and done

Rated A for Awkward

2011-09-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

I find myself in a lot of stressful, awkward situations. One of the best ways for me to relax is to unwind with a movie. Movies are awesome, right? I even enjoy watching movies with other people. I grab some beer and pizza, fire up my exquisite 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound, and sit back to enjoy a moving picture with people I like. But sometimes I make poor movie choices and other times Hollywood just conspires against me, so the entire evening ends up a smoking ruin. Below are a few quick examples of movies that you should probably put some thought into before you screen them with your Great Granmammy.

1.) Saving Private Ryan

It's awesome when you make friends with a theater's projectionist when you're in high school. That super cool "I know a guy" ability is something you want to flaunt. You especially want to show it off if you take a young lady on a date. However, there are certain things I just didn't understand about dating and I honestly still haven't learned a lot in the years since.

"Girls sound a war cry on a conch shell when they want you to kiss them, right?"

Yes, I sneaked a girl into "Saving Private Ryan." It was the only R-rated movie in theaters that wasn't horrible. I was probably over compensating by attempting to avoid a movie that had sex appeal and thereby avoid any awkwardness. I guess I couldn't think of a tactful way to lean in and say "I promise that I'm not thinking about you being naked so that things won't get uncomfortable," which would have failed on two fronts as it establishes me as a liar, since I was a high school boy, so I definitely thought about naked girls and it absolutely makes everything uncomfortable forever. All things considered, it's probably for the best that "Schindler's List" was not released during my high school years.

Great job, High School Liam!

2.) The Rescuers

Did you know that someone put boobies in this movie? Covert boobies in the background? Well, they did and my friend's family apparently has crazy awesome vision. So. I imagine that put a strange twist on Family Fun Night.

It's not like you wouldn't have sneaked some ta-ta's into Pictionary anyway.

Disney has been under fire with accusations of hidden smut for years, so much so that I now watch every film as though it were a perverse "Where's Waldo?" exercise. But this was indeed out and out pornography, and Disney has never released the perpetrator or motive. It appears in only two non-consecutive frames and at 30 fps, you'd have to have a quick eye. Which apparently many people do.

Don't lie, you know you wanted to see them.

3.)Full Metal Jacket

A friend of mine actually threw her then-boyfriend under the bus on this one. She abandoned him while watching "Full Metal Jacket," a movie entirely comprised of shooting people super hard and threats to shit down people's throats after ejaculating in their eye sockets.

Also, Adam Baldwin just goes fucking nuts on a building with a machine gun.

That's not all that weird in and of itself. I don't know how many girls have left the room when I'm watching a movie they find scary/gory/perverted/dumb, but if I had to venture a guess I would say all girls ever. Even girls that I've never met. If I put on an unappealing movie, they sense it and exit whatever room they're in.

That's not even my place. She's taking it out on someone, who's probably just watching "Bagger Vance."

No, what makes my friend's act of treason so awesome is that they were watching "Full Metal Jacket" with her father. Her father. Again, I have no idea what possessed them to do so, but those were the circumstances. She basically just said, "I'm out" and vanished. And I think she did it just 'cause, you know? Either this was a test of character or she just pulled the ultimate "eh, fuck it." Both conclusions are equally hilarious.

Oh, also this event happened when she was in high school. I think they may still be friends, but honestly I stopped listening to her story after the hilarious part.

4.) Pulp Fiction

You can make the argument here with any Quentin Tarantino movie, but I feel like "Pulp Fiction" could be the most squirm-inducing. I'm not sure if my mother is able to perceive obscenities or not, but Tarantino fucking uses those goddamn words like a motherfucker. That's not the real issue here, though. Sex talk is never a really great occurrence around parents. It just feels wrong and dirty.

"There's no way whatever follows this image will be sexually deviant, Mom."

You know what's worse than talking about doin' it? Butt rape. It's totally absurd to be sitting in the same room as your mother, your mother who graduated from college before we landed on the moon. Like two years before we hung out at Lunar-ville. So, watching Ving Rhames gagged and screaming, being dragged into a backroom while Bruce Willis is watched by a character called "the Gimp" is a moment when you slowly turn your head toward your family and intone, "uhhh...." is like your pants falling down at graduation.

5.) Dicks, Shoes, and Penises. And Then More Shoes.

I guess my lady-paramour really has some genuine affection for her mother. I know this because she went to go see the "Sex in the City" movie (cleverly titled "Sex AND the City") with her mother. She claims this was an act of charity, as no one else would go. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, as she did willingly attend the first two Twilight movies. But only the first two, she reminds me, as though it makes it acceptable. Her rebuttal would be that I own a, uh, film called "Punk Rock Pussycat Dolls." It's a mail order, straight-to-DVD title.

It's an art film.

Anyway, in this horrific display of potential filial duty, my lady-friend finds herself in a theater full of lonely, middle aged women eagerly watching a movie that pretty much only features women talking about shoes and dicks. I am told that wing wongs make an appearance. I'm fuzzy on the details of how many or how often, but the giant room was filled with a cacophony of hoots and hollers. All the while, the girl I court is trying her damnedest to shrink into her chair. I assume she could no longer have any kind of eye contact with her mother on any level.

LP out.

It's Impossible to Kick the Weather in the Balls

2011-07-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Whenever I have to move apartments, a heatwave sets in and tries to kill us all. I know that my moves always take place in the summer, but I'm talking about the hottest days of the year are exactly in synch with me having to move me incredibly awesome (if inappropriate) futon bunk bed. Maybe I pissed off a gypsie or a magical hobo or an evil fairy godmother or something. Maybe I just have horrible luck, but I definitely have a curse. So, you know, sorry about that guys. If it helps, I know some Canadians that always bring cold weather when they visit. In fact, they just visited last week and brought that awesome reprieve. Although, one of them also brought that huge snowstorm we had back in the winter of 2010. I maintain that Canadians are all Ice Wizards/Witches.

This is...I think this is what Canada is like. Probably?

Anyway, last year's move had me driving all around the state, because my move was totally fucked and I wanted to die. As per the curse, it was stupid hot outside. Did you know if your car's radiator explodes and leaves on the side of the road in rural Virginia, it will ruin the rest of your day? It's true. Did you further know that if you're wearing a light colored T-shirt while waiting for help to arrive, you can look at your own perspiration spreading through the fabric as a visual timeline of how long you have left to live before you're dead from heat exhaustion? It's like looking demographic maps of a pandemic sweeping over a populace, except your sweltering chest is the diseased country and your body's tears are the wave of destruction.

But you may be asking yourself, "What can I do to stay cool after I'm rescued?" And I'm here for you with my helpful guide to see you through this insidious heat wave. I've done significant research (read "I just thought shit up and told it to you as though it were science") to bring you a few bullet points on things you can do to slap Mother Nature around and show her who wears the pants in this family. So, for instance, you can...

1.) Not Do Whatever It Was You Did As A Kid

You what's awesome? Hurling yourself down a hillside-installed Slip N' Slide, surprise water gun attacks (with the optional water balloon bombardment), gorging yourself on freezie pops, drinking 17 Slurpees until your head implodes from a massive brain freeze, hanging around in just a swimsuit, and drinking from the neighbor's hose.

Childhood!

Nobody tolerates any of that noise now. I'm not a kid anymore and I've been warned more than once by police that sneaking around people's yards with a gun, no matter what it shoots, is a good way to get outfitted with a new set of ventilation holes courtesy of bullets.

But if you're a car, they're called "speed holes"

Those behaviors just don't fly anymore. That's what I did for years to regulate my temperature in the Dog Days of summer. Apparently fun is illegal once you get a diploma. I remember exactly what the inside of a garden hose tastes like thanks to my childhood summers. These were simpler times, before the internet (i.e. we didn't have access to boobs). Though I do have to concede that height, weight, and spinal development are all key factors in the Slip N' Slide experience. Don't get me wrong, sitting on the porch with a bunch of cold beer is a lot of fun, but it isn't "hit your friend in the face with a goddamn water balloon" fun.

Pictured: so much fucking fun

2.) Go to the Movies. Maybe?

This is a method I used to get a lot of mileage out of. It might be the geeky nerd in me talking, but sitting in a dark, cold room seems like a pretty good way to escape the sweltering death choke of summer. Hollywood especially endorses visiting the cinema.

Can you still call it "cinema" if you're watching Saw?

I don't know if you guys go to a lot of movies or not, but they're pretty damn expensive these days. Of course, when I was in high school gas was only a dollar, which may skew my opinions on a lot of expenses. But there's an issue at play here that some of you may not realize.

See, everyone talks about digital rights management (DRM) on electronic media these days. You know how when you download a song from iTunes but it only lets you play it on your specific iPod or a limited number of computers? That's DRM. You can even rent movies from iTunes and cable services like On Demand, for a reasonably low price. A lot of times it's only $1.99. But, people get mad because once you start watching the movie, you have to finish in the next 24 hours or it's gone, and only sometimes are you able to change the device you watch it on. That sounds kind of like bullshit, right? Most of the time I end up renting a physical DVD/Blu-ray for one night only, but I don't like being forced to.

Because I'm a rebel!

Anyway, movie theaters do the same thing, worse even, and you don't even notice. They sell the rights to a movie for about $10 a pop and you only have viewing rights for the specific two hours when the movie is shown. And you can't pause that. There's an awesome theater near me that serves beer and wine in the lobby, but when that alcohol catches up with your bladder halfway through Lord of the Rings you just have to settle for missing part of the film.

Or settle for purchasing new pants.

3.) Die

While I've gone on record to tell winter that it can go fuck itself with an iron stick, summer can free the beast all over your face, too. There were 2,190 deaths in the U.S. between 1992 and 2001 due to excessive heat. In fact, the loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events. Combined.

Occasionally heatwaves manifest in the physical form of a flame tiger

An excellent example of what makes heat waves the deadliest weather overall is the 1995 Chicago heat wave. If you're old, dying will be one of the more likely activities on this list. While it's important to remember that people die every single day and the weather may just be picking on those that were already going to die (see "harvesting effect"), extremely hot weather can cause wildfires, power outages, extra psychological stress, and can even cause physical damage like buckling highways.

