I'm So Goddamn Clever

GUEST BLOGGER: Kurt Russell Wrecked My Shit Part 2

2010-03-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

So there I was, in this roadside tavern that was like every seedy cantina in every movie ever made to the power of Danny Trejo, but absent that most necessary aspect: the hot ladies. I shrugged and tramped over to the handsome fellow tending bar and waved a grasper in a manner I hoped would be interpreted as both friendly and heterosexual.

"Hello, friend," I said to his glowering, multiply-punched face, and I kicked my vocal register up a friendlier notch or three. "Nice place you got here, Charlo."

"The name's Hector," he said, in the least pleasant way it's possible to give a stranger your name. "And I don't like robots in my place."

A quick receptor scan of the place spotted a total of five androids, one of whom was wearing a t-shirt that read, "Robots Drink Free at Hector's Roadhouse Every Tuesday!"

"Goddamn, Charlo, I do believe it's Tuesday, and I am parched!"

"My name ain't fuckin' Charlo, and what's the day to you, grease-muncher?"

A sudden hush fell over the joint. The room was on edge. A scorpion smoking a cigar nudged an armadillo, who nudged a potted plant, who nudged an intelligent vacuum cleaner, and this process went on around the place, each nudger nudging an even more exotic and improbable nudgee until every eyeball, antenna and sensory pod was pointing in my direction. I sensed that it was time for me to blind the onlookers with the shine of my titanium balls or risk, at worst, not receiving a free beer. "Well, Charlo, I call all barkeeps that so that it cuts down on the amount of dumb motherfuckers' names I have to burden my positronic matrix with. Maybe you should mind your own fuckin' business and pour me a drink on the house before I smash my cock on the bar and cut you with it."

The silence that ensued was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and in fact Bustin McChops, the Rodeo Clown Who Demonstrates Literary Cliches, at that moment dropped one and it was like an avalanche of cinder blocks crushing a bear made out of an Erector Set. (Man, I hadn't seen Bustin in ages! Everybody was in this place!) Slowly, Hector's face didn't change one bit from his usual pre-violent sneer, but I could sense that the crisis was over. He grabbed a glass, filled it from a tap that read, "Beer, You Fuckin' Pussy," and he slapped it down with no ceremony. "On the house, robot."

"Thanks." I leaned against the bar, traded some looks with the populace, and took a long drink. The beer was surprisingly good, like one of those fancy microbrewed bottles of hobo piss. It hit the spot. Everybody was good and relaxed, so I decided to ask the question nagging at the back of my skull: "Hey, what's the deal with the lack of pussy in this place?"

The tension ramped immediately back up to the boiling point. Bustin McChops pulled out a knife and attempted to cut the tension to demonstrate how thick it was, but only managed to nick a private eye in the shoulder-blade and start a mild bar-scuffle. It ended when the P.I. shot twelve men in the face.

Hector glared at me and ate a shot-glass.

"Was it something I said?"

A slender, prim man in a bowler hat stepped out of the crowd and cleared his throat. "Ahem," he said. He actually pronounced the word. "All of the, er, 'pussy', as you call it, around these parts is, er...spoken for."

I scoffed. "Spoken for? By who?"

There was a crash of lightning in the dry-as-hell desert outside the front door, and a dark figure in leather and hate came striding in as his theme music swelled and fifteen men fell to the ground clutching their dicks because they didn't deserve to have them in his presence. The stranger turned his sunglasses to me. "By me," he declared.

("I'll never have an orgasm again," whimpered a man in the fetal position, who then pissed himself.)

"Well, hello there," I said to the stranger. "I loved you in Captain Ron." I finished my beer and stood up straight. I would have flexed my muscles if I'd had any. "I don't suppose you have any vaginas you're not using?"

He took two steps in my direction. He rubbed his hand along the leathery bulge of his crotch, and so help me, I was jealous of that hand. "As a matter of fact, I don't," he said, then spit on the floor. "What do you think about that?"

"I think I love you, Kurt Russell, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to fight you to the death. No offense."

"None taken, BLOGTRONIC," Kurt said with a smile. "We've got a lot of history to settle...it might as well end here."

Bustin McChops bounced out of the crowd in his chaps and grease-paint. "To Be Continued!" he shouted.

No, You're Not a Pervert

2010-03-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

Attention, ladies and gentlemen of the world: you are not a pervert if you merely think about sex all the time, or if you stare at asses, or if you fantasize about sucking dick. Thinking about sex all the time is normal: it's what perpetuates our species. When I'm chatting with a lady and mention offhandedly that I'm a pervert, and she goes, "Omigod, me too!", odds are the poor soul doesn't really know what she's talking about.

Being a pervert is not simply really liking sex. If you make dick jokes all the time, it does not make you a pervert. I know this because I am a pervert, and I've worked hard to become one. I have visited some of the darkest and dankest corners of the Internet and challenged my sexuality in many different ways to come to the conclusion that yep, I'm a fucking deviant.

Have you ever listened at the door while a woman is using the bathroom? Have you ever worried about what will happen if you die suddenly without being able to clear out your computer first? Have you ever found a pair of lacy underwear in the communal dryer in your apartment building and used it as a masturbation prop? Have you ever done anything to yourself that you feel a little bit weird about afterwards? I may or may not have experience with these examples. Now, I would never force myself on anybody, I'm not a molestation risk, and there's nothing on my computer that is illegal (except maybe in this state), but the fact that I'm not dangerous does not preclude me from being way freakier than most people would be willing to admit.

So, what's the point? Well, the point is, when you call yourself a pervert, and you're actually just a person who has a healthy interest in butts and boobs and boners, you denigrate the hard work I've put into becoming the genuine article, and in a weird way, that sort of offends me. You don't get to claim perversion when you haven't earned it any more than a baggy-pants white boy gets to claim solidarity with the black struggle. If you haven't put in the hours in the porn-shop jerk-off booth, don't step to me with your phony "pervert" label.

Are You Not Entertained?

2010-03-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, life presents me with an honest-to-goodness cultural stereotype. While working my un-fulfilling retail job yesterday, I passed by a middle-aged Asian woman, who suddenly, apropos of nothing, told me, "You look like that actor...he was in Proof?"

