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The Stoats of Purity

Ben — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:43:00 -0400

Weasels. Long have they been maligned by such mighty forces as Western literature, Hubert Humphrey, the Dixieland jazz movement of the early 20^th Century, the Indian Subcontinent, and Bo Diddley (who, as a young man, was mauled by a weasel he found sealed inside a jar of apricots). The weasel however, is in fact a noble and weaselicious beast, with a proud history dating back to the Pleistocene Epoch (it was in the 70’s, Gerald Ford had all the #1 jams, and giant land sloths roamed across America in large, ugly, tail finiferous automobiles), so, that we may better dispel the horrible lies perpetuated against weaselkind by the biased anti-weasel media, here’s a brief history of the incredible, edible, weasel (not available in Alaska, Hawaii, or My Pants, pants void where prohibited).

The weasel was first discovered by Sir Isaac Weasel, when he sat down under a tree in a weasel orchard and one fell on his head. After attempting to gnaw his ears off (that is, the weasel attempting to gnaw Sir Isaac Weasels ears off, not the reverse, which would be cruel, nor good Sir Isaac trying to gnaw off his own ears, which would be both uncouth and silly) Sir Isaac befriended the weasel, taught it to wear a little fedora and play the zither, which was all the rage back in whatever historical period we’re assuming this all happened in (let’s just say it was the Hot Pants Epoch, because that would be a totally sweet name for a band, as well as an epoch).

During Elizabethan times, the stoat (which is basically just a souped up weasel, like if you took a regular old stock weasel and dropped a V8 in it, and painted a stripe on it to make it look faster) was known as a symbol of purity, and therefore there was a good ten year period where if you wanted to look holy and righteous, when you had a portrait taken, it was all the rage to look thoroughly bestoated.

When Bob Dole discovered Canada, crushed his enemies, drove them before him, and heard the lamentations of their women, his ship was called la grande belette which means “The Big Weasel”.

Thomas Jefferson always kept three ferrets in his pants. That way, when people said “Thomas Jefferson, why are your pants full of weasels?” He could come back and say, “Sir, my pants are the pants of democracy, and these ferrets which guard them are the Ferrets of Vigilance.” Then whoever had asked him would be ashamed for having ever doubted Thomas Jefferson, and would probably buy him a drink or something. Also, The Ferrets of Vigilance would be just fine and dandy as a band name.

A large group of weasels is known as a boogle of weasels, boogle being an old Indian word meaning “many weasels”

George Washington once threw a weasel across the Potomac River. When it landed, it took root in the fertile river soil and swiftly grew into what we now know as the federal government.

Weasels have this thing they do called, seriously, The Weasel War Dance, which involves jumping around a lot in celebration, pretending to throw a little football down at their furry little feet in the imaginary end zone they’re standing in, and something called “dooking” which whatever it may be, does not sound like a thing which you would want a weasel to do on your new carpet.

Actual real world flavors of weasel include the Least Weasel, the Tropical Weasel, the Egyptian Weasel, the Indonesian Mountain Weasel, the Yellow-Bellied Weasel, the Great Crested Weasel, the Northumbrian Whooping Weasel, the Mexican Jumping Weasel, the Siberian Baby-Eating Weasel, the Sock Drawer Weasel, Schrodinger’s Weasel, and the Lesser Mongolian Singing Weasel.

Weasels are a natural source of potassium.

Your average weasel, were you to stuff it in an envelope, could be sent anywhere in the world for the price of a single first-class postage stamp. So, for all you people out there who want to rain weaselly destruction on someone in another state but have nothing except a roll of stamps and a liberal weasel supply (also a good band name), you should probably start licking envelopes now.

Weasels can be found anywhere in the world except in places where people pretend to have better things to do than look for weasels, like in trendy coffeehouses and beneath the sofa cushions of the affluent.

Finally, if everyone in America traded in their car for a chariot pulled by a thousand weasels, global warming would end, over 17 billion weasel-related jobs would be created, and jelly beans and snicker doodles would rain from the heavens.

The Amish!

Ben — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:19:00 -0500

The Amish. Pennsylvania and many of your other fine Sylvanias are positively infested with them, as they swarm o’er the cornfields in all their pre-industrial majesty. But who exactly are the Amish? Keep reading, and learn.

The Amish are forbidden by their religion to fight back in you hit them. But don’t get cocky, because some of them are actually Harrison Ford. And not just the dudes, you could just go up and punch an Amish woman, and she might well be Harrison Ford too. So you’re better off not risking it.

The Amish don’t use cars because they make it waaaaay too easy to zip around at 60 mph, so most of them go about in a buggy pulled by horses. But watch out buggy-riding Amish, because even you’re not hardcore enough for the Jogging Amish, who think if you get a horse you may as well just go ahead and get one of those little George Jetson cars, and you’ll be all out riding along in your buggy, and they’ll jog by and laugh all malevolently at you, but dude, you can’t punch, because you’re Amish already!

There used to be the Car Amish, but most of them drove away. The Car Amish were kind of the Crystal Pepsi of Amish.

Everything the Amish do, they do especially because 18^th century Prussian military guys didn’t do it. Like Prussians, they had big Teddy Roosevelt Mustaches and lots of buttons, and high speed internet. So the Amish grow crazy chinstrap beards, hold their clothes together with duct tape, and have to keep their internet out in the barn, where the horses poop on it.

One time, some guy convinced the Amish that the defining characteristic of the 18^th century Prussian military was the wearing of pants. The Amish had a cold an embarrassing winter that year.

The rule of thumb for the Amish and modern conveniences is that they’re okay as long as you do something to make them suck, thereby canceling out the convenience. So you can have say, a cell phone, but it has to be one of those big-ass 50 lbs WWII D-Day phones. Or you can have a light bulb, but it has to be pink, so that your farm house will look really fruity. Or you can buy a trampoline, but it has to be on fire, covered in bees, and not bouncy.

Almost all of the Amish are from the Yoder family; some of them live on the swamp Planet of Dagobah and make rocks float around. They are Not cool with R2-D2, unless he stay out in the barn.

The Amish can eat up to half their weight in insects during a single night.

Scientists now believe that the Amish mostly evolved from Saber-toothed squirrels.

If you were Amish and a cyborg, you’d have to stay out in the barn with the internet, otherwise, you’d be too convenient for yourself, and then you might as well just be an 18^th century Prussian, like all the rest of us.

If you piss off the Amish, because they can’t beat you up, they just shun you instead. Also, some of them will wait until you park at church, or the beard store or something, and then let all the air out of your horse, so you have to walk home.

If you’re Amish and in the bath, and you have a little toy boat, you get kicked out if you make motor boat noises; instead, you have to make sounds like a three-masted schooner.

You can say anything you want about the Amish on the internet, because if any of them read it and call you on it, they’ll get in more trouble than you will.

For the Amish, Jane Austen novels are like reading 1984; a Dystopian vision of a hideous world yet to come.

Presidents on Money, Woot

Ben — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:00:00 -0500

There is something curious, in the American psyche, about not being all gung ho about one dollar coins. Way back in the day, we put Susan B Anthony (the B was for Bonequeisha) on one, and honored her historical role in the American conquest of the Moon on the other side. Unfortunately, the coin never really caught on in part because it was about the same size as a dollar, and partly because Miss B Anthony had this sort of a sternly disappointed look on her face, as if she had already resigned herself to the fact that you were going to pick her up, put her in your pants pocket down by all your naughty bits, and eventually spend her on beer Friday night.

So, back to the drawing board they went, those plucky designers of currency, and came up with an idea that involved a coin featuring a rattlesnake riding a flaming motorcycle out of a giant skull, which was of course struck down, because it made some who beheld it weep tears of joy at its ineffable awesomeness, while others who saw it wept tears of sissiness, for such was its unspeakable badassitude. So they went with Plan B, Sacagawea, who unfortunately, never really caught on either, because even though she was way hotter than Susan B Anthony, there’s just something about a coin with a picture of a dead white guy on it that says “money” which brings us to where we stand today.

Thus was the idea born to put a different President on each one, at the rate of four a year or so. On one hand this is totally sweet, because I can finally fulfill my lifelong dream of walking around town with a pocket full of William Howard Taft, on the other hand, at some point in the future, I’m going to buy something, and someone is going to hand me a Jimmy Carter as change. Ah well, one must take the bad with the good I suppose. And at least we don’t get stuck with money with a duck on it like some other countries in North America.

Anyway, let’s take a look, why don’t we, at the first four coins to be issued in the series, that we may better ~~appreciate their fine art and craftsman ship~~ make fun of them.

Let us start out then, with the tails side of the coin which, in commemoration of an event which is held fondly in the hearts and minds of all red-blooded Americans; the moment right before the Statue of Liberty brought down her mighty Jackie Wilson-powered arm on the roof of that museum in Ghostbusters 2, defeating Vigo the Carpathian, who at the time had been about ready to join up with Hitler and start an evil boy band (I know, all boy bands are technically evil, but this one even more so). Notice how she’s looking right at the $1. What? Is that all I’m worth these days? Personally, I think it would have been a nice touch to put a tiny little Charleton Heston down on the lower left, but one can’t have everything, I suppose.

First, we have George Washington, whose cheekbones, apparently, cast a permanent shadow over a goodly part of his head, leaving it forever condemned to an eternity of freezing darkness, while the other side of his face was perpetually exposed to the Sun, reaching temperatures hot enough to boil lead; leaving only a narrow habitable region in his nose. Or maybe he’s just clenching his jaw closed really hard, suggesting that this particular likeness was taken against his will, as the engraver tried to cajole him into revealing his hippopotamus teeth. Also, note how the hair on the front of his head seems sharply divided from the hair further back. He actually cultivated this look because the hair wall up front acted as a shield and a wind break to protect the stand of tiny pine trees that covered much of the rest of his head from storms, low doors ways, and funny hats.

Next we come to John Adams who displays an excellent example of DRAMATIC CURRENCY HAIR, in which a person whose hair would normally just kind of hang out on his head is rendered in such a way as to suggest that he spent laborious hours each day setting his mighty follicle of steel with a pair of blacksmith’s tongs while holding his head in a mighty furnace. Also, note how vacuous and doofy his eyes look. While George seems to be saying “Are we done yet; I have people to punch in the face?” John Adams seems to be giving off more of a “Hmmmmmm? Are those Cheez Doodles over there?” vibe. Also, it just looks like as soon as they were done taking his picture here, he unbuttoned his collar and his chin just kind of merged back into his neck, ala Jabba the Hutt.

And who’s this then? Why it’s President Thomas Jefferson, who once saved an orphanage from a meteor shower by shielding it beneath his mighty jutting caveman brow. Honestly, when you look at it long enough, it’s kind of like a magic eye picture, where Jefferson’s head starts to morph away from his hair and you begin to perceive that this is really Fred Gwynn with a mop on his head. He’s kind of doing a bedroom eyes thing there too, “Hey there baby, I kept a large collection of mastodon parts in my vestibule, wanna come take a look?” he seems almost to say. Or perhaps he’s just completely stoned, and is presently imagining what it would be like if Washington DC were visited by Znorok, Alien Unicorn from the Gumdrop Planet. Either way, he has more important things on his mind that being on money right now.

Then we come to James Madison, exactly as he looked right after Gandalf demanded that he hand of the One Ring. Seconds after this, he will realize the error of his ways, and bequeath the Ring to his son, John Quincy Adams Baggins, who would one day leave the Shire to save all of Middle Earth. Isn’t there a bit too much neck-swaddling going on here as well, it almost looks like his head merges straight into that cravat thing he’s wearing, as if he were in fact, James Madison, King of the Lizard Men, Five Seconds After Putting An Entire Lemon In His Mouth. Which, coincidentally, is what his wife called him when no one else was around.

Squirrels!

Ben — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:09:00 -0500

Once, back in the late 1700s, around the time our mighty ancestors were having a revolution, there was a French sciency guy, whose name I am at present inadequately motivated to look up, so we’re just going to call him Monsieur Francis Martha Weaseltrousers (or as the French say, les pantaloons de weasel). Now, Monsieur Weaseltrousers had a theory concerning the relation between animals on one side of the ocean, and their brethren on the other, and it went a little something like this: Everything in Europe is bigger and smarter and stronger and more fabulous that anything over in America. This, of course, made him very popular in France, while many great Americans, such as Ben Franklin, thought he was an enormous tard. Old Ben went so far as to point out that, on average, Americans were a good two inches taller than the French, which he credited to our steady diet of buffalo and monster truck rallies.

Anyway, if you’ve been watching the news lately, there’s something afoot in Britain that would surely make the late Monsieur Weaseltrousers most unhappy, and would doubtless cause him to mince about ineffectively in a manner most delightfully humorous to behold. I am, of course, referring to the fact that England is being taken over by American squirrels. The native squirrel of the British Isles, as it turns out, is the red squirrel, which gains its color from the millions of tiny krill it eats daily as it sweeps through the sky, filtering them through its baleen. The grey squirrel, on the other hand is purely of American derivation and acquired its coloration in the late 19^th Century, when, during the Civil War, the vast majority of squirrels sided with the South, eventually distinguishing themselves in battle greatly, when, in a daring nighttime raid, they ate General McClellan’s nuts, crippling the Union war effort for some time.

It is suspected by British Squirrelologists that the American squirrels first found their way across the Atlantic during the early 20^th Century, when old-timey bicycle merchants would routinely use thousands of live squirrels as ballast on the voyage over to England. Once there, they would dump their cargo of squirrels into the Thames, filling their hold with delightful old-timey bicycles for all the good little children of the USA. Unfortunately, it soon turned out that grey squirrels were in many ways mightier than the indigenous red ones. They drank a lot more, were larger, drove SUVs, and frequently carried tiny, cute little firearms. Alas, the red squirrels were mostly at that time occupied in fighting World War I, or as people called it then, “Fred” (later, when World War II started, and everyone realized they were going to end up having to call it “Fred Jr.” which was too silly to contemplate, they went back and changed the name of the first one).