4.) Honestly, I Was Trying To Come Up With Another Topic, But All I Want Is a Cold Beer

Sorry, you're on your own

I Think We Forgot How Odd the 90's Were

2011-07-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

I recently experienced two events that drop-kicked me into a sentimental time machine. The first occurred while visiting my sister and having to explain all the old photos of me to my girlfriend. I gave up saying, "I guess you really had to be there" and then drove her all around my hometown. The second is that I watched Empire Records again. And while all of those actors are playing teenagers even though they're in their 20's, those of us who were teenagers at the time believed that's what teenagers should be like. So, you know, pretty heavy on the nostalgia there. I noticed when I was confronting this evidence that my memory was a little rose tinted.

1.) Anachronistic Jobs

This goes back to Empire Records. I can't name a single friend that still works/is trying to work in a record/movie store. That used to be THE cool job to land. And we all wanted to be friends with the people who worked there, even if you were that stuck up bitch that laughed at me in high school and only rang up my purchases condescendingly. Whatever.

I don't want to give anything away, but I was a huge nerd.

I can't even think of the last CD I purchased in a store. I think it was back in 2006. That's five years ago. Back in 1997 I couldn't go five days without setting foot in a record shop. And you'd better believe those stores were some of the first places I visited once I could drive. These temples of cool were cultural touchstones. You have plenty of movies like High Fidelity and Clerks to take as examples.

What happened? Napster changed everything, but not in the way you think. It wasn't that we could all download gigs of music for free that mattered so much as the means by which it was done. Digital distribution is hottest thing in media retailers. It's taken almost a decade for new systems to be put in place, but I'm willing to bet you spend your time downloading and streaming most of your media. The digital divide was much wider back then and internet connections were slower than a summer car trip.

Plus dial up had that awesome song when it connected.

Couple that with archaic computers with extremely limited storage (my first desktop had a just a single gigabyte of hard drive storage BEFORE Windows 95 was installed) and there just wasn't any room for growth until the industry caught up. Speaking of...

2.) What the Fuck is This "Internet" Thing?

This seems laughable today, but people had no idea what to make of the web back then. It was all over the goddamn place and I don't mean the network's physical presence. I mean that people were totally in the fucking dark when it came to implementing it. All we knew was that it involved phone lines and we got to add "cyber" to the front of every word to make them sound more awesome.

Tada! It's the Cyber E-World Web or whatever!

Up until the past few years, you could still find sites that could be viewed as text only. That isn't functionality that anyone needs anymore. Period. But it was important back then and a lot of devices required it for use. Tiger Electronics released the first hand held game console with internet connectivity, but it only displayed pages as text.

This dinosaur right here.

True, you had to connect it to a hideously large external modem and it was monochrome, but you could do it. My family even had a word processor that could do the same thing. Do you guys even remember word processors?

People even tried to inject the internet into refrigerators for fuck's sake. Although the most hilarious attempts at shoving the net into our lives were via movies. The Matrix seemed totally plausible, The Net scared the shit out of Luddites, and people believed hacking was done by kids with 'tudes, wearing roller blades and VR headsets.

Hacking, apparently.

3.) Severe and Prolonged Identity Crisis

The 1990's were extremely transitional. On top of the technological revolution, you have to remember that the Cold War had just ended and we'd lost a lot of our cultural identity along with it. And we went looking for it again like a pack rat rummaging through their closet looking for an old yearbook. For those 10 years it's like society's parents had gone out of town for the weekend and we just ran buck ass wild. Imagine the recklessness of the Twenties, but with ecstasy.

We recycled everything we could find value in, no matter how small or esoteric. The Eighties were still a little too fresh on the mind, but the Seventies had a huge comeback. And we were unapologetic about it. Lazy, even. When envisioning a new TV program, we collectively said "fuck it" and just named it "That 70's Show." We had movies like Dazed and Confused and Boogie Nights. The Sixties had their shot, too, with Boomers celebrating the anniversary of the clusterfuck mudfest that was Woodstock and the release of the Beatles Anthology albums. Tie dye shirts got pretty big. Singer songwriters got a break, too.

How else can you explain Tori Amos?

But that wasn't enough for us, fuck no. We even went and threw in some damn swing dancing in those last couple of years. That didn't even make sense. But we collectively couldn't care less. My point is, if you spent any amount of your formative years in the 1990's, you had absolutely no clue about your cultural identity. It's like if you were adopted, tracked down your birth mother, and found out she was the biggest groupie slut ever.

Take that, Liv Tyler!

4.) Cartoon Shows Went Off the Fucking Rails

I remember waking up from orthognathic surgery and being totally out of it. I guess "remember" is the wrong term, but I am theoretically knowledgeable of the event. I was in a world of hurt and pumped full of enough painkilling narcotics to make Mark Renton blush.

Sorry, you weren't eating lunch, were you?

But, I had nothing to do except layabout in my drug stupor. So, of course I tried to watch TV. I know they try to make the television controls simple by only having one button to turn the TV on, off, and change channels, but that's really confusing for a person who's so fucking high on medicine that they think all of those tubes and IV's might be transforming them into a Borg.

"Paging Dr. Third-of-Five."

So I played TV roulette and it landed on Pokemon. I was pretty sure that Japan had vomited directly into my eyes. Later, after my reconstruction was complete, I tried watching that cartoon again and it still made just about the same amount of sense. And this kind of madness was going on everywhere. What are you explanations for "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters!," "Ren and Stimpy," "Rocko's Modern Life," or "Every-Show-Ever-On-Nick?"

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" had a large part to play in this Saturday morning bedlam. After you invent reptiles trained in martial arts, all bets are off. They opened some kind of Mutant Pandora's Box and the world was forced to watch sanity and creativity take a back seat to "WTF?" Wanna make a cartoon about intergalactic leather-clad rodents? Sure, we'll call it "Biker Mice From Mars."

Don't want them to ride motorcycles? That's cool, we can go with a anthropomorphic space rabbit named "Captain Bucky O'Hare."

Fuck it, let's just mixed sharks and gangs and see what the animators can shit out.

I give you "Street Sharks."

I guess you could make a case for this insanity in other decades, but all I know is that Saturday morning cartoons completely disappeared after the turn of the century. In much the way that Batman & Robin killed the franchise until Batman Begins, the Nineties exploded cartoons.

5.) The Colors, Oh God, The Colors!

Actually, the Nineties exploded a lot of stuff. Everything had to extreme, to the max, if possible. This extended as far as the color palette of everyday life.

It was a bad time to grow up with astigmatism.

We were insatiable hedonists and we reveled in day-glo vibrancy stretched across spandex. We invented raves just to have a place to put all of the goddamn new colors we invented. Remember when I mentioned Pokemon earlier? They colorized the shit out of it so hard it gave people seizures. I'm not linking to a video of it, so it's on your hands if you go searching for the offending clip.

But we all did it and thought nothing of it. We did it to Play Doh, even.

Every kid needed to be extreme. They need to be extreme so bad, that we developed a new spelling, "X-Treme!!!" Those exclamation points aren't a personal addition by me. You just yelled a whole lot back then. Like, all the time. For no fucking reason. Those videos I linked to were for a soda. A soda that is now defunct, possibly due to it's over X-Treme!!! nature. People were just all like, "Fuck, yeah! Soda rules, motherfuckers!!!" You don't need to think about rioting when you drink a soda.

6.) I Thought I Was Kind of Cool in a Loser Kind of Way

This is the one of the best things about the argument "Pics or it didn't happen." My yearbook presence is extremely minimal and no one had digital cameras back then.

This is what we took on school field trips.

So there's about zero proof of how absurd I was back then. I am able to tell you that I wore, in public mind you, corduroy cut-offs, mismatched soccer socks, combat boots, a chain wallet, a Sailor Moon T-shirt, a flak jacket, and spiked "Atomic Turquoise" hair.

Ha ha, suckers! That shit isn't on the internet!

Look, you had to be there.

LP out.

Moving Out is Like Being Punched in the Tit

2011-06-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Moving is bullshit. I assume anyone reading this is an adult, so you've moved at least once. And it was total bullshit, wasn't it? Even if you were excited about living in a new place or going off to college or whatever, it's still a punishment from god to an evil world. And I'm going through it all again. Right now.

1.) You Always Own Too Much Shit

If you're reading this at home, take a look around your room/apartment/house/Hooverville shanty. You've probably got it in decent order. Nothing looks terribly out of control. I mean, you have stuff, plenty of it, but it's totally manageable. No. It's not and you're dead fucking wrong. The second you start that packing process you'll notice the true quantity. It's like at the arrival of boxes, all of your possessions start reproducing like coke-fueled rabbits.

I don't really want to sift through the results of a "cocaine + bunny" image search.

Where did you get all of this stuff? You don't remember carting it all around last time. Did you really bring back that many things from your parents' house over the holidays? Why do I even own some of this shit?

I really don't know how to defend this purchase.

Even if you thinned out your possessions before your last move, it doesn't matter. Chances are you just bought all new shit to replace whatever you ditched. Or maybe you just totally forgot about how much of a pain in the ass it was lugging your stuff around when you moved in. It doesn't matter, though, and you grimly face the fact that a sizable portion will "have to go." But you don't really do that. No, you stand around picking up all of your stuff and deciding that you really do want that hideous sweater from Great Grandaunt McDoodle or that you really will need all of those AV cables and old computer parts. And you do this for days. You totally lie to yourself until it comes down to right about the last day. That's when you have your "Oh, shit!" moment.

Then, out of nowhere, you are a changed person. Suddenly you are a heartless, nihilistic son of a bitch and nothing holds meaning for you any longer. You just start tossing everything in sight into the garbage, no matter how precious it was a few moments before. If you insist on putting a positive spin on this frenzy, please consider this a perfect opportunity to ditch any artifacts from a former relationship with a cheating gorgon that may still be lingering about your place.

She's hiding her face because if you see it, you'll turn to stone.

You're going to fill all of the available trashcans at your place. Then you're going to sneakily add garbage to your neighbors' trashcans. And finally you'll just give up and toss your garbage bags beside other people's trashcans. The worst is when your final moving day is trash day as well. It's pretty hard to keep your head down when you walk right past the garbage men start tossing all of your stuff into that hideous, foul-smelling maw they call a truck. You KNOW they're laughing at you.