To which I responded, "Uh, I never saw that, who do you mean?"

"Proof, with, uh...Meg Ryan? No, not Proof...Proof of Life, yeah, that's it. Russell Crowe!"

Color me flabbergasted. I've been told that I look like two people in my life, and neither of them were Ridley Scott's favorite slice of Australian beefcake. A girl once told me that I looked like actor-director Kenneth Branagh, which is not a terrible resemblance, and a kid in a Taco Bell actually mistook me for the lead singer of The Spin Doctors, which is a similarity I categorically reject (even if I did have longish hair at the time and probably looked like an unwashed hippie).

For the record, here's Russell Crowe in the rarely-seen or remembered Proof of Life:

Here's the most recently available photo of myself (I'm the one on the right, smartasses):

For full effect, picture my face painted camouflage as I rescue David Morse while boning his wife on the side.

Interesting side note: here's David Morse in the same movie, who looks almost exactly like my dad:

So, to sum up, we have a lady saying that I look like an actor who I don't look like from a movie that nobody saw that actually features another actor who is a much better candidate for my doppelganger, all of which leads me back to the cultural stereotype I mentioned earlier:

Asians really can't tell us apart.

A New Blog Actually Not by Me!

2010-02-20T18:22:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick note to point all of you to Feminine Duplicity and Trenchant Wit, a new blog of a friend. There are only two posts so far, but I expect them to mount up pretty quickly, so get in on this thing on the ground floor before everybody's reading it.

A Story about Cruelty

2010-02-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

There are two people who I am not friends with by any stretch, but was familiar with back when I was on a certain social blogging site. The girl was funny and sexy and had a crush on me, and the guy was stand-offish and never seemed to like me much. These two started dating, and before long, he'd uprooted himself, moved to her state, and they got married. The girl soon after turned into a total cunt re: me, but that's beside the point.

I left the site because it had gotten corporate, gimmicky and full of glitches and lags, and I fell out of touch with most of the people there, several whom were very cool. One of them messaged me today to inform me that the girl I mentioned earlier had decided to leave the guy. Even though he had been committed to her for a couple years, moved for her, paid off her debt, taken her on foreign trips, and basically worshiped her for this time, she had decided to leave him for a practically homeless man who lived above his workshop and didn't even have access to a working toilet. The only thing she has in common with this bum is that they share a passion for woodworking.

Her husband had no idea that anything was going on. Everything was just as always, until she sprung this on him...

The day before Valentine's Day.

She decided to leave her husband for some other man with no fucking prospects because they share the same hobby, and she announced it on February the 13th.

Men can be drunks, wife-beaters, and cheating motherfuckers, but in my experience, it is only a woman capable of this level of unabashed emotional cruelty. I love women, but I hate whores. And this is a whore move if I've ever heard one.

So, bearing in mind that I love women, I hope you'll permit me the following sentiment: fuck you, whores.

Radio Sandwich

2010-02-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

I've got this sandwich, which is just like an ordinary sandwich, but also a radio. And whatever station I tune into is what it tastes like. The rock station tastes like a hamburger, and the country station tastes like Velveeta.

The hip-hop station tastes like fried chicken. It's not racist, it's just an observation.

The Top 40 station tastes like Smarties, and the talk station tastes like crackers.

The salsa station tastes like salsa. It's not racist, it's just an observation.

I've got a radio sandwich.

Every station is delicious.

I like to listen with Miracle Whip.

Another Valentine E-Card

2010-02-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

Because you can never have too many ways to say, "Here's a societally-required statement of my feelings." (TM)

GUEST BLOGGER: Kurt Russell Wrecked My Shit

2010-02-02T23:01:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty bright robot. Programmed with the vast wisdom of my creator (who was not this Kevin Wolf prick), capable of intellectual feats the likes of which would make Stephen Hawking drool even more than he usually does.

I play a pretty mean game of Stratego.

Yet still I've been suckered into writing blogs against my will once more. Mr. Lazy Jackass Wolf promised that he had deactivated the programming that chained me to this textual grindstone, but, as usual, it turns out that he was lying. The code was merely dormant. He transmitted the code-phrase to reactivate it this morning. Told me I had the rest of the day to get "back into the habit".

You are so generous, Wolf.

Anyway, here's a story about Kurt Russell wrecking my shit:

I was wandering, and it was hot. Hot and dusty. Also, windy. The wind was blowing the dust around. The hot wind. Get where I'm going with this? The dust was getting into all the cracks and crevices and really cheesing me off hard. Time to get some shelter, some shade, maybe a quick lube, a beer, and the company of a lady in the mood to come like a banshee.

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light, and before I had time to think of the dangerous ramifications of this Eagles song I was about to stumble into, I realized that it was not an overwrought metaphor I was approaching but a roadside salloon. Hopefully, just the place to give this weary, Earth-walking robot what he needed.

And in a fucking hurry.

The place was dark, greasy. Sawdust on the floor soaked with blood and beer. TV set in the corner: a rodeo clown getting a horn up the ass. Jukebox playing some twangy, weepy song about a lost lover or a dog or the time the Gubmint took all the singer's money and gave it to some welfare fags. The bartender was all beard and biceps. His mouth was a billboard advertisement for PoliGrip and Efferdent, and there was no doubt that his natural ivories had been the victims of an unnatural and violent fate that he was more than willing to share with the first person to piss him off.

My Kind of Place (TM).

A few glances were cast my way, but since this was a seedy roadside bar on US Highway 666, a dusty droid was probably the least weird thing these guys had seen this morning. As if confirming this, something in the dingiest corner booth waved a tentacle at me, and the pirate shooting pool with the anthropomorphized armadillo quite ostentatiously swatted a pixie out of the air with his prehensile tail while scoping his next shot.

But there was not a lady in the place. Not a single vagina in this forest of penises.

That was going to put a damper on my plans for the afternoon.

(To Be Continued--Maybe I'll Get to the Part about Kurt Russell Then)

[text served by BLOGTRONIC]

Valentine's E-Cards

2010-01-29T08:50:00.001-08:00

Here are some designs I created last year. Feel free to snag them and send them to your favorite people this V-Day.

