We all have heroes, and I am no different from anyone else, in that respect, save for the fact that all my heroes are weird and don’t make any sense to normal people.  It will therefore come to most of you as no surprise whatsoever, that high on the list of people who changed my life is, (drum roll………) Skeletor.  Yes, Most kids probably wanted to be firemen of ninjas or dinosaurs when they were little (or fiery dinoninjas) (which would make a totally sweet name for a band), but me, I wanted to be like Skeletor.  What made him so cool, you ask?  Well, for one thing, he had a skull for a head (most of us do really, come to think of it, he was just more obvious about it, I suppose) he beat a lot of stuff up, and he taught me all sorts of invaluable life lessons.  Insert segue here, here are a few of them:

 

            First, he was determined and dedicated to his life’s work, getting into Castle Greyskull, so that he could gain access to its many secrets.  We never found out what these secrets were, but since everything else that Skeletor ever did made perfect sense, I’m sure these secrets were totally sweet, and would, had he ever have gotten ahold of them, easily allowed him to dominate Eternia (which, by the way, was really just a metaphor for Richmond, like Narnia was for England, or like Hell for New Jersey).  As it was though, he never really succeeded, even though he summoned innumerable monsters, and once dressed up as a fat Italian chef (this one almost worked, actually).  So yeah, next time you feel like giving up, ask yourself, WWSD?

 

            Next, he didn’t let the fact that he was (like so many of us) surrounded by retards get him down.  In fact, most of his band of henchmen also had homoerotic names, like Beast Man, and, um well, actually it was mostly the good guys who had insanely fruity names, but still Beast Man was always hitting on Skeletor, making it that much tougher to capture the secrets of Castle Greyskull.  But did he ever let it get him down when Webstor got his butt handed to him by Ram Man for the umpteenth time in a row?  Nope, he’d just shoot some evil at Trap Jaw and then go make out with Evil-Lyn for a while.  There’s a moral in there somewhere, but it’s probably a silly one anyways, so don’t look too hard.

 

            He had a totally sweet voice, and laughed all the freakin’ time.  Now, a lot of you out there probably also have pretty awesome voices as well, but stop for just a moment and shout the following phrase, “Soon, Randor, the Trousers of Power will me mine! Hahahahaha!!!” Did that sound awesome?  If not, it’s probably because you don’t have the Skeletor voice.  It’s worth perfecting though; I use it all the time at work and it never fails to get me what I want.  As for the laughing, just think about it for a moment; he had a skull for a face, always had to wear purple, and he lived in a mountain full of retards.  But he was still able to laugh at life’s little ironies.  Try to remember that, won’t you, next time some triflin’ little thing gets you down.

 

            He was mysterious.  Yes, even though pretty much everyone in Eternia was completely freaky looking (again, just like Richmond) as a child I was always convinced that Skeletor had some uniquely awesome origin.  Was he burned by acid, like Two-Face?  Was he part armadillo, like Hillary Clinton?  Was he He-Man’s real father, like Herbert Hoover?  I never could figure it out, but that made him all the more of an enigma.  As such, I knew from my earliest days that in order to be, like Skeletor, I too must strive to acquire such an aura of mystery, a quest which I think I’ve done admirably well at over the years.

 

            Finally, he had a heart of gold.  Yes, even though he spent countless hours trying to figure out a way to rip through He-Man as easily as a hungry gorilla rips through a bag of kittens, he still, deep down inside, knew the true meaning of Christmas and once saved an alien space-puppy from a hideous and nameless evil.

 

            So remember, even if you’re ugly, shrill, surrounded by retards, and constantly defeated by a half-naked guy with a really good tan, keep on truckin’, it’ll pay off eventually.  I know that really applies to most of us, and especially to Al Gore, so take heart, and know that the some day, the secrets of Castle Greyskull may be yours as well (secrets void where prohibited, Castle Greyskull not available in all areas).

  To the casual observer, it might appear that my blog is in fact, nothing more than a bunch of random crap and formulaic mockeries directed at 80’s pop culture, Dick Cheney, monkeys, and band names.  In fact, all the myriad secrets of the universe are contained within these daily (for the most part) writings, like the Da Vinci Code, or the after 11:00 menus at Waffle House. Nay, my blog a like a Rosetta Stone of human existence, a veritable Mad fold-in of the soul.  But it owes it’s existence not merely to me, but to innumerable others, and so I would like to take this opportunity to thank one of them for their awesomeness.  That one, is my van.

 

            How, you ask, does my van contribute to this blog?  Well, for one thing, without my van I would doubtless live a homebound and dull existence, developing a dual personality, staring at shiny objects, and fearing the light of the day, my only computer activity consisting of that old Qbasic game where you blow up gorillas.  Yes, my van gets me all over the friggin’ place.  It is nothing short of my very own Millennium Falcon, or to use and even geekier metaphor, my USS Defiant, that allows me to leave Deep Space My House, and boldly go where no man has gone before, as well as garner better ratings.  Let’s take a look then, at what makes my van totally sweet.

 

            First, while most vans that year were made with a Big ol’ V6^®, mine was the economy model, and came with the Not Quite Big Enough 4 Cylinder^®.  As a result, there’s enough extra room in the engine compartment to fit Grover Cleveland (affectionately known during his Presidency as “Uncle Jumbo”) in there.  This has the happy side effect of making it totally easy for me to reach in there and fix stuff without having to go and pay a man of questionable hygienic practices named Earl (the man, not his hygienic practices) large quantities of money to do stuff a monkey with a ratchet set could do (we are, of course, talking about a glow-monkey here).  Also, owing to the uniquely weird engine design, combined with the fact that the catalytic converter plate fell off sometime last year and the steering gear never has sounded quite right, my van sounds like Sebulba’s pod racer.  This makes driving fun, as I can always pretend I’m about to run over Anakin Skywalker.  Finally, owing to the teacup engine in my van, it always feel like I’m going way faster than I actually am.  Many a time, I’ve hit the road and floored it, listening in a pleased manner to the roar of the engine as I let those horses run, and then looked at the dash and seen that I’m still pushing 35.