And apparently they're also going to murder you.

2.) You're Forced to Confront Your Past

Before you get to that scorched earth policy and you're still "trying" to pack, you have to face another horrible truth: everything you've done since you lived there. You find all sorts of filthy secrets you'd locked away and forgotten. This may come in the form of uncovering well-intentioned projects that you just never finished. Remember that month when you were really fucking into knitting and you just couldn't stop talking about it too everyone you met? Say hello to your haphazard and pathetically half-finished scarf.

There are freezing kids in the world that could've used that. Ass.

Or what about the time when you were really going to get in shape and you were totally for reals serious about it this time seriously? Oh, my, it looks like you unearthed all of those exercise books and infomercial fitness gadgets you bought.

Yeah, this thing was clearly going to get you all kinds of ripped.

Awesome. Not only are you stressed about moving, but you've confronted irrefutable evidence that you're a failure. OK, well, maybe not. Maybe you're just a bad person instead. Every time you run across a borrowed movie, album, or book that you never returned or even watched, listened to, or read you'll feel a heavy stab of guilt. Worse yet, you're confronted with the decision of how to handle this. Do you have time to enjoy them now? Almost certainly not. Should you give them back? Eh, probably. Unless you hope that the lender also just totally forgot. But what if you return them and then you're asked how you enjoyed them? And then you're also asked why you're so goddamn late getting back to them? It's a gamble; live with the embarrassment or live with the guilt.

Like I said, you're a bad person.

The situation can be so much worse, though. Let's pretend you have friends willing to help you. They're going to see all of your shit. Every last thing that you hide away in a closet, drawer, or S&M dungeon is going to get exposed.

"Why do you own all of Season 2 of 'Sailor Moon' on VHS?"

There is another situation which is worse than that...

3.) Strangers Will be Examining You

And that situation occurs when your landlord leads total strangers on a parade through your private life. Typically, it feels pretty awkward to have voyeurs blatantly gawking at everything you own, so you try to make yourself scarce when your harpy of a landlord arranges these little viewings. This means you have to spend a lot of time not being in the place you pay to live in and wondering just who is secretly sniffing your bedsheets.

It's the only way he can feel alive anymore.

I've come home more than once to find the contents of my medicine cabinet rifled through. One time they just straight up took some of my medicine. You can hide things away as best you can, but they're there to investigate this place and they're going to be manhandling all of your personal items. Whatever they want to touch is fair game. And it's impossible to see the actual apartment through all of the things you've populated it with. They're not really looking at the rooms, they're judging you and probably thinking they have nicer things than you do.

Of course this all provided that your landlord was responsible enough to give you the proper amount of notice before barging in. My place right now just leaves a note on your door. No phone call, but only a gesture of "meh." That's kind of illegal, though. Even worse than that, I had a landlord that made me leave the apartment to show it regardless of the fact that I had just come home from the hospital for a serious injury the day before. Another time I was surprised by the same landlord when he just showed up and led people into my bedroom while I was changing. The viewer didn't even flinch. She just regarded me in a half state of dress and then walked out. Like I was an amenity.

"This stuff doesn't come with the place, lady."

4.) Trying to Get Back Your Fucking Money

Landlords and insurance agents are always more pleasant than when they might have to give you money back. It's not in their understanding. The normal routine is that you pay them, not the other way around. So your landlord starts cooking up all these reasons why they'll have to get a professional cleaning crew in. I was threatened with that because my cat had tossed some of her Fresh Step out of her box while I was at work. Not actual poop, just like a quarter cup of actual litter.

At any rate you're going to clean that place harder than you've ever cleaned it before. You mop, wash, and scrub everything until all you can taste is bleach and Pine Sol. But, no matter what, you know, you just know, that you're going to get fucked.

To be fair, you were already in a convenient position and dressed for it.

I had this process go well exactly one time. The guy cut me a check for my full $700 deposit right while we were standing in the kitchen. I immediately got the fuck out and dropped it in the bank before he could say anything else.

But on the way out the door, I had to walk right past the garbage man AND the building's maintenance manager...

Sorry, guys. Just...I'm sorry.

LP out.

How to be someone else who's awesome for Halloween.

2010-10-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

I operate my day-to-day routine using my own Halloween-centric calendar (fuck you, Pope Gregory XIII). I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we're one week into October. According to my system, this means you're already screwed if you don't have your Halloween properly scheduled, which in turn means that we'll never be friends again. Well, that's usually what it means, but this year I'm willing to throw everyone a bone. I'm going to assemble an emergency Halloween guide for you right here on this very blog. Think of it as a crash course in being incredibly fucking awesome.

This guy's got the right idea.

1.) Picking your bad ass costume.

The first is to determine if you are, in fact, already a bad ass. I can help you answer this question; no, you are not currently a bad ass. You're reading this guide so I know you're already in serious trouble here. Your only hope is to devise such a brilliant costume that everyone will be forced to reconvene their council of Bad Assery Evaluation. The trick here is to never pull a costume directly off the rack at Target and consider your job done. Nobody is going to remember you or your stupid non-bad ass. A general rule of thumb is to avoid any recent movies. If you're going to be a character from a recent movie, then you must strive for accuracy and you are not allowed to buy a pre-assembled costume. You need to acquire all of parts on your own and never ever let the thought "eh, it's good enough" pass through your skull. You should only stop working on your costume because your girlfriend/boyfriend is bitching that you need to be at the party in 10 minutes.

But it is OK to temporarily stop to go
check out some sweet explosions.

You need to make a serious effort to set yourself above everyone else and their store-bought polyester atrocity. Elbow grease and creativity are going to be the only weapons you have. If people want to take your photo, or better yet schedule a photo shoot, then you did an incredible job. There is one simple rule to remember: no one likes you so you have to become something cool to win them over.

Under no circumstances should you dress up as a cast member of Jersey Shore. Once you open that portal to Douchebag Hell, there is no going back. And you can never wash the image of you dressed as Snooki from your significant other's mind and they absolutely will recall that image when you two are naked.

Maybe you shouldn't tell your
next girlfriend about that poor decision.

2.) Is your costume too obtuse?

Are people going to get it or are you going to be explaining all night long? If your interests are on the outskirts of pop culture's radius, you're going to find yourself in a bit of a pickle here. Maybe you feel like you're too smart for everyone else, so you dress up as Charles Darwin. All anyone else is going to see is some old dude. Perhaps you've crafted an absolutely perfect recreation of Val Kilmer in Red Planet. It certainly sucks that nobody is going to give two shits about your spaceman costume.

Seriously, does anyone even know what this fucking movie is about?

Tandem costumes can be a big help. Ichabod Crane is just some awkward dude if he's without his Headless Horseman.

Unless said Ichabod is actually Johnny Depp.

You're already painfully inadequate in everyday life, so try to avoid it at all costs on Halloween. It can be tricky to find someone to go in with on a costume if you're single, so try to focus on a pitch reminding your prospective partner that your hideous face will be obscured by a mask or makeup.

Strangely enough, the inverse is true for girls. Typical costumes for girls want to leave nothing obscured at all. Women are awesome to look at. Agreed, right? But unless you're going out as a stripper or a naked lady, you're not really a master of illusion.

Ah, I see what you did there.

All I'm saying is that if you buy a costume that has the word "sexy" in its title, you should spend the entire night only getting your own drinks and never letting them out of your sight. It falls into the cliched saying of, "Why buy the cow, when you can ogle her tits to death?"

3.) Did you plan ahead?

This is an issue with pretty much every holiday. If you want people to look at you and think, "that guy isn't a retard" then you have to get out in front of this whole Halloween business. In much the way that you will get broken up with over birthdays/anniversaries/Valentine's Day/X-mas/New Year's/Super Bowl/Arbor Day, no one will ever talk to you again if you try to bullshit your way through Halloween. I'm warning you right now not to be lazy. Costume shops are positively swamped and Walmart just plain runs out. If you don't pay attention, you're going to be standing in the aisle, looking at the meager pickings left, and trying to decide if you should go as the Power Ranger missing a mask or as the Little Mermaid that's three sizes too small.

Sadly, I think this was planned in advance.

And don't lie to yourself about what you'll be able to manage. No experience with metallurgy? Then maybe don't pick a costume that requires you to forge the Shards of Narsil or Gondorian armor or some shit.

Out of your league.

4.) Do you even have a party to go to?

Let's hope after all of this work that you have at least one friend who's throwing a party or you're going to a contest at a bar. But if you're reading this, you're probably lazy because you need so much help with the holiday to begin with, so it follows that you're friends are probably lazy, too. It looks like it's up to you to party your way out of this one.

Spuds Mackenzie to the rescue!

There are certain dos and don'ts that must be adhered to when throwing a Halloween party. Here's a quick run down:

You must make a Halloween playlist and, yes, Thriller needs to be included on it. You absolutely need to put dry ice in the punch bowl so it steams up all spooky like. A fog machine can be used and if done correctly, a strobe light or blacklight may be added for subtle effect. Just remember that seizures and semen stains aren't good icebreakers at a party....although later on they may be a good sign that your party was off the fucking hook, yo.

You're party is most likely OK in this case.

It is crucial that you never purchase and display and novelty Halloween motion sensor bullshit. This means no candy bowls with fake hands that grab you when all you want is a Tootsie Roll and nothing that hangs on the wall, laughs at you when you walk by, and then launches into some asinine song. I don't need a trussed up fast food window speaker yelling at me because I'm walking down the hall for another beer.

It's totally a good idea to turn the front of your home into a haunted house to terrify little kids. They need to learn that nothing in life is free and that if you really want that fun-size Twix, well you're going to have to pay for it in nightmares and wet pants. When I was little, there was a house where they put a scarecrow out front in a chair and the candy bowl in his lap. Seems nice except the scarecrow was actually a live person and when you went for that candy, he jumped up and chased you with a hatchet. Sometimes another person was under his porch and would grab at your ankles when you tried to run.

This is what happened when I Google Imaged
"scarecrow hatchet" and I'm on board 100%.

LP out.

It's Morphin Time!