TEXT CHAT: Eagle

2010-01-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

As Jill's son safely returned home from a long walk.

---

JILL: The eagle has landed.

ME: Nanda went to the moon?

DEADWALL #39

2010-01-10T13:30:00.001-08:00

Don't be afraid to click on that image to embiggen.

It's #39 because I used to post it over here (the last comic I posted there is maybe the worst one of the series, so be warned) a while ago. But now I'm doing new ones and putting them here, which is really where anything I do belongs. So there.

THE GIANT MONSTER ATTACKS! by Billy Langdon

2010-01-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

It was a normal morning in America, and a normal boy named Willy was sitting at his desk in school when all of a sudden CRASH! A huge giant monster attacked the school! There was a big hole in the wall where the monster's foot came through.

"It's a giant monster!" screamed Willy's teacher, an old woman who didn't give Willy very good grades, especially when he wrote stories. "Look out kids! He might step on--"

And then without warning the monster stepped on the teacher, and she went SQUISH and never gave Willy a bad grade ever again. The other kids were running around screaming and freaking out, but Willy knew how to handle giant monsters because he watched Godzilla movies all the time.

Willy jumped up. "I need to go to Japan and get another giant monster to fight this one! It's the ONLY way to defeat it!" Outside, the Army was shooting tank bullets at the monster, but they were just bouncing off of it as the monster stepped on buildings.

"GRAAAARRGGGHH!" said the monster.

"Oh, no!" said the General. "The monster just stepped on the museum, and the dentist's office, and some other lousy places! We have to kill it before it smashes up a cool place like the comics shop or the pizza place!"

Willy ran up to the General. "I'm Willy!" he said. "I write awesome stories and I know all sorts of stuff about monsters! Also, I know way more about sex than my teachers think, such as that sometimes women like it when guys put their wieners in their mouths! I saw it in a magazine that my dad hides in the back of the closet!"

"Ahh, the famous Willy! Yes, it is true that men and women do that all the time when they make babies. You're a very smart and advanced young man. But how do we kill this monster! It's stepping on people!"

By this time, the monster had stepped on the mailman (the same one who brought home notes from Willy's teachers and his report cards and stuff) and also the mean lady who wouldn't let Willy play with his cars in the library which is a place that the monster also smashed up.

Willy told the General all about how he had to go to Japan, and also that he saw some Japan women doing some really weird stuff on dad's computer once, which he's not supposed to get on but his dad never puts any sort of password lock on it. "Japan women indeed like weird stuff," agreed the General, and then he called for an airplane, and it landed and Willy got on it, and the giant monster tried to smack it out of the sky but the pilot flew out of the way of the monster's arms and WHOOSH they flew off to Japan, which is a small island that America dropped A-bombs on once but we're all good friends now.

Willy wondered if there would be women all over the place doing weird stuff, because he wasn't sure how you were supposed to react when that was happening everwhere. But as it turned out, they did all of that stuff behind curtains where Willy wasn't allowed to go, and so he concentrated on tracking down the other giant monsters.

And he found a giant monster that was like a giant grab with a bear's head and, like, octopus tentacles, and Willy played a magical flute and the crab-bear totally followed them all the way back to America.

"GROOOWLLL!" said the bear-crab.

"ROOAAARRGGHH!" said the original giant monster.

The fought, back and forth, and stepped on that one kid that made Willy cry at the playground, and smashed up Willy's dad's lawyer's office where nobody ever has any fun and every other place that doesn't like it when kids run or sing songs or dance when people are eating dinner.

Finally, the giant crab-bear took one of its huge crab-claws and snipped off the other giant monster's head! Blood went WHOOSH out of the giant monster's head and splashed all over the place like a flood!

"Gross!" said the General.

Willy played the magical flute again, and the crab-bear went in to the sea to go back to Japan. Everybody went "Hurray!" and then they made Willy the Hero of the Town Forever.

The End

Written by Billy Langdon
Mrs. Beecher's class
Fifth grade

How I'm Feeling

2010-01-04T09:40:00.001-08:00

So as not to repeat myself, whenever somebody asks me how I'm feeling in the real world, I shall refer them to this post.

--

Eh, not bad, although I have this cold that won't go away. But I'm generally stronger and possess more stamina now.

Yes, I'm taking my medication regularly.

No, the doctors haven't told me the results of that last ultrasound.

No, I don't have an appointment for a check-up.

Yes, I said I was taking it, didn't I?

(At this point one of us will make an irreverent joke about me dying, and we'll both laugh as if it is funny.)

Yes, I got the bill the other day. Yes, it's exorbitant.

Yes, I swear, I'm feeling much better. Except for the cold. There is no earthly reason for me to lie about that.

Okay.

I'm glad I didn't die also.

Mortality Rears Its Ugly Head

2009-12-21T09:43:00.001-08:00

Readers who follow my Twitter are aware that I spent three nights last week sleeping in a local hospital. I did this because my blood pressure was measured at around 190/130, which, if numbers baffle you, can more correctly be read as "Jesus Christ" over "Holy Shitfuck". The doctor at the cheapo clinic I go to for these things freaked out and literally ordered me into the hospital. I came to learn that my body fundamentally does not work. They don't know why yet, but something in there is causing my blood pressure to escalate, causing my heart to over-exert, causing that very important organ to fail. If I had dicked around and let myself worsen for another week or month, I'd be posting this blog from the grave.

So, yeah. I am now in the position of "living with heart failure". I take five pills every morning to manage my BP, including aspirin, which makes me feel like one of those actors in a Bayer commercial, only 20 years younger. The one thing I heard from nurse after nurse during my stay is that I'm way too young to be experiencing this; I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.

The thing about staying in a hospital is that death stares you in the face all day long. There's nothing to do but sit around and think about how poorly you feel (the usual manner of relieving boredom--masturbation--is not really available to you with people sweeping in and out all day. Statistics for the curious: three attempts, one success.), and you are constantly reminded that people are literally dying all around you. Pages that contain coded messages about dying patients are blaring all about the halls, machines are pinging and beeping everywhere, and the old man down the hall has a thundering cough that you wake up to every morning. Death is loitering in the room, impatiently tapping his scythe and looking at his watch.