In 1918, when a war-weary red squirrel populace at last returned, having left behind their tiny little squirrel-sized gas masks and teensy weensy little machine guns that shot acorns or somesuch whimsical thing, they discovered that they no longer had the advantage of numbers. And so it has continued ever since, with the red squirrel population dwindling, and the grey squirrels becoming ever more brazen, chewing holes in the Tower of London, beating up little of ladies, and recently taking up residence in Prince Charles ears, where an estimated 500 of them now live.

The emergency being what it is, the British government (the cool part, that always made exploding watches and crap for James Bond) claims to have created a Super Squirrel, larger, mightier, and more bloodthirsty than the American invaders, in hopes that it will chase them out, and going on to establish a benevolent dictatorship over the regular original recipe red squirrels, and eventually, the people of Europe in general.

A Brief History of the Presidency

Ben — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:44:00 -0400

It is very tempting, at occasionally serious times in history such as those in which we know find ourselves embroiled, to get all serious about things, and believe that whatever is going on now is The Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened. Fortunately, our great nation’s founding fathers realized that there would now and then be dark times ahead for their young republic, and they took it upon themselves to make sure that, whatever else were to happen, there would always be one man in America who was elected and paid primarily to make Americans laugh. By which of course, I mean the President.

Some of you, no doubt, think this is going to be about George Bush, but you would be wrong, because however comical his frequent grammatical lapses may be, he cannot for a moment compete with some of the great and preposterous men who have held the office before him. Let us then, gird up our metaphorical loins with the figurative loin-girders or history, and assay to smite to and fro the notion that Presidents are serious fellows.

First, of course, was George Washington, who, like his Secretary of Periwigs, Bob Newhart, was a great master of the deadpan delivery, an example of which can be seen in virtually every portrait of Washington, in commemoration of the many times he would stand up before all the other founding fathers at their monthly cookout, looking all Presidential, before intoning in sepulchral tones such immortal phrases as “My pantaloons are teeming with ferrets” and often donning his hippopotamus teeth moments before a major address, only to run around the room pretending to eat people.

Thomas Jefferson, great innovator that he was, developed an early chemical process for the fabrication of dissolving pants. Though the details are lost to history, many now believe that this was somehow instrumental in getting Napoleon to sell us Louisiana.

In addition to getting drunk and driving the Presidential carriage into the Presidential swimming pool at his inauguration, Andrew Jackson was known to carry a valise with him at all times, which contained nothing except for a comedically large rubber catfish, with which he would smack everyone who dared to criticize his wife. He was also the first President to hire a fellow to follow him around, and every time he’d get into some shenanigans, which was often, to say “President Andrew Jackson!” in an exasperated sort of way, at which point he would produce a small trombone and go “Wah, wah, waaaaaahhhhh”

Martin Van Buren would always trip over the ottoman in his living room, to great comedic effect, when he came home in the evening to his wife, Mary Tyler Van Buren, and his son, Bob Dole

Zachary Taylor could swallow his own forehead, and that is the primary reason he never got to be on any money.

Chester A. Arthur, due to an acute facial hair shortage during the 1880s, lead the way in conservation of vital resources by combining his sideburns with his mustache. This had the added advantage of acting rather like a chinstrap and keeping the rest of his hair from blowing off when he rode on trains.

Grover Cleveland was affectionately known to his friends as Uncle Jumbo, and was known to entertain neighborhood children by catching peanuts with his mighty trunk.

Benjamin Harrison mastered the art of throwing his voice at a young age, whilst he was but a boy working in the mighty cheese refineries of Ohio, or as it was then called, “New Michigan” He later put these skills to use during boring political dinners when he would sit behind pompous, silly English persons, with which Washington DC teemed in those days, as verily as if they were ferrets in George Washington’s pantaloons, and make humorous flatulent noises, to the delight and embarrassment of all present.

Grover Cleveland II, Revenge of Grover Cleveland, would call up Grover Cleveland, Original Recipe and the two of them would have great fun at the expense of everyone who didn’t know that there were two of him running about. He would also frequently disguise himself as a large cake, and nudge people who walked by him in the street, following them home and filling their shoes with pistachios as they slept.

William Howard Taft, in addition to getting stuck in bathtubs, (and on one memorable occasion, the Capitol Rotunda) was fond of peddling around on an amusingly diminutive bicycle, as well as straining millions of krill through his mighty and glorious baleen (it is said that under water, his resonant mating call, to deep to be heard by the human ear, could travel for over a hundred miles).

Calvin Coolidge would wear an Indian Headdress around the house, but after it kept getting caught on the light fixtures, he discarded it favor of a big foam rubber Mayor McCheese head, Which is why to this very day Republicans still control more that 80% of the giant cheeseburger vote.

Harry Truman would take off his glasses in times of great need and fly around saving people, only to leave everyone confused when he put them back on again and looked completely different. Also, after the surrender of the Japanese, he would spend hours on the deck of the aircraft carrier, making motor boat noises and burping out the alphabet backwards.

Richard Nixon somehow convinced an entire nation to call him “Tricky Dick”. He also could put a whole box of Teddygrahams in his mouth, and then shoot them out of his nose at speeds adequate to knock small rodents out of trees on the White House lawn.

Jimmy Carter was once attacked by a swimming rabbit.

And finally, not to be outdone by his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, while at a major disarmament conference with Gorbachev, would sneak into the latter’s room every night and replace all his clothes with slightly larger ones, so that by the end of the week, Gorbachev was convinced he was shrinking. Historians now believe this to have been the turning point of the Cold War.

Al Gore: The Untold Story

Ben — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:47:00 -0400

So, Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize, as you have most likely heard by now (assuming you’re not still angry because Canadian dollars are worth more than ours now), and the question on the I minds of all good people who only read headlines and then remain blissfully ignorant about everything else is what exactly Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for, anyhow? Sure, he doesn’t like global warming, but then most other people don’t either (except for Dick Cheney, who rides to work every day on his mighty pet Lava Monster, Buttons) and all of them have cut down waaaaaaaaaaay fewer trees to publish their books that Al Gore has. So what then, if not for his work in the vital field of saving polar bears (without which Coke would have to get a new mascot, such as the water buffalo, the stoat, or the great wild and wooly late President William Howard Taft)? It is with this in mind that I here present a list of other things that Al Gore has done to help humanity over the years.

First, he invented the Internet. Yeah, you don’t hear much about that one anymore, but it’s all true. You see, back in the 60s, Al Gore used to hang out in his secret lair built deep beneath a rain forest full of super-intelligent lemurs and lament that his mighty UNIVAC computer, for all its vacuum tubes and totally sweet lights on it, was incapable of bringing up his myspace page and sharing it with the cute little multicultural children of the world (and it was totally sweet, he had like, a list of all his favorite emo bands, and which cheerleaders at Municipal Rainforest High School he was totally crushing on, and a cute video of a cat falling off of a television). So, one night, Al Gore, blissfully unaware that his name could be rearranged to spell “Ear Log” built the first internet out of environmentally friendly pandas and 60% post consumer recycled beer cans. Alas, the next morning as he stood out on his front porch admiring his mighty new invention, a blue-butted baboon descended from the trees, distracted Al Gore for one crucial second with his butt of many colors, and stole the prototype Internet, which he later sold to Bill Gates for beer money. Which is why to this day, Al Gore does not all baboons at his speeches and Betty Crocker cook-offs.

Then in the 70s, Al Gore was one of the Superfriends for a while. Like, one time, Solomon Grundy was totally trashing this village full of grass huts and stuff in like, India or something, and Apache Chief was supposed to go over and do that thing where he got all huge and chase him off, but unfortunately, Apache Chief was, at the moment locked in the bathroom crying softly to himself because Hawk-Girl said he looked like a total doofus. So Al Gore quickly leapt into his resplendent chariot made of rainbows, pulled as it was by a jillion and three butterflies of all sorts of lovely colors and hummed his personal theme song in a quiet, serious sort of a way as he flew to India, where, using a tactic he learned from his old nemesis, That Baboon In The Previous Paragraph, he used his blue butt to frighten Solomon Grundy away. And then an elephant absent-mindedly ate his chariot of rainbows, which totally killed the moment. For a second there though, before that last part, it was pretty sweet.

Then there was the one time where, as Al Gore had long predicted, so many Americans bought SUVs that a rift into that mirror universe where everyone is evil opened up, and before Al Gore could destroy it by throwing a Prius into it, Evil Alternate Universe Al Gore came through, with a goatee and a twirly villain mustache and all came through, and immediately set about messing up all of Al Gore’s good work saving the world by building a giant mechanical spider that ran on non-renewable fuels. Fortunately, Al Gore knew that at our current rate of oil consumption, we’ll probably run out of oil in the next 80 years, so he just sat back to wait until that happened and meanwhile let Evil Twirly Mustache Al Gore and his mechanical spider go and utterly destroy Wyoming, which they did.

Of Fire, Ice, and the Man-Eating Rat

Ben — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:54:00 -0500

At the moment, the first two fingers of my right hand are burnt. Not like, flamethrower-style burnt, or even really-bad-sunburn burnt. It’s more the kind of burnt that you get when you look at a Texafornia style Cheeto, where they’ve got like, little grill marks on them, to show how hardcore the Cheeto chefs are. Now, the next obvious question is: how did I burn my hand in the first place? Was I cooking something? Did I once again forget the Prime Directive of muffler repair (Don’t touch the damn muffler while the motor is running!)? Was I fighting Oprah again and she decided to summon Rog’nosh, Lava Beast of the Unquenchable Hell-Pit? Nope, the truth is that I was trying to throw a flaming torch (is there any other kind?) at an Indian village right handed, because my left hand was busy carry my pitchfork, and some of the baling wire that was holding the torch together came loose, slid down the torch handle (I’ll bet there’s some incredibly archaic yet monosyllabic Norse word for a torch handle that’s nobody had used for centuries because we so rarely storm castles anymore) and rendered unto my mouse fingers a Cheeto-like branding, all of which contributes to its standing as the new Official Scar Ben Has with The Coolest Story Behind It. And here, of course, is the rest of that story:

It happens to be the case that this was my last week in the employ of Henricus before I cast off the mantle of Old-Timey Englishness and gird about my loins the figurative belt of librarianation. As the goddess of improbable scheduling would have it however, yesterday happened to be the day that a movie company would be filming a Nova special about Jamestown, and since actual Jamestown now has seven Ferris wheels and one of those teacup rides, they decided to film their thing at Henricus, where we can’t even afford a properly matched set of historical chickens. I spent much of the past two weeks peeling the bark off poles to help a group of Powhatan Indian guys gussy up our Indian village, and then yesterday came my time to be on camera, which I regarding with earnest expectation, since I had gotten a look at a shooting schedule and saw that a scene was called for involving a man-eating rat, which is one of those New World threats that most films about our nation’s founding skip over.

Now if there is one ironclad rule by which one may judge the quality of a Jamestown movie production, is it my the ratio of young, potentially starving guys in it as opposed to the number of portly, over fifty guys, and this one promised to be a class act indeed, with a goodly number of mildly grizzled, lanky, mildly manic fellows. In such good company however, I decided that I needed a way to set myself apart from the crowd, and so I hit upon one of those brilliantly dumb ideas that my brain throws out every now and then as a sort of penance for having once been allowed into a school with a gifted program. “I know what I can do!” I thought, “I’ll do the whole thing barefoot to look extra poverty stricken and desperate! I can think of no possible ways in which this could backfire or ever be even mildly uncomfortable in December on a muddy day next door to a swamp!” And so, as everyone else shivered to work setting up tents and making all us actors up to look adequately grungy (I had, in my infinite wisdom, thought that since being in a movie is the sort of occasion for which one ought to look impressive and decent, taken a shower that very morning before setting out), I cast my shoes off and set about finding all the pointier patches of gravel in the area with unerring luck.

My first scene called for me to be chopping wood, barefoot of course, while some Indians came in with food, at which point I was to look especially unbalanced, lurch towards them, and begin pawing experimentally at a dead deer they had brought, which, while missing most of its vital organs, still had it’s head, with which it kept looking at me in a sort of disappointed, yet vaguely annoyed manner.

After this, we shot a scene or two which involved John Smith coming to the village, and one of the guards shouting “Look, it’s Captain Smith!” in the squintiest manner possible. It just so happened that the fellow to whom this task fell had been gifted with an almost super-human talent for shouting news in a squinty manner, so that the ultimate effect can scarcely be compared to anything else upon the earth. It was just as if you happened to find yourself with an enormous caveman-styled unitard and the task of finding someone who could wear it to maximum effect and just as you despaired of discovering such an individual, Andre the Giant walked into the room to deliver you a pizza. Seriously, it was epically squinty. If squinty shouting were, say, balrog-slaying, this guy would have been Gandalf, or Gerald Ford (they’re secretly cousins, though they don’t look it since Gerald stopped wearing the hat).

Then it was time for lunch, at which point we all retreated to the warmth of the main admin building for and impromptu reenactment of the of the First Thanksgiving, when the Indians brought the starving settlers a might feast of Shepherds Pie (regular and vegetarian, for all those vegan settler) and off-brand root beer, along with a basket of fun-size Snickers bars, an urn of hot water, and a copious supply of Swiss Miss, at which point they all gave thanks to their Creator and commented on the extreme degree of squintiness of which these Englishmen seemed capable.