2010-08-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

OK, so you know how sometimes a person's moment of glory turns out to be something totally pathetic in retrospect? Or how you're trying to cut your teeth and pay your dues, but actually that struggle is as far up the later as you get? Guess what. The Power Rangers by and large got way more awesome after they left that show. So what the hell are they up to now?

1.) Thuy Trang - Yellow Ranger

This one isn't funny at all and is a complete downer. Unfortunately, Thuy Trang was killed in a car crash in 2001. It's extra sad because she was doing OK. Not super great, but pretty good. She had a role as a principal villain in The Crow: City of Angels. Iggy Pop was also in that movie, so I guess you get some extra points by proxy.

Seriously.

2.) David Yost - Blue Ranger

It's kind of hard to make a judgment call on David. I will say this: he owns a "Z Pizza" franchise and, even though I don't know what that is, I know that pizza is fucking incredible. I have to imagine that if the Ninja Turtles ever quit beating up super villains, that they'd probably own a few pizza joints as well. Other than that, David Yost is 41, which means he hasn't spiraled into a drug-fueled untimely death. Hooray!

He does look pretty tired, though.

3.) Austin St. John - Red Ranger

OK, first off he was born in Roswell, New Mexico. That means it's entirely possible that Austin's part alien. Or all alien. That must have felt weird to take a role in a show where it was his job to beat up an extraterrestrial army. It's like space treason. Secondly, he's well trained in Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Kenpo, and Shenkito. I don't even know what that last one is.

Maybe it involves face weight and Bluetooth headsets.

Also, he's a paramedic now, so he saves lives for real. Like everyday. He's possibly the only person on this list who became an honest to goodness real hero. And he lives in Sterling, VA which is my goddamn state. It's entirely possible that I will travel to Sterling and get injured just so that I can tell people that I was saved by a fucking Power Ranger.

4.) Walter Emmanuel Jones - Black Ranger

Walter and Thuy really got the short end of the casual racism stick on the show, what with their roles being essentially color coded by their ethnicity. He apparently left the show over issues regarding wages and fees. But he's managed to land small roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Shield, and even as a zombie in House of the Dead 2. Even though that movie was celluloid afterbirth by all accounts and the title of his role was "Locker Zombie," Walter Jones has still professionally played a zombie on the big screen which is an honor I would really like to achieve.

"Oscar, please." -Liam

Then again, he had major role in Backyard Dogs, a straight to video backyard wrestling production. Perhaps it was a movie tie-in with his PETCO commercials. And he was arrested for DUI in July 2009, but the charges were dropped this past April.

Also, it looks like he got to hang out with the cast of Home Improvement.

5.) Amy Jo Johnson - Pink Ranger

Ms. Johnson has managed to continue with a respectable acting and musical career. She landed a part in Interstate 60 with motherfucking Gary Oldman, which is hard core awesome no matter how you slice it. Now, you can see her in the police drama Flashpoint (in which her music is also featured) on CBS. Or CTV if you live in Canada, but nobody reading this blog lives in Canada. Previously, she's had roles in Spin City, The Division, Felicity, and ER.

And bitch loves her some Game Boy Color apparently.

6.) Richard Steven Horvitz - Alpha 5

While Amy Jo Johnson may have the strongest live-action acting career, Horvitz might have the most recognizable career in show business post Rangers flat-fucking-out. Richard Horvitz is a voice actor and you may have heard him on every goddamn Nickelodeon cartoon from the 90's. He gets around. He's done cartoons, movies, live-action (voice dubbing, mostly), and video games.

For my money, it doesn't get much better than Invader Zim.

7.) Jason David Frank - Green/White/A Whole Bunch of Others Ranger

Jason David Frank has gone on to focus solely on a very specific career path: kicking your fucking ass.

Frank seen here, about to murder martial arts to death.

He's a professional MMA fighter. He's proficient in Boxing, Karate, Muay Thai, and Jiu-Jitsu and won his August 4th pro MMA debut quickly at the time of 0:46 in the first round by a Rear Naked Choke Submission. I don't have a professional understanding of that move, but it sounds pants-shittingly terrifying and totally humiliating.

I was too scared to look up "Rear Naked Choke Submission,"
so here's a picture of a T-Rex eating a man with a machine gun.

8.) Johnny Yong Bosch - Replacement Black Ranger

When Walter Jones was written out of the show, Bosch was added to the cast. But what's he up to now? Taunting immortal demons with a huge ass revolver and a sword with a motorcycle throttle attached.

He's fucking Nero from Devil May Cry 4.

For those of you who aren't video game losers like me, he's playing the shit talking guy with the crazy arm. Oh, did I mention he did all of the motion capturing and stunts, as well? Johnny Yong Bosch has followed the Richard Horvitz school of thought and heavily pursued voice acting. What titles might he have provided voice work for, you ask? Oh, I don't know, just a couple of things you've probably never heard of, like Akira. Bosch played the role of Kaneda in the re-release of Akira, a character that's become one of the most recognizable anime icons in the West.

You know, just the guy on the cover of the damn movie.

Bosch has largely stayed within the bounds of anime and video games, as opposed to Horvitz's more mainstream, kid friendly route.

9.) Jason Narvy - Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch

This dude wasn't even a Power Ranger. He, along with real life friend and pending heart attack victim Paul Schrier, played the "comic relief" duo Bulk & Skull. The words "comic relief" are in sarcastic quotations for a reason. Only watch the video below if you worry that you might have been Hitler in a past life and feel the need to punish yourself.

Ugh.

But you know what? Mr. Jason Narvy realized that business was mindblowingly fucking stupid and he'd had enough of it, god damn it. He was gonna get him some good old fashioned book learnin'. After leaving the show, he left Los Angeles to pursue further education. He received a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in English from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a Master of Letters in Renaissance Literature in Performance from Mary Baldwin College and the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. He participated in the Young Company Theatre Camp at the ASC as a director and Master Class Fight Workshop instructor in 2004. He recently graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Ph.D. in Dramatic Arts.

Did you read that? He's now "Dr. Skull, Master Class Fight Instructor." Fucking A, dude! That is ultra success to the max!

This is what happened when I Google Imaged "Dr. Skull."

LP out.

Unintended Consequences

2010-03-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

There’s a long-standing belief that someone basically said there’s never going to be anymore new stuff. That one may be a fallacy (you figure it out, snopes.com), but people have made a lot of incredibly retarded statements about new inventions. You’ve probably said some stupid shit, too, but now you won’t own up to it. A lot of you reading this have at least an undergraduate or technical degree, are currently attending college, or have a vague idea of university life from watching the movie Road Trip. So you’ve probably had at least one idea that would change the world. Well, you were wrong. You can’t change the world no matter how many Facebook causes you join. That kind of slack-tivism gets you nowhere, especially when there are people out thinking shit up right now that you will pay money to own. Although, some of these creations have unintended, if not sinister, functions that their creators never really considered.

1.) The Internet

We can start out simple here and the Internet is low-hanging fruit. Most people are fully aware that the Internet was not invented by Al Gore and that he never actually said that, anyway. It was, however, created in response to Soviet scientific advances like Sputnik, which is still a pretty fun name to say. Back then it went by such monikers as ARPANET and was pretty much strictly for government use. It got some other names too, like MILNET, NIPRNET (which sounds totally dirty), and NSFNet. The damn thing was even designed to survive a nuclear strike, which is pretty cool because not a lot of things can do that. I included that link so you can read all about, but you won’t because you don’t fucking care. Know why?

It’s pretty much exclusively used for crime and boobs. That’s it.

This is what the Internet looks like:

Did you click on that picture to enlarge it? Go do that now and really try to take it in. And every single one of those lines ends at a thief or a titty. Sometimes both. It’s kind of like the best rat maze ever. Some crazy illegal shit goes down on the net. We’ve all come into contact with a Nigerian prince at some point, but it gets way worse. Fraud and extortion make sense, OK. But drug trafficking? You know things have really changed when you can use your Dell as a coke mule.

Where do you jam the condom full black tar heroin?

Murder is a serious WTF, though. Cannibalism or consensual murder is pretty fucked up. Never before have cannibals been able to have a little man-eating sewing circle from the comfort of their living rooms and that scares me to death. One in thirteen of you have thought about eating a person at some point in your adult lives.

I just made that shit up but you're totally thinking about it now.

And I can’t use Google Image for five minutes without encountering some level of nudity. When I was growing up, we had to work for our naked chicks. Kids had to steal their dads' magazines or be content with staying up late to watch the scrambled Spice Channel. If you wanted porn before, you had to walk to a creepy store with blacked out windows and avoid eye contact while purchasing your smut. Unless you live in Europe. I hear that everyone over there is pretty much naked all of the time.

2.) Cell Phones

Obviously these things have changed our lives hugely. Chances are you feel naked without yours. I know I’ve parked my car and run back into my apartment when I’ve left it behind. And I don’t do that with most things.

"Shit, did I leave the stove on? Did I leave the stove on with a baby on top of it!? Meh."

Most people use them completely in place of landlines. They damn near do everything and we depend on them for our very lives. Sometimes citizens with camera phones are the first to capture news events. Or whatever hilarious hobo they just saw.

Actually this is funnier than any hobo image I could find.

We’ve worked them into our lives so much that we’re developing completely new neuroses just for them.

Bitch, can't you wait five fucking minutes?

So what’s so bad about them? Fucking everything! They take all of the Internet’s problems and put them right in the palm of your hand. Don’t worry, though, they come with a whole new slice of horrible problems. Sexting, talking/texting while driving, electronic waste, gambling, the legality of recording by civilians, location tracking, and all kinds of photography issues are all part of that rich bouquet. “Blackberry thumb” sounds like it’s for pussies, though. Kids have killed themselves because embarrassing photos of them have spread like Ebola monkeys.

I’m not saying Outbreak is worse than child suicide, I’m just saying it fucking sucks and you should go to jail if you pay money to see it.

What’s worse, next time you’re in a public place like the mall, subway, or public restroom, look around and see how many people are on the phone. They’re all talking to someone, but not each other. I can’t even remember people’s phone numbers anymore. Nobody really wants to interact with anyone else anymore. Not if it isn’t through some weird digital medium. Which is fine, because I fucking hate people and their stupid voices.

Another major concern is that before we had cell phones, we had no idea how fucking greasy our disgusting faces and fingers are.

