Quiz Time!

When someone, says "Groovy, baby, yeah!" in their best Austin Powers voice, unironically, in goddamn 2008, which of the following is the most appropriate reaction:

1. Punch him endlessly.
2. Release an anguished howl and hurl yourself out the window to your doom, just to prove a point.
3. Sleep with his wife, just to prove a point.

Think carefully. Your response could make all the difference. Did I miss any options?


On an unrelated note, to the asshole who almost mowed me down because you decided to run a light that had clearly turned red, I saw the traffic camera flash as you did it. Enjoy your ticket, dick.

Placeholder

I had an essay about my creative process here, but...

...wait for it...

I'm having trouble with it.

I'm going to try to get it done this week. Until then, please enjoy this cute/terrifying picture of Timer.

Interim post

I'll have something more substantive here soon, tomorrow maybe. But right now it's late and my favorite football team got their asses handed to them. So, while you wait, here's a bunch of half-naked women dancing around to a Johnny Cash song.


Seat girls - RJ41 Productions from rj41 on Vimeo.

Times like these call for immature actions.

Found via a link on Rodney Anonymous' blog forum (look at the links over there to your right) to the http://malnurturedsnay.net/ site:

A brilliant idea! I just did this for $5.00. Please consider joining in with a donation to a worthy cause, and PLEASE pass on! :) Rita (If you don’t want to get these from me please say so, I don’t want to offend anyone)

Instead of us all sending around more emails about how horrible she is, let’s all make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin’s name.

And here’s the good part: when you make a donation in in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor
(this is where http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ takes you)

You’ll need to fill in the address to let them know where to send the ‘in Sarah Palin’s honor’ card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

John McCain 2008
P.O. Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

Have fun! And a worthy cause too. Spread the word!

Jukebox

So, what's on the music menu tonight...

I play this song a lot.




Everybody should own a copy of Love's "Forever Changes." Here's Calexico covering Alone Again Or.



Listening to Sugar's "Copper Blue" in the car leads to genuinely unsafe speeds of driving while simultaneously making one unspeakably sad.

The Andy Williams Depression Special

“Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Andy Williams Depression Special. I’m so glad all of you could join us again this year. Well, those of you who didn’t kill yourselves since last year’s special. Those of you know who were friends with someone that did are probably even more depressed, and that’s what the spirit of Depression is all about isn’t it? Making ourselves miserable all year round, never allowing the light in.

“We’ve got a humdinger of a special for you this year. We’re gathered around a fire that will hopefully suffocate us all thanks to poor ventilation, and we have some great guests coming by. The Vienna Boys Choir will be singing some of those Depression carols we all love so much, Mary Anne Mobley will be stopping by to make some gingerdead men, and Kerri Strug, everybody’s angel from the 1996 Olympics, will be doing a gymnastics demonstration for some reason.

“Why don’t we get started by going to visit Mary Anne Mobley over in our special Depression kitchen? It features a gas stove and grey walls with peeling wallpaper. I can smell the ginger goodness from all the way over here. Mary Anne, as you may know, is a former Miss America and took over Dixie Carter’s role on the final season of Diff’rent Strokes when the show moved to ABC*.”

(Andy strolls into the kitchen.)

“Hello there, Mary Anne! It smells wonderful in---oh, my.”

(Mary Anne’s body swings gently to and fro from the overhead light fixture from which she’s hung herself.)

“Goddammit. We lost Shelley Long the same way last year. Okay! Let’s move on to check in with Kerri Strug, who’s going to jump around the room like a spastic monkey. We’ll just go over to the good ol’ Depression mat…Hi there, Kerri! How’ve you been? How’s life treated you since ’96? Ready to show us some of your famous moves?”

(Kerri is dressed in her same leotard from the Olympics, only it doesn’t fit so well now and has coffee stains on it. She looks sullenly at the camera for a moment. She looks at Andy. Then back at the camera. A tear rolls down her face. She does a series of backflips to the window and leaps to her doom.)

“We’re thirty fucking stories up---Jesus! Every year! Fine. Just cut to the damned Boys Choir.”

(Here we see a bunch of kids in choir robes, all with emo haircuts. They’re about as happy as you used to be when you had to wear choir robes. They begin to sing to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”)

Shoot myself

Shoot myself

In the fucking face

I just wanna shoot myself

And stop this endless pain.

(The kids all smoke. You can hear one in the background say he hates his father.)

“You know what? Fuck this. This is Andy Williams, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

(Andy douses himself in gasoline as we cut to closing credits.)

*Author’s note: Look how fucked up the opening credits were during the show’s final season. I have no memory of that, although the “Sam gets kidnapped” multi-parter is seared into my brain.

The Takei Wedding

As you may have read, George "Mr. Sulu" Takei got married recently, thanks to California's recent legal approval of gay marriage. I'm not going to get political here*, but my good friend Justin and I were fortunate enough to overhear a few things said at the wedding. Also, it gave us this, quite possibly the funniest wedding photo of all time:


Anyway, here are a few things said at the wedding:

1. "He's no longer flying sulu."

2. "Will you takei this man's hand in marriage?"

3. "I now pronounce you man and worf."

4. "I think the gift for the one-year anniversary is dilithium crystal."

5. "Right now, they're in their honeymoon phaser."

6. "I liked when they fed each other wedding kirk."

7. "I hope they didn't get too caught up in the wedding planning details. Sometimes you can't see Deforest for the trees."

8. "I think the wedding starts at noonian."

9. "Takei looks nice. I think the vanity koenig was a bit much, though."

10. "I doohan."


*Jesus Christ, are people really opposed to gay marriage? Don't gay people have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us? Let 'em get married. Do you have any idea how much fun gay wedding receptions are going to be? Great food, danceable music. If the idea of gay people getting married sticks in your craw, you really don't have enough going on in your life. Also, you're probably secretly gay.

