’s that it’s experienced billions of years of growth and change during the 6,000 years of “real time” which the Earth has experienced, which is the only time worth mentioning or counting. Which sounds like an amazingly semantic argument to me.
My fourth impulse is to laugh a little bit. Because it seems to me that they’re positing a god which has gone to an amazing amount of trouble to create a situation which SEEMS to have been a product of billions of years of natural development, and which SEEMS to disprove the story he ostensibly wants us all to believe, when simply plopping things down in such a way as to produce the “ever-expanding shell of visible stars” model I proposed above would have been just as easy, and would have, again, presented clear and irrefutable evidence of the veracity of his creation. But instead, he would have had to go out of his way to create a universe which seems to obscure and obfuscate this truth, as though attempting to mislead anyone who doesn’t make some massive and seemingly-unfounded leaps of faith in order to get to the “proper” conclusions. I laugh because a god which would do all of this still seems like the mischievous trickster-god which they rejected in the first place.
Honestly, the mental gymnastics these people put themselves through in order to never have to admit that they’re wrong is amazing. As a sort of mental exercise, it’s almost admirable in a Rube Goldbergian sort of way, but as an actual approach to life, the universe, and everything, it’s a little on the horrifying side.
It was at around a week or so later that I gave some thought to the considerable amount of money he owed me, and how I was likely never to see a dime of it. A plan occurred to me, though, which it seemed to me might at least allow me to recoup my losses somewhat. I hadn’t seen too much of Vince in the week or so since that last conversation, though, and so it seemed to me that the practical approach was to leave him a note explaining my thoughts on the topic. I therefore drafted, printed, and taped to his bedroom door the following missive:
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
As long-time readers of my blog will know, I’ve been having some difficulties with my hideous, swine-like monster of a room-mate, Vince, for some time now. For those newer to the readership, I recommend that you check out some of the previous nightmares-rendered-as-text on the topic. I do so not only in order that you might be able to better understand the unfolding drama of the story, nor yet simply because I enjoy having my posts read (although both are valid points), but as a cautionary tale: Vince is in some respects a worst case scenario as room-mates go, and as we draw nearer the end of this saga, a moral begins to emerge.
But before we jump to that, let’s step back a couple of months.
( Read more... )
...but this guy has got to be the funniest of the batshit insane Obama haters.
EDIT! I managed to find a Youtube of the full video! Huzzah!
Apparently this guy - this Reverend Manning - has gone on on this topic at some very considerable length, over and over again, but this video seems to be kind of the summation and aggregation of all of his crazy on the topic. A longer, better-quality, and all-around more awesome version can be found here.
I swear, I just about lost it when he screams "LAURA KNOWS IT TOO!" (which, sadly, is cut from the embedded video above but can be seen on the longer one) It's such a random thing to toss in there, and with such mad vehemence! He's so plainly just tossing random shit out there, it's delicious. Similarly, I've been joking for a year now, as a caricature of Republicans, that they would refer to Obama as a "Godless Communist and radical Muslim", but until this fellow, I've never seen one of these nutjobs actually shout this out with perfect sincerity. The cognitive dissonance here is beautiful.
And then... and then the musical number at the end. Holy shit, my friends. Holy shit.
Magnificent.
Today, I have placed a letter to my room-mate Vince on his bedroom door, in the hopes of undoing some of my mistreatment of the poor boy. In the belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant, I share this letter with you, my readers, in the interests of claiming responsibility for my own faults as a room-mate. The full text is posted below.
***
Vince
I have come to realize that I have in some respects been an inconsiderate room-mate of late, and I feel that I ought to ask your forgiveness in this respect. I have placed upon you unreasonable expectations and become angry at you when you have failed to live up to them, and I have treated you poorly as a result of your not having acted in accordance with wishes of mine which I have never plainly articulated. As such, I hope to make myself clear in ways that I feel now I owed it to you to have made clear many months ago.
I have complained many times about your stealing my food. I have told you repeatedly to replace food of mine that you’ve stolen on those rare occasions which you haven’t lied to my face about having done so (and to your credit, some 20% or so of the time that you’ve made this promise, you’ve delivered on it like a champion). I have placed locks on some of my cabinets in order to prevent you from stealing the food and drink contained therein, knowing – as I’ve told my friends since then – that “If you want to keep a dog from ripping open a bag of dogfood and glutting itself, you need to put it somewhere that the dog can’t get at it, and the same principle applies here, since Vince has all the concept of personal ownership that a dog has.” But perhaps in only having done so, I’ve only muddied matters for you, in that I may have seemed to have been giving you tacit permission to steal that food which I placed in the fridge, rather than keeping it under lock and key like I did the rest. For example, when you ate an entire large bottle of my ketchup over the course of a week without ever asking if you could have any of it, never apologized for having done so afterwards, made no offer to replace it, and then put the empty bottle back in the fridge and left it there, can I really, honestly hold you responsible for such actions?