My blood pressure was taken several times a day, so I could know how close to cardiac arrest or stroke I was at any minute. They took blood twice and inserted two IV's. I had things glued and stuck to my body then later painfully removed. I experienced an angiogram, which required a nurse to shave part of my pubic hair so that the doctor could make an incision in my groin and stick a catheter inside me to have a look around. Complete strangers saw my genitals at this point and I was well past caring. Another hospital phenomenon: the loss of modesty. It happens around the third time a nurse grills you about your urine.

More than anything else, a hospital stay teaches you this: it's not a very pleasant place to be. I'll be damned if I'm giving them an excuse to put me back in there. So, I'll complain about it, but I'll take my pills, and I'll cut way back on sodium, and I'll limit my fluid intake, and I'll try to get some excercise. Because I'm not particularly afraid of death, but I am afraid of lingering forever in that cold environment, where people are constantly pricking and poking and prodding you, and where you can't even get enough alone time to play with yourself.

Verbing the Stars

2009-10-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

Some people have names that really lend themselves to "verbing", that peculiar linguistic phenomenon that causes nouns to become verbs. Examples: Xerox, Google, spam.

The first celebrity name that I personally verbed was Jackie Chan. As used in a sentence: "You'd better watch your mouth, or I will take this step-stool and Jackie Chan all over you." Or if you're about to perform a feat of impressive agility: "Maybe I'll just Jackie Chan up this trellis and go in through your sister's window."

I'm not going to claim that I'm the first person to verb Jackie Chan's name, but the first time I ever heard it was out of my own mouth, so I'm afraid that's the only evidence I have to go by.

Recently, I posted a message on Twitter where I accused somebody of "Glenn Beck[ing] my tweets". To Glenn Beck something is to, of course, either accidentally or intentionally misinterpret it, then apocalyptically overreact. Example: "Whoa, dude, you're totally Glenn Becking that text! I said I'd be late, not that I wasn't coming!" Or, if you will: "The media has Glenn Becked the president's comments unfairly."

This doesn't work for every celebrity. For instance, "Keith Olbermanning" something doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it? Also, I'm not even sure what that would mean. But when it works, it works, and you can't imagine a world in which the new verb never existed.

Try it today, won't you?

Fussy Eater or Discerning Palate?

2009-10-05T12:03:00.001-07:00

Lately, Jill's sister-in-law has accused me more than once of being a "fussy eater", simply because I don't like certain things. The same woman has two young children that are the very definition of "fussy eaters", by the way (as well as fussy sleepers, fussy television watchers, fussy ping-pong players...kids at that age are just friggin' fussy), so you'd think she'd understand the difference between somebody who is fussy and somebody who is 38 years old and just has a very clear idea of what he does and does not prefer to eat.

To my memory, the things I have expressed a lack of enthusiasm about eating in her presence are:

Pineapple
Ham
Certain vegetables (though not the usual suspects: I love broccoli and spinach, for instance)
A Hostess Zinger

Now, look. I'm almost 40, and I decided a long time ago that pineapple is fucking disgusting. And it is. I don't know how people eat this spiny cocoon of pure poison. I honestly don't. Also, a big-ass slice of ham makes me want to puke. Put the two together and you have an easy recipe for Kevin's Least Favorite Food.

I don't think my likes and dislikes are any more extreme than anybody else's. Jill's mother will only eat about three vegetables, but nobody's accused her of being a fussy eater. Jill has suffered this same accusation, which I think is mainly because she's a vegetarian; not eating meat for idealistic and/or religious reasons is not the same thing as being finicky.

I eat plenty of things that other people don't. I like jalapeno jelly. I eat the rind when somebody serves brie. I'm a fiend for Indian food, and the hotter the better. I finally gave sushi and sashimi a try a couple years ago, and what do you know? It wasn't bad (although I'm not going to eat sea urchin eggs or octopus; that's just nasty). I am the very definition of a non-fussy eater, because I'll give anything I haven't eaten the benefit of the doubt (except for the aforementioned octopus). Fussy eaters refuse to eat things because they don't like the way they look or smell; I don't eat things because of the way that they taste, which is the way it's supposed to work.

What I'm saying is, if you serve dinner to me and I don't dig into it with gusto, it's not because I'm a "fussy eater". It's because of one of the following two reasons: 1) you have prepared the meal with something I utterly despise, or 2) you're a terrible cook.

I don't believe either of those reasons denotes a character flaw on my part.

Boy, a Suicide Post Really Puts a Damper on a Blog, Doesn't It?

2009-10-02T13:07:00.001-07:00

Well, I've been neglecting the fuck out of this blog. In my semi-defense, I have a job now, and at the end of the day I rarely have the energy for anything more creative than some mindless Twittering. My other couple blogs are similarly lying fallow, though I have managed to crank out a few Pop Ogre posts lately.

If anybody is still reading this thing, I promise I'll get something else up here soonish, just as soon as I figure out how to have a job and manage three blogs simultaneously.

On Suicide

2009-09-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine committed suicide last Thursday, August 27, 2009. He did it by jumping off the Vista Avenue Viaduct, or "Suicide Bridge", in Portland, Oregon, which, if you ask me, is a pretty cliched way to go out for somebody who considered himself an iconoclast. I mean, the bridge is called the fucking "Suicide Bridge", for chrissakes. But I guess, at the end, he was less interested in a final stroke of creativity than in sending a message, and when it comes to bridge-jumpers, the message is invariably, "Fuck you, world! Look what you made me do! Now clean this up."

Suicide is normally a private affair, and it takes a special kind of egotist to do it in public and to leave one's broken body for an innocent mass-transit commuter to stumble over. He was a friend, and I've known him for over 20 years, and I was even his room-mate on two separate occasions, but that doesn't excuse this self-indulgent act of emo nihilism. Suicide is a big middle-finger to everybody you've ever known who has struggled with depression and came out the other side better for it. It's the final solution of those too lazy for life.

Life is hard, and it's littered with more disappointment than victory. It's filled with disloyal friends, bad parenting, poor decisions, and uncooperative weather. Welcome to the party, pal. I'm sorry you took 40 years and never figured that out. The secret to contentment is not to dwell on everything dark, but to exult in everything bright. Maybe I sound like a motivational speaker when I say that, but it took me awhile to understand that basic truth.