Seriously, it’s like you’ve got KFC strapped to the side of your head.

3.) The Mii Channel

Most of us have played the Wii and had a good time drunkenly creating the most retarded Mii possible. The Mii Channel is basically social networking, if you took out the communication, most of the social aspects (because they almost always need to be in the same room as you), and all of the networking. I don’t care that your Mii shows up on my console. It’s pretty much just an inoffensive avatar that I can beat to death in boxing, if I can get my character to even throw punches.

But here’s the rub: there are plenty of people on there that I don’t want anymore. Facebook can be the same way, but you can immediately unfriend someone when they update some bullshit status.

“OMFG I totally just did some underachieving, mundane minutia! Give me a goddamn prize!”

With cell phones it actually makes sense to keep some of the people you despise in there because a.) drunk dialing is totally hilarious, b.) you can screen your calls/messages.

“If my fucking son calls me one more time I’m going have him killed by yakuza thugs.”

But the Mii Channel is different. I’ll kick on some Wii Sports or whatever and play a game of tennis because I haven’t accidently thrown things at my TV in a while. Or maybe I want to play some baseball. Boom. The trap is sprung. Suddenly I’m forced to compete with or against all of the stupid “friends” I intentionally lost contact with and every fucking ex-girlfriend that I can't stand the mention of. That is not an OK thing. I hate these people and I’ve said some vicious shit about a lot of them.

“Get out of my goddamn life, fuck-slaw!”

And I can’t immediately do anything about it. I have to stop my game and go to the special channel where they live. Then I have to track them down while they actively try to walk away from my cursor. I will admit that it’s fucking awesome to snatch them up by the head, watch them flail wildly, and then throw their body into a garbage can. It’s like being some guy in the mafia that everyone calls “Tiny” or “Bulldozer.”

So the Mii Channel has become this cursed realm for me, inhabited by woeful, malevolent phantoms. I feel like I need to go on a Stalin-esque purge just talking about the damn thing. It only succeeds in making me feel rage, shame, and disgust. And that’s a combo meal that you normally can only pick up from a dominatrix or Taco Bell.

“I always order the #3 Meef Chewbacca with Queasy-ritos, and I regret it every single time.”

4.) Man vs. Wild

Watching a dude survive against all odds in nature should be awesome, right?

Pictured: awesome

The reality is you sit through an hour of watching a man drink his own piss.

Or elephant piss via elephant dung. He’s not picky, really.

LP out.

Think Diff'rent

2010-01-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

No. OK? No, Apple, I'm not going to buy your new $829 paperweight. I'm mad about the iPad, not because it's new and expensive, but because they're telling me that I fucking need it. Nobody needs this. The entire product is like recycled parts from other devices they've already made, and many were questionable. But you can read all about these horrible atrocities on any site because they are 100% true. What's worse is that in the year 2010, a year that they've made science fiction movies about where HAL 9000 hangs out around Jupiter, Steve Jobs described technology as "magical." For real? Magic? That's the kind of thing that puritans would accuse you of if you took a Zippo back in time to Salem, Massachusetts. Magic is reserved for deities, warlocks, and those goth kids in high school that watched "The Craft" too many times.

based on a true story

What kind of trouble is your PR department in if they have to tell consumers that your newest invention is powered by dark sorcelations? This is like The Beatles saying they were bigger than Jesus, although in their case, they can at least claim it was taken out of context. And it's not like this is the first time Apple has shown up with a half-assed science project that they left until the last day to do. Or did you forget?

1.) The Apple Newton

This device was ridiculous enough to warrant Nelson Muntz on the Simpsons making fun of it.

that's not even a fucking joke

That's what the Newton spit out when Nelson wrote "Beat up Bart." The show was mocking the Newton's complete inability to translate handwriting into text, otherwise known as "the-huge-innovation-they-were-really-pushing-hard-on-the-Newton." They can be given a little bit of credit here for pushing the idea of the PDA. But they didn't even do a good job at their stated purpose, which they were never able to actually define. The thing with Apple is that they strive not to just be the spear point of innovation, but remain the best option even when that technology becomes common place. A lot of people owned PDA's, yes. Hell, I still have one in my desk. But nobody at all had a Newton. Did you ever even see them in Staples or wherever (there were no Apple stores back then)?

also it was the size of the meteorite in Armageddon

2.) The Apple PipPin

You didn't even know this was a real thing. But it was and it's been placed on numerous "worst products" lists.

and it doesn't even look like that hobbit from Lord of the Rings

This entertainment console was apparently released in 1996, but you could have fooled me. You know why? I was too busy playing games on the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo (it still had a little life left in it), and even the goddamn Saturn.

don't you dare judge me

I can't even name you one game that came out on the PipPin. I'm told that it was a bigger deal in Japan. So? Everything is popular there. I'm a big deal in Japan. Vending machines that sell used underwear are huge in Japan and that is the antithesis of a compelling argument.

3.) Apple TV

This one's new, so they have no excuse for it. You're probably in trouble when Penny Arcade devotes their resources to making fun of you. Do you have one of these sitting next to your TV?

answer: no

Because you already have a computer and probably an iPod. If you want to watch movies from iTunes, you just watch them on your computer or iPod. Duh. Oh, I almost forgot, you probably have Netflix, Video on Demand from a cable provider, one of those Red Box things that charge you $1.00 a night, or a motherfucking Blockbuster card.

Apparently this shiny box is indeed selling, since Apple keeps posting projected sales. But I have no idea who these people are and I don't much care to.

4.) Their Stupid Mouses/Mice/Whatever

Remember this bastard from why back at the turn of the century?

eh?

That fucking hockey puck made my life hell when I was in Photography class. Trying to use an already super slow iteration of Photoshop while using this disc caused me to fuck up a lot of projects. And it left my hand as a gnarled claw. And I guess this was their response:

Apple products are so shiny you're not supposed to touch them

A mouse that had no buttons but still clicked on every fucking thing you moused over. Maybe if you have pincers to hold it, it works a lot better.

it was probably huge with crabs

5.) Macintosh Portable

Laptops are pretty rad. They're even calling them "desktop replacements" these days. But you know what sucks? Needing a really sturdy desk to support your "laptop." The Macintosh Portable weighed in at a devastating 16 pounds.

"I'm just big-boned you guys."

Human babies weigh less than that and I don't even want those on my lap. And the problems didn't stop there. If you used the batteries and ran them down, they failed completely. Like "you couldn't ever use them again" kind of fail. We've all had our cell phones die in the middle of a conversation because we were negligent in charging or that phone sex operator was just saying all the right things.

"So, what are you wearing?"

But imagine throwing away your battery, or worse your iPhone, if the battery died on you. Also, if the batteries were dead, you couldn't get this beast to turn on even if it was plugged into the wall. All I'm saying is that for a price tag of $6,500, I want to be purchasing a device that, you know, works. It could have been worse, though.

6.) The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh

Released in 1997, it was expected to cost $9,000. Hitmen work for less than $9,000, meaning some people's lives are worth less than that computer. Thankfully, Apple took pity on us and lowered the price to a much more manageable $7,499. Seriously, I'm glad they left that extra $1.00 off because $7,500 is waaaaaay too much.

in 2010 dollars it's worth like, infinity dollars

LP out.

Winter is Stupid

2010-01-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

Some people can be described as not being a "morning person." I am not a "winter person" and I want to make that explicitly clear. I'll get it engraved on a ring and punch you in the face Phantom-style if I have to. There's a reason airfare drops to the Midwest during these months and it's because being freezing cold sucks and it's winter's fucking fault. Don't believe me?

1.) Shorter Days

Look, I know that there's no changing the laws of the solar system and that the Earth is just going to keel over on its axis. It's like your drunken friend that, no matter how close to their door you drop them off, they're going face first onto the pavement.

at least they won't remember it until they start puking the next day

Such it is with the Earth's rotation. But what really makes it worse is motherfucking Daylight Savings Time. First off, I don't know what they're actually trying to save. It's not like there's a goddamned daylight bank. You can't store up your daylight all year long and then go buy a PlayStation 3. It's intangible and anyway it doesn't belong to you. It's Daylight Theft Time, is what it is, and you're stealing it from me and every other person that enjoys not living in a pitch black void. And because it's cold, you don't go outside during the day if you don't have to, thus you inhabit a nightmare world of eternal darkness. I am willing to go to work in the dark OR come home in the dark. But I am not down with the one-two punch of darkness. It only leads to heavy drinking and surly blogs on my part.

2.) The Weather is Actively Trying to Murder You

Yeah, yeah, I know that there are other times of the year when the weather can kill you. Severe thunder storms and hurricanes will fuck you up, no doubt.

and twisters can throw a whole lot of Helen Hunt right at your face

Those are bad experiences and anyone who has gone through them can tell you that. What's different is that winter weather is constantly assaulting you. You don't get a break. The best you can hope to get away with is freezing cold temperatures. It's unrelenting. But the Snow Miser makes it so much more of a pain in the ass with precipitation.

motherfucker didn't even try to save X-mas

There is no other season that has the variety of precipitation that winter has. Have you ever heard of a "Spring Time Mix?" No, because that isn't a real fucking thing. And even if it was, it would probably just mean that you'd get rained on by tulips, pony dreams, and rainbows. But everyone knows that a "Wintry Mix" is a great opportunity to wreck your car, lose power, and die.

3.) You Need Equipment to Survive

You know what you need to make it through summer? A fan. Maybe an air conditioner if you want to be extra comfortable.

although Dentyne Ice has the same effect

In autumn, I guess you need need a hoodie and potentially a rake for the leaves. If you're a show-off bastard you may even have a leaf blower. Spring only requires friends and beer to enhance its preexisting awesomeness. If you hate April showers, you might want to invest in an umbrella. But, oh no, not fucking winter. Winter doesn't even want you to survive. It wants you to end up like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

it's a winter wonderland!