In all that time, I’ve realized something – and herein lies the crux of my apology. I realized that I have never explicitly and specifically told you to never steal my food. I have expected you to be able to function at the same level as any reasonably intelligent adult human being would function. I have expected you to be able to at least act as though you have any sort of functioning ethical core. Both of these are plainly unreasonable standards to hold you to, and I am deeply, profoundly sorry for having done this to you. I want to redress this wrong by being 100% clear and specific on this issue in the hopes that future confusion and the acrimony which arises from this confusion can be avoided.
To be clear: None of the food which I have ever bought has been bought in the hopes that it would be stolen from me. All of it has been bought so that I could eat it, or else people who have the basic and rudimentary grasp of fundamental politeness and morality necessary to ASK if they can have some of my food could eat it. You are a part of neither group, and thus none of my food has ever bought for you, nor is any food which I presently own or which I will ever buy be for you.
I realize that I have never been as clear as this, and yet have somehow, irrationally, expected you to grasp principles such as the notion of “other people’s property” and “stealing is wrong.” I hope that I have now been made sufficiently plain that in the future, these needless and easily-avoided conflicts can be avoided, and peace around the home can reign.
Once again, I’m sorry for having been so vague, and I hope you can forgive me.
-Dave
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.
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.
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)
Last night, my friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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/11
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/11
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/11
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/11
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/11
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/11
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/11
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/11
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.
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-h
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.
Actually, to say it's a homeless shelter slightly misclassified it; there's a good deal more than just food and shelter to be had there. There's a room where a big TV and DVD player is set up so folks can enjoy some entertainment in peace, there's a room where haircuts are given by an amateur-but-competent barber can be had, and a "clothing room", where clothes donated from any one of a number of different quarters are made available to anyone who needs them. I tend to work in the clothing room a great deal in the early part of the night; unpacking and sorting the clothes, putting them on display, making sure that no one person takes more than their fair share, keeping fights from breaking out in the room, and then tidying up an hour and a half or so later.
There's this one family - a mother and her two kids - who comes every week. They're obviously not homeless, but equally obviously so deep in economic distress that nobody gives them any guff about taking advantage of the services of the program. There's actually a few people like that that are regulars there. The older of the two kids is a girl (whose name, irritatingly, always eludes me) who I will for the purposes of this story call Francesca. When my friend Ray and I first saw her, we were not altogether sure if she was a girl or a boy; she's around 11 years old, and is consistently dressed in a baggy brown sweatshirt and faded jeans which seem more boyish than girlish, and which were plainly chosen for no reason other than that they were what was available at the time, given extremely limited resources, and her haircut, I suspect, is one she received by above amateur-but-competent barber; there's nothing stylish or feminine about it. It's close-cropped and not too far off from being a brush cut.
Last week, while working the clothing room, I found a bag dominated by children's clothing. This is quite unusual; the clothes we get are - some 99% or so of the time - entirely for adults, which is hardly surprising given that we only have these two kids that ever show up. My guess is that they all came from a single donor; perhaps a family who looked at their 13 year old daughter's clothes from three years prior and said "Well, none of this is going to fit anymore. Might as well give it away". It must have been a rather affluent family if this is the case; it was all quite nice, and quite plentiful. Now, while we normally have this rule about a single person taking more than five articles of clothing all at once, in this case, I figured an exception could be made, since there were no other little girls who would be cheated out of clothes if this one kid took it all. As such, I made the family aware of this treasure trove, and Francesca's face just lit up at the sight of all of these age-appropriate "girly" clothes. Gender stereotypes notwithstanding, it seemed to me she was delighted by the prospect of not being mistaken for a boy so much. After snatching up every available item of clothing, she dashed off to the washroom and got changed into her new pink hoodie, and was obviously elated all the night long. I don't mind telling you, it put quite the smile on my face to be able to have played some small part in something like that.
Mind you, the personal drama isn't always as heart-warming as that. Later that very night as I was working the food line, handing out bread and drinks to people (other people were handling the salad, the stew, the brownies, etc), there was a man - probably in his mid-thirties and looking a little sketchy. At one point, there was another fellow; probably fifteen-or-so years his senior who briefly brushed against him whilst leaving the food line. The first fellow just EXPLODED, pushing and shoving him away in a panic, bellowing at him to keep his distance, keep away from him and all that. He then turned to the girl standing next to me among the servers - an attractive young asian woman whose name I can't recall - and started ranting about how "That guy is obsessed with me! He won't leave me alone! He's always around me, and he's always touching me! I think he's one of the gays!" etc, etc. Once he had left and was comfortably out of earshot, I turned to the girl, and smiling, said to her "I guess when he felt another man touching him, he felt something which compelled him to aggressively extol his heterosexuality and dread of homosexuality to the nearest attractive female as soon as possible and as loudly as possible. You know what they say about people who protest the loudest about their loathing of gays, don't you?" Naturally, being a baptist, she didn't, and I quickly realized I would be doing myself no favours by getting into THAT conversation in this setting. Nevertheless, the whole exchange left me chuckling for some time, especially in light of the degree to which the "obsessed" older gentleman plainly wanted nothing to do with the histrionics of the fellow he had brushed up against, especially once he had his big gay panic of the night.
Small tales of human drama, yo.
Profile
- dave_littler
- dave_littler
- Dave Littler's New Deal
Syndicate