At this point we had fallen a bit behind schedule, so we found ourselves filming a couple of different scenes concurrently, including the Eating Dead People Scene, and the much anticipated Man-Eating Rat Scene (which alas, turned out to simply be a fellow having a squirrel for lunch, rather than the Rodent of Unusual Size that I had imagined). I myself, along with another fellow hardy enough to stand barefoot in frozen muck, got to dig a well in a lazy and lackluster fashion, at which point John Smith would come over say unkind things to us regarding the sub-par nature of our well-digging. The well in question, of course, was about a foot deep, and while the other fellow got a mattock to swing, I as so often is the case (remind me to do another blog sometime on my history of romance) got stuck with a cheap hoe, which meant that after Smith came over and yelled at me, I could usually get away with about ten good strokes in before the head fell off my hoe, and I had to stand there barefoot in the mud, pushing a stick around, getting yelled at, and trying not to get mattocked in any of my more sensitive parts. It was, in short, a great deal of fun. About this time, I also secured the help of a fellow on the production crew whose job was apparently to carry around a propane heater, thaw out the feet of those in need of such a service, and give me a sort of a “You poor, brave, stupid, bastard.” kind of a look, which was really very decent of him.

At this point, a great change took place in that for the next scene and all those following, shoes were not only allowed but encouraged, so I got to join a party of men who were grimacing sadly as John Smith was carried back to England after suffering a near fatal-groin injury after a tragic, yet hilarious accident involving a pocket full of gun powder, a raccoon, a rabbi, and a farmer whose eighteen daughters were all practicing to be trombone players. But I digress. Most of the scene involved me and all the rest of the cast standing there looking somber from various and sundry angles as Captain Smith’s ship sailed out of t he parking lot and back to England, or as residents of Chester best know it, that Wawa where they sell donuts that look like the Ghostbusters logo.

At last darkness had fallen, and the time had come for me to do my big scene with the raiding party. I was one of five men off to torch the Indian village. Each of them had a musket, I was the only one with a pitchfork, as if I was the one good-natured yet stupid colonist who might not be cool with torching a village so they had to lie to me to get me to come along. “Quick Ben, the Indians are building Frankenstein’s Monster and we have to stop them!” “Gawrsh, that sounds like an awfully Jewish name for an Indian Monster, but okay!” Or possibly, “Ben, the Indians have a whole bunch of hay they need moved somewhere else; also, it’s the middle of the night and they’re in danger of suffering severe eye-strain from studying in the dark for their midterms tomorrow!” “Golly, I’d best get me pitchfork and torch and go help them out!” In any case, we were about at the third take when one of the wires holding my torch together felt a sudden kinship with the force of gravity and bit me on the hand, prompting me to take the very reasonable step of shouting “Graaaaaagh!” and dropping the torch. Right in the middle of the forest, which as forests often are, was made out of dry flammable things with a great affinity for catching on fire. This in turn prompted me to survey the situation and sum it up with a succinct phrase that is unprintable in the space, before picking up the torch again, running into the Indian village, and dropping it off in at the firepit there. At this point, I had had time to catch up with events well enough to find myself standing in a village full of Indians, and ask if any of them had a band-aid, or as they Indians called them, Maize. Which of course, they did not, it being the case that my question was completely dumb.

About this time, the head of make-up came over and took me back to the building, where they swabbed me down in various and assorted antibacterial oinkments, bandaged my hand, and generally took excellent care of me, after which point I grabbed an extra ice pack, and called it a day. The result being that today, my feet are more than a little bit sore, and my index finger now sports a very dashing little dueling scar, as if it sustained a rapier strike while dueling with one of my other fingers over some matter of honor, “I’m the index finger, I make it so Ben can push buttons on the drink machine!” “I’m the pinky finger, I let Ben look French and girly when he’s holding a phone to humorous effect.” “Thou varlet, have at thee!” In short, even without the man-eating rat, it was a most excellent day.

Dodongo Dislikes Monday

Ben — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:57:00 -0400

Perhaps you’ve read the news that the Mongolian Embassy in DC wants to put up a statue of Genghis Khan, which is of course, the most awesome thing since sliced awesome. Now, many n’er do wells and blankets of unadulterated dampness have decided that Genghis Khan isn’t a fitting subject for a statue in Washington, on account of the pillaging and the conquering and the crazy hats and whatnot. However, we already have a statue to Martin Luther, who once punched Pope Leo X off a flaming zeppelin, and we still let Jimmy Carter talk to the UN, despite the fact that back in the 70s, he lead his soulless Army of The Damned to fight alongside the Wlatsome Swarm of Zargon the Desecrator. Also, Genghis Khan invented pants.

You know how they say you ought to cut up those rings that hold six-packs together because they’ll choke sea turtles? If you think about it, this actually makes no sense at all, assuming as it does that either we continue to dump all six-pack rings into the ocean simply as a matter of course, or alternately that sea turtles live in landfills, which, for the most part, is not the least bit true (the lone and notable exception to this being the Buttworthy Hawksbill, which in fact flourishes in landfills, garbage dumps, and wastewater treatment facilities, but which curls up and dies like a scorched hippo when introduced to clean water).

I saw a poster the other day proclaiming a dodgeball tournament to help handicapped kids. Honestly now, if there’s one sport that handicapped kids probably hate above all others, its dodgeball. So yeah, even if you do raise a heap of money for them, they’re all still going to hate you for it. Just imagine if someone did a bake sale to help Holocaust survivors. It would not be cool.

If I were the Last Unicorn (which I am not, last time I looked), I think I’d probably track down the Last of the Mohicans, and go clubbing with him.

Just once, I’d like to see a horror movie made where a car full of attractive, college-age hillbillies breaks down in the city and they’re all murdered by deranged, inbred yuppies.

I was at Lowe’s, where everything is now posted in Spanish, and I saw a sign that said “Ferreteria” and I was all like, excited and stuff, because I thought that meant that they had a room where one could go to eat ferrets. Alas, it turns out that in Spanish, ferreteria just means “hardware”. On the other hand, in Spanish, “Employees Only” means “free puppies” so I guess we’re sort of even.

I bet the Flying Nun gets a lot of bugs stuck in her teeth.

Why did Popeye even bother carrying a pipe around? He never smoked anything; all he’d ever use it for was eating spinach. So, it worked, but he would have been so much better off just keeping a fork with him. It’s like if I wanted something to dry my hands off on, but instead of a towel, I always just always brought a mummy along with me. It works, but he’s always cursing your friends and picking fights with Brendan Frasier.

Our chickens at work have finally become so stupid that in order to get them into the coop at night, I have to individually chase them into a corner, pick them up, carry them like a football, and hurl them into the coop. Also, sometimes they try to poop on me. In short, I need a new job. Now.

The Pope Versus Everybody

Ben — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:59:00 -0400

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, I never thought that when Benedict XVI took over as Pope, that he’d ever be able to live up to the awesome-hatwearing, Commie-fighting, Popemobile-road-tripping popery of old JP2. Clearly I was wrong. For those of you who have decided to get all your news regarding the Western world from teacupmammoths (in which case I pity you, since I’ve been on an angst-related sabbatical for like, several fortnights now), The Pope managed to stir up some major controversy earlier this week after he declared that Islam’s contributions in the field of theologically-inspired headwear, though undertaken with the greatest of gusto, “dorkaliciously retardulous.” In the days that followed, of course, outrage rocked the Middle East as everybody demanded the Pope apologize and allow himself to be summarily executed, but feisty old pontiff that he is, B16 decided to stand his ground since, technically speaking, “Dorkaliciously Retardulous” would be a totally awesome album title or political party.

Which brings us to the real question here: Why is everyone so mad at the man who made Santa hats acceptable formal wear again? The answer, as always, had a lot to do with pirates. This past Tuesday, as all of you surely know, is that most beloved of Roman Catholic holidays, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and while all of us here in the Great Satan and many of the attendant Lesser Satans (I’m looking at you, New Zealand) are busy buckling our swashes and battening down our yardarms, many in the middle east take great umbrage at this annual reminder that when it comes to talking like pirates, Western Civilization totally freaking rules.

What made this year different though was the fact that apparently some new intelligence surfaced that the Pope, venerable old gent that he is today, had a somewhat more interesting youth than we have been lead to believe. I refer you here to a picture of B16 in his younger days which has recently been making the rounds amongst the mosques. And I offer it with the promise that really, honestly, I swear upon the grave of Don Knotts, I am not making this up:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Pope was once a Jewish Gangsta Frankenstein Pirate. Now, here in America, we may have no great problem with this, our nation having built by great and courageous people of all religions and degrees of Gangstatudinousness. In Palestine and Iran, however, history is not nearly so amenable to peace. For you see, the Pope is not the first Jewish Gangsta Frankenstein Pirate to “Keep it Real” as they say in the Vatican. Albert Einstein himself, famed Jewish Gangsta Nuclear Physicist Pirate and White Guy Afro Pioneer is much reviled in certain circles of the Orient. And who can forget that according that according to popular tradition Emperor Constantine was fond of a bit of pillaging, looting, and “getting jiggy with it” himself. To make matters worse, no lesser authority that the Torah itself recalls that Moses, emancipator of the Hebrew people was wont to:

“rise up early in the morning, wearing upon his brow an eyepatch of the choicest chalcedony, gird about his waist his mighty glock, which was an abomination unto the Philistines, and bust three score and seven caps in the shiesty domes of they who endeavored to steal the flava of the Lord”

Indeed, recent research into the early Christian church suggests that eleven of the original twelve Apostles were practitioners of the Jewish Gangsta Frankenstein Pirate lifestyle.

And so the debate rages on; how does one bridge such a vast cultural gap? What is the best way to reach out to such an utterly alien way of life and find some piece of common ground? What does put the ape in apricot? I don’t know; but if I know the Pope, his answer is sure to involve kicking it old skool, and more than a little bit of keelhauling. Peace out, Popeslice.

Pluto Uber Alles

Ben — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:14:00 -0400

So, it’s been a busy month, and I haven’t really been around ye olde blog much lately. For which, I’m terribly sorry, and can say only in my defense that lately my life has been a parade of angst worthy of Spiderman, and that I have recently been caught up full-time in the struggle to save Pluto, a battle which, alas, has now been downgraded from planet to “Trans-Neptunian Object” which is, in my professional opinion as a guy who once spent a week as a physics major, unremittingly lame. So yes, according to science, Pluto is in fact not a planet, but rather a cartoon dog who hangs around with Mickey Mouse.

And what about that song we all learned in grade school about the nine planets? This is as bad as the time the Soviet Union fell apart the week after I learned the “All the Countries in Eurasia” Song. You can’t just take the ending off and think it’s still going to work. No, we’re going to have to write an entirely new song about our celestial hood. I would recommend putting it to the tune of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” or possibly that song by that guy who’s way too hung up on the idea of having a nameless horse.

Really, I think I feel for a lot of people here when I say that I feel like Captain Picard did in that episode where the Cardassian asked him how many lights there were. Because, you know, if they really wanted to get rid of Pluto, they’d just build a Death Star and blow it up like civilized people, but instead, they’re taking the sissy way out and calling in the lawyers.

The thing that really makes me so angry about the whole “demoting Pluto” thing is how many people seem to be taking it as a major success against the forces of evil. “Finally,” they say in the papers, “Pluto never deserved to be a planet in the first place!” Like they used to lie awake at night fretting about it, “Noooo, Pluto, you’re not a planet, damn you!” before going out beneath the cold and terrible night sky to shake their myriad astronomer fists and gnash their many pointed teeth at the erstwhile planet. I know, what with its eccentric orbit and binary moon of death, Pluto is kind of the black sheep of the solar system, but hey, who among us isn’t a little bit eccentric themselves, venturing now and then from the plane of the solar elliptic which so many others rigidly adhere to?

The other possible option going into all this, of course, was to promote the other three things larger than Pluto to full planet status. Though astronomers want us to believe that this was shot down because it would have resulted in a total of twelve planets (Oh Noes!) the truth is that they couldn’t live with the fact that one of them was already named Xena, and if there’s one thing your scientifical types can’t stand, its planets named after warrior princesses (this is, incidentally, why Planet She-Ra and Planet Wonder Woman never really made the cut either).

I guess the thing that makes me mad about the whole tawdry affair is that Pluto is simply so totally freakin’ sweet. I mean, I could understand wanting to demote it if its name was Planet Goofy, but Pluto? Dude, he was the god of the underworld, and the last thing you want to do is incur his wrath. In other languages, it gets even better; in Japan, Pluto is called “The Star King of the Dead” while in Vietnam, it is known as “The Guardian of Hell” which is totally sweet.

Personally, I think that if we were going to get rid of a planet, we ought to have gone with Uranus, because for one thing, I always got in trouble in science class for laughing about it when we studied the solar system, and also because really, do we need to have an entire world named after the Roman god of the butt anyway? What about in like, 500 years when people live on planets? Telling people you live on Pluto would be totally sweet, telling people you’re from Uranus would just be embarrassing.

Also, if it is indeed true as many scientists believe, that Pluto is home to a race of funguous crustacean interdimensional death beasts, and they get word of what we’ve done to their world, I for one am not going to be the one to call them on it when they come to Earth looking for answers.

Viva La Monday!

Ben — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 21:53:00 -0400

I wanted to get a job at the Amish stuff emporium, but when I went by to apply, they said that they only took applications online. The Amish have so totally sold out ever since Harrison Ford made them cool.

If you happen to be one of those mildly deific immortal forces of evil about whom the prophecy states that no man shall slay you, you probably ought to look out, because not only are there are lot more women out smiting mildly deific immortal forces of evil, but you’re also leaving yourself open to say, Mr. Peanut. And he don’t take no prisoners.

Why is it that when you go to a moderately nice restaurant, they always leave to top of your straw wrapper on? Is there really that much asbestos and fly ash floating around the kitchen at Applebee’s? Or are they just trying to make it easier for you to use it as a tiny projectile against your sister? What’s the right thing to say when the waitress does this anyway? Whoa, thanks for leaving that on! Last time I came here I got fiery lava of doom in my Dr. Pepper and had to send it back; you’re definitely getting 15%!