 

            It’s a Plymouth.  Why is that cool you ask?  Simple, they don’t make Plymouths anymore.  A few years ago they were bought out by some German company and the American branch was renamed “Hitlermobile USA” thus relegation the Plymouth to that venerable list of old-ass cars they don’t make any more, like the Stanley Steamer, the Edsel, and the non-gay-looking Beetle.

 

            It was made in Canada.  Now, this by itself isn’t all that cool, but in a way it’s kind of inspiring.  You see, my van came to this country from a far Frenchier one, and though an immigrant in this great nation of ours, has learned to fit in perfectly, running red lights, disregarding speed bumps, and running off of regular unleaded, rather than croissants and moose snot, as cars do up in the frozen North.

 

            It didn’t come with many gauges in it.  Yup, as part of the whole economy plan, it pretty much just came with a speedometer a couple of idiot lights, and a gas gauge that’s just accurate enough to tempt you into believing it, just so that it can crush your hopes like a baby chipmunk beneath a cinderblock.  As such, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a few pieces of instrumentation to the dash, but since I don’t really know what I’m doing, they’re all just sort of bolted on wherever, so my van has more of that H.G. Wells, retro steampunk look to it, which is totally sweet.

 

            It has a blue book value of $138.  Really.  You know what that means?  It means that I pay no taxes on it at all.  It means that my insurance is totally low.  It means that unless I park it next to the junk yard, there’s always another car nearby that looks more stealable.  Also, this is a point of honor amongst my people.  Long have the elders of my tribe decreed that it is a shameful thing to get rid of a car while it’s still worth more than $400, and I have surpassed all my brethren in this degree.

 

            So yeah, kudos unto thee, my van.  You’ve carried me nearly 200,000 miles, we just need another 800,000 before your odometer rolls over.  Next time I take you to East Coast (Where your Mom would stop!)  I’ll give you a tank full of the good stuff.

 

            And, for all you people out there in cyberspace, here’s a bit of a poser.  You see, the one thing my van lacks is a totally sweet name.  So think up a good one, and send it to me, if it totally rules, I’ll use it, and your name will be remembered for as long as I have the van (estimated time, 10,000 years).

Okay, sorry I've been slackin' it with the blog these past few days, first there were technical difficulties (arg) and then there was romance (ooh), but at last, the long-awaited entry is here; I give you, the teacup mammoth article:

 

We, amongst all the generations of the human race, are so very privileged as to live in this uniquely awesome age.  How, you may ask?  Well, it happens to be the case that modern cutting-edge technology, ridiculous fashions, and man’s insatiable lust for dominion over God’s creation are at last on the very brink of creating what is quite possibly the most awesome thing in the universe: the teacup mammoth.  What, you may ask, is the teacup mammoth?  Therein lies a tale to be told indeed.  First, let’s take a look at the scientific side of things. 

 

            Jurassic Park technology has been a dream of humanity since many distant ages past, back in the early 90’s.  Alas, with relatively few ambered mosquitoes and with tyranno-jerky in such short supply, it becomes problematic at best if we want to create a monstrosity of science that can go awry and try to kill Jeff Goldblum.  But what manner of prehistoric beast do we have plenty of DNA from?  No, not Teddy Kennedy.  In fact, it is the common garden-variety wooly mammoth.  Yes, thanks to the greenhouse effect, wooly mammoths have been thawing out all over the friggin’ place, supplying us with a more than ample supply of wooly mammoth DNA (go ahead and look under your sofa cushions, I’ll bet there’s at least one mammoth under there).  Indeed, scientists now predict that we could have a prototype mammoth up and running within a decade, with consumer mammoths soon to follow.

 

            Next, we have the coming perfection of glow-monkey technology.  As it’s name implies, glow-monkey technology allowed us to cross the DNA from monkeys and glowsticks to creat a monkey which glows in the dark.  This is of course, even apart from our greater topic this evening, a sizeable breakthrough in itself, as I am sure that both of my regular readers will agree that monkeys’ primary shortcoming up until this point has been their lack of organic phosphorescence.  Scientists (and your mom) predict that soon we will possess the ability to make other creatures like orangutans, water buffalo and Oprah Winfrey also bioluminescent, ushering a brave new world of freaky crap that lights up.

 

            Next, we come to the lamentable fashion of the teacup poodle (The Lamentable Fashion of the Teacup Poodle, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band).  For those of you who know it not, it has become quite the thing for women with more money than sense to get these tiny little mutant pillow dogs that they then carry around in their purses when they go to the local lah-de-dah ritzy mall (Your city doesn’t have one, you say?  Haha, Richmond has two, each more unnecessary than the other).  No, seriously, they’re these already tiny dogs that have been specially bred to be even more useless than your better know varieties of useless tiny dogs.  Why, a teacup poodle is so tiny that the shockwaves in the air created by the beating of the wings of a passing luna moth could crush its tiny skull like a wet paper bag full of soggy cheerios.

 

Finally, we have man’s unending desire to control all life (just like Christopher Lee).  This callous disregard for the decent course of nature has long driven mankind to create all manner of unnatural abominations, like low-fat Oreos, the metric system, and reality TV.