Winter hates you. If you want to continue living with most, if not all, of your extremities you're going to need to stock up. You need hats, coats, scarves, boots, snow shovels, ice scrapers, road salt, gloves/mittens, layers upon layers of clothes, fire, bread and milk, power companies with cherry picker trucks to fix your iced over power lines, something with Gore Tex because it sounds awesome, extra blankets, snow tires, friends to help push your car out of a snow embankment, and something to do inside to occupy your time since it sucks outside. That's a lot of things and a lot of them sell out when there's the slightest hint of oncoming bad weather. In the summer, the store clerk never says, "I'm sorry sir, it appears we're completely out of beer, charcoal, burgers, volley balls, bikinis, and good times." And that's another good point right there, winter has a noticeable lack of bikini-clad women. Or men, if you're into that.

4.) February is Bullshit

February is technically the shortest month, but you'd never believe that if you've lived through even one February. It is, in fact, the longest month. At this point in the winter season, you just want it to end. It's dark, cold, wet, and you're running low on Gore Tex or whatever. To borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams, it is the long dark teatime of the soul. Side effects of February may include a sudden interest in whiskey, irrational purchases, reading Bukowski, and German existentialism. But wait, there's more!

MORE?!?!

February has invented the one holiday strictly conceived to make you feel like shit. God damned Valentine's Day. You're fucked. That's all there is to it. It's anguish for everyone involved. You just got through X-mas, which means if you're seeing someone or married you've already had to come up with a romantic, thoughtful, and creative present. And god only knows when your anniversary is and what you thought up for that. Now you're expected to do it all over again. Fuck that. You know what's awesome? Showing someone how much they mean to you on a date that's actually important and relevant to your lives. I'm all for that. I'm not OK with setting a pass/fail date like it's a goddamn college entrance exam.

"college" is used here to represent the amount
of clothes the two of you will be wearing

And Valentine's Day hates single people. It wants singles to feel so bad that they see the world as nothing but a series of gallows and guillotines. Want to watch some TV to take your mind off of your loneliness? Get ready to be assaulted by a nonstop barrage of ads telling you that "he went to Jared." How about just pigging out on some candy? Hope you like eating chocolate out of heart shaped boxes to remind you that yours is broken in half. Want to go to pick up some beer or wine to drown your sorrows in? You've got to make it through the completely tacky aisle of red and pink children's cards.

even children get more action than you

You know that scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray declares that there's no way this winter is ever going to end? That's what you're in for.

Except with less Andi McDowell.

LP out.

Sony: Failing Real Good Since 1975

2009-12-15T05:03:00.000-08:00

It's X-mas season again, which means if you're a guy under the age of 30, you're entertaining sweet reveries of the latest electronic devices. The desire to constantly acquire and update anything with circuitry is keyed directly into the Y chromosome. It's right there between Adam's apple and testicles. Best Buy circulars are straight up gadget porn to dudes, even though I won't shop there because of their annoying ads with carolers that get stuck in my head (hahaha, your turn!).

we're going to need some alone time

Anyway, every time I buy a movie now all I can think is how much more badass it would be on Blu-ray with an HDTV. It's a bit annoying since marketing drones across the world just finished telling me how awesome DVD was and now they're like, "Come on, guys. We weren't even serious about that last one. All the cool kids are doing Blu-ray now." I guess I just suggested that all forms of media are drugs...but I'm going to run with that analogy: DVD's are now the Quaaludes of the media world.

The really important thing of note here is that Sony has finally won. They've been pushing proprietary formats for a long time and they've finally got us hooked. No one brand was directly responsible for the CD and DVD formats. In fact nobody even knows what the fuck DVD stands for. So because no one owned those formats, no one was able to collect all of our souls as payment. Well, Sony decided that just wouldn't do. Sony makes movies. That means if they'd wanted to play hard ball they could have chosen to make their movies available only on Blu-ray. They were always going to win against HD DVD. And now we must come to love our new master. But maybe you've forgotten about all of the failed attempts Sony has made to lure us into they're creepy van.

hint: they didn't use candy

1.) Magic Gate/Memory Stick:

Sony actually did pretty well with this one, mostly because we didn't know any better. It's like when you first got the internet back in 1996 and you subscribed to AOL because "why the fuck not?"

because everyone at AOL hates you, that's why not

We've seen a lot of rapid expansion in digital technology and a lot of people just grit their teeth, shut their eyes, and dive in. When the average consumer goes to buy a device, let's say a camera, they don't always go in with all of the information they need. It usually boils down to knowing that a.) more mega pixels are better, and b.) high profile brand names are the only way to go. That's not very helpful.

would you like the Magnet Box, the Panaphonics, or the Sorny?

You know the Sony name. They make good shit, right? And how were you to know which memory card was going to become the most widely used? You probably had only heard of the competing Compact Flash cards at the time. But the real place that Sony found an application for this technology was in their PlayStation systems. The PlayStation 2 used memory cards which we'd come to have accepted as standard. These memory cards exclusively required Magic Gate authentication. That means that not just any company could produce third party cards. No, you had to be directly licensed by Sony, which meant the prices were fixed. So while I could buy a 512MB card for my Nintendo Game Cube for $30, I was stuck buying 32MB cards from Sony over and over at $20 a pop. And the PlayStation Portable requires a Memory Stick as storage. So if you want to use any of those devices, you're just going to have to ask Sony to "please be gentle."

2.) UMD:

While we're on the topic of the PSP, who could forget the Universal Media Disc? So compact and sexy. And it's universal! You can do anything with this son of a bitch!

you can even use the cases to store Sony's other formats!

OK, so it's a disc-based portable system and that's a first. Neat, right? No. No one gives a fuck. That's why they're out there playing Nintendogs or whatever, that are just printed on a flash-memory cartridge. Disc-based systems run into a lot of problems. Remember when portable CD players were becoming common? Remember how they could detect an earthquake in China and they would immediately skip? That's the problem. There a ton of tiny, precise moving parts in those things and it doesn't take much for one to break and fuck up the entire thing.

you're fucked

But back to the "universal" part. You were supposed to be watching movies on these fuckers. That sounds fine on paper, right? Well, the catch is you paid the same price as a full DVD which contained bonus features, commentaries, surround sound profiles, and higher resolutions. The UMD movies had none of that. Oh, and more than one person could watch a DVD at the same time. This concept was so mind bogglingly retarded that even Walmart stopped selling UMD copies of movies because no one wanted them. Also, the little open space where the PSP's laser read the UMD was completely uncovered and prone to scratching...

3.) MiniDisc:

...But the MiniDisc at least had a sliding cover to protect the optical disc inside, as well as some hardcore anti-skip protection. And what's more, the MiniDisc was a moderate success for Sony. Just not with you. No, all of you owned CD players because that was the cheaper, more logical thing to do. When you bought a CD, you were like, "Great, I just a bought a CD! On the way home I'm going to listen to it on my car's CD player and when I get home I'll listen to it on my stereo, and when I go out for a jog, I'll listen to it on my portable CD player." Why buy another, more expensive player that required its own special kind of discs and needed a computer to convert your CD into ATRAC format files (true MP3 profiles weren't supported because, you know, Sony didn't own them)? Only music industry, radio, and audiophiles bought this fucker.

I actually own several...

The MiniDisc did have some really bitchin' qualities, though, and that's why it was used in all of those industries. First, most of the players were compact and ran off of one AA battery for around 36 hours. Batteries used to be a big deal in the era of portable CD players. Second, each MiniDisc could hold about five CD's worth of music. That's a lot of music in a small space and each disc was rewritable. Think of it like a removable storage medium for an MP3 player. The third and maybe most important feature to sound nerds, it had an optical jack (most people don't fucking care) and a microphone input. You could record directly into this thing. So it got used a lot for high quality, digital recordings of interviews. Beyond just recording, you were able to place or remove track marks at any point in a recording or song. So you could jump to different sections of an interview or just skip right to the part of a song you actually like.

Having sung its virtues, this motherfucker is the bastard son of the CD-R and the MP3 player. It was middle-ware and really had no place in the consumer market. You probably didn't even remember it. Or, at best, you thought it disappeared a long time ago. Guess what? Fuck you, that's what.

4.) Motherfucking Betamax:

There's not really much I can say here since the name "Betamax" is synonymous with failure. Most people born before a certain date remember this high priced paperweight. It was launched in 1975, but I knew more people growing up with Laserdisc players than these god damned things. But there was a massive war between Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS cassettes. The 1-hour recording time probably hurt them there since VHS (which stands for "Video Home System" because don't even pretend that you knew that shit) could record up to 4-hours. And this was in a day when VCR's cost the low, low price of infinity dollars.

you've probably got enough there for a VCR and a copy of Flashdance

Hey, at least they did better than DIVX managed against DVD. You don't even fucking know what DIVX was, so don't even play.

again, I still own two of them...

LP out.

Halloween is Better Than Whatever Holiday You Like

2009-10-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the deal, plain and simple: Halloween is way more awesome than you, your mom, or your whatever you got for your tenth birthday. And I'll tell you exactly why.

1.) Halloween is a Legitimate Excuse for Vanity

On Halloween, your only job is to be bad ass and make sure that everyone knows it. It's a competition. You actually go to places to win prizes based upon how awesome you are.

It's not always going to work out in your favor, though.

In fact, not only are you rewarded for your impression of a serial killer/demon/racially inappropriate costume, but if you can't come up with anything good, you're actually derided for it. That's like if you gave your dad a lame tie for Father's Day and he then proceeded to tie up your hands with it while he beat you with his belt.

Lame Second Place:

The only thing close to Halloween in this respect is the time honored tradition of over-the-top X-mas lights. Except what you win there is the "White Trash of the Year Award."

Is this guy inclusive or retarded?

2.) Halloween is Openly Selfish and Greedy

This one barely requires explanation and is particularly evident amongst children. Children have no real crafting skills and their costume creativity extends only so far as the movie they just saw. So what happens here is their costumes' level bad-assery is qualified solely on how much money their parents spent on them, and, by extension, how much their parents love them.

Pictured: So much love/money.

But here's where it really gets good. After the child looks awesome (through no effort of their own), they march up to strangers' homes and demand to be rewarded. Holy shit!

That girl is even kneeling in his presence!

That never works for anything else in life. If I showed up at your house, banging on the door at 10:00 at night to tell you that I'd just beaten my previous high score in Tetris, you would call the fucking cops.

Lame Second Place:

St. Patrick's Day has no end of apparel that demands you preform actions upon the wearer based solely on their ethnic heritage.