I saw a sign whilst I was out driving that said, “Our name has changed, but our quality is as high as ever! Shepherd University” The problem was that they neglected to mention what their old name was, so I was left wondering whether Harvard had just run into copyright issues with Manny Harvard’s Muffler Repair, or if this was just another case of Ye Olde Online Universitie trying to gussy itself up. Also, this sign happened to be on the back of a Pepsi truck in the middle of West Virginia, so it failed to impress me on a number of accounts concerning its rigorous academic badassitude.

I want to start a beverage company, and sell a drink called, “Shut Up Juice” and when people I know get all worked up about stuff, I can be all like, “Hey, why don’t you just sit down and have a nice cold glass of Shut Up Juice?” And they’ll get all angry and stuff, but then I’ll explain that it’s made from only the finest Shut Up Berries that grow high in the mountains of Venezuela, hand picked and sorted by only the most studious of agriculturally-inclined flying monkeys and that it contains an entire day’s allotment of Vitamin C and many totally funky amino acids. Then they’ll be all sorry and ask for another glass, and I shall become wealthy indeed.

I think people are taking this whole Mel Gibson vs. the Jews thing way too seriously. How do I know this? Because I happen to play Warcraft with Mel of a regular basis, and he happens to be a total master of what my cyber-homies refer to as “leet-speak” So, instead of saying “Jews totally suck” he was in fact saying “J00 totally suck”, which, while far from a decent thing to say to an officer of the law, merely marks his status as an u3eR 1337 HaXXoR.

Seattle has got to be the biggest rip-off ever. I flew all the way out there in my sweet, sweet, hovermobile/truckasuarus just to see the Space Needle, and it was not even remotely in space. Did you think I wouldn’t notice your pathetic attempts at trickery, Seattle? Or are you merely so consumed with your own evil that you no longer care about naming things accurately? Either way, rest assured that soon all the world shall know of your treachery, just as they learned after I spread the horrible truth about the Air and Space Museum actually being full of stuff.

If you met Elmer Fudd in a pith helmet and carrying a high-powered rifle, and he told you that he’s just spent the day hunting winos, you would never know if he had just come back form a safari or if he was just embarking upon a murderous rampage against alcoholics.

The Lone Ranger > Werewolves

Ben — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:18:00 -0400

If you’re like me, than probably about 87% of your worrying involves werewolves and the job that those who protect us from them are doing. I know, werewolves are sort of like fire and cholesterol, where really, the most of the work to be done is preventative, and may be accomplished through the judicious application of things like werewolf-retardant attic insulation, werewolf detectors with fresh batteries in every large room of the house, a regular exercise program, and a diet of foods low in werewolfoflavin. After all that is said and done though, the task of protecting you and yours from werewolves comes down to professionals, like Oliver North, Green Lantern, and The Statue of Liberty. At least they’re the ones you always hear about and see on TV doing all those sappy public service announcements about not taking candy from werewolves and never giving them your credit card number. Above and beyond them all though, there is a man who probably does more to keep our great nation werewolf-free than even Batman, Skeletor, and avid Bowie combined: The Lone Ranger.

Now, odds are that you haven’t heard of him, but doubt me not, for he is merely the behind the scenes sort of a werewolf hunter that shuns the spotlight of public fame and celebrity, but rather prefers to fight his werewolves in the inky and inchoate realm of undulating darkness and burbling chaos, New Jersey, where eldritch gibberings rend the ebon skies and the high priest Zurgaloth reigns upon a throne of chalcedony from a city carven from a single titanic piece of walrus ivory. Because you know, werewolves are really into things like that. But how did the Lone Ranger get into werewolf fighting in the first place? That, my friends, is the tale which I am about to relate unto you this day.

The Lone Ranger, you see, was originally part of a greater autonomous collective of rangers, one of whom may have been Chuck Norris’s mom, who all wandered around Texas shooting bandits and hogtying cattle wrestlers (these being men who wrestled with the cattle, rather than cattle who were simply in the business of body-slamming people, which was actually kind of encouraged there for a while back in the 30s). One day however, one of his posse sold them all out to a gang of werewolves, who shot them all and left them for dead. Fortunately, Tonto, who was all bummed out because his hunting grounds had been turned into a casino, found him, gave him a silly Indian nickname and nursed him back to health. Upon recovering, the Lone Ranger discovered that not only had the werewolves killed all his homies, but they had also taken the little eye mask he used to wear when catching his afternoon nap and cut hole in it, thereby preventing him from ever again enjoying a siesta. He swore to wear it forever after though, as a reminder to him that, like justice, he must never nap in his pursuit of evil.

Now werewolves, as you may know, can only be killed by a silver bullet, and by happy coincidence, The Lone Ranger (who quickly discarded his original title of “The Really Popular Ranger) happened to find his old mentor, Mr. Miyagi, who lived in a haunted silver mine in the middle of the gumdrop forest. He used the silver from the mine to make a magical flying unicorn for the Lone Ranger, and cast him all the silver bullets he needed, so that whenever the Lone Ranger shot someone, he could immediately tell if they were a werewolf (he originally experimented with the idea of having Mr. Miyagi cast him a silver mullet instead, but that looked really silly, weighed like, 173 pounds, and for it to be any good at all, he first had to chase down the werewolf in question and hit him in the face with it, which was not only grossly impractical, but difficult to accurately relate over the radio). Thus attired, he then ran into young William Tell, who had been gored by a beefalo. To him The Lone Ranger gave his surplus silver mullet, and out of gratitude to the masked man, William Tell composed for him an overture to play whenever he was out riding around after werewolves and needed to sound dashing and dramatic.

Eventually, after killing off all of the werewolves in Texas, the Lone Ranger fell on hard times, and not long ago got into trouble for trying to shoot Chewbacca in a Houston 7-11. In search of metaphorically greener pastures, he then departed for New Jersey, where owing to the large number toxic waste plants and the fact that the New Jersey Supreme Court recently allowed them to form civil unions, werewolves and flocking like sheep to a monster truck rally. There he remains to this day, keeping to the shadows, shooting werewolves, and speaking of the pompatus of love, and occasionally accidentally busting a cap in an 80s hair band. And remember, there's no "I" in team, but there is a "We" in werewolf.

Eat Mor Mundays

Ben — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:18:00 -0400

You know, if it turns out that they never make a fourth X-Men movie, I think it would probably be a wise course of action to just pretend that Kate and Leopold completes the tetrology.

At my job, we happen to be right next door to a bridge (our other neighbor, a forest, is always keeping us up late by throwing nature raves and getting the cops called on them when the deer get drunk and knife each other) and we also happen to have a number of walkie talkies. As a result, anyone driving over the bridge who happens to also have a walkie talkie can unwittingly share their thoughts with us as they drive over said bridge. Unfortunately, these thoughts are invariably something akin to, “Whoa, this is a totally high bridge!” Every single freaking time. Mind you, it is a pretty high bridge, but really, is it that important an epiphany that you need to tell everyone else in the convoy and interrupt me teaching a bunch of 2^nd graders about how the Powhatans made their canoes (mostly with nunchuks and their phat needlepoint skillz).?

I bet that if you were a vampire and you ate a bowl of Sun Chips, you’d probably die. Again. So if you suspect yourself to be a vampire, but you still want to be health-conscious, maybe you’d better stick to the Baked Lays.

You know how when someone is choking, people always run up and pat them on the back? I think that’s the worst thing you can possibly do. It’s like you’re offering them kudos for failing to chew adequately. “Hey,” you appear to be saying, “You’ve managed to get a Swiss Roll stuck in your throat again. Good work, you deserve a pat on the back!” All that kind of thinking does is encourage people to keep on choking. Rather, when somebody is choking, you ought to smack them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, so they learn that choking is bad, and is the sort of behavior with which you will not put up. Don’t wait too long to do it though, otherwise they won’t make the connection and will just think you’re beating them.

If you were a member of one of those South American tribes that can’t count past two, you would also be most foolish for your bowling team to appoint you the task of scorekeeper.

The bathroom mirror in Sheetz is just low enough that if I had an afro, it would be completely useless for inspecting it.

I’m really tired of ending letters with things like, Love, or Sincerely. They seem so trite and I worry that the people to whom I am addressing epistles will fail to recognize how deeply I care for them. That’s why I propose changing it up a bit.

“Dear Grandma, thank you for the pajamas, they make me to resemble a plaid marmot and smell strongly of communism.

May your foes tremble before you,

Ben”

Did you ever notice how all Elton John songs sound exactly alike? I just did the other day, and man, it’s like the whole world has changed for me.

I bet Gene Simmons, despite all his great contributions to human civilization in the fields of rock n’ roll, monster slaying, and being able to lick his own elbow, lives a life of secret shame because of his brother Richard. Yeah, just imagine how those family reunions must go.

Finding Emo

Ben — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:57:00 -0400

Hey everyone! Guess who got dumped yesterday! No, not Dick Cheney. Nope, nope, not Batman either. No, not Chewbacca either; to my knowledge he remains happily married to Mrs. Francine Bacca. Give up then? It was me! Yes, yet again, a woman with whom I was in love decided that a life of unremitting solitude was preferable to one in which I played a part, and as a natural consequence, I am once more single. What then is to be done? I could always get all emoed out, write free verse poems about spirals of darkness and the depressingly high cost of eye liner, and go out to Hot Topic to buy a pair of black pants composed entirely of zippers, but you know, that’s just not really my style. Or I could become one of those bitter, lovelorn souls who hate all women and decide to take their revenge by being a total loser and spending every night of their natural life sitting around in their underwear, watching Babylon 5, and eating Cheez Whiz out of the jar. But I’ve never really enjoyed Cheez Whiz nearly enough to embark upon such a plan.

What then, does a fellow have left to do, when he finds himself adrift in the world in such a fashion, after he’s packed up all the things that remind him of someone and replaced all the “Woot, I’m in love!” songs on his iPod with Bjork? The answer, as I’m sure you will have already guessed, is for me to turn to a life of supervillainy. I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “But Ben, you’ve promised you were going to do this sort of thing before, but you’re no sooner back from Lowe’s with the parts to your death ray when a shiny object distracts you and you once more take leave of your nefarious schemes!” My friends, this time it shall be different. Already I have begun drafting plans to make my van into a helicopter with a totally sweet shark face painted on it. At this very moment I’m researching dental appliances that will allow my dog to bite through steel girders. I’ve even made a reservation for tomorrow night with a voice coach to work on my maniacal laughter. Clearly with plans like these, an army of goons with face-concealing helmets and a secret lair beneath Mount Rushmore cannot be far behind (I know volcanoes are more traditional, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see a ballistic missile shoot out of George Washington’s left nostril).

I realize, of course, that getting into the burgeoning field of supervillianation just because of a bad breakup can lead to bad things. Darkseid for instance, has based his entire reign of terror on getting Wonder Woman to be his wife (she of course, values him as a friend, but simply doesn’t feel ready for the commitment right now). However, and I know that it’s always risky to go with what’s fashionable at the moment, I’ve decided to go with more of the Lex Luthor model, in which while you most certainly are a big hit with the ladies, romantic woes and tribulations never get in the way of you deciding to raise an America-eating continent from the depths of the Atlantic (no worries though for my readers here in the States, should I ever find that my career path is leading me in a sunken continent-raising sort of a direction, I promise to raise mine way out in the middle of the Pacific, or possibly next door to France).

Really, I think that what keeps a lot of us unlucky in love types out of the field of global domination is the idea that it takes a lot of work and startup capital. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, all you really need is a close encounter with a radioactive meteorite or a magical alien artifact of unimaginable power, or barring that, to be bald and always wearing white linen suits. For instance, if Captain Picard and Mark Twain ever joined forces, they could easily be the greatest supervillain ever. So anyway, I’m going to go out hiking in the mountains a bit alter this month and maybe hit up all the local mystical antique shops, and if nothing turns up, then it’s simply time to shave my head and make a trip to the Big & Tall.

So, if any of you out there feel like auditioning for jobs and henchmen (and these are the top drawer kind, by the way, where you get to have like, an afro and a katana made out of fire) feel free to send me a resume, and if all the rest of you could possibly see your way to collectively trembling in fear at the very idea of me ruling the world, I would be ever so obliged.

A Witch! A Witch!

Ben — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:31:00 -0400

Let’s face it, in these times of turmoil, trial, and doubt, there are many things that can keep a person up at night worrying. Things like international terrorism, Bob Dole’s mullet (which would be a mulletastic name for a band), Stephen Hawking’s techno DJ career prospects, and of course, whether or not any witches from the 18^th century need to be apologized to by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Fortunately, though all the rest remain major sources of angstiness, you may now feel free to cross the last of those off of your emo list, because as of last week, the Governor of Virginia formally apologized for the trial of Grace Sherwood, the Witch of Pungo. This is her story, all of which is true, except for the parts I made up.

Grace Sherwood lived in Virginia Beach in 1706, with her husband and three sons, in a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard. She was reputed to be thoroughly the epitome of magical hotness, and was well-known for not taking no guff from nobody. Like most of us, she enjoyed wearing pants on a regular basis (which, back then was kind of unusual, since most women dressed either as ninjas or pirates. Or pirate ninjas, for the exceptionally fashionable). Also like most of us, she enjoyed flying around in a teacup and occasionally traveling therein to England. Whether she made herself all tiny and fun-sized when carrying out this unusual operation is left unsaid. And one supposes that if she simply kept a mammoth teacup around to purely for such outings it would have turned up the first time the police showed up at her house. And how did they learn that she’d been going over to England in said teacup anyhow? Did the mayor of Pungo get a letter from the King of England saying, “Hey guys, just thought you might want to know, some crazy ho from your side of the pond has been hanging out over here lately and stealing all our royal English flava. If you could drop a house on her or something, it would be much appreciated. See ya at the Revolution in a few, King Smacky Vander-Cheeselings IV”

Also, just in case you were wondering about the whole teacup thing, it seems that way back in the day, brooms were far from the officially endorsed for of travel for witches and Harry Potter. Originally colanders were all the rage, and it wasn’t until later that things like teacups, hubcaps, houses with chicken legs, and William Shatner’s toupee gained widespread acceptance amongst the airborne magical community. All of which kind of makes sense, since of you think about it, riding around on a broom for any length of time would be totally uncomfortable and even if you’re in league with the Devil, you’re still going to want to avoid unnecessary chafing like that.