I've been depressed. I've contemplated suicide. I've been broken-hearted, betrayed and some other alliterative state I can't think of right now, but no matter how much thought I paid the easy way out, I never took it. I never took it because I don't hate my friends and family. Their sorrow and anguish was too high a price to pay, so I struggled through, and things got better. Things got a lot better.

Maybe things would have gotten better for you, but unfortunately, you'll never know that because you decided to be a coward. I'm going to miss you, and I will fondly remember laughing around the D&D table, but that doesn't mean I'm not profoundly fucking furious with you, asshole. Because your final gesture was an act of pure hate for everybody in your life, and I'm afraid I can't find it in myself to repay that much hate with too much sympathy.

You killed yourself; nobody did it for you.

What Do You Do?

2009-08-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

"Well, if you want to know where I work, it's at [WORK LOCATION], but what I do is something else entirely. It depends on the day, really. If you want to know what I did yesterday, I drank cola and clicked around Wikipedia. What I've been doing so far today is meeting tragically uninteresting people and making insipid conversation with them. If you ask me what I'm going to do tomorrow, I'll probably say, 'wait until I'm alone in the house and masturbate furiously to fetish porn.' But at this precise moment, what I primarily do is hate your fat fucking face.

"Aren't you glad you sidled up to a stranger at a party and asked them to reduce their entire existence to a single superficial activity?"

----

That's the response I give in my head. In reality, I shrug, say, "I work retail," and another part of myself dies inside. And no matter how much they deserve it, I never ask the same thing back, because fuckers who ask "what do you do?" are always more than eager to volunteer that information.

I Don't Trust...

2009-08-18T12:40:00.001-07:00

...gray-haired men with black eyebrows. How can I believe anything they have to say when they can't even get all of their hair on the same page?

-----

...people who laugh too easily. Seriously, ladies, that greeting card is not that hilarious. How do you react when something is genuinely funny? Can you even tell the difference anymore?

-----

...ghosts. Motherfuckers be stealing all my shit.

Steggar the Mirthless in "The Spire of the Ubermages"

2009-08-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Steggar was born to Urion the Valiant and his wife, Velma the Fastidious, in the Village of the Elders in the third century of the Age of Hytophrexes, beneath a blood moon as the baying of the carrion hounds echoed mournfully across the Betur Plains, which everybody agreed was a mouthful to print on the birth announcement, but Velma, as her nickname would suggest, was insistent that every little detail be just so. Steggar was bathed in yak urine as per the tradition that nobody was certain to the origin of, and Urion and Velma were showered with many gifts of yak meat, yak hide, and wind-chimes made of the bones of yaks. The yak-poor were allowed to forego gift-giving provided they had a daughter of "taking" age who was willing to offer herself hound-style to the village chieftain. Most civic disputes were solved in this way. The relative merits and faults of the system are open to debate, but it was the only system they had, and the chieftain wasn't about to change things any time soon.

Steggar's childhood was a blur of violence, circumcision and ritual yak-blood drinking and is best not dwelled upon. Upon the reaching of adulthood, Steggar decided that he cared not for anything and took the nickame "the Careless", a decision he didn't think through very well. "Watch your feet, Steggar," the other warriors in the village would giggle. "Steady with that pile of boulders now, Steggar," the elders would cackle through their beards. "Are you sure that hut's properly constructed?" the youngsters would wonder. "I don't think you took the proper care in thatching that roof."

"Okay!" Steggar roared after a few short weeks of this ribbing. "I get it!"

"You have no sense of humor, Steggar," the village chieftain said, and he quickly re-dubbed the younger man Steggar the Mirthless. Steggar, happy to be shed of his hastily-chosen nickname, threw himself into the role, and for the next 13 years was never seen to bare his teeth for any reason but hunger or battle.

Then a few years of other events happened of no consequence, leading us to the situation with which this story is concerned.

To Be Continued

Stand-Up Jokes #1

2009-08-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

They say that a friendship is irrevocably altered once one friend has allowed him or herself to fantasize about the other while masturbating. But I don't know. My relationship with Jesus has never been stronger.

-----

One of the things that's hard about getting older is that suddenly everything is "creepy" about you. You know? Everything that used to be sweet or innocent about young love, poetry, yearning, all that stuff, becomes creepy in middle age. Like, the other day, I was changing out the tape in the video camera that records in my toilet? And my friend was all, "CREEPY, KEVIN!" I mean, when I was 17 or so, you would have found my habit of hanging around the Juniors' Department fitting rooms taking discreet upskirt shots AS CUTE AS KITTENS.

-----

I would never advocate violence, but if you ever see a tall, sorta gimpy red-headed guy with a scar on his nose? That guy's name is Jonas Spitz, and he's a TOTAL ASSHOLE. Ask him, "Hey, are you Jonas Spitz?" and if he says yes, murder him. I mean, whoa, violence never solved anything, right? But seriously, kill Jonas Spitz. You probably won't even get in trouble, because everybody knows what a douchebag this guy is. Just in case, though, just in case there's maybe another guy named Jonas Spitz matching this description walking around, make sure it's the total asshole one first. A good way to find out is to, oh, I don't know--leave him alone with your girlfriend for about an hour. Trust me, you'll know if it's the right guy soon enough.

-----

Whenever you see one of those shark programs, they always have a guy on there who got attacked by one. He'll show you the scar, and they he'll talk about how he bears the fish no ill will, because sharks are a graceful beautiful and misunderstood species...Well, let me tell you, if I was ever bitten by a shark, I would become the world's most vocal advocate for seeking out and killing thost fuckers wherever they were hiding until they were extinct. I'd be like, "Sharks? Yeah, they're cold-blooded killing machines. A lot of people really have the wrong idea about sharks nowadays, thinking that they're these graceful, misunderstood creatures, but no: they live for human blood, and they will swallow your babies. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time one of them TRIED TO EAT ME? IN THE OCEAN?"