Even wasted chicks won't fuck you in that shirt.

The difference here is that a child on Halloween takes your candy away from you, and a drunken "Irish" man vomits down your throat when you kiss him.

3.) Halloween Allows You to Terrify People Legally

Other holidays simply try to amplify an emotion that you're already supposed to be expressing. Pretty much universally, the emotion expressed is one of kindness and respect. Those holidays are for pussies.

At least Arbor Day is making a fucking effort.

Halloween keeps it real. It's never acceptable in day-to-day life to jump out at people and give off the impression that you're about to murder them. Worse yet, the impression that you have already been recently murdered and are now going to murder them.

Think of it like a really fucked up game of Telephone.

Now, you may feel these urges every day, but you don't get to act upon them without going to jail, otherwise known as "the place where real murderers will rape you."

Lame Second Place:

Fucking Valentine's Day. Don't even pretend that's the kind of shit you think about when you get up in the morning.

THIS IS NEVER SOMETHING YOU THINK ABOUT!

4.) Pranking the Shit Out of People

We're not talking about "Ha ha, I got you!" kind of pranks. I mean malicious, over-the-top pranks...that frequently backfire in hilarious or ironic ways.

Lame Second Place:

Obviously, April Fool's Day. But when an April Fool's joke goes sour, you don't fucking die.

"Ha ha! I got y-...gurgle, gurgle..."

LP out.

Overkilling the Dead

2009-09-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

This spiel has been a long time coming and somebody's got to say it: zombies are so last season.

That's not easy for me to say, either. I have a long-standing love affair with the inept undead and everyone knows it. But so does everyone now. This funny article over at Cracked hilariously confirms that fact. But that isn't the only piece of evidence that I have here in my briefcase for my prosecution.

1.) Enough with the Shitty Fucking Movies Already

I'm not naive enough to pretend that I discovered zombies and they're my special secret. Zombie movies have been around since the advent of motion picture technology, even before talkies! Wanna know why? Zombies are hands down the easiest monster costume. Period. If you want to be all lame with your get up, all you need are dark rings around your eyes and a stiff gait.

you lazy fucks

Yeah, I know all too well how complex zombie make-up can end up being. You can get crazy elaborate with it and create some totally awesome, vomit-inducing effects. But it's this range of detail that gives studios carte blanche to go buck-ass wild. If you're creating a zombie horde, the path of least resistance is to focus attention on the foreground zombies and slack on the rest. Some blurry dude in the back with darkened features and fake blood on his shirt is perfectly believable for the .5 seconds that he shows up in the background. It's your front line troops that need to be all jazz hands and spirit fingers.

this is a strong example of what the fuck?

The end result of this cost-effective ghoul is that a lot of shitty plots get green lit because it costs next to nothing to make them and a return on your investment is pretty much guaranteed.

2.) If I Wanted to See Cheetah-People, I Would Have Gone to See that Movie

Don't bullshit me, zombies don't run. I know that it gets a little silly to argue the physics of completely fictional monsters, but I'm sorry, dead things are never better at living than things that are alive.

I just realized that a movie about cheetah-people would be totally bad ass

One of the only things that makes zombies scary (because if they're not zombies, they're just normal dudes hanging out) is their unrelenting plodding down the street towards while you scurry in a panic, only to realize that you're surrounded and your noose is slowly tightening. They slowly gang up on you and represent a threat because of their single-minded, strength-in-numbers policy. If you make them crazy fast, well, they could be any monster. Or a sniper. And then you're not in a horror film, you're in an action flick.

terrifying in its own right

Before you start screaming, yes, I make an exception for 28 Days Later...sort of. For all intents and purposes, it's a zombie movie. But the infected aren't dead. They're totally alive and rabid. Have you ever seen a rabid animal? They're all panic and aggression. And they're about to be dead, but they aren't yet.

3.) I've Killed Too Many to be Scared

Even the Resident Evil games (because fuck those movies outright) had to change up the formula because it got stale. So stale, in fact, that it became fashionable to beat the games using only the knife, otherwise known as "the weapon you get rid of immediately because it's so fucktastically worthless."

that's what you'd look like to a zombie

It only takes you about five minutes in those games to realize that there's nowhere near enough ammunition to kill every zombie and all you have to do is run around them. That's it. Game fucking over. At least the Silent Hill games tried to toss some David Lynch style, freak-out content in their games instead of just having shit come through windows. Although, they didn't have zombies in them per se and their movie was a celluloid abortion.

4.) Because They Reveal Everyone's Desire for Murder

Zombies were people and the point is often made that they were people you cared about. And you get all excited about the opportunity to shoot them.

in the face, no less

People exploding can be incredibly entertaining, but you have to keep this sort of thing in context. The situation here is often you putting down your friends and family. The people who actually want to do that in real life go to fucking jail. Yeah.

5.) The Social Commentary is Trite as Fuck

Zombies as a reflection of modern society are about as subtle as Oliver Stone's Platoon.

I get it, you're supposed to be Jesus/Red Badge of Courage dude.

6.) I'm Just Straight Up Tired of George Romero's Hack-Ass Bullshit

what's up, douchington?

LP out.

Australia is a never ending parade of death

2009-08-18T07:11:00.001-07:00

I watch a lot of Discovery Channel. A large reason for this is the fact that you never have to wait more than an hour for something to blow the fuck up. The danger of the channel is that, without much warning, suddenly your program starts to highlight situations of unmitigated horror. But the two most important lessons I've internalized are that you can drink your own urine and Australia is hell on earth. Actually, both can be true at the same time. Here's my logic:

1.) The Continent Is a Sci-Fi Apocalypse

The climate of Australia is scientifically described as "murdertastic." Australia is what happens when you play Sim City and you straight up don't give a fuck about what happens to your population and natural resources. In 2004 scientist Tim Flannery made a prediction that if the city of Perth doesn't make some pretty serious changes, it's going to run out of water and will need to be abandoned. That is fucking scary. With a population of 1.6 million, there's going to be a lot of really thirsty, pissed off ex-residents. Water restrictions are already in place in a lot of cities.

Suck it, Perth

Climate change and ozone depletion are huge concerns in Oz. The country is the largest producer of greenhouse gases per capita in the western world. Rainfall in the wet season between May and August has decreased by 20% since 1968 in southwest Western Australia (PS - pick a goddamn direction and stick with, Australia). Not to mention the fact that 18% of the land in Australia is uninhabitable desert.

3.) Sharks, Oh Dear God, Sharks!

In 2000, the year with the most recorded shark attacks, there were a total of 79 attacks worldwide and only 11 of those were fatal. So there's about 360 different species of sharks out there and only four of those have been involved in a significant number of fatal attacks on humans. Those are pretty good odds. Guess what?

Australia is home to three of those species.

Pictured: a shark makes a helicopter its bitch

The bull shark, tiger shark, and great white shark all call Australia home. But that's just the ocean, right? If you just stay out, you'll be fine. Guess what?

Bull sharks can tolerate fresh water and frequently swim inland upstream.

This is the kind of shit that goes on all of the time in Australia

4.) Crocodiles that Eat Fucking Buffalo

The Aussies call these monsters "salties," but I can't imagine for an instant that it's a term of endearment. They're kind of an ambulatory garbage disposal for anything alive. Their diet includes, but is not limited to (goddammit), birds, monkeys, dingos, kangaroos, buffalo, humans, and sharks. Did you read that?!? These fuckers EAT SHARKS!

Pictured: a crocodile having just made a shark its bitch

You also need to take into consideration the size of some of these prey animals. Go to the zoo and look at a buffalo. They're massive. Now think about that in relation to the size and build of your average human. The number of estimated fatal attacks on humans annually varies wildly between dozens and thousands, proving that these motherfuckers are dangerous and Australians are really shitty at math. If you ever come into contact with a salty, you're goin' down, son.

5.) Everything In the Water Hates You

The blue-ringed octopus is about the size of a golf ball and can alter it's skin to display some pretty gorgeous shades of the color blue. But here's the rub: those pretty blue rings are the harbingers of your doom...26 times. The blue-ringed octopus has enough venom in one bite to kill 26 adult humans. And there's no antivenin, so have fun dying.

"I'm a huge jerk."

It's going to be a super bad death, too. The venom causes motor paralysis and respiratory arrest. This means you can't swim to the surface, splash around, or yell "Help! This octopus totally just made me its bitch!" Oh, and then your heart can shut down shortly after that. And remember that this entire time you're in the fiercest pain of your life, except for that time you got dumped in the sixth grade. If someone sees exactly what's happened, rescue breathing can save your life but you most likely won't appear responsive in any way. So depending on how big of slacker your rescuer is, they may just give up on you and go get shrimp or something.

6.) The Ocean of Australia is the Devil's Aquarium

Meet the box jellyfish. It hates you and it doesn't even have a brain. They can actively hunt prey which isn't something that jellyfish typically do. Normally they're lazy bastards that wait for food to brush up against them, like a sweaty pervert playing grab-ass on a crowded train. But that's not the sort of bullshit attitude that the box jellyfish stands for. No, it will chase at speeds of up to four knots, which is sailor talk for "as fast as a human can swim." Clearly whatever made this creature did so just to fuck with the us.

Your life is over in 3...2...1...

Strangely enough, the best treatment is pouring vinegar on the wound. Of course, cardiac arrest occurs almost immediately so I hope you were making salad when you got stung. Also, sea turtles are immune to the sting which ranks them as the coolest turtle that isn't also a ninja.

Because I don't feel like creating another entry for Australia's Sea of the Damned, the stone fish is another nightmare come to life. Doctors report that the sting is so painful, victims often beg them to amputate the affected limb.

7.) God Awful "Music"

I'm not just talking about Russel Crowe's train wreck of ear rape, I mean tunes that actually hit the airwaves. Dexy's Midnight Runners wrote an immediately recognizable song even if you never remember their actual name or that they wore stupid overalls. "Come On, Eileen" has been covered a million times and is required to be played in any 80's themed movie or flashback sequence. (On a side note, even worse than that was Sweden's own yokel-themed one hit wonder [hit is used VERY loosely] Rednex, with their stirring rendition of "Cotton Eyed Joe." It's your turn next, Sweden, and we all know how I feel about the Swedes.)