Now, as if this weren’t enough to get a person hauled before a judge, Grace Sherwood was also generally believed to sneak into places by slipping through keyholes, though once she was there, all she apparently ever did was makes someone’s milk spoil once. In terms of non-keyhole-related witchery, she is said to have once bewitched someone’s crops (how can you tell anyway? Did his crops start glowing or doing phat beatbox rhythms?), and a brief yet terrifying rash of incidents involving flaming bags of flying monkey poop (that’s poop from a flying monkey, by the way, rather than the more mundane flying bag of poop from a regular, non-flying monkey) on the front porches of her neighbors.

Now, the people of Virginia, being a fairly inexperienced group when it came to witch detection, didn’t really know where to go from here, and thusly decided that the best way to figure out the matter for sure was to have her inspected for any black marks of demonic allegiance. And since they didn’t really find anything all that conclusive and she was, as I said back in the first paragraph, rather on the attractive side, they went back and had her looked over again, just to be sure.

Now, by about the sixth time through with this, it dawned upon people that as much fun as this was turning out to be for the whole family, this trial really had to be going somewhere, at which point they decided that the best thing to do would be to tie her to a big Bible and throw her into the river, the idea being that water hates evil things like Ringwraiths and fat kids with waterwings, and that if she floated, then surely she was a witch. On the other hand, if she sank, than clearly she was alright after all and not a witch, and someone would be along in a couple of weeks to kind of fish her out and apologize for the mistake. Amazingly, she agreed that yes, this seemed like a good course of action with no foreseeable problems.

So, on July 10^th, Grace Sherwood was tied to the aforementioned big Bible and thrown into the river. Much to her credit, rather than either sinking or bobbing around like a duck, she saw fit to paddle around in the water singing a cheery little song until she managed to untie herself and swim back to shore. All of which begs the question of whether, even for such an important purpose as witch-finding, it is appropriate for a body of Christians to tie a Bible to someone evil and toss it into a river, which does not immediately present itself as being one of the more Godly uses for the Gospels.

Anyhow, they sent her to jail for a bit, but after an unexplained series of problems with guards turning into newts, and the fact that no place with a keyhole was going to keep her on ice anyway, they let her go, after which point she went on to live a long life of wacky hijinks, pants, and flying about in tasteful kitchenwares.

Now, were I one of those moralizing political types, I’d probably put something in about the importance about separating politics and religion. The truth is though, that the whole thing is just too silly to really learn any important lessons from, so instead, just stay in school, don’t do drugs, and always vote for retired pro-wrestlers.

Fortune Hast Smiled Upon Thee; Thou Hast Found The Monday!

Ben — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:42:00 -0400

If you asked me which tribe of Israel was my favorite based solely upon their contribution to the art of sandwich making, I think I’d have to go with the Tribe of Reuben.

So, in Norway recently, some people were out on one of those whale-watching cruises, and they saw a whale, out cruising all majestically whilst straining jillions of krill and nachos from the frigid arctic seas, and some other boat just came by and shot it, like, right there in front of the tour boat. Seriously though, if you had told me they had drive-by shootings in Norway, I probably would have suspected something like this.

If Marvin Gaye was looking to do a greatest hits album, he would be both wise and hilarious to call it “Totally Gaye”.

The worst people in the world are the ones who run the Paralympics. Not that it isn’t cool to do athletic competitions for the wheelchair-bound, but you shouldn’t name your organization anything that includes the word “limp” when dealing with the disabled. Really, not since the Jewlympics back in the 50s has an Olympic spinoff been so crassly named.

When I’m President of the World (now taking campaign donations!) I’m going to legally add an X to the spelling of espresso, so that all the world shall have to say it the way that my brain always wants to.

I was always disappointed that in Oregon Trail, when someone in your family died, you didn’t get an extra 50 pound of food (or slightly less if they died of malnutrition). Also, that when you shot buffalo, they’d flip over and stick their legs in the air; this rarely happens in real life.

In other news, I am no longer allowed near the wildlife section at Maymont.

I saw the most ominous billboard for a hospital ever the other day. It had this really intense-looking doctor on it, and the words, “It’s your health; choose wisely”. Seriously, sometime the medical industry gets just a bit too cutthroat for me..

Not that it’s my place to mention it, but if Canada would make the Dudley Do Right song their national anthem, they’d get so much more military respect from us violent ass-kicking nations.

Those Kryptonite brand bike chains are the most dishonestly marketed things ever. They’re not real kryptonite, it’s just that Superman hasn’t stolen your bike because of all the superheroes in the world; he has the least desire for a bicycle. Except for Fat Lazy Couch Potato Lad, he’s not really into the whole bike stealing scene either. And even if Superman did want to steal your bike, all he’d have to do is stand a safe distance away and melt the chain with his heat vision, or throw Jimmy Olsen at it.

Just once, I’d like to see a villain just accept the fact that bullets just bounce off Superman without feeling the need to try it and see for himself. Though no the other hand, it does always look pretty cool, so if you were about to be caught anyway, you might as well get to see for yourself. Which begs the question: if you shoot Superman, does it count as attempted murder? I mean, it’s not like anyone realistically thought he’d die, so at most it ought to count as assault, though even then, it’s kind of a flimsy charge. I’d probably have to go with littering myself.

If lead can stop the radiation from kryptonite, why doesn’t Superman just sew a bunch of it into his suit? It isn’t like the extra weight would slow him down.

Why is it that in movies, whenever someone has a large column or something falling towards them, they always run directly away from it, instead of just stepping slightly off to the side? That’s why lumberjacks are rarely in action films, because they deal with that kind of thing everyday, and rob the situation of all its drama by just heading in a completely different direction altogether.

This is the Monday Primeval

Ben — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 23:20:00 -0400

If I’m ever President, Oregon shall rue the day they decided to put a lake on their quarter. It would have been so totally awesome had they instead put a picture of a Conestoga wagon and the inscription: “One of Your Oxen has Died” That would be unspeakably sweet. Or, barring that, “Timmy has dysentery.” Way to go, Oregon, land of broken dreams that you are.

You’ve probably heard of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s spy agency. What you perhaps didn’t know is that the initials KGB actually stand for “Kremlin Ghost Busters.” It turns out that Lenin was actually terrified of Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and organized a special security force to keep them out of his hair, so to speak. Then later, after Stalin took over, he decided the name and the proton packs were just too cool to get rid of so he put them all on spy duty. And now you know the rest of the story.

I want to replace my van’s license plate with one that just has a barcode on it. That way everybody will think I’m from the future and be impressed by my self-adjusting sneakers and uber-leet hoverboard skills.

There’s an entire website out there devoted to pictures of cats that resemble Hitler. Whenever life has you down and you fear there’s no goon left in the world, remember that, and smile inwardly with fiendish glee.

I saw a package of Huggies in the store, and the box said “Now Baby-Shaped!” I’m confused here, weren’t Huggies baby-shaped all along? I mean, if they weren’t, then what the hell were they shaped like? To my knowledge there is but one legitimate purpose for Huggies and it involves putting them on babies, and yet apparently Huggies Ltd. International only just realized that their intended market was babies, rather than say, gila monsters or chia pets. I’m just glad that diapers are the only thing they make. Oh look honey, “New, hand-shaped gloves!”

They say there’s no wrong way to eat a Resse’s, but I’m pretty sure that if you were creative enough, and/or Hitler, you could probably find one.

For instance, one totally wrong way might be to put in into your ear. Because even if you’re the kind of sicko who enjoys that, you have still failed to eat it. Perhaps Resse’s, you ought to change your slogan to, “We’re not going to judge you for eating candy like a freak.”

You know how Apple started out by putting a trash can on their desktop, so that you could, you know, trash your unwanted files. Then Windows decided to get in on the act and do them one better by having an environmentally-friendly recycling bin, so you could recycle your hard drive space. Not I though; I want an OS with something like say, a Municipal Filth Incinerator, so that instead of merely deleting my files, I can take them out and burn them, spewing an acrid cloud of noxious smoke into the pristine bandwidth of the Internet, poisoning the forests of the web and clubbing the baby seals of cyberspace. Grrrr, I’m evil!

Whenever people are talking about how bad our society is, they always mention how the Indians used every part of the buffalo, while we only use the tasty bits and the parts containing weapons-grade fissile Buffalonium (atomic weight 247). What they never mention though is that as bad as we are, we’re still waaaaay better than zombies, because all they do is eat the brain and throw the rest away. Yeah, take that zombies, you really suck at preserving nature’s splendor for future generations! Which is of course why I’m not even going to think about buying a hybrid until Al Gore manages to reign in all the zombies, which to my knowledge, he is not presently doing.

Where are all the agnostic mantises? I’ve never seen one.

The Assorted Wacky Hijinks of WW Poole

Ben — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:57:00 -0400

Richmond, it ought to be obvious to all by now, has always been a city of great diversity. Yes people of many races, religions, and preferred steak preparation methods have long called Richmond home. Richmond also happens to be home to a thriving vampire community, assuming that one vampire counts as a community. The vampire in question is reputed to be none other than WW Poole, and this is his tale: (then again, maybe it isn’t and I’m getting him mixed up with a couple of Richmond’s other vampires, of which there are presently reputed to be several, though lest you worry, they prey mostly upon the emo)

WW Poole, who’s first and middle names we shall henceforth assume to be Wedginald Weaseltrousers, was some mildly wealthy guy who lived in Richmond back in the late 19^th century, having been chased out of England under suspicion of being a vampire and dodging his income taxes. As so many freaks and weirdoes eventually do, his path led him eventually to Richmond, and there he set up shop.

Now, Mr. Poole was not fantabulously wealthy, rather, he was that kind of wealthy that people are in Victorian romance novels, you know, where even though they’re always talking about how money is tight and someone has to go ahead and marry Heathcliff, nobody in the family seems to have a job and all the servants keep showing up for work anyhow. And what should a man of such modestly impressive means do upon finding himself here in town? Why build a castle out of sheet metal, of course (unbeknownst to many, there is traditionally no better way to make a splash in Richmond society than by being demonstrably undead and building a castle out of modern industrial materials, just in case you were looking to impress anybody).

Richmond, lest any try to tell you otherwise, is a city of very industrious folk, and if you happen to be appropriately weird, then you may rest assured that in short order all manner of rumors shall spring up in connection to your person. Mr. Poole proved to be no exception and before long it was noised about that he had beneath his castle a dungeon lair where he did all sorts of crazy vampire stuff, like sleep in a coffin shaped like a racecar, turn into a bat and fly around shrieking, and counting stuff in a jovial and educational manner. It was also said that he built his castle deliberately near to the Richmond city prison and via a system of underground tunnels, did his own part to, shall we say, render parole a moot issue for the more succulent inmates within. And of course after the castle was destroyed in the 40s, there were just enough rumors that such things were found to keep the legend alive.

But I digress. Mr. Poole has the misfortune to die in 1922, and for three years, did very little other than lie in his tomb in Hollywood Cemetery and occasionally go “Bleugh!” at passing youngsters. In 1925, however, there was a collapse in the Church Hill railroad tunnel, and though no definitive evidence was ever found to pin the disaster on mole people, one can only infer from what happened next that they were working in collusion with our dear friend, Wedginald Weaseltrousers Poole, Esquire. For immediately after the collapse, from the mouth of the tunnel emerged a creature whose flesh hung about him like ribbons and whose teeth were uncommonly pointy. Far from being the least bit disturbed by recent events, this singular individual was observed to quiver, as if with unholy glee, and immediately flee on foot. Those who dared to follow chased him to the tomb of Mr. Poole, where they are said to have found the door locked from within. Needless to say, to this very day at midnight on some of your more spookier of holidays (Halloween, Boxing Day, Samhain) all the goth kids hang out there, paint them selves up with pentagrams graven in Heinz 57 Sauce, and read bad poetry about Darkness, Satan, and Not Being Familiar With The Concept of Shampoo.

And, just to make everything all uber symbolic and whatnot, the tomb of WW Poole just so happens to be adorned without with a statue of a lamb, this being said to signify a charming twist on the biblical verse about mutton and the king of the jungle, that mostly Mr. Poole is just a’lion in the mausoleum, but when he escapes, he’s on the lamb. And with that horribly bit of punnery, I wish you good night, and sweet dreams.

The Summertime Blues

Ben — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:00:00 -0400

“There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues” ~ Eddie Cochran, 1958

There is a disease which annually kills over 17 bajillion people every year*. It strikes silently, often without visible symptoms, and can affect anyone, regardless of race, sex, or whether or not you live in Canada. That disease is the Summertime Blues, and despite the fact that almost half a century has passed since Eddie Cochran first tried to raise public awareness about the threat posed by the Summertime Blues, scientists still have yet to find a cure.

This is no doubt in part due to the fact that while diseases like AIDS, Parkinson’s, and that thing that Stephen Hawking has have all recently been brought to the public eye by celebrities who didn’t care about any of them either until they came down with them and decided that the most important thing in the world was to find a cure, no famous or pretty people have come down with the Summertime Blues and gotten into the whole fundraising scene. My friends, it is time to change this sad state of affairs by joining the race for a cure.