I did an interesting (to me, at least) writing exercise this afternoon. It was a conversation between me and depression. In my head, depression’s voice sounded a lot like Orson Welles. I liked the way it turned out, and it helped me work on my dialogue skills a little bit. I’m not putting the whole thing here, because…well, most of it is really personal and a little emo-y. I did like this little exchange though:

“How do you pop up so easily? Last weekend, I had a great time, spent the afternoon having fun with my friends, then almost jerked the car into the median on purpose on the way home. What was that about?”

“I’m sneaky. And I’m always there.”

”Like the Venom symbiote.”

“Jokes like that aren’t helping the situation.”

So, the writer nerd part of my life is progressing nicely. As for the music nerd stuff, please note that Ella Guru, the best record store in the world, has moved into the 280 Elizabeth St. complex, where Dad’s Garage is. So, go buy some records and see some fun theater. I bought the I Believe to My Soul compilation from Don this weekend and it sounds so, so fine.

Word Explosion

I wanted to update the blog, but I didn’t have anything in particular to add right now, so I’m trying a little experiment. Sitting down at the computer and just typing my stream of consciousness until I hit 500 words. I figure this will be good training for NaNoWriMo when that hits. Can’t run before you walk. Or walk before you run. Gotta walk before they make me run.

I decided to day that “Tumblin’ Dice” is my favorite Stones song. Pretty much everything on Exile on Main St. is gold. Will: bringing you the latest in music news. If it weren’t for the Underground Garage archives and my headphones, I’d be a much less happy person.

Sitcom idea: Convent Convict. Woman gets out of prison for robbing a bank, gets assigned to serve the rest of her sentence by doing community service with a group of nuns. Every week we all learn a little something about ourselves, and about life. Dick van Patten is the sweeps week guest.

What the hell am I doing? I guess this is the equivalent of doodling if I was an artist. I wish I could draw. I check out the monster sketches over at Evan Dorkin’s page and I get jealous. But words are what I was given, and words are what I’ll use.

I really wanted to punch the weenie guy with the stupid haircut and the tie that I saw play last night. Best that I didn’t. I may want to go back to that venue and I don’t think my friends would have enjoyed the inevitable arrest that followed. To say nothing of how much I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

San Francisco, one night on my own before everyone else gets there. Golden Gate Bridge? Presidio? O’Ferrell Theater? City Lights? Need to get this figured out. Need to get a damn room booked.

Someday, I’m going to sit down and write a thorough explication Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al.” On that day, I will truly be a pretentious jerk-off.

It was almost a year ago that I got mono, which lead to a whole heap of trouble and... That’s all I’m going to say about that. Wait one more thing: fuck you, mono.

When I got stuck in that elevator last week and I started looking around at my surroundings, I noticed there was a video camera in the corner. Two things:
1. Always keep your pants on in the work elevator.

2. There should be a talk show hosted out of an elevator. Desk is situated in the opposite corner, maybe it’s one of those desks you sat in back in elementary school. The band is one guy in the next corner over. There’s an audience of one in the other corner. I need to talk to Matt and Sweeney about this. There’s a short film to be made here.

"That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Someone said that about On the Road once when they found out Kerouac hammered it out over two weeks. There’s writing to be found in typing, though. When I comb back through this mess, I’m guessing I find one or two things I like. Kerouac managed to get more than one or two good things in his typing explosion…

Okay—maybe that’s enough. Even I think this is getting self-indulgent, and this blog exists to showcase my…whatever.

It was nice of you to sit through this, if you made it this far. Actually, you probably were just desperate for something to pull you away from your workday. Still, you’ve earned some kind of reward. Let me go find a cool Youtube video for you.

Got it! I loved this song when I was kid. In retrospect, it suffers from the tiniest, tiniest bit of a case of 80’s production.

Hmmm. Some kind of issue with that video. Just click here.

Nice Try, Lao Che

Being a pilot for Lao Che airlines had to be a weird gig. At some point in your training, you are told that if your boss ever salutes you from the tarmac while laughing maniacally, you are to jump out of the plane mid-flight and leave your passengers to their deaths.

This begs a lot of questions.

1. When does this come up during the training? Do they make it clear during the first few minutes that murder and great personal risk come with the job? Is it before or after the first 15-minute “bio-break?” Do the new hires talk about it in the bathroom?

2. What kind of benefits does Lao Che offer? My company has a pretty decent 401(k) and medical/dental plane, but there’s not much they offer that would make me jump out of a plane over New Delhi. Maybe if they got that box back at Phillips. I got to see KISS that way a few years back.

3. Is your year-end bonus dependent on how many jumps/murders you have? “Don’t drink that coffee. That coffee’s for jumper-killers.”

4. Does your business card say “Pilot-Jumper-Killer?” Did they pick up girls in bars by telling them that they were "Lao Che PJKs?"

I could go on. I asked this same question over at CHUD and got some good responses.

Anyway, I just caught the end of that Terminator TV show and in the final scene a urinal turned into a Terminator in the form of Shirley Manson. I had a massive crush on Ms. Manson from during my college years, and I'm pretty sure that sequence is going to cause me to have dreams that would make Freud call me "really fucked up."

Attention, fellow southern drunks

Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka

You're welcome.

This ad caught my eye

It was some kind of debt relief ad. The picture of the guy in need of debt relief made me look twice. If you've met me, I think you'll see why.




Well, if anything happens to me (and let's face it, it will), it's good to know there's a spare.

Hit Zombie Songs

1. Constant Craving (For Human Flesh)
2. Brain in Vain
3. Everybody's Trying to Eat My Baby
4. Stop Dragging My Heart Around
5. She's Not There