Category Archives: funny

TODAY’S RANT: Invisible Conversants

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Proposed addition

Proposed addition

A few years back, I was leaving an office building when I saw a man ranting full-bore. He was gesticulating wildly, delivering karate chops to the air with vicious intent, pulling at his hair. What was even more disconcerting was the potty mouth on this guy; he weaved together a chain of expletives that would make a mafia don blush. Yet, I could recognize his words as one half of a conversation, though there was no one else to be seen. He would pause and respond, and I could vaguely imagine what the invisible conversant would have said to invoke such a response.

I, of course, concluded that this poor soul should be committed to an asylum.  I was wondering if I should call the guys with the straight jackets to bring their rubber-lined van when the man swung around to pace the pavement in the other direction and I saw the BlueTooth headset clinging to the side of his head.

I then realized that this man was not certifiable.  He was just a rude douche-bag with a bad temper.

In the good old days, when someone was talking to an invisible conversant, you knew that they had an imaginary friend speaking in their ear. While this didn’t necessarily make them a danger, it did put one on notice that voice in their head might just be saying, “Get stabby.”

Today, I think we are being desensitized by miniature wireless headset technology. Now instead of assuming the someone chatting up an invisible conversant has gone around the bend, we assume that they are communicating with a real, live, flesh-and-blood person. This may be to our own peril.

What I’m suggesting is that Bluetooth headsets be made more conspicuous. They should be in bright neon colors, and should have a flag viewable by people from all directions. The flag would indicate that they aren’t hearing the voice of Beelzebub in their ear telling them to have a nice killing spree.

Just a suggestion.

It’s only going to get worse, when the first people start getting surgically grafted cell phones.

BOOK REVIEW: You Suck by Christopher Moore

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You Suck (A Love Story, #2)You Suck by Christopher Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t read Twilight or any of the many YA vampire books that have glutted the market in recent years, but You Suck perfectly captures what real teenage vampires would be like. Tommy Flood is not a confident, suave, sexy vampire. He’s an awkward, if likable, dumb-ass. Christopher Moore’s characters are hilarious and, sadly, true to life.

Moore tickles the funny-bone as he tells a love story of a young couple up against an elder vampire, a group of other young idiots, and the cops. The fact that the couple isn’t pitted against each other– despite the fact that the female, Jody, turned Flood into a vampire– is testament to the strength of the relationship. If anything can sour a relationship, it’s one half of the couple turning the other into a vampire (or a Zombie for that matter.)

While the tension is not intense, the humor is ubiquitous. More importantly, one gets food for thought on such mundane vampire questions as:
– how does one recruit a good minion? (Abby Normal holds her own as a font of humor.)
– do cats make suitable substitutes for a blood meal?
– what happens when you bronze a vampire?

I enjoyed this book, and suspect you will too.

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TODAY’S RANT: TMI in Advertising

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I was reading the label of a bottled tea this morning. It said something like:

To offer you the fullest flavor, our leaves are not washed prior to steeping. The first time they experience water is when boiling spring-water is poured over them for brewing. This is why it’s so important that we use organic farming methods. This ensures the product you get is only tea… and water… and trace amounts of poop.

Sometimes I think big advertising is out of control. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than on Sesame Street. Big money letters like “M” get all the play and “Q” ends up being the stumbling block letter in the road-trip “ABC” game. No one wants to make more words starting with “X” or “Z” any more. Sure there’s a grassroots counter-culture movement, such as Ernest Vincent Wright’s short novel called Gadsby. Wright’s book was written entirely without the letter “e.” To be sure, “e” is a big money letter; it’s made more money off of Wheel of Fortune than any other vowel. Vanna turns the “e”s and the whole puzzle becomes clear. I heard e’s manager wanted to make its purchase value higher than the other vowels, but Pat Sajak showed his ugly side and “e” backed down.

You probably thought this post was going to be about the Super Bowl ads. I didn’t get past the first Go Daddy ad, which creeped me out. I still don’t know who Go Daddy is and what he does. (His name sounds a little like a pimp.) Which, by the way, is just like the medicine commercials. They have these ads for medicine that leave me like, “I don’t know whether your product will give me a boner or loosen my bowels, why are you advertising to me– especially if you’re going to end by telling me that, ‘Side effects may include a bleeding rectum?'”