While it is true that there is no cure for the Summertime Blues, there are treatments, most of which involve a combination of electro-shock therapy, monkeys, watermelons, stolen hotel bath towels, and EZ Cheez, all of which are far too scientific and ridiculous to go into here. With early detection and a generous slathering of unquestioned funding and those little flavor packets that come with ramen noodles, it is possible for many sufferers of the Summertime Blues, (or STB, as we in the abbreviation industry (or the AI) like to call it), but even the best that modern medicine has to offer falls far short of the goal of completely eradicating this horrible plague.

No one is sure where the Summertime Blues first came from, though many geneticists are fairly confident that it has something to do with that time that Rick Moranis got turned into a devil dog. Others, who are quite possibly just trying to stir things up, maintain that it first developed when American settlers briefly tried to use buffalo in place of orange juice.

How can you help support the cause? First, send me lots of money. Lot’s of it. Buy a teacupmammoths T-shirt, write me a check, carve me one of those big stone wheels they used to use for currency in Indonesia before they went over to the Euro, whatever, as long as it’s shiny and I can trade it for beer. If you want, I can even send you some pictures of adorable children from 3^rd world countries. Sadly, raising a fuss and a holler, and writing to your congressman will not work, nor will taking your problem to the United Nations, since North Korea, Sudan, and Djibouti all sit on the Council of Silly Ailments, and all three of them think you’re a big poophead.

Wearing a ribbon would probably help, because if there’s one thing that diseases and international terrorists fear more than any other, it’s a colorful magnet stuck to the back of your car. Unfortunately, the color blue is already taken, and if you tried to go around wearing a blue ribbon, you would at best be taken for the winner of the regional hog-calling contest, and at worst be sued by PBR. The black ribbon already belongs to fighting melanoma, and supporting anarchy and the Amish, so it’s right out too. Orange is always nice, but it’s already been taken by feral cats and Ukrainian independence, so no help there either. Silver is the ribbon for supporting the abuse of the elderly, and I like to think that we opposers of the Summertime Blues are better than that, so it’s no good either. In fact, the only color ribbon that’s still free is apricot with magenta polka dots and the Decepticon symbol in the middle, so by process of elimination, that’s the one we have to go with.

So yeah, join the fight against the Summertime Blues today, because together, we can build a more awesomer tomorrow. Do it for the children.

*This number is based on a combination of demographic surveys, CDC tabulations, ingredient lists on cereal boxes, and the fact that a bajillion is a fun number to say. Bajillion, bajillion, bajillion. I feel better now.

There's Something About Monday

Ben — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:26:00 -0400

During the cold war, the Army developed nuclear landmines capable of causing a ten kiloton explosion. They were to be buried around Berlin in the event of a Soviet invasion, and were designed so that during the winter, chickens could live in them and keep them warm. When ever you think about us beating communism, remember that it was exactly this sort of thing that carried the day. American scientists also discovered that the Nuclear Chicken Mines would be an excellent name for a band, but the war ended before they had time to get any major gigs.

I wanted to paint a shark face on my van, to symbolize its ferocity and vulnerability to attacks by Richard Dreyfuss, but upon further inspection, I discovered that the front wheels are set in a way highly detrimental to the depiction of shark faces. However, I did a bit more research and found that there is one deep sea creature that would work: the humpback whale, because it’s got that weirded out wiggedy, over the face, flip top head. Not only would this imply that my van is capable of cruising the highways while simultaneously straining billions of interstate krill through its mighty baleen, but it would also be a visible testament to the fact that Star Trek IV was totally sweet.

Why does Batman not have a Bateaux? It’s like the one vehicle specially named to fit with his theme, and he chose something else like the Batdinghy.

Why do Dennis the Menace’s parents keep letting him come to dinner parties? I mean, every single time they have someone over, Dennis makes sure to bring up whatever snarky thing his parents said about the guest in question (which is of course completely avoiding the issue of what kind of people his folks must be to talk trash about literally everyone who they invite over for supper). Seriously Mr. and Mrs. The Menace, if you don’t like your boss, then you’d best keep your kid locked upstairs, because otherwise we’ll all get treated to a one panel strip of your son saying with all innocence, “Why ain’t you dressed like a bitch? Cause my dad you’s always actin’ like one!”

On a similar note, maybe Mr. Wilson ought to just take his phone off the hook at night, since it seems like he gets about three one in the morning calls a week from the human ferret next door.

If you really want to mess with people, next time you’re out, take a magic marker into a public restroom and write something on the walls like, “You know what? Jews aren’t so bad after all.” Or “For a deep philosophical discussion on the cultural implications of the lesser known works of Geoffrey Chaucer, call Becky at 555-8372.”

I think it’s really dangerous to get one of those “Hey, I’m an Organ Donor!” license plates, because if the guy behind you needs a new kidney and is tired of waiting for the system to work, you could find yourself in the middle of a most unfortunate “accident”.

I’m glad that if they had to remake just one Charleton Heston movie with Marky Mark, that it was Planet of the Apes, because if they’d tried such shenanigans with The Ten Commandments, I’m pretty sure divine wrath would have been in order.

How does 7-11 get away with making their motto that “Oh thank heaven…” thing without getting sued by atheists and other non-Christian folk. Watch, now that I’ve pointed it out, I’ve gone and jinxed them on it; in a couple of weeks you’ll be driving by and see one with a big sign that says, “Oh, thank Allah for my 72 virgins and 7-11” which will actually be kind of an improvement, so far as catchiness goes.

The Recent and Probably Preventable Misadventures of My Van

Ben — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:11:00 -0400

I am inclined to believe, though it is ever a difficult thing to trace this sort of business to its very origin, that it all began when the headlight of my van decided to snuff it one night, thereby rendering my estimable vehicle into what both botanists and theologians alike have commonly termed a “padiddle.” Now, being as it is the case that my van, by some great stroke of foresight on somebody’s part, came equipped with two headlights, mist likely in case of just such an eventuality as this, I failed to notice at first, the diminished luminosity of my totally fly ride.

Unfortunately, this new event did not fail to escape the attention of on of the many policemen who hang about Jeff Davis Highway in the small hours of the morning, it being one of Richmond’s seamier underbellies (of which there are many), and since it is apparently the case that 89 Plymouths are all the rage in the international terrorism scene these days, I found myself shortly promising to an officer of the law that I would replace the faulty lamp in short order, as well as hoping that he didn’t feel the need to ask me how many axes I presently had along with me (because let me tell you, no matter what line of work you happen to be in, the authorities rarely approve of any number in excess of three).

Now, the great problem with changing headlights is that at night, when you need them, it’s far too dark to replace them properly, and in the daytime, the Sun is shining anyway and you can just forget about them altogether. At any rate, it was the better part of a week before I got around to actually changing the offending bulb. In the interim, I found myself to be constantly passing police cars, and was therefore presented with the continual choice of whether to allow them to see that I had in fact, as a result of raininess and constitutional ennui, not yet gotten around to changing the bulb, or to just turn on my highbeams and risk giving offense. In any case, I eventually had a day off and was able to summon sufficient vitality to get the job done at last.

Which brings me, of course, to the next event in my litany of hilarious sorrows, when the next night, shortly after stopping at one of Richmond’s many fine Wawa’s, I made most unpleasant discovery that my van had, either out of capriciousness or a mere yearning for a bit of excitement, decided to drive as if someone had nailed legos to all of its tires. Now, there are, as regarding these sorts of things, two main kinds of people in the world. The first are those who, when presented with a problem, step back, figure it through, and do not proceed with other things until finding a practical solution. The second is comprised of they who, rightly figuring that it is already late and there are not, in fact any legos visibly attached to their wheels, decide to ignore the problem and hope that it goes away. I myself have subscribed to this latter view for most of my adult life, and can attest to it’s efficacy in ameliorating nearly all ills. Sure enough, I turned out to be right, for within another day the matter had resolved itself satisfactorily, as either my van had quickly wearied of the entire super offroad effect, or its mutant healing factor had kicked in. I was now, however, in the unenviable position of being really low on gas, and in a distinct hurry.

The discerning mind may well ask why I was in a hurry. Well, it just so happens that I often find myself running late, much in the same vein as Osama bin Laden often finds himself to be living in a cave, and monkeys often find themselves to be addressing the vicissitudes of life by throwing poo at them. Indeed, if Virginia and Late were ever to declare war upon each other, I would be sorely pressed to choose sides, since both make an impressive claim for being my natural and native state. To make matters worse, the gas gauge with which my van came equipped has always held the view that in our increasingly precision-obsessed world, it would be a breath of fresh air for it to merely tell me, whether I had more or less than half a tank on hand at any given moment. At the particular given moment in question however, less than half a tank seemed to be in vogue, and since every time I took a corner the low fuel light would flash menacingly at me, I ever so carefully drove the approximately twenty miles between my job and the nearest gas station, arriving with that turns out to have been enough gas to easily carry me another 500 feet or so.

I departed from the gas station then, in high spirits, and remained blissfully unaware that a soda had rolled itself beneath one of the back seats, quite possibly in an attempt to avoid being quaffed. Which was all well and good save for the fact that the combined effect of gravity and a really sharp offramp caused a biggish piece of lumber I had in the back to come crashing down upon it. I, of course, did not know this at the time, being simply sensible that there had been a large thunk, followed by a hissing sort of a detonation, like a mortar hitting a laundry hamper full of snakes, and the sudden realization that the contents of my van, including myself, were now very damp, and slightly carbonated.

The good news, as of course there always is, is that this explosion seems to have been taken by my van as a sort of disciplinary act on my part, and as a result, no further mischief seems to be afoot, automotively speaking. Though of course, in the words of Princess Anastasia, one never knows.

Dial M, for Monday

Ben — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:32:00 -0400

I bought some new cargo pants, because if there is one thing that brings me joy above all others, it’s being able to hit myself in the knee with my cell phone every time I take a step. This time, however, I foolishly went with the classy brand, and saw that they were sold not as pants, but merely as a cargo pant, which is totally whack, because if there is one thing that should always be plural, it is pants. And monkeys.

I’m gonna name my kid Marco, so that from an early age, he’ll hate going to the pool.

At work, we got some new polo T’s to wear around the site. Mine is red though, and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Star Trek, it’s that if you wear a red shirt out into the forest, you’re darn well gonna get all the potassium leached out of your body by a cloud or a horta or something, or at least have to fight a bunch of freaks to keep the quatloo economy alive. I wish they’d asked me before they ordered, I’d rather have gotten a blue one, cause they come with a tricorder, a bowl-cut, and the Vulcan Death Grip.

If I ever start a company that sells baby food, I’m gonna ditch the baby and put a picture of Robocop on the jar.

If you happened to be both a carpenter and a harvester of wheat, and wished to advertise your services with an appropriate logo, you would probably be severely confused when all your customers turned out to be communists.

Did you ever notice how in movies anything containing radioactivity has to have a big nuclear symbol on it? And not just like, official American stuff, but like things built by mad North Korean scientists and stuff. No offense, but if you really want to be considerate of people, then why not just refrain from building a hellish engine of destruction in the first place? Try building a nuclear-powered Easy Bake Oven or a nuclear sundial instead.

I want to start a barbershop quintet, because I bet we’d totally pwn all those other guys who had one less dude on their team. Especially during the steel cage match.

If you were both a Jehovah’s Witness and a vampire, I bet you’d be severely conflicted on the subject of blood transfusions.

I want one of those Superman shirts, but with two S’s on it instead of one. That way people will look at me and be left wondering whether I’m a fan of the Nazis, or I just really like steamboats.

A lot of people say that the future isn’t going to be like Star Trek; however, I have proof that they are wrong. Next Generation, of course, aired back in the early 90’s, when the internet was still little more than a cardboard box full of Duck Hunt cartridges in Al Gore’s basement of solitude. And yet, the following are actual quotes from Data in Episode 16, Season 3: “LOL, the third crosslink transfer series is complete.” “That is a complex question, LOL.” “You are truly becoming sentient, LOL.” “What are your wishes? LOL” “LOL, put him down!” Yet again, we have clear proof that Gene Roddenberry anticipated not only the technology of the 21^st Century, but also the geeky net lingo.

The next Harry Potter movie really ought to be called “Snapes on a Plane”.

Hitler and the Talking Barrels

Ben — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:01:00 -0400

As most of you will doubtless have already gleaned (glent?) from recent newspapers, Jedi holocrons, and Family Dollar advertising circulars, Germany has finally gotten around to putting a historical highway marker up over where Hitler’s Secret Bunker of Doom is. This is, of course, an intensely controversial thing to do, since every time you even mention Hitler in Germany all the Neo Nazis go crazier than old people at Ukrop’s on double coupon day. Because, you know, there’s probably all sorts of secret Nazi science and stuff still down there, like say, all the ancient artifacts that Indiana Jones didn’t manage to save from them, like the Credenza of Longinus, or Moses’ Catcher’s Mitt. Or maybe it’s just the secret lost flavors of Fanta that Hitler was planning on unleashing after he won the war, like Mango Blitzkreig, Fuhrerberry, and Von Ribbenpop. But I digress.

The real question here, I think is whether Germany is going to go all the way in turning this into a historical site or just wuss out and go with a sign and one of those machines that squashes pennies into little Hitler-related souvenirs. Now personally, as an historical interpreter myself, I think the best way to do it would be to have a living history museum where professional historical dudes could reenact what life was like back when Hitler was around. So at one station you could have like, Hitler in hobbit pants running an old-timey flour mill, and another one of him in a hoopskirt and corset trading with the German Indians for corn (which the Indians called “maize”). And then maybe a ways off there’d a like, a little diorama of Hitler building a palisade with traditional tools, while on the other side of the park they’d have like, a traditional Hitler pewter shop where old Adolf himself would be casting little things like tiny collectible spoons and lead-free musket balls.