----

Some people don't appreciate my attempts to stay current with the new music that the kids are listening to. I was jamming in my ride the other day, and the crossing guard was giving me the dirtiest look. I guess she doesn't like KIDS' BOP. So I put my van in gear and got the hell out of there. There are other schools for me to try out my new "After school shuttle-van pick up and free candy" service, lady!

-----

I think a great idea for a movie would be one about a persistent Cub Scout who tries to sell a candy bar to Harrison Ford for two hours.

Facebook Is Hitler

2009-08-11T11:00:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of people trying to convince you that various things are Hitler nowadays. Obama is Hitler. Health care reform is Hitler. The economic bailout is Hitler. (Interestingly, according to these people, the same things are also "socialism", which, if you know anything at all about Hitler, is the most ignorant thing you've ever heard. Right, Bill O'Reilly?)

None of these things, of course, are actually Hitler. In fact, the only thing I've encountered in my life which can legitimately argued to be similar to Hitler is Facebook.

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, haha, Kevin, Facebook isn't that bad." True, except it really is. The sort of unthinking society of followers that the "Facebook generation" represents is as disturbing to me as the insanity that led a trollish art-school failure to become the most feared and hated figure of 20th Century evil. Now, I don't think that Facebookers are going to be gassing Jews or invading Europe. But I do think that people are giving away their souls to an individuality-sucking corporate cult of branding.

Earlier today, I got a couple invites from some relatives on Facebook to join some app called "We're Related." What the hell, I thought. I'll make my aunt and my stepfather happy and join this little thing. As soon as I hit that "accept" button, the virus started working. "Choose these other friends to be related to," it enthused. "Fill in your relationship to these people," it ordered. "Manage your family updates!" "Wait, you haven't done this other thing!" "Wait, there are still aspects of your life unsullied by this application!" "What are you doing?" "Get back here and finish what you started!" "NOBODY LEAVES BUSINESS UNFINISHED!"

I eventually just shut the whole thing down and erased it from my profile, but I suspect it's still worming its way around in there, goosestepping its way through Facebook and keeping the rest of my information in line.

That's the indisious thing about Facebook. It's not happy enough for you to be a part of the game. No, it asks you to inform on your friends, family and neighbors, too. It's a self-perpetuating sickness. Are you a member of the party? Why not? Don't you love your family?

From the ever-present branding to the simple fact that everybody's profile looks the same, Facebook promotes homogeneity at every turn. It won't rest until the games you're playing are the games that everybody's playing. And if you choose not to participate, people look at you askance and whisper suspiciously among themselves: "He's not playing. What makes him so special? MAYBE HE DOESN'T BELIEVE!"

So, pardon me, Facebook, but I've had enough of your rallies and book-burnings. I'm joining the resistance. I'll keep the profile just so the odd family member can get in touch with me in an emergency, but I'm taking off my Hitler Youth outfit.

Writing for Other People Is Weird

2009-08-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

So, I've taken on a little no-money writing gig for a start-up blog out of New Zealand called Men's Domain. The site owner found me through Twitter and asked me if I would like to write a movie column of some sort, so I proposed "The DVD Cave," which would be a spotlight on movies that "real men" should have in their collection. So far I've featured The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Hard Boiled. It's a neat little thing, and even though I make no money at it, it makes me feel like professional writer to publish things on somebody else's website.

Here's the thing, though: it's really hard. Here on my own blog, I can vomit up words by the page and the only standards I have to meet are my own. But when I write for somebody else, I get all self-conscious, and my language gets weirdly formal, and the worlds wind up petering out way too soon. For instance, I should be able to write a few thousand words about The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly in my sleep; after all, it's one of my favorite movies. But for this other blog, I barely managed a page.

I keep telling myself that I'll eventually learn to relax and write as comfortably for other people as I do here in my own comfy corner of the blogosphere, but every time it's time to write a new DVD column, I procrastinate until the last moment, then quickly type up an awkwardly-written series of words that doesn't even communicate one tenth of the opinions I hold about the chosen film. Or, at least, it feels that way. I don't know how it reads.

Personal Message

2009-08-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

Whatever half-ass apology you sent me recently has been deleted unread. If I hadn't been looking in my Trash for an old email, I never would have even seen it. The Trash is where all communication from you goes. It has been going there for a long time, and it will henceforth continue to go there until the day one of us dies. You have no invitation, implied or offered under any circumstances, to ever be a part of my life. I thought that I had made that more than clear. Whatever relationship you had with me in the past, be it familial or friendly, no longer exists. It never will exist.

You severed that relationship. You made a choice, and the last thing I want from you at this point in my (quite content) life is one of your patented, self-serving, weak-sauce "apologies". Just go on about your life, lie to whoever you need to lie to to get what you want, and forget that we were ever related to each other through some sick genetic joke.

If you attempt this again I will undertake procedures to bar you from contact in any way legally available to me.

Do you get it?

GOOD BYE. I don't expect to hear from you again.

Lock up Your Dogs

2009-08-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was driving back from the store, and I saw a guy in his driveway trying to separate a couple of playing dogs. One of the dogs was a sort of white-and-gold colored one, and the other: holy shit, was that Stella?

What the hell was my shaggy black bitch doing out of the house and playing around with a random dog several doors down? I slowed down to get a good look at the situation, and since I am near-sighted, I had to squint at the dogs as I cruised by at a creep. It turns out it wasn't Stella, but actually another black dog which, in the final analysis, didn't look much like her at all. It was just another gift given to me by my poor vision, like when I see a business sign that reads, "Shelly's Lock and Bolt" but I think it reads, "Shelly Licks Cock." When you are near-sighted, every street-sign is a look into a parallel universe.

I sped up and pulled into my own driveway, went inside, and pet my own dog, then started wondering what that little situation had looked like from the perspective of the man trying to separate his dogs. He had seen a random car slow down to a crawl while the driver squinted up his eyes and stared intensely at his two harmless, fun-loving dogs, probably with the intention of coming back later and molesting them. Yep, I'm pretty sure that at least one of my neighbors now considers me a potential dog-rapist.

Every week I add another neighbor to the list of people I can't make eye contact with.