Here’s said Go Daddy ad. Bon appetit.

BOOK REVIEW: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide, #2)The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The adventures of Arthur Dent and company continue as Zaphod Beeblebrox chases after whatever it was that he made himself forget, and the group seeks the question to match the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Neither of these issues is resolved with great satisfaction (leaving plenty to be covered in the remaining three books of this five book trilogy.) However, we do learn why Earthlings are so prone to war and bureaucracy.

Time travel is a key plot device in this book. If hilarity will get you over any hurdle, you’ll love The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. But if you’re the kind who geeks out on the minutiae like the grandfather paradox, this book may drive you crazy. They travel forward through time from a period shortly after the end of Earth until the end of the universe. Then they go back to a period 2 million years before the end of Earth.

Spatially they travel from a Vogon-threatened Heart of Gold (ship) in deep space to the Ursa Minor headquarters of the publishers of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to a planet in the Frogstar system that is home to the Total Perspective Vortex (or so Zaphod thinks) to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (which, coincidentally, is on the same Frogstar planet) to a planet where a ship full of management specialists and telephone sanitizers (and Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect) crash lands. All the while they run into new puzzles and adventures.

While the book is named for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, that locale is not especially significant to the story. They visit the restaurant in the middle of the book. The restaurant does provide more than its fair share of gags. For example, the group’s interaction with a cow that is bred to encourage diners to eat it is classic Douglas Adams.

This is definitely a character-driven novel. There’s not much of a plot to speak of, but it is hilarious.

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TODAY’S MINI-RANT: On Groundhog Day

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Attribution: Marumari (through Wikipedia)ALL HAIL, GREAT GROUNDHOG

Attribution: Marumari (through Wikipedia)
ALL HAIL, OH WISE GROUNDHOG

Today is the one day each year that I hope for first contact with an alien race, because I want their first report back to their home world to be: “Earthlings anxiously await the weather prediction of a large rodent.”

Furthermore, when the aliens ask to be, “taken to our leader”, they will be stunned to find that it isn’t the chubby omniscient rodent. They will be dismayed to learn that our political leadership not only isn’t omniscient, but isn’t even that “scient.”

On the other hand, perhaps they will back the rodents in an overthrow of  our kind. I’m not saying this will happen, but have your varmint rifles at the ready.

TODAY’S RANT: Preferred Customer Cards

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Today at the grocery store, the cashier asked whether I had a preferred customer card.

To which I, of course, replied, “No. Do you have one of my preferred cashier cards?”

I thought that she would be devastated when she realized that she didn’t have my card, but she apparently thought I was joking — which saddened me a little.

I don’t sign up for such cards for a number of reasons, most of which have to do with being a dude.

1.) Wallet real estate premium: As a man, any extra card has to be wedged under one of my butt cheeks where it will sit all day trying to cause scoliosis. While your firm’s card may seem thin, they add up. Therefore, the card had better offer great perqs, such as an option to cut to the front of the line any time I so choose or the knowledge that –should there be a maniac on the loose in the store– lesser favored customers will be shoveled in front of me as human shields.

2.) Commitment limitations: One idea behind these cards is to build customer loyalty. I’m a man who has been happily married coming up on 19 years. Every ounce of my capacity for commitment is spoken for. I have no excess loyalty to spare on a brand of canned corn or on a particular store (you all sell the same stuff.) Sorry Keebler Elves, but I am not above a midnight rendezvous with some freaky Nabisco Oreos. Don’t make me perpetrate a lie.

3.) The Fudgesicle Dossier: When thinking about who to confess my moments of greatest weakness to (as reflected in buying a gallon of “Chunky Monkey” ice cream): a friend, a loved one, a priest; oddly enough Acxiom Incorporated does not spring to mind. Acxiom is one of the big companies that collects information about when you buy tampons or condoms or gas station sushi. Somewhere in a massive server farm sits an e-file, an indelible record of a lifetime of bad decisions as reflected in my consumer purchasing history. I’m not going to feed that monster.

Any way, getting back to my story. The cashier said that without the card my total would come to $21.70, but with one it would only be $12.95. She then proceeded to “blip” a card that she had stored next to the register. It saved me a bundle, so I felt obligated to give her one of my preferred cashier cards.