But let us assume for the moment that even in Germany, where the squirrels are red and Helga is still an okay name for an ubermodel, chronic funding issues exist for historical sites. In this case, they would have but one recourse; that last resort of historical places and minimum security prisons: talking barrels. Like, you’d show up there with your family and you’d walk a ways down the Historic Hitler Heritage Trail, and there’d be a sign and a barrel with a button on it. So you’d let little Wilhelm punch it and then the magic would begin. (Note: Never in the history of teacupmammoths have I so regretted not being able to offer the site in an audible format as I am concerning the next paragraph. Sadly, I was unable to find any text to speech programs that really convey the flavor I'm going for here, so unless you're content to have this be Stephen Hawking as Hitler, which would be pretty funny in its own right, just steer clear of the AT&T R&D page altogether )

“Allo, I am Adolf Hitler, it was on this very site on May 17^th 1942 that I lost the Battle of Hastings. You see, I had been out late the night before mit some auf mine homies at der luftwaffle haus, and vas still verrückt im mein kartoffel. So ja, anyways, it turned out that I had managed to show up not only in the wrong war, but also in the wrong century, all of which you can learn by looking at the Bayeux Tapestry, which incidentally is available in der giften shoppen. Now please continue along ze trail to the scenic uberlook, where I shall speak to you from the next of these most uncomfortable barrels.”

Yeah, that’d be pretty sweet, especially if they had a Sno-Cone stand there, because if Hitler had one weakness, it was his all-consuming passion for Sno-Cones. Well, that and his weakness against bullets and being set on fire, but just you try to set up a bullets and getting set on fire stand at a family tourist attraction and see how many takers you get.

Anyway, assuming Germany learns a few lessons from how we do history here in the states, they ought to be okay with this whole thing. Also, as an added bonus, I was looking through my art folder the other day and I discovered that at one point I did, for no reason that immediately presents itself, a picture of Hitler as an ent. Please accept it with my compliments.

I am Ozymondayas, king of kings; look on my blog, ye mighty, and despair!

Ben — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:51:00 -0400

So, it turns out that The Omen has its own Myspace page. Honestly now, who in their right mind wants to be in Satan’s Top 8. And anyway, what do you write about if you’re the Devil incarnate? “June 12^th: Man, I’m so depressed. Ever since Cindy left me and I got fired from down at the frou frou cheese shop my life has just been one long silent scream of angstiness. On the bright side, I just can’t wait to see Spiderman 3!”

My Mom, for reasons not entirely understood by myself, decided to buy a rubber purple dragon to decorate the kitchen with. For reasons even less obvious to me, she has apparently decided that it would be a capital idea to have him just live in my box of cider. Now, if I were more of a heavy drinker, or she were more the sort of person given to making symbolic statements as a way of keeping her family on the straight and narrow, I might be tempted to read too much into this, but as it is, I think this is just her revenge for all the times back in the day when I left Skeletor and Man at Arms locked in mortal combat in the lunchmeat drawer.

I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and in their computer accessories aisle, they had printer ink. The problem was that all the boxes had brightly colored butterflies on them. Sorry Wal-Mart, but whoever told you that the butterfly is an ink-producing animal was lying. Really, this is worse than the time all the frozen crab legs there had a picture of a manatee on them.

Did you know that George Washington had a set of hippopotamus teeth made after he lost all his original ones? I bet that’s why he was such an effective President. Nobody wants to be bitten by an angry founding father with hippo teeth. He must have been like Jaws or something.

In a completely non-characteristic bout of conformity last week, I bought a Batman antenna topper. The problem is though, that now I have Batman’s severed head stuck on my antenna, and he looks so freakin serious. It’s like he knew this was coming; that someday the Joker would manage to remove and shrink his head and mount it on a Plymouth Voyager, so now all he can do is bear it stoically. Also, whenever I go above about 60, he spins around, which does nothing to enhance his dignity.

Speaking of heads, why is that shampoo called Head and Shoulders anyway? Do a lot of people out there have insanely hairy shoulders and need a special shampoo for them? Am I paying more by always getting the shampoo with the shoulder option? Is there a shampoo out there simply called Head, which would suit my needs more affordably?

This all of course begs the question: have they ever thought about making a foot care product called Knees and Toes?

I passed a truck today for Southern Tile Delivery. I kid you not; their acronym does not leave a favorable impression.

You see Keanu Reeves is doing a new movie in which he falls in love with Sandra Bullock. And travels in time. Honestly, I’m beginning to think that he’s got some kind of contract thing going on where unless he gets to travel in time and be the Chosen One, he just won’t sign on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with this and all, but someday someone is going to make a time traveling chosen one movie with say, Lindsay Lohan in the starring role, and the universe will just implode or something.

If you went postal and shot up a Target, it would be tragic, yet strangely appropriate.

It’s a good thing that most obscene gestures are things that you have to do like, really deliberately. Like, what if there’s a culture somewhere where waving your open hand cheerfully at someone was a mortal insult concerning both goats and the mother of the person at whom it was directed? I hope there is such a country, and that someday they send a lot of immigrants here. Unless of course this culture already happens to be the French, in which case it would explain a lot.

Pocahontas: More than Just a Pretty Face

Ben — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:01:00 -0400

This happens to be one of the more exciting times in colonial Virginia history (which, as all right-thinking people know, is way better than what passes for colonial history up in New England), primarily because the quadracentenial of Jamestown’s 1607 founding is fast approaching (or Stardate -715634.4351851852 for all of you tourists from the future), I thought it might be a good time to deal with a few of the myths, misunderstandings, and historical narfage concerning the most famousest of Indians, Pocahontas. So gird about thy loins with The Girdle of Learning Some History, because it’s time to set the record straight.

Myth: Pocahontas was a princess.

Fact: Actually, she wasn’t. You see, the Powhatan Indians were what we call a matrilineal society, in which royalty was chosen not by the line of descent from the king, but rather by a series of grueling yet hilarious reality shows in which those who wished to be the next chief would have to live in a house with all sorts of washed up celebrities from the 1580’s, such as Francis Drake, captain of the humorously named ship, The Golden Hind, William Shakespeare, who was still at this point completely ignorant that future generations would decide that he was either gay, black, or a posthumous committee, and Vanilla Ice, who lead the English navy to victory against the Spanish Armada. As a result, Pocahontas was not in the running at all to take command of the nation; rather the next in line was Junior Assistant Sub-Chief, Gary Coleman.

Myth: Pocahontas and John Smith were, as the bard himself once said, “getting’ it on.”

Fact: At the time of the first English settlement, John Smith was in his mid to late 20s. Pocahontas was about 10, and spent her days running around the village naked singing the theme from the Powerpuff Girls, as all the children of the Powhatans were wont to do. This was not, his writings tell us, really something that John Smith was into, and as such they mostly just messaged each ther on Myspace a lot. True, the name “Pocahontas” means “little naughty one” in Algonquian, but hey, what’s in a name after all?

Myth: Pocahontas spent all her time jumping off of the majestic waterfalls of the James River and talking to her pet raccoon.

Fact: By the time the Powhatan Indians arrived on the scene, there were no more majestic waterfalls left on the James, all of them having been hunted to extinction thousands of years before during the end of the last ice age. As for the talking raccoons, the Powhatans had no use for raccoons, talking or otherwise, except in the form of the raccoon hot pocket, the raccoon hat, and the occasionally role of a tetherball. The English, as we now know from recent archaeological evidence, did in fact keep, tame and look after raccoons briefly, but when they turned out to be incapable of human speech or wacky hijinks, they were eaten. Take that, Miko.

Myth: Pocahontas looked totally weird, as evinced by that portrait of her they’re always showing.

Fact: Actually, that’s simply the only picture of her taken during her life, and it happens that she had the bad fortune to have had it taken at the London DMV.

Myth: When the Indians and the English got angry at each other, they’d all march purposefully off to war, taking the most circuitous and scenic route possible, like Billy from Family Circus, while singing a dramatic two-part battle duet about how much they disliked eachother.

Fact: In truth, while the English were very fond of marching places, they were epically white, and as such lacked the rhythm necessary for such large-scale impromptu musical performances. As for the Powhatans, they were really more of a moseying people, and while they did their best to engage the English in song, it just came off really awkward and they just decided to fight it out with a bit of cheery whistling and a couple of drum solos.

Myth: If you’re ever at a historical site in Virginia and see someone dressed as an Indian, it is an excellent idea go up and say, “Whoa, are you Pocahontas?”

Fact: Actually, it is a great idea to do this. Assuming that you also happen to think that it would be fun to have your kidneys removed through your ears with a dull oyster shell. Otherwise, you may wish to back off and not be such a ‘tard.

So there you have it; everything you always thought you knew about Pocahontas but in horrible reality, did not. Well, I think we’ve all learnt something very important here today, so class gets out early for the day. For extra credit, be sure to bring me a buffalo or one of those delicious talking raccoons to class tomorrow.

Scheduling Satan

Ben — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:52:00 -0400

Well, here we are again, on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year, and all the smart money is on Satan appearing in all his demonic evilness and doing a really bad remake of a 70s movie (speaking of which, isn’t just a little bit blasphemous to try and cash in on Satan? I mean, even if its not like, a mortal sin or anything, it seems like one of those things that makes you more likely to get struck be lightening or eaten by a hungry, hungry hippo). And then like, jump out of a volcano somewhere as a cheap stripper doth a cardboard cake. And, um, you know, fly around and be all apocalyptic and stuff. The only real problem is, of course, that in fact, this whole 666 date thing is that it actually comes once per century and according to every single “stuff what happened today in history” page I could find, absolutely nothing of historical interest has every happened on June 6^th, ’06, in any year, ever. No demons flying around throwing marshmallow peeps or death at people, no oceans turning to blood, no Captain Planet after-school kids-stay-away-from-drugs-or-I’ll-eat-your-dog special, nothing.

This of course leaves us at a bit of an impasse concerning the reliability of pop culture prognostication concerning old Beelzebub. It is of course possible that, Prince of Darkness that he is, just has a really busy schedule and never goes in for the big holidays. Or maybe, inveterate butthead that he is, he just likes messing with everybody and his favorite number is like, 582, but since it never comes up for him when he plays it on the lottery, he’s kind of given up on the whole superstition deal and become a more secular source of all evil. Or maybe he’s just a trekkie and is waiting for stardate 666, which happily enough won’t be until September 1^st, 2323, at which point I expect to have become an immortal caveman supervillian and be living under the sea in my fortress of doom, surrounded by minions and singing crustaceans.

But before we even get into all the complications of bringing to Devil himself to Earth, let’s take look at a few of the greater concepts of Old Sparky down through the ages. The Bible tells us that Satan, much like William Shatner, rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven with all his groupies to run amok here on Earth and give goth kids someone to write edgy yet vacuous songs about.

In early America, the whole goat-legged pitchfork guy look was widely favored, to the extent that forks came to be looked upon as the dining utensil of Satan and all good people either made do with sporks or just adjusted their mental image of Lucifer to have him wielding something a bit less common, like a pair of salad tongs, a spatula, or a rubber chicken. A fiery rubber chicken of lies and eternal damnation.

The Pope, who is, it appears, still learning the difference between the “reply” and “reply to all” buttons on his email recently made major eschatological booboo (that’s less dirty than it sounds) by confiding in the entire internet that he personally believes the Devil to be none other than President Martin van Buren, who happily enough died in the year 23,000,000 BC, after an unfortunate yet hilarious time machine accident, so we’re all safe after all.

And of course, according to those guys who wrote all those Left Behind books, the Devil is in fact Vigo the Carpathian, who shall remain imprisoned in a New York art museum forever, so long as Harold Ramis remains a faithful brother of that weird order that tried to kill Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

As for myself, I though the temptation to just pin being Satan Incarnate on Ben Affleck is both great and oh so probable, I’m gonna go with the less obvious route and suggest the Pillsbury Dough Boy. First, he looks like some creepy little anime ghost thingie. Second, he has no belly button, much like Alfred Hitchcock (who lost his when it fell off on the Shockwave at Kings Dominion). And of course, he never takes off his hat, which suggests the presence of either horns or the hidden face of Voldemort.

So anyway, until next time, I don’t think any of us have to worry much about all of this- RAAAAWRRRR!!!! AT LAST I AM FREE! FREE TO BRING RUIN TO THE EARTH AND TYPE IN ALL CAPS! MWAHAHAHAHA, THE NEW AGE OF DARKNESS HAS BEGUN; WHAT WAS WILL BE, WHAT IS WILL BE NO MORE. TIME TO LISTEN TO SO LINDSAY LOHAN ALBUMS AND SEND OSAMA A FRIEND INVITE ON MYSPACE. Oops, sorry about that, the cat just jumped on my keyboard there. She’s been kinda funny ever since my grandmother pegged her in the head with that accursed Babylonian can of orange juice. Well, she’s hovering around in a circle of fire again, so I’d better let her out for the night. Catch y’all tomorrow!

The Wrong Stuff

Ben — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 23:22:00 -0400

I dunno about all y’all guys and gals out there in blogland (which may or may not be a real place or merely a figment of my tortured imagination, like Count Chocula and the miraculously wacky resurrection of Calvin Coolidge), but if there’s one thing that keeps me lying awake at night all angsty and sleep-deprived, it’s the decline of western civilization. Well, that and the fact that someone seems to have gotten me a subscription to Stuff magazine. I’m not quite sure when it happened, but I think it was back around the beginning of the year when my first issue shewed itself unto me. My mom, who is a woman of decency and discretion if ever one lived, saw fit to leave it on my desk, face down, lest I be corrupted by the image of the scantily clad whore of Babylon on the front cover. Either that or she was worried that the aforementioned brazen hussy of the media might see what a horrible mess my room was and tell all her scary supermodel friends.