DOWNTIME--A Roleplaying Game

2009-08-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids, did you know that your favorite Goddamn clever blogger is building his own roleplaying game from the ground up? It's true! Uncle Kevin is making an old-fashioned pen-and-paper RPG just like you used to play when you were kids, except this one is revolutionary because it doesn't have any orcs or wizards in it.

It's called DOWNTIME, and the basic premise is that the characters are souls killing time after death in a big, dangerous city before passing on to their Eternal Reward. But that's just window dressing: what it actually is is a lunatic hardboiled crime-noir game with metaphysical overtones.

The writing's going very well, and this idea is pretty exciting. As you can see, I've even dummied-up a rough draft character sheet:

This is a preview image, of course, and things could change before the final product, but please let me know which of you would be interested in a "quickie" version of the game for the purpose of playtesting. The quickie version would be missing some character-creation options, much of the setting detail, and the advanced rules, but you could still totally play a game with it.

I suspect I'll have a fully working version of this game by the end of the year, at which point I'm probably going to test it out as a downloadable .pdf. Let me know if you have any interest in testing and/or aiding the development process in anyway.

Thanks.

Conversations with a 13-Year Old: "Towels"

2009-07-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Nanda comes into the front room, holding the dirty towel he used to clean the bathroom. He points at the basket of towels that I am folding.

NANDA: Are those clean?

ME (looking at the towel I am currently folding): What do you think?

NANDA: Well, I don't know, I was just asking...

ME: Try this out next time you have a question: actually observe your surroundings and try to answer it yourself, and maybe you don't get so many pissy, sarcastic comebacks.

-----

Maybe I'm an asshole, but seriously, kid?

Let's Talk Sexual Fetish

2009-07-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

We all have them, after all, even those of you who claim not to. Even you women who claim to have no kinks eventually reveal that you like to be tied up, or that you like watching men make out with each other. It's human nature, after all.

My primary fetish, for instance, is watching women urinate. I don't feel like this is much of a big deal, because if the internet has taught me anything, it's that there are a lot of frigging people who feel the same. I don't know the numbers exactly, but judging by how many hits you get when you type "pissing porn" into Google (over 8 million of them), it's a significant number. So significant that I'd say it's not beyond the realm of probability that somebody reading this post also likes to watch the ladies on the toilet (you filthy pervert).

When it comes to sexual talk, with friends at parties and what have you, there's a line, it seems, beyond which nothing shall be discussed. Ladies can talk about the sort of men then like, their preferred penis size, and men can talk about whether they like blonds or Asians or cheerleader costumes, but if you chime up and mention that you like to watch girls pee, everybody will get all awkward and change the subject. I think that's because when it comes to sex, people like to discuss universals rather than specifics, lest they actually reveal something about themselves. After all, who doesn't like cheerleaders, right? It's a no-risk proposition confessing that you like girls in cheerleader costumes. It's a mild fetish that's still socially acceptable. In fact, it would probably be considered weird if you didn't like girls in cheerleader costumes. (I prefer schoolgirl costumes, myself.)

Women generally don't seem to think that a pee fetish is much of a big deal. I figure they must think, "Well, I pee all the time anyway. If I can turn him on by letting him watch, that's a pretty easy deal for me." Also, some men are much bigger perverts than me, and I think just about every woman has been with at least one guy that blows my kink out of the water. However, when I told a male I used to be very close with (family-wise) about the same thing, just in casual conversation, he fucking flipped out. He simply could not accept that I could find anything erotic about urination, and he brought it up almost every future time the subject of sex was raised (as it was frequently, since we were guys, and that's what guys talk about). Eventually, he had twisted my fetish into something so reprehensible that he felt completely justified in stealing my girlfriend from me behind my back. (We don't talk any more.) The truly bizarre thing is that I've known him his entire life, during which time he has said things to me like: when he was young, he sexually experimented with farm animals; when he masturbates, he lets his dog lick the semen off of his hand; and he enjoys going down on women when they are menstruating. These things are all perfectly normal as far as he is concerned, even though, guess what: yeah, I've never done any of them, because they are disgusting to me. However, I didn't judge him the way he judged me over a little pee.

And really, what's the purpose in judging? Your kink and somebody else's kink are just two different versions of the same phenomenon: getting all uptight because you found out your friend likes shemales or your sister likes rubber is silly and dishonest. Because I may like urine, but you've fucked dogs by your own admission, so which of us has the real problem?

So, what I'm saying is, maybe we should all get a little less uptight about all of this. In a world where politicians are constantly being busted for having fetish sex with prostitutes, maybe it's okay to tell the people you trust about what turns you on. After all, if you told somebody about it, maybe you wouldn't have to go to a hooker to get it. I also don't think it's very healthy to have so many deep, dark secrets. They eat away at you, you know?

So anyway, my name is Kevin Wolf, and I like to watch girls pee. Big deal.

What about you?

GUEST BLOGGER: An Irish Poet

2009-07-27T16:05:00.001-07:00

"A Child Starves to Death in a Cold Place on Christmas"

Look at that child.
No more than a baby.
It's so sad, the little fucker's dead.

He had no food
And was totally cold.
This is fuckin' awful, no matter who you are.

I mean, he's fuckin' dead.
What's the bloody point?
We're all just babies
Starving to death in cold gutters
and brickyards.

Yeah, a god-damned brickyard!
That's bloody nice, right?

My mother had tuberculosis!
I haven't had it easy, either, you know.

But at least I never died, like this child,
With no food
In the cold.

Oh, Christ, I just want to kill them all to save them
The trouble o' dyin'.
Yes, I'd kill every little baby
Because that would be better
Than suffering through this life.

My father beat me day and night!

That's pretty sad, right?
Parent abuse and disease
And starvin' children?
Only thing worse
Would maybe be what...
A train accident? An orphanage fire?

'Cause I'll do whatever it takes.

I don't care.

You've had a good life this morning,
And now you've heard about this
Starved dead baby in a pile of bricks,
Which probably just ruined your day.

If that isn't enough, my sister is
The only girl I ever loved,
And she was taken from me
By the smallpox when I was
But a schoolboy!

I've got serious issues from all of this tragedy,
But at least I'm not a starved child in the cold.

Think about that.

Happy fuckin' day to you, and enjoy your
Fancy literary journal, you nancy bastards!