TODAY’S RANT: Pudgy Dictators, Ugggh

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This is my iron hand for which to rule you.

This is my iron hand for which to rule you.

Well, the new Kim on the block is about to pop his first nuke. This will be the third test for the PAB* Dynasty over all. Of course, as an AP article today indicates, we won’t necessarily know whether they succeed because any seismic event emanating from the country might just be a perfectly choreographed simultaneous jump by all citizens.

News reports suggest that Kim is upset about the latest sanctions. While sanctions generally don’t succeed (see Iran), we have hit the DPRK leadership where they live by restricting the flow of commemorative NBA bobble-head dolls– preventing the new Dear Leader from finishing his collection. This has led to veiled threats that he might, “Stop lavishing on the world glorious views of national splendor and brilliance… or bust a nuke up in America’s grill.'”

We need a better class of dictatorial villain. North Korea’s one success has been in killing the new Red Dawn movie by providing such an improbable nemesis. (They almost killed James Bond in the same manner.) Don’t let them kill again.

* PAB = Pudgy Ass Bastard

If you like dark DPRK humor, their state news service is hilarious.

P.S. I had real trouble deciding on which caption to use for the photo. Please let me know which caption you prefer [write-ins enabled.]

KimJongUn3

TODAY’S RANT: Nukes and Ketchup

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Why was there no Manhattan Project for Ketchup?

Why was there no Manhattan Project for Ketchup?

How come we mastered the thermonuclear warhead decades before we did the ketchup bottle?

Building a nuke took:

– the greatest scientific minds Hungary ever produced (You scoff, but Hungary’s claim to fame is driving out more Nobel Laureates and top-rate scientific minds than most countries will ever hope to produce. [e.g. Teller, Szilard, Wigner, von Neumann, etc.] If they didn’t let jackwagons run their country, they’d probably rule the world by now.)
– $42 billion in current-year US dollars
– the Project Manager who built the Pentagon
– and a whopping two or three years (for the fission weapon)

Building a decent ketchup bottle shouldn’t have even required an Algonquin Round-table  It could have been achieved by two morons sitting around at a barbecue.

Moron one says, “You knows what would be delightful, if this bottle was squeezable plastic, not glass.”

Moron two says, “Dude, you are so right, and what if they turned it upside-down so that all the ketchup stayed near the hole?”

Bob’s your uncle, the ketchup bottle is perfected.

Do you know what kind of Galactic douche-bags this makes humanity look like? It makes it seem like we don’t care about our condiments.
Oh, but we do. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a man in Boise use no less than 42 packets of ketchup on his fries. I saw a rotund woman in Phoenix use half a jug of mustard on her hot dogs. I saw a canuck slather mayo on his burger (what is up with that, Canada.) From sea to that other sea, amid the prairie dogs, through the alligator-infested swamps, across those bruised mountains, I’ve seen a divinely inspired love of sauces throughout our great nation (and that ancillary nation to the north.)

No wonder aliens haven’t visited us; they probably haven’t received word across the light-years that we’ve mastered ketchup. Or maybe it’s the fact that we haven’t built a plastic fork whose tines could stick up to a sturdy gherkin. (But that outrage is for another day. Yes, manufacturers of disposable flatware, you too will taste my wrath.)

Book Review: JOHN DIES AT THE END by David Wong

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John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1)John Dies at the End by David Wong

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If the movie Alien was “Jaws in space,” then John Dies at the End is “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in the Nether World.” Except that, unlike Bill and Ted’s, Wong’s book is hilarious.

The gist of this book is that two likable anti-heroes ingest a drug, “soy sauce,” that gives them the ability to pass into an alternate universe. They’re inexorably drawn down the rabbit hole (so to speak, there is no actual rabbit hole in this book.) What they find is not what they expected. It’s not what anyone expected, because it’s so mind-boggling ridiculous and richly complex.

The title character, John, oddly enough is not the main character. The author, David Wong, uses a self-named protagonist as narrator and lead. The book unfolds as Wong (the character, not the author) tells a skeptical journalist about the strange goings-on in his small, Midwestern hometown.