 

            So let us say then, that we use Jurassic Park technology to create new mammoths, then, let us suppose that we use glow-monkey lore to create glow mammoths.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Ben, people these days just don’t have the space to take care of a full-sized mammoth!” Fear not, for thanks to the judicious application of teacup poodle methods, we can at last create (ta daa!) the teacup mammoth.  Yes, tired of those bulky old-fashioned mammoths taking up all your real estate?  Mammoth fuel costs eating you alive?  Having trouble flushing them down the toilet when one of the bites it?  Those days, gentle reader, are gone, thanks to the immanent arrival of the teacup glow mammoth, the mammoth for today’s person on the go.

 

            But say you’re a bit more traditional in your mammoth needs, and though a full-size mammoth is out of the question, you don’t feel comfortable driving a flimsy little compact mammoth.  No problem, because it’s only a matter of time before they perfect a glow mammoth the size of say, a golden retriever.  Ah yes, imagine how delightful it will be for the whole family to get home and here your little glow mammoth gaily trumpeting on the other side of the door, eagerly awaiting his master’s return.  How about when he brings you your slippers in the evening?  Or when he playfully charges you under the table at dinner time.  And, with the glow mammoth, you need never again worry about falling over the tinkertoys or the meth lab as you make your way to the bathroom at night.  Nope, putting out more light than a jar full of angry lightning bugs, a glow mammoth will make your house safer for you and your loved ones.

 

            So write your congressbeing today, and tell them to vote for more money for totally sweet teacup mammoth research; it’s not just awesome, it’s American.

Okay, I wrote my entire teacup mammoth article, and then the internet ate it.  I'll try and put it up later tonight, but if not, I'll get it up again by tomorrow!

Ah, nature, man's oldest enemy.  Ever since our most distant ancestors evolved from aqua-yaks, nature has been out to get us.  Even if you take the more traditional view of human origins, the fact that nature hates us is in the Bible too (Look it up, it in the Book of, um, Qarl, you know the one with all the hamsters).  Either way, Planet Earth has always been trying to wipe us out before we could beat her back into the kitchen of the solar system to cook us some dinner, and always have we remained one step ahead.  In the early 1990's though, that almost changed (or maybe it was the late 80's, meh).

Captain Planet.  That name ring a bell?  It should, in fact he is nothing short of the sworn enemy of everyone out there who's not merely the personification of nature sent to wreak vengeance upon mankind (I think that's probably most of you).  Let's take a closer look though, shall we, at the one super hero even more lame than Aqua Man (that's dorky swim team Aqua Man, by the way, not totally sweet hook-hand goatee-having Aqua Man).

First, let's start with Captain Planet's foolish quisling teenage metaphorical helper monkeys (one of whom had his own literal helper monkey; that's just how deviois this show was).  There were four or five of them, one for each element.  They used the four old-school ignorant elements instead of the hundred-odd ones we know about today, partly because it would make the credits way too long and partly because then you'd have kids with powers like Radon, or Strontium, whose only power would be to kill people mercilessly, and some with powers like Unneleptium, who would decay into their constituent subatomic particles in a fraction of a second.

First, there's the always important street savvy white guy with a heart of gold.  Let's call him the Fonz, shall we?  His power was Fire, which you could tell because he had red hair.  Seriously, anytime someone has the power of Fire, they've got red hair, it's just how the universe works, don't question it, you fool.  Fonz's only other character trait worthy of mention (besides his tendancy to leave scorch marks on the planet-sofa, was his totally unrequited love for Helga.

Helga was from Eastern Europe, because it's the only part of Europe aside from Great Britain that's not totally wack (go ahead, think of the countries in Western Europe, most of them hate us because of our totally sweet pop culture and regular bathing habits).  Helga was as cold and frigid as the nose on a Ukranian Slarnth Beast and had the power of Wind.  According to the Captain Planet website (no really, somebody made one) she enjoys music and solving the toughest of problems, and dresses like she wandered into the juniors section of Goodwill during a Power outage and just threw on any damn thing she could find.

The next Planeteer hailed from Africa, because otherwise this show would have been whiter than Scooby Doo.  His name was LeVar Burton, and his powers were fixing starship engines, talking with androids, and making reading fun for kids (but don't take my word for it, da do doot)  Also, his power was Earth.  His other power was talking just like a black guy from America, except most of his sentences started with "Back in Africa..." (Should you, gentle reader, ever find that most of your lines start with "back in _insert native land here_" know that you have become a meaningless cookie-cutter diversity character, and go out in a blaze of glory at your soonest convenience)

Next came Generic Asian Woman Planeteer.  Her power was Water, and living up to pretty much every positive sterotype ever for Asian girls on TV.  She was a marine biologist, surfer, linguist, computer tech support, and expert builder of railroads, who always felt bad because the Fonz's heart belonged to another and LeVar Burton thought she was a skanky ho (with good reason, I might add).

Alas, we now get to the littlest Planeteer, Monkey Boy.  Raised by a tribe of wild lemurs is some generic South American country, Monkey Boy wasn't originally supposed to be a Planeteer at all.  However, one day when he was on a visionquest with his adopted brother Senor Mucho de Eeps, he ate one too many poisonous toads and found his way to the Planet Cave (or maybe it was the Planet Submarine, or the Planet Fonz's Mom's Basement, it doesn't matter really) and owing to the fact that he was twelve years old and only spoke monkey, they gave him a mood ring, told him his power was Heart, and mercifully refrained from eating his monkey brother.  According to the website, he was also the most caring Planeteer, which is a nice way of saying he was the most useless Planeteer.