What's sad is they've accomplished more than I ever will

But the song still sucks and doesn't make a bit of goddamn sense. This is what happens when you leave music to people who's previous experience is pretty much just "Waltzing Matilda." That song is some sort of demon-wail, designed to herald the End of Days. If you manage to decipher it and summon forth the Destroyer of Worlds, at least you'll find comfort in the knowledge that you have finally ended Australia's reign of fear.

LP out.

Carnegie Hal

2009-08-17T09:00:00.001-07:00

The Days of the Week: an In-Depth Assessment

2009-08-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

Let's just go ahead and get this out of the way: I'm a cynic and, more than likely, a jerk. In my defense, a lot of this behavior is reactionary to my day-to-day experiences. To put a finer point on it, I'm influenced by the days themselves.

Do you see what I just did there? I owned up to my negativity and then immediately blamed external forces.

Anyway, I have performed numerous studies through extensive testing (meaning that I drank until my arguments made sense and I refused to listen to any other ideas) and have come to the conclusion that I'm totally, 100% correct that the Sunday-Saturday system is bullshit. Here is the part where I justify my buck-passing:

#1.) Sunday

Sundays are bullshit, plain and simple. Yeah, it's still the weekend or whatever, but it doesn't really count. Sundays are like the last week of summer or death row. You know what's coming and there's no way to avoid it.

Sundays are like this without the shanking.

You can't do anything fun (drinking) because you have to go to work or school the next day (places where being drunk isn't typically allowed). It's just 24 hours of doing laundry and bitching about going into work the next morning. You can fuck this up even worse depending on what you did Saturday night. Sunday is the harsh light that forces you to reflect on the bad things you did over the weekend and the badness of the coming week.

#2.) Monday

Listen, that "Someone's got a case of the Mondays" schtick or any sort of Garfield reference isn't going to cut it here. Don't be a fucking baby, you know you're going to survive the day. But it's going to suck and the exact measurement of suck hasn't yet been determined. It's like being on I-95 in rush hour traffic and you're in the lane completely opposite from the exit you need to take. You're going to cross all of those lanes and make your exit, but you have no idea how much abuse and damage you're going to take on the way out.

No one in this photo is even looking at the road

You're probably not going to come out of Monday with all of your dignity intact. Your best defense is to weep quietly in the corner of your bedroom because things aren't really going to get better any time soon. Developing a crippling addiction is also an option.

#3.) Tuesday

With your soul still newly crushed from Monday, Tuesday is here to rip the Band-Aid off your fresh wound and pick at the scab. Tuesday is a re-release of Monday. It's like "Monday: the Crystal Method Remix." Or you can think of it like Dave Matthews; it can't come up with anything new to interest you, so it's just going to keep repeating the same stuff that seemed to work for Monday.

Nobody fucking cares, douchebag.

As such, Tuesday receives lukewarm reception. The main thing it's got going for it is anonymity. You're never going to remember what the hell happened on a Tuesday, because there's nothing to distinguish it. What did you eat for lunch on Tuesday? You don't remember and what's worse for Tuesday is that you don't even give a shit. Fuck you, Tuesday.

#4.) Wednesday

Calling it "Humpday" isn't cute or clever, except to fifth graders and frat boys. Having "hump" as your nickname already means you're in serious trouble and no one is ever going to let you forget it. Sorry to break it to you, Igor.

It's your own fault, really, you creeper.

Wednesday only functions as a mile marker. It reminds you that you're nowhere close to being home free. It's like when the shark let's go of you just long enough to gulp down a lung full of air before it yanks you back under. Even if you can struggle past this 24 hour shark attack, you're going to be bleeding heavily and missing a fucking leg.

#5.) Thursday

Thursday is a goddamn tease. Thursday is wearing a low cut shirt and seductively nibbling the stirrer from her cocktail, but you're not going home with her.

Above: doesn't want anything you've got

Sorry, buddy. No amount of wishing or chatting up Thursday is going to get you any closer to her goods (the weekend and/or boobs). Just take her number, smile, and stumble home.

#6.) Friday

The only thing everyone is going to say to you today is "Thank goodness it's Friday," or, if they're a total fucking loser, "TGIF!"

Fuck you.

This is X-mas Eve. Good times are almost here, but you've just got to hold out. You're going to have to take Friday out for a nice dinner and "dancing" before anything fun happens. But when it does, you will be heard to declare, "Woo!" You've already forgotten about how the rest of your week was. And if you haven't forgotten, you can use it as an excuse to get really messed up.

#7.) Saturday

Fuck yeah! OK, listen, though. Seriously, you have to be careful. Because you can easily go from this:

to this:

Or, if you're really unlucky, this.

And once you reach that point, your Sunday is just going to be even worse than it would have been already.

LP out.

Compelling reasons that Japan hates children

2009-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

Japan really has a lot to offer. As a young person, I was constantly consuming their delicious fruits, but it only recently dawned on me that Japan was being a little passive-aggressive. Like a bad step parent, I came to see that Japan wasn't nurturing me, but in fact actively trying to make me fail. So now that I'm all growed up, it's high time I get to work on a tell-all book.

#1. Neon Genesis Evangelion

For those of you who weren't losers in high school or college during the 90's, that title probably sounds like I drew some bad letters in Scrabble. This is actually the title to a popular animated TV show, indeed an entire franchise, hailing from the land of the rising sun. While it would be easy to pick on Japan for its notoriously hodge-podge engrish, that isn't the real threat here. Let me break down the show for you with the help of my good friend, Wikipedia:

"Evangelion is an apocalyptic mecha action series which revolves around the efforts by the paramilitary organization Nerv to fight monstrous beings called Angels, primarily using giant mecha called Evangelions which are piloted by select teenagers, one of whom is the primary protagonist."

It's all pretty much madness and you didn't even need to see a single frame of animation to know that. But there is crucial information up there, the key being that children are forced to endure severe mental and physical pain or the entire world ends.

Standard extra curricular activities in Japan

OK, listen. I was scared of driving at the age of 14. If I showed up to ninth grade and someone told me that when I was done with geometry, I needed to pilot that gigantic purple robot up there or everyone everywhere would die, I have no idea how terrified I would be. That's bullshit. That's totally child endangerment and you go to jail for that.

Not to mention that nobody in the show really seems to give a fuck about anyone else. Every single one of those kids already come from a broken, abusive home or they're an emotionless gynoid. You start to wonder when one of the children, in a moment of angst ridden clarity, will realize that everyone would actually be better off dead. Just the pep talk every budding adolescent needs to excel in life!

#2. Battle Royale

Since we're talking about sending ninth graders off to die, Battle Royale is head and shoulders above the competition. Yes, you read that logo correctly, it does indeed say "survival program." Battle Royale is a movie based off a graphic novel that was in turn based off of a novel. It's kind of a mash up of Lord of the Flies, Survivor, and every gun ever made.

The basic plot is that Japan's economy crumbles and students start to refuse education, going so far as to physically assault teachers. So the government institutes the "BR Act." This is essentially a lottery wherein every year one lucky ninth grade class wins a three-day getaway on a gorgeous island as their class trip...

...where they're forced to kill each other off until only one remains.

"Even though I'm a pop star explaining the rules of this child-massacre,
this is the most normal part of your stay here on Murdered By Your Friends Island."

I want to make this perfectly clear to you, so I'll say it again: In Battle Royale, an entire class is kidnapped, placed in explosive collars (you know, like for dogs that REALLY bark a lot), given some form of weapon, and told to kill each other until only one kid is left or everyone's collar explodes. That's it. That's the entire premise.

Best. Trip. Ever!

Honestly, I don't think there's anything else I can add or explain. Asking girls out was extremely difficult at that age, let alone being tossed into some bizarre gladiatorial combat. And just to confirm your slack-jawed protests, no, this movie was never officially released in the U.S. But it is available on region free DVD's. Enjoy!

#3. Video Games

First off, I love video games, so this part is a little like finding out that your significant other is actually a serial killer who has been active for 25 years. Obviously, there are all kinds of accusations flying around about violence in video games. Any time one kid hits another with a stick, he (because it's always boys, goddammit) is immediately assumed to have been re-enacting Grand Theft Auto. The simple to truth is that, by this point, everyone has played video games. Even incredibly dangerous murders play video games. But so does my mother.

This kitten is pwning noobs in Halo as we speak.

But no lawyer is ever going to be able to prove anything one way or the other way on that one. There are other dangers though, all of which I am now going to blame an entire high-tech country for.

You want an example? Fat kids. Yeah, that's right, your children are disgusting because the Japanese gave birth to Pac-Man. Before you slap me with a lawsuit, I recommend you speak to my attorney, Mr. H. R. Wikipedia:

"Many children fail to exercise because they are spending time doing stationary activities such as playing video games or watching TV. TV and other technology may be large factors of physically inactive children. Researchers provided a technology questionnaire to 4,561 children, ages 14, 16, and 18. They discovered children were 21.5% more likely to be overweight when watching 4+ hours of TV per day, 4.5% more likely to be overweight when using a computer one or more hours per day, and unaffected by potential weight gain from playing video games."

So, the jury is still out on games specifically, but computers are definitely in trouble. And computers are certainly massive time sinks because of blogs like this one, but there are programs out there that actually destroy lives. I'm looking directly at you World of fucking Warcraft. For fuck's sake, people have actually died playing Starcraft on their computers. But becomming a chunk monster isn't the only risk with video games. There are plenty of actual, "holy shit, for real?" injuries that you can sustain while avoiding getting laid.

It's pretty simple logic as to why children are more interested in games than going outside. Destroying demons/zombies/robots/nazis is pretty fucking exciting and ends with you being praised by the video game, and, maybe, your peers. Skinned knees and broken noses hurt like the dickens and end up with you being laughed at by your peers.

They can't laugh at you if you never leave the house

And while no one has really been able to nail a specific set of criteria, there are definitely people out there who view games as some form of digital smack. Games have been indicated to contribute to poor self-esteem, speech impediments, and social dysfunction. And nothing tears a country apart from the inside like creating a future generation (aka children) of babbling, self-loathing sociopaths who have been physically dehabilitated. Essentially, Japan invented electronic cancer. For children.

LP out.