We see John mostly through the lens of the narrating Wong. We know that John is a storyteller. Which may sound a lot like “liar,” but that’s not the case. Have you ever known a person who would never deceive you for personal gain, but will never fail to engage in hyperbole to make a story funnier or more interesting? That is John. He has one of my favorite lines of the book:

“We’re talking about a tentacled flying lamp fucker, Dave. What are you prepared to call unlikely?”

Despite the fact that John is a booze-hound and exaggerator, he remains an endearing character. As Wong gets to know Amy, a classmate who lost her hand after they knew each other in school, we get an insightful testimonial about John:

“Let me tell you something about John. The reason I was surprised by your hand was because John never once described you as, ‘the girl with the missing hand.’”

As for Wong’s character, he is hapless but hilarious. When he gets to know Amy, he is shocked to find that she’s not retarded or crazy. They had vaguely known each other from a “Special Needs” school, but it never occurs to him that she might be at least as sane as he.

The book is a pan-genre mélange. While it’s mostly a combination of horror and humor, there are points at which it feels like action/adventure and towards the end it seems largely like sci-fi. Horror and humor are not easily mixed, but this book does it about as well as one can imagine it being done. John Dies at the End is campy, of that there can be no doubt, but Wong writes descriptions of creatures and murderous events in a way that offers grim clarity. As a lover of humor more than horror, I was obviously not put off by this dark comedy.

Throughout the book, one suspects that the whole surreal bag of events is just a bad hallucinogenic trip, and that the “soy sauce” is just LSD on steroids. Happily this is not the case… or is it?

Don’t worry; John dying is not the intriguing twist at the end of this book. There are a couple such twists though.

If the movie that comes out today (January 25, 2013) is not awesome, it’s not Wong’s fault. The trailer shows us the quirky horror, but not the humor of the book. Much of the humor is in the language – i.e. the word choice. Some of that will likely come out in dialogue and narration, but who knows how much.
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TODAY’S RANT: Toy Movies

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Uggh!

Uggh!

I’m troubled by the devolution of movie source material. As soon as there were movies, there was a desire to convert books into films. This worked great. While it wasn’t always easy to convey the depth of a 600 page novel in a 100 page screenplay, this gave even the least of us the ability to raise ourselves up to the status of pretentious douche-bag with the mantra –say it with me: “The book is always better than the movie.”

Running low on literary fodder, movie-makers decided to shift to making movies from comic books. This worked even better. You could convey the complexity of a comic in a movie, and you had an existing visual media for continuity. The major challenge was finding actresses with huge boobs who could deliver a spinning back-kick (enter Scarlet Johansson), and figuring out what to do about the crotch bulges (or lack thereof) of male superheroes in Spandex.

Pushing the limits, directors turned to video-games. This gave us such hits as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Doom.  Okay, a video game may give us a nice action-packed romp of mayhem and carnage– albeit with dialogue like, “Suck on this!” (accompanying a grenade toss.) One can watch such a movie on basic cable on a Sunday afternoon while eating an entire pizza and still leave all of one’s mental faculties for contemplating such deep questions as whether this is the low point of one’s existence.

Movies based on toys and board games are the low point of Hollywood’s existence. I thought they had learned their lesson from the movie version of Clue in the 80’s, but apparently not. 

To show that I am nothing if not flexible, I will say that I’m willing to change my view if any of the studios are willing to develop  my ideas such as:

Lincoln Logs: Zombie Slayer: A rogue ex-cop, Lincoln Logs, takes a break from drinking himself to death after his family is Zombified to lure zombies into poorly constructed cabins, toppling the cabins, he crushes the Zombies to undeath. Tagline: “Eat Log, Bitches.”

Chutes and Ladders: Into Darkness: Two naughty children find out what happens when one chutes right off the board — an express ride to hell, that’s what. In order to get out they have to learn to count to 100, but the devil is teaching them to count: 1, 7, brick, egg, 14, 6, toad, biscuit… They must warm Satan’s heart, and then develop the upper-body strength to climb a ladder out of hell.  Tagline: “Numbers are Hard, Hell is Hotter.”

Lego Box: The Musical: A plucky red-headed stepchild is devastated when his siblings get all the Lego bricks, but he only gets the plastic tub they came in. However, through hard work and dedication, he becomes the lead percussionist for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, leaving his horrid family behind. Working Tagline: “Eat Box, Bitches.”