Finally, we get to Captain Planet himself.  He was greenish, had a soccer kid haircut and was some kind of a nature spirit (like Jimmy Carter)  Every time all the Planeteers had proved their worthlessness for the episode, they'd call on him by putting all their rings together while the villian of the week, kindly stood by waiting for them to summon the one thing that could foil his evil scheme.  He was weak against pollution, cheesburgers, MTV, nuclear radiation, and monkeys (Monkey Boy was, in fact, part of the failsafe plan in case Captain Planet ever went rogue).  The nuclear radiation part never seemed to make much sense to me, since he seemed to be blatantly solar-powered, and last time I checked, the Sun is pretty much made of nuclear radiation, but maybe he Captain Planet didn't know this, and all his friend liked watching him make an ass of himself like that.

Also, there was some blue-haired Oprah woman who lived in their Cave/Submarine/Fonz's Mom's Basement and gave them their missions.  I think she was some kind of Earth-Goddess, because she wore a toga and had a computer that spit out holographs.

They had about a dozen different villains on the show, but they really all wanted the same thing, so we'll just average them out and get....Dick Cheney.  What did Dick Cheney want you ask?  To destry the environment.  Really.  He didn't want to, say, mine a bunch of diamonds while not caring about the enviroment, or possibly make a fortune selling whale parts while not caring about the environment; nope, he just hated the environment.  This is somewhat akin to Bills Gates spending a jillion dollars to steal a thousand baby seals, coat them with plutonium and drop them in a rainforest full of handicapped puppies.  Honestly, I never saw a villain on the show do anything the least bit profitable. Ever. Maybe if Captain Planet had just set Dick Cheney down and explained the basics of modern economics to him, he might have given up his evil ways and started a business where he'd carve baby names into old horseshoes or something, but no, Captain Planet just had to bust in there like Kool-Aid Man, punching crap and killing minions, all in the name of nature (kind of like environmentalists do today).

Finally, every show would end with a little PSA, like GI Joe and He-Man always did, only the Captain Planet one was always about helping the environment.  Don't listen though; the stronger the environment is, the easier it'll be for it to sneak into your house  tonight and punch you in the face.  Go kick a few whales instead, it'll keep Mother Nature in her place (Canada).

On the subject of unnatural yet awesome things, tune in tomorrow to learn about the future of Teacup Mammoths, and what they may mean to you. Captain Planet and the Teacup Mammoths, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band.

As long as there have been parents and children, there have been parents trying to get their children to play dull, educational, non-violent games (boys in particular).  This rarely works, though it dates back at least to the year 1600.  How do I know this, you ask?  Allow me to present exhibit A: the Hoop Stick game.  Sound familiar?  Possibly not.  But think back, for a moment, to every single movie about colonial times you've ever seen.  Invariably, there's a least one scene where dapper and wholesome-looking colonial children run through the dapper and colonial streets rolling a wooden hoop with a stick.  In fact, we have a couple of Hoop-Sticks at the Citie of Henricus, where you can carry a cell phone only if it's made out of a hollowed-out racoon.  Never, in all the time I've worked there have I ever seen a kid come up to the Hoop-Sticks and say "Oh look Papa, the Hoop-Stick game, I have so desired to play it!"  Nope, every one of them tries to hula with the hoop for about five futile and awkward seconds, and then starts using the stick as a sword.  Now, kids these days rarely grow up to take part in sword-using professions, and it is altogether probable that theri parents are, in fact, neither knights, pirates, or Jedi Masters, but still, if you give one of them a stick, he starts training for that improbable universe in which he will become a full-time orc slayer.

Now kids haven't really changed all that much in the past gazillion years, so I'll bet that when parents back in the day got their kids the Hoop-Stick game, it was in much the same spirit as parents today who buy their kids video games based on the Book of Psalms (nothing wrong with Biblical games, per se, mind you; "Noah's Xtreme Ninja Power Battle 3D" being a fine one in every particular) and think that playing cowboys and indians will scar them for life with bloodlust and cultural insensitivity.  And, kids back then did the very same thing that they do today, wait until Mom and Dad leave the room and then get back to playing games where you kill eachother.

Now, the reason why parents are so helpless to prevent this phenomenon is because it's based in a very deep-seated and integral survival trait which is probably responsible for the existence of the human race today.  It is, simply put, this: Guys like fire and destroying stuff.  You see, back in prehistoric times, before we got all lazy and our tails evolved away, there were really only two things in a man's world that he needed to worry about (not counting women, but only because this is going to be a long enough blog without getting into that too) fire, and mastadons.  Seriously, fire was important, it gave you light, warmth, was the Neanderthal's television, and it let you cook stuff.  This brings me to point two, mastadons, which taste nasty when they haven't been cooked properly.  Now, mastadons back then weren't like they are now, only living in zoos and the specialty aisle of organic food stores.  No, great herds of them covered the wastelands, scampering hither and thither, straining millions of tiny krill through their baleen, and often blotting out the very sun as the sky turned black as their leathery-winged flocks flew overhead.  Mastadons, you see, are generally disinclined to being killed and eaten, and it was soon discovered that the best way for a caveman (or Cro Magon-American) to bring one down was to hit it repeatedly with pointy of heavy things.  And so it came to pass that the only men who lived to pass on their genes to future generations were the ones who excelled at fire appreciation and mastadon bludgeoning. 

Now, for umpteen squintillion years (not a real number) the human race went on like this, until, sometime while Harry Truman was President, people started being accountants, dental assistants and undead ninja assassins.  It was then that some people got the crazy idea into their heads that fire and mastadon beating weren't things they wanted to teach their children.  Well, lo and behold, but somewhere along the way both these very traits had carved themselves upon the very native heart of man, inextirpatable by even the most bland and uninteresting parents.  And that, gentle reader, is why the Hoop-Stick game is nothing but a legacy of lies.  Also, "President Truman and the Firey Mastadons", would be a great name for a band.