Anyway, I’ve never been quite sure what to do with it. I mean, I’m sure there are folks in third world nations going without borderline celebrity porn and technogossip, so just throwing it away doesn’t seem right. At the same time, I can honestly say that I’ve always been just a little too weirded out by some of the blurbs on the cover to venture within its skanky pages. But then, the world must know what perils lurk in the hearts of magazine publishers, so here follows a brief tour of this month’s attack on that that is good and decent in the world.

First, the covergirl of the month is Brooke Burke (who may very well already be a senator from some state up North for all I know), who has apparently traded most of her clothes for an alliterative name and a retro hairstyle. Also promised in this issue are exclusive photos of Kristin Cavalliari, who, not to be outdone by Miss Burke has also given in to the alliterative name craze, and Michael Moore’s feet (really!) which I can only hope are wearing more than the other people so far mentioned.

And of course, I’m promised fifty ways to live like a rock star. And by fifty, they mean of course, three. Namely, big money, crazy sex, and total destruction. Now, I’m an old fashioned kind of guy here, and I’ve always been a fan of the cashless economy of the future, and find such a retrograde position in Stuff to be somewhat offputting. As for crazy sex, I personally find crazy people to be extremely non-sexy and as a result would be much more intrigued if the blurb said something like “emotionally well-adjusted sex” or “hey, why not take your time and just take her out for dinner and a movie first?” And so far as total destruction goes, I already get all I need of that from my subscription to Evil Overlord Quarterly (this month’s covergirl: Attila the Hun!) and since Stuff hasn’t done too well thus far in terms of winning my trust, I think I’ll just stick with what I know about the annihilation of all that is.

So far I’m just to the table of contents and I’ve already been promised a peek at Skeletor’s homoerotic fantasy. I’m sorry, but the Skeletor I know is a dedicated and faithful husband to his wife Betty and his three children, Toby, Beast Man Jr, and Rush Limbaugh, and would never in a million years even think of such a thing. Stuff magazine, you’re not doing too well here.

On the very next page, I find an ad for a razor with five blades. I’m sorry, but now they’re just making stuff up.

Page sixteen; so far, at least half the pictures have been of dudes. This does not bode well.

Page fifty presents me with the opportunity to get washboard abs with the assistance of Stacy Keibler, who apparently ran away from her tyrannical uncle and his tree-based cookie factory to become a professional ab-abber. Alas, my abs are already so mighty that France signed a non-aggression pact with them, so this does me no good whatsoever.

Moving on, I get the chance to buy a professional goatee trimmer. I didn’t even know that having a goatee was a profession. What’s the starting pay for being a professional haver of goatees?

On page 81, Motley Crue (whom I shall not honor with the unnecessary umlauts which they insist upon) say one ought to beware of vans. Perhaps so, Mr. Crue, at least you should beware of my van, for with it I shall smite all who dare to oppose me. Yet again, Stuff manages to choose the wrong side, because vans are always cool. Just ask yourself: What did Mr. T drive around in? That’s right, a van. And since, according the Gospel of Awesome (it’s in the Apocrypha, ask for it at your local Christian bookstore) Mr. is infallible about what totally rules (seriously, in the council of Nicea, the early church decided to make Mr. T like, the Pope of cool stuff and he’s been right about everything ever since), vans are just ineffably cool.

And finally, Stuff tries to teach me how to cut down a tree. Look Stuff, I’ve had just about enough of you trying to tell me how to run my life, be a rock star, and slander Skeletor, the last thing I want from you is your opinion on how to fell a tree. In fact, I will personally go up against you in any sort of a tree-vanquishing contest you can imagine at a moment’s notice. Like, I can be coming out of Waffle House with all my homies at like, three in the morning, and you’ll be all standing there by my van (which you will beware of, lest it smite thee) with a tree, and I’ll just pull out a felling axe from like nowhere, like Anime characters are always doing and like Optimus Prime used to do with his trailer when he turned into a robot, and I will mightily slay the tree in question, and then turn it into something in conceivably awesome, like a monster stuck/catapult/wet bar. So yeah Stuff Magazine, I don’t know how you decided to invade my mailbox, but bring in on!

X:Men 3: Frasier Goes Postal

Ben — Tue, 30 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

So, earlier this week, I went to Pittsburgh and, after a cookout, a undisclosed quantity of cheap beer, and innumerable musings about the nature of broad axes, I sallied forth with a merry little band to go catch X-Men 3: An American Wolverine in Paris. What follows are my thoughts, in no particular order, about this latest cinematical experience, and for the love of all that’s good and decent, be forewarned that they’re chock full ‘o spoilers, such as the fact that as the rumors predicted, Snape kills Professor X. This said, read on only if ye be men of valor, because otherwise, I’m seriously about to ruin all the secrets. So there.

First, I think I speak for all good men and women of all the races and nations of the Earth, of generations past and present, and innumerable ages yet unborn, when I say that it has always been my deepest heart’s desire to see Kelsey Grammer brutally slaughter hundreds of people in an epic fight scene other than the one in the last episode of Frasier. It was totally worth the wait.

After Mystique lost her powers, she totally looked like Monica Lewinsky. And everybody else in the theatre said there wasn’t any social commentary in the movie.

I think that really, the one great failing of the movie was that it failed to add enough hilarious outtakes and crazy alternate endings. Like at the very end when Magneto is sitting in the park playing chess by himself because all the other old people don’t like him, it would be so totally awesome if like, Hitler just drove by and Nelson laughed him.

And speaking of Magneto in the park at the end, why didn’t he get, you know, arrested by the federal government for destroying half of San Francisco and killing everybody and all that? Were the police just like, “I’m sure that now that he’s lost his powers he’s harmless enough,” Or, “Well, yes he is technically guilty of about a jillion different felonies, but hey, I think he learnt his lesson back there.”

Ooh, or what if he was sitting at the chess table there at the end and all of a sudden Christopher Lee came up with all his funky white robes and his power staff that looks like his house and everything and was all like, “Hey dawg, heard you got pwned out there yesterday, ever thought about being a wizard for a change?”

Or maybe, for the classy subtle angle, if at the end they just showed a shot of him going into a pointy hat and magic shop before an ominous fadeout.

Also, the way they brought Professor X back at the end was totally lame, it would have been so much better if instead of being all lame about it, they’d pulled a Bob Newheart and at the end, after he died and everything, he wakes up in sickbay back on the Enterprise and Dr. Crusher is there looking all worried and stuff, and he’s all like, “You will not believe the dream I just had, Beverly. It was even weirder than that time I lived an entire life in half an hour while learning to play the flute in a 3,000 year old weather satellite.”

As much as I appreciate the importance of the psychological advantage in battle, can’t really see how throwing flaming cars at people is really that much better than just throwing regular cars at them. I mean, unless all the cars he’s using are right from Smallville, it’s not like they’re going to blow up all that much more just because of the fire.

And why did they have to start off the movie with Wolverine decapitating the Iron Giant? All he wanted to do was come to Earth and stop war!

Finally, if after seeing this movie you get all worried about Gandalf setting your car on fire and throwing it at Kelsey Grammer, just go ahead and buy a Saturn, because they’re not made out of metal, just packing foam, communism, and the souls of the damned.

The Monday and Margarita

Ben — Mon, 29 May 2006 08:00:00 -0400

I was hanging out at my sister’s place the other day, and she had a couple stacks of DVDs on the sofa, so I picked up what I thought was Bowling for Columbine and read the back. It was really sounding like a kickass movie, until I looked at the front again and found out I’d accidentally picked up Batman instead.

I’m beginning to suspect that the Bangles are in fact, not a reliable source of information regarding life in the real world because the other day I happened upon all the cops hanging out in the donut shop. However, contrary to what I’d be told, in song no less, they failed to sing and dance or go “oh way oh” before walking like an Egyptian. Oh the disappointment.

Why is it that people can get away with wearing “Your problem is that you’re stupid” shirts in public without getting punched? Is there some rule that if you put it in print on your torso, others are obliged to be less offended by your lame insults? I mean, I’m as guilty as anyone here, since I frequently wear my “Anybody want a peanut?” shirt around with no actual intention of giving out peanuts, but still.

I’d like to teach the world to bling.

We keep a nightlight in our barthroom at home, not so much to fend of the troll that lives in the medicine cabinet (Bob Dole) but so that nobody gets lost on their way down the hall. Last week though, the bulb burned out and all we had left were these red Christmas candle lights, which means that our bathroom now glows with this hellish red-litten aura of demonical doom. Which is kind of cool, unless you’re given to having toilet demon-related nightmares already, because this doesn’t help at all.

Also, that was supposed to be “bathroom” rather than “barthroom” up there. Our house does in fact have a barthroom, devoted to Karl Barth and all his funky ghetto ninja dance moves and theological musings, but it is in fact lighted by a menorah made entirely out of plastic shot glasses and the Cobra Terrordrome, so adequate illumination is no problem.

They’re making a new movie about Bob Dylan, guess what? One of the people playing him is Cate Blanchett. Which is totally awesome, because now I can finally get to see Bob Dylan give Frodo the Light of Eärendil, which has always kind of been a big life-goal for me.

I was at the movie theatre, and they had a big poster with all the Muppets on it, and there in the back, betwixt Rolf and Gonzo was none other than, dun dun duuuun! The Rock. So yeah, I’m glad to see that he’s finally coming out of the muppet closet, so to speak. I mean, I’m sure we all kind of suspected for a while. Like all those times you’d see him out and about with Miss Piggy, and that time Beaker called in sick and he missed a wrestling match so that he could help Professor Honeydew out with one of his wacky experiments. But still, I’m sure Muppets everywhere will be inspired to stop living the lie of secrecy.

Why is it that when you’re at a restaurant and your group is taking a bit to figure out what they want and so you ask the waitress if you can have another minute, she always interprets this to mean, “Leave my table alone and never, ever come back, especially if we all start waving at you.” Seriously, this happens all the time to me. I’m guessing that waitresses, like Vandal Savage, immortal caveman supervillian extraordinaire, have a highly unusual sense of the passing of time.

Also, did you ever wonder who would win between Vandal Savage and Captain Caveman? I mean, they’re both cavemen, so I’m guessing that the universe would just implode or something, which would be kind of nice for a change.

Kenya Hear Me Now?

Ben — Wed, 24 May 2006 21:55:00 -0400

Kenya, has often (okay, just this once) been called “The North Carolina of Africa.” A land veritably teeming with mystery, fraught with adventure, wonder, and man-eating hippos, Kenya is where all the cool kids want to be, (assuming that the cool kids these days are even smart enough to know where Africa is in the first place) and indeed, I’m sure that all of you out there have just been pining away asking yourselves, “Gee whilikers, when is Ben going to write a helpful little article on Kenya?” My friends, that day comes today. Also, Amy happens to be over there right now, spending two weeks doing mission work, building stuff at an orphanage, and teaching all them loveable orphans the gentle art of kung fu monster truck intergalactic space monkey warfare. And thus, in an effort to divert myself from sliding into an excessively angsty state (Washington) here’s everything you’ve been simply dying to know about Kenya.

In Kenya, everybody farms coffee, yet drinks tea. Likewise, everyone there hunts for lions, but eats only Steak-ums and manatees.

Kenya is part of the British Commonwealth, along with Australia, Canada, Uganda, New Zealand, and Middle Earth. Zimbabwe used to be in there too, but a couple of years back Kenya played this totally awesome practical joke on them involving filling Zimbabwe’s dorm room up with whipped cream and bacon bits, after which point Zimbabwe wussed out and transferred to the EU along with Vermont and the Lost Continent of Mu.

There’s like, a million wildebeests there, which would normally be okay, except for the fact that due to a clerical error back in 1968, all of them are named Steve, which means if you call one of them, the other nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine all come too, which tends to leave one’s vestibule in a state of considerable disarray, unless of course one happens to have invested in wildebeest screens.

When everyone in Europe was out colonizing Africa and junk, England was busy putting a totally bitchin’ sound system in the HMS Victory so that they’d be able to totally serve France at the next dance off. But just to make sure they wouldn’t get left out of the whole colonialism thing, they sent someone down to Kenya to lick it and then stick a fork in it, just so that no one else in Europe would want any.

Kenya is approximately twice the size of Nevada. In your face, Nevada!

The world’s largest viper (Norbert the Gaboon Viper) lives in Kekemega Forest with his mom and her boyfriend Chuck, where he spends his prank calling people in Nairobi with that old “I am the viper; I have come to vipe your vindows” gag, which still gets people all the time, in spite of a massive PSA campaign telling people not to fall for his serpentine shenanigans, as well as under no circumstances to admit that their refrigerator is running or that they keep Prince Albert in the can.

Lake Magadi is one of the world’s largest sources of sodium carbonate. And Cool Ranch Doritos.

Once some guy made some movie about a couple of lions in Kenya who ate a bunch of people and stuff. One of the lions eventually defeated his evil uncle and became king of the jungle again. The other, after much soul searching, discovered that in fact, courage is what puts the ape in apricot, and armed with this new outlook on life, went on to direct music videos in Zanzibar.

Remember The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? That started out in Kenya.

Ditto for The Goonies, Soylent Green, and King Lear.

Some say that the Garden of Eden is in Kenya, so if you’re over there and you find something that looks like it might be it, mark it down on your GPS and then go tell a teacher, Wonder Woman, or a lion.

Kenya

is actually the first and only effort by the British to make a geographical magic eye picture. If you go up into space (remember to pack a helmet!) and look at

Kenya

for a while so your eyes go all wiggedy, you’ll notice it looks like a three-masted schooner. Yeah, they did that on purpose. Also, if you look at

Uruguay

long enough, it starts to look kind of like Batman wearing a trout on his head. This is purely accidental