As I do most days, I arose bright and early this swampy Tuesday morn, opened my window blinds to take my first look of the day at the dank and miasmatic tarn which sprawls languidly across the street from me and then settled in to check my fan mail (I did this, not the tarn; it doesn't even have dial-up) which pours in from around the world as numbers of readers up to and including 5 or 6 read my daily musings.

This was no ordinary day though, this was a red-letter day if ever there was one in Blogland (don't worry about mapquesting it, you're better off not knowing where it is).  Today, you see, I got my first slutty E-skankmail on myspace.  I knew in a moment that I had to save it, like an exquisitely trashy faberge' egg, or like an exotic, yet whored-up dragonfly in amber, that I might mock it tonight at my greater leisure. Alas, twas better that I had siezed the day this morning, for upon my return home this evening, I found that my slutty message in a bottle had vansihed as suddenly as it had arriven.

Was it deleted by some moderator with a sense of decency?  Or snatched away by the capricious gods of the internet who had unwittingly shewed it to me in the first place?  Did I dream the whole ordeal?  Or was it just one of my friends pranking me, like some damnable Ashton Kutcher, punking my very E-soul?  That is a question I shall leave to wiser and more inebriated men than myself.  What follows though, is the body of this brief and sultry missive, which was so recently seared into my living memory (name changed to protect other friends I have who have the same name as the mystery skank):

"Hey Babe, you're kinda cute and I thought I'd send you a message.  I'd really love to get to know you better.  Check me out on MSM or AIM sometime, my name is Lovelygurl69.  Love and kisses, smooch, smooch,
                                                         Buckwheat Bertha"

See what I mean?  I think it was the 69 in the screen name that really put it over the top.  If she'd just used a regular, non-dirty ho name, like "SweetThang87", or "AgnesCthulhu2" or even "Banthaface821"  I would have been torn between my natural suspicious nature and my nerdy desperation to have a girl find me attractive, not writing this blog, but rather a horribly different one about the futility of the hoop-stick game (there, there, I'll do that one tomorrow) But as it is, I knew right away, like William Howard Taft as he stepped into the bathtub, that this would not end without incident (William Howard Taft and the Bathtub Incident, by the way, would be a totally sweet name for a band).  And so here I sit, lost in my reverie, wondering what it all meant, where she came from, and if it wasn't just Tom getting back at me for denying his friend request (Sorry, man, I didn't you that you were the household diety of myspace at the time).  When all is said and done though, I suspect that I haven't heard the last from this, E-Skank of the Mist....

(If you're a skank, or just wish you were, feel free to send me tantalizingly unbelieveable messages anytime; I promise to take them way too seriously and make fun of them at the same time)

Most of us, I think, had in our early lives certain beneficial influences, people or things which had, though we might not have known it at the time, a profound effect on the person whom we would someday become. Today, I take a moment to pay homage to a certain group of people who did just that for me. Sure, they had their flaws and failings, but who among us doesn't? And isn't it our ever so human imperfections which, in the end, enable us to relate to eachother as equals? Without further ado, I give you, the cast of Inspector Gadget:

First, the man himself, Inspector Gadget. Now, in the world today, most of the cyborgs we meet aren't particularly nice. Even the ones who work for the forces of good are still not exactly people people, like Robocop. Which is a big part of why Inspector Gadget helped to break down traditional anti-cyborg stereotypes and prejudices, allowing cyborgs these days to step forward and claim the civil rights so long denied them. It is indeed to Inspector Gadget that men like Darth Vader and Dick Cheney owe an immense debt of gratitude. Not only in terms of human rights, but also in terms of fashion, was Inspector Gadget a courageous pioneer for progress. Can you remember any man wearing a hat with a helicopter in it before the 80's? Of course not, it was completely unheard of. But now, you can hardly go out to Donut Connection without running into at least half a dozen repectable citizens in helicopter hats. That, my friends, is what makes America totally sweet.

Next in the grand scheme of things comes Penny, Inspector Gadget's niece. Now, It's tough to imagine what happened to Penny's real parents, but I always concluded (very logically, I might add) that they were probably eaten by a baboon of some sort. Imagine for a moment the effect of an event like that on the psyche of a young girl; and yet, aside from a certain grim determination in her mien, it hardly shows at all. Penny also taught me that female cartoon characters weren't all worthless nancies, like Daphne, Smurfette and Cobra Commander. (Cobra Commander and the Worthless Nancies, by the way, would be a great name for a band). She was also kinda cute (i was five years old remember) and totally fearless. On top of all that, she had her Computer Book, which really kind of introduced the idea of the laptop computer to the world, the same way that William Shatner suggested the idea of the man-girdle.

Moving right along, we get to Brain, Penny's absolutely brilliant dog. Brain must have hated his job. Every single episode Inspector Gadget would completely give the real bad guys a miss, and end up chasing Brain all across creation while the hapless dog was dressed as Madeline Albright or something. Every single time this happened, but never did he complain
about his most undeserved place in the order of things. Also, as one of many almost-talking, completely sentient TV dogs, he was used to being treated like an ordinary dog, despite his ability to read, drive cars, and speak that weird Chewbacca language that only Penny seemed to understand. On a related note, my dog is always telling me how much it sucks that people just laugh and go on about how cute it is when he tries to use my debit card to by liquor and Slim Jims. Keep reaching for that rainbow, dogs, you will overcome.

Finally, we get to Dr. Claw. Not the lame Dr. Claw from the movie, mind you, where he looked like Al Gore in a lab coat with a big goofy metallo arm. That's scary enough I guess, but not in a badass way. No, the original Dr. Claw was so totally evil that all we ever saw of him was his cat-petting arm, which came with the most totally sweet looking gauntlet of evil ever. I spent hours upon hours in my youth trying to figure out what Dr. Claw looked like, hoping against hope that they'd do some climactic episode where we'd finally see his face (I also assumed that he was really Inspector Gadget's father, a belief I hold to this very day). He had a car that transformed into stuff, he had minions, and he had a voice that I could do a pretty good impersonation of if I didn't mind ruining my vocal chords for the next two hours. His plans were always devious and evil, yet grandiose, and classy. He really was all that I have ever aspired to be; and though it will likely be a while before my empire of the shadows approaches his in terms of awesome grandeur, I like to think I've done pretty well.

So there you have them, the heroes of my youth. Respect them, venerate them, buy them a beer sometime if you see them on the street. If you yourself, gentle reader, are adrift and without purpose in this oft mystifying world in which we live in, do as so many others have before you, and learn a thing of two from a cyborg, a precocious youngster, a mutant dog, and the most severely badass overlord to ever have a flying submarine; they won't let you down.

If there's one goofy old white woman who's most famous than any other for giving unneccessary, inaccurate, and downright toxically retarded advice, it's Abby, the advice lady in the paper. Now, I know she's probably got a last name, but I don't care enough to look it up so let's guess that her name is Abby Yaknostrils, and assume that I got it right.

What's wrong with Abby Yaknostrils, you ask? Well, it doesn't begin with her, but with those innumerable legions of pitiably lost souls who ever turn to her for guidance. Let's start with one of the worst and most common offenders, the reprint junkie: At least a couple of times a week, Ol' Abby gets a letter than goes like this,

"Dear Abby,
Fifteen years ago you printed the poem "I'm a teenager who got drunk a lot and died, isn't that sad?" It totally changed my life and taught me that rather than being a smear on the guardrail, I should drive safely and further pollute the human genepool by living long enough to reproduce. Now my kids are getting to the age where they've finally figured out which end of a bootle you actually drink out of and I don't want them to make the same mistakes I did. Alas, my copy of your poem finally disintegrated and because I live on a planted without photocopiers, my only hope is that you'll avoid having to write anything new by running it again.
Dumb as a Bag of Hammers, Ontario"

Abby of course invariably grants these requests, gleefully reprinting some peice of mindless drivel that never ought to have seen the light of day back in 1978, much less today, and one can only hope that this time noone bothers to care. Next up is the clueless ninny:

"Dear Abby,
My boyfriend, "Zolnar" and I have been having some troubles lately; he keeps punching me in the face, setting my hair on fire and breaking my Hanson CDs. He's really a very gentle man though, and he said that as soon as his divorce comes through, he'll marry me and my three teacup bichon frises. I don't know what to do, all my friends say he's evil, but I love him anyway because I'm that stupid. What should I do, all powerful Abby woman?
Pathetic Simpleton in New Brunswick"

To such letters as these, Abby just about always mentions slef esteem and recommends counseling to both parties concerned, along with everybody else that they've ever known since third grade. Seriously, you want to know why there's some many psychoanalysts these days? It's because Abby is a big ol' shill for the entire "you're too weak-minded to help yourself industry". Finally, let's look at one I like to call the Blindingly Obvious Epihpany Dweeb:

"Dear Abby,
Last year I took a bath with my chainsaw. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in a hospital in a separate room from most of my extremities! There was no warning label or anything on the chainsaw and while I expect to win an outrageous sum of money from the lawsuit, I was hoping that you, Abby, could use your bully pulpit to make all the other people out there aware of this danger that could strike anyone at any time. Please, warn the good people of this planet that chainsaws and bathtubs don't mix!
Torso Boy in Quebec"

Abby, like Mr. T, always pitys the fool and takes this ludicrous request at face value. "I would tell people," she says, "but your letter is already a better testament than I could ever write." Abigail Nostilpants, you are seriously the laziest woman on the facce of the Earth. Honestly, all her job consists of is taking the words of fools at face value and eating up space in the paper that could better be devoted to a new strip I just imagined in which Mark Trail hits Ziggy in the face with a flaming sledgehammer while singing showtunes.

Here endeth the lesson

(By the by, I'm not really that creative after all, it would appear, so if you'd like me to mock someone or something, jut give me a holler and I'll see to it that your own private hatreds are splashed across the internet on a baby-blue background for the eyes of all seven of my regular readers to behold, foo')

There comes a time in the life of every young man when a new and alien menace threatens his home, and the only course of action left for him is to boldly step forward and make fun of all the people who are actually trying to help solve the problem. This is that time, and I am that man. What is this terror which so recently has infested Chesterfield County, you ask? You will probably be surprised (or maybe not, if you're just really jaded and cynical by now) to learn that it is none other than an alligator.

Now you might well ask yourself how an alligator got to central Virginia, so have a lot of people, but most of their answers are boring, so I've come up with a few of my own likely scenarios. First, it could in fact not be an alligator at all, but rather a baby Pterodactyl or some kind of Quetzacoatl that was flying over the area when it suddenly lost it's baby wings and plunged down into the murky recesses of Falling Creek Resavoir. It is also thoguht highly possible by experts in the region that it's some elder thing of the ancient world, recently awakened from it's aeon-dead slumber beneath the placid surface of the lake by all the nuclear testing they've been doing next door in Henrico lately. Personally, I think it's really Old Man Slapdeback, dressing up as the legendary Falling Creek Ghost Gator in an attempt to scare Cass Elliot and the Harlem Globe Trotters away from the abandoned taffy factory they recently bought owing to the rumors of pirate gold buried in the caverns beneath it. If this turns out to be true, I'm going to have to paint my van green, teach my dog to talk and recruit a cheerleader, a some nerdy girl with pop-bottle glasses, and a fruity guy to go out and solve this mystery.

Alas, even finding the alligator seems to be beyond the ability of our local authorities. Despite the fact that ever since the dam was broken a couple of years ago the lake is shallow too shallow to drown a midget, the combined genius of the local nimal control people is unequal to the task. Even if they do find it, they've already given up on being able to capture the alligator by themselves, it being all of three feet long.

Assuming they do find it, I think that it's all too likely that this animal will prove altogether too mighty for our city's local guardians to vanquish, neccessitating more desperate measures. Personally, I'd like to see William Shatner build a cannon out of bamboo and costume jewelry to shoot it with, thereby proving once and for all that humans are more highly evolved than the gorn, er, alligators.

What's more, this alligator has spawned additional rumors around town. Someone in Chester claimed to have seen another larger alligator in the river, while I myself glimpsed a small mastadon in the pantry this morning, scurrying amongst the Cheetos.

Well, this one didn't turn out as funny as I had originally planned, but I already wrote it and all, so maybe later tonight if I think of something better, I'll add that too. Meanwhile, you'll probably just have to wait until tomorrow for my insightful and wacky observations into more things in life. Honky Out.

Okay, I realize I'm a day late with this one, but I've was totally zombied yesterday as a result of..... (Surprise!) staying up late to catch the midnight showing of Star Wars Wednesday night. First, a little social geek commentary: I went with Jason and Jessica (you guys rule, by the way) to the Colonial Heights theatre to stand in line for an hour with various other freaks to wait for the movie. Now, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with going to the opening show of Star Wars dressed as Anakin Skywalker, so long as you remember one crucial point: You are a nerd. Not in a bad way, mind you, but allow yourself no illusions; your homemade jedi robes and lightsaber you got from Wal-Mart do not grant you any additional cool points. At all. I say this because in the paper this morning they had interviewed a lot of people at the midnight showing, and among them was this one fellow, pudgy, round-faced, and dressed like Grand Moff Tarkin who has this look on his face that said, with no hint of irony, "I am a total Badass" Sorry, Myron, I'm afraid you're not.

Which brings me to my next point: If the paper interviews you about what you thought of the movie, do not say something like, "When Yoda said goodbye to Chewbacca, it brought a tear to my eye as I realized how heartfelt his compassion was for the plight of the wookie people." If you say this, I'm afraid it is my sad duty to inform you that you are a complete tool, and never again will you know the touch of a woman (if you're that guy, sorry but better that you hear it from me now). Rather, when interviewed say something like "I thought when Yoda gave the Emperor a force wedgie, it was totally sweet!" This is what real humans say when they see a movie, don't try to be all deep, you don't have the Jedi Mind Trick, it's not gonna fool anyone. And definitely don't be like the poor girl in the paper who said "It was great, but I missed about 20 minutes of it while I was in the bathroom." I'm sorry, but first off, we didn't need to know that; and secondly, what took you that long? Unless you were making out with Boba Fett, you've probably got a few issues that don't need to be printed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The high point of the night (in terms of social dysfunction at least) was when we were still sitting in the theatre waiting for the movie to start and I (my chronometer having broken while I was traveling in hyperspace) asked if anyone knew how long it was until midnight. Jessica replied, as a normal person might, "About fifteen minutes."
At that moment, the guy in the row ahead of us turened around and said, in the perfect likeness of Comic Book Guy, "Actually, it's twelve minutes until midnight." I was dorkstruck. I mean, I really almost spewed jelly beans all over the guy (I managed to smuggle them in by telling the usher that they were really Bantha nuts, and if he didn't like it, well, I had a thermal detonator).

I'm sure being the usher at the midnight showing of Star Wars is the worst thing ever for these people, and I truly believe in my heart of hearts that if they could have ripped every person to tiny pieces with a rusty spoon who said "May the Force be with you." to them as they took their tickets, they would have. In the interest of full disclosure of my own social disability, I had planned to go as a wookie myself, but at the last minute I didn't care that much and instead just didn't shave for a couple of days. I received many compliments however, on my realistic costume and gratuitious back hair.

Now onto the actual movie. I won't tell you there are spoilers coming up, because if you're the sort of person who would actually care, you've already seen it. It was good, far better in fact than either of the other two prequels and well matched in quality to the original trilogy. I'm beginning to thinkmthat the awesomeness of a Star Wars movie is directly related to how many arms get cut off in it. In the original trilogy for example, there was exactly one arm cut off per movie, and as a result they were all quite good. In Episode One, however, no arms we cut off. In Episode Two, Anakin lost an arm. In this one however, there were at least six different arms taken off in lightsaber fights, and as a result, it was a totally sweet movie, which you ought to go see right now (you know you want to).

Really, except for a couple of things, it was a great movie. For instance though, how come it appearently take them nearly 20 years to build the first Death Star, while after it's destroyed it takes them about a week and a half to build another one. Also, is it just me, or does the Emperor look suspiciously like Joseph Lieberman? I mean, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but if one day they find Bob Dole all crispy on the Senate floor, I think none of us will really have a right to be surprised. And really, if you live in a world where they can replace any part of you with a sweet mechanical one that lets you do everythnig with it that you could ever need, why don't they have the surgical skill to make you less messed-up looking when you fall into a pit of fire?

Well, I was gonna do a post on the Mystery Alligator Across the Street tonight, but it's late, and I'm sure you don't care that much, so it can wait until tomorrow. (If I don't post then, it probably ate me, oh well)

The funny pages, one assumes, are intended to be funny, but alas, this is not always the case. Mind you, I'm not talking about the ones like Judge Parker, or Rex Morgan, or Dilbert, where the people are drawn to look realistic and grapple with serious life issues, but rather the ones that are supposed to be funny, but are in fact, a blight on the face of the universe.

First off, let's take a look at Marmaduke shall we? He's just not funny. Every single time, the joke is based on one of the three following premises: Marmaduke is large, Marmaduke has a bunch of unneccesary crap in his doghouse, Marmaduke thinks he's people. I cannot express in words how utterly hilarious it is to open up the paper for what feels like the ten thousandth time in a row only to read great captions like this, "Okay Marmaduke, I'll get up and walk you now!" hahaha, isn't that funny? Funny like a kitten in a blender, and if you thinks that's funny, you're a sick, sick person.

Moving on down the page, let's take a look at Shylock Fox. Now, I know that this is really a pretty funny one, but I think it more than makes up for that by teaching kids all sorts of prejudices. How, you ask? Every week, Shady Shrew is guilty (okay, sometimes it's Count Weirdly). Now, they can try to say that it's because the weight on the scale gave away the fact that Miss Possum's stolen diamond was in the loaf of bread, or that the dead hooker in the storm drain was clutching Shady Shrew's monogrammed crack pipe, but really, Shady Shrew is already guilty. You don't need to go to the crime scene to figure it out, he's guilty by nature. So yeah kids, just go around assuming that people will always live down to the worst of your assumptions. Bah. And yet, next week he's back on the streets again, thanks to the revolving door of forest justice. Man, how much must Shylock hate his job? Every week he has to notice some trifling clue to solve a meaningless crime, and next week the felon is right back on the streets free to not rewind his videos before returning them again. Or whatever.

Next on the parade of loathing: Cathy. Now, Cathy seems to me like the kind of comic that's really only funny if it mirrors your own life, kind of like the Far Side, but with fewer space aliens and one more talking cow. Really now, how many times can a poorly drawn woman fret about how her thighs look in her bathing suit before it starts to get a little old. Who cares anyways? Your thighs aren't your problem, woman! You'd still be ugly and look as if you were drawn by a paraplegic elephant even if you lost 30 pounds. Really, Cathy's only redeeming triat is her propensity to say "Ack!" which invariably reminds me of Bill the Cat, making me feel all happy inside.

And now for the worst comic to disgrace the lifestyle section of the paper ever, Funky Winkerbean. Now, don't get me wrong, Funky Winkerbean used to be funny (if a little predictable), back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Jimmy Carter was President. But then Something Happened, and Tom Batuik felt the need to become socially relevant. Maybe his cat died, maybe he was more traumatized than most at the failure of Crystal Pepsi to capture a viable share of the soft drink market. It doesn't really matter; but then in Funky Winkerbean, nothing really matters anymore. If you don't follow the strip (in which case you ignorance is truly bliss) they've spent something like, the past three years going on about how Wally can't get over having been a P.O.W. in Afghanistan. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against dealing with important issues of wartime life, this is merely a retarded way of doing it. Anybody out there want to see Garfield deal with prostate cancer? I didn't think so, and that's really my point here. Seriously, I'd punch a Nazi off a blimp for even one strip where he can laugh at the uncalled for fanaticism of the band director, or chuckle along to the wacky world observations of Crazy the postal delivery person. But alas, those days are dead and gone.

And now to make up for all the evil of the preceeding paragraphs, it's time to do a comic that's the exact opposite of the above; one that looks like it's supposed to be serious, but is in fact the craziest, most wacked out funfest ever to fit into three panels a day. I am of course talking about Mark Trail. What, you say? How is Mark Trail that funny? Well my friend, you clearly haven't been reading it long enough. First, everyone in the strip looks either exactly like Mark or like Cherry, his ho with delusions of decency (no Cherry, we all know you're a skank, don't keep lying to yourself). Seriously, it's like Bizarro World, or that episode of Star Trek with all the androids that looked alike and though Checkov was sexy (I think we can all be grateful that we don't live in such a world as that). Next, Mark Trial is a total, freaking, super hero. Sure he looks like a mild-mannered park ranger, but how many people can bring down an airplane full of terrorists by throwing a piece of fossilized wood at it? Just one. And who can distract a gang of nefarious poachers by standing outside their door and saying "Cluck, Cluck" then, get this, punching them in the face as they come out to see what could have made such a sound. Seriously, Mark Trail is my new demigod. Finally, He's bound by law, and on pain of death, to include a woodland creature in at least one frame of every strip. Mark can be sitting in an office in New York City talking to Evil Mark with a comb-over and Fat Mark with a mullet, and all a sudden, right out of nowhere, VWOOOOOM, you're fifty mile away listening as a speech bubble emanates from the distant and tiny city, reading the strip from the point of view of the enormous and omniscient squirrel who now fills an entire frame. Then, just as you begin to get your bearings, VWOOOOOM, you're back in the office with the Mark Brothers discussing a missing panda, unable to warn Mark that an abominable hell-rodent has overheard his every work from half a state away. Chilling, isn't it?

Well, I've clearly been at this for far too long now, and if you've read this far and kept your sanity, then kudos to you, go get a waffle or something.

A blog eh? I've never done one before, but it seems like these days blogs are like cell phones hammerpants and international communism, they're everywhere. Anyways, on to the obscurity:

Which one came first? Captain Marvel, or Gomer Pyle? I mean, they both say "Shazam!!!" to get their awesome powers, but it's hardly that common a word, so which one is ripping the other off? That, of course, is assuming that they aren't both getting powers from the same ancient wizard and really they're like one of those dynamic duos of superheroes where their powers, though different, compliment eachother. Captain Marvel, for instance, can fly around and punch super-villians; while Gomer Pyle can really annoy Sgt. Carter and make Barney Fife look less stupid then he in fact is. See what I mean? No skills overlap at all there, they're the perfect team.

Well, I think that's enough retardedness for my first post, gotta save some for later.