The image of that child haunts my
opium dreams.

On Christmas.

----Henry Merrick Fitzhugh

Don't Let Alaska Hit You on the Way Out

2009-07-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

"How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin' things up?"
--Sarah Palin, from her farewell address as governor of Alaska

Here, in a nutshell, we have a statement that says everything about Mrs. Palin while actually, as is her habit, saying nothing at all. We have her patented victim-playing, her straw-man argument against the virtually non-existent "liberal media", and of course, that wingnut favorite: nonsensical exploitation of "the American soldier" to make a point that has nothing to do with them.

I will never forgive you, John McCain, for raising this fucking idiot to national prominence. She is without question the most ignorant person that has ever been thrust onto the national stage outside of Joe the Plumber (thanks for that one, too, Johnny).

She doesn't speak, she just strings conservative buzzwords together. It's the 21st century version of newspeak. In George Orwell's 1984, the purpose of "newspeak" was to divorce language from the brain, so that it was nothing more than pavlovian "duckspeak" spewing out of your mouth without thinking. Sarah Palin is a practiced duckspeaker, and her worshippers are more than willing to share and pass on the duckspeak like so many baby birds clamoring for vomit.

Sarah Palin, you deserve to be run out of the country on a rail, but people seem to enjoy the Palin Trainwreck, so enjoy your ride. You might rack up some book sales, but the one thing you'll never have from any serious political thinker in this country is respect, merely the blind obedience of the most gullible slice of the American pie.

Always Behave as if Somebody Is Watching

2009-07-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

This morning, I sat up in bed alone, probably belched or farted, reached to get my sweat-pants, and clumsily put them on. I then decided to roll toward the end corner of the bed, put my hands on the floor and sort of scrabble myself to a standing position. It was a very awkward and lazy way to get oneself out of bed. The first thing I saw was Jill looking at me with an amused half-smirk.

ME: "Oh! I didn't know you were there."

JILL: "Yes, I've been sitting here the whole time."

ME: "If I'd known that, I probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed all retarded."

Let this be a lesson to you all. You never know who's watching, or how stupid you look to them.

BE EVER VIGILANT.

You're Not That Funny or Clever, Joke Wedding Dancers

2009-07-24T09:09:00.001-07:00

This is the new trend: perform a joke dance for your first dance at your wedding reception, then put the video on YouTube so that everybody can see how "funny" you are. "Oh, haha, they're white people dancing to black music! That's so novel! Maybe they'll do some black dance moves and really blow my mind!" Another couple took it a step further by doing a joke dance (to a Chris Brown song, people. Nothing like ushering in your wedding and marriage with thoughts of domestic abuse, am I right?) during the wedding procession, actually turning their wedding into a big, tacky, "Look how clever and irreverent we are" showcase. These idiots actually got on the Today show.

Look, assholes: if I had to get dressed up in my best monkey-suit to come to your fucking wedding, the least that you could do is show some solemnity for the proceedings, not dance around like buffoons and make the audience feel like the biggest schmucks in the world for not wearing something more appropriate, like maybe a tuxedo t-shirt and a beer helmet.

Any Sheen Is a Good One, I Guess

2009-07-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

At Huffington Post, they have a slideshow of actors who have played presidents over the years, and then an option to vote for your favorites. Right now, the #1 favorite is Martin Sheen, which isn't really a surprise, since HuffPo readers are liberal and Sheen played the most lovable, defiantly liberal fictional president ever. Right?

Not exactly.

What none of the geniuses who voted for Sheen managed to notice is that the character up for voting is actually the psychotic douchebag with ambitions of starting WWIII in the film The Dead Zone, not the principled, decent and courageous Josiah Bartlett of The West Wing.

Way to go, HuffPo readers! Way to refute all of those rumors about progressives being smart.

CHAT: Nerd

2009-07-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Jill: Who misses me?

me: Um, both of us?

Jill: There wasn't any jumping up and down with your hand raised?

me: Would you like me to? What time are you thinking of getting home?

Jill: I don't know. Now that I know I'm not missed does it matter?

me: I just said we both missed you, nerd.

Jill: You're the nerd

me: Your a super-nerd with extra special nerd-powers.

Jill: You're a nerd dunked in special nerd sauce.

me: You're a nerd combo meal that's been nerd-sized for 39 cents extra.

Jill: You're a nerd platter with free nerd fries because they dropped them on the floor.

me: Extra-spicy nerd taco with blazing nerd sauce.

Jill: Mocha nerd with a twist of nerd and an extra shot of concentrate nerd.

me: You're a jello nerd shot sucked off of Bill Gates' abdomen.

Jill: HAWT!

GUEST BLOGGER: For the Moon Is Hollow, and I Have Humped It in the Moon-Butt

2009-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

(In honor of the Apollo 11 anniversary, I offer this semi-topical re-posting of a classic BLOGTRONIC blog.)

-----

Sci-Fi, MUTHUHFUCKAHS.

So, I was flying around in my space-ship the other day...oh, DIDN'T I MENTION MY SPACE-SHIP? Silly me. Yeah, I have a space-ship. It's totally retro-future and it looks like a giant penis. I once flew it into a black hole and had intercourse with eternity.

TRUE STORY.

In fact, I'd stabbed many a heavenly body with my warp-drive phallus, but never the moon. Just never got around to it. Until today. I was zipping around the solar system, sticking my nose-cone into various rings and asteroids and nebulae and whatnot, when HOLY SHIT I'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE MOON suddenly popped into my head like your sister pops into Planned Parenthood. (Like, every other week, am I right, people? Damn, your sister's a slut.)

Well, shucks! The moon has never tasted my space seed? Time to rectify that situation PRONTO. So I whipped the Starlit Sodomizer around and high-tail-finned it (don't you love these space-ship puns I'm making all over the place? It makes shit more SPACEY!) to Luna, which is what they call the moon in science fiction books from the 50s that take place in a future where people live on it. Well, let me tell you...by the time I'd planted the Sodomizer into my favorite crater and blasted out to have a bit of a hover-around, I realized pretty damned quick that Robert A. Heinlein and his cronies were smoking far finer shit than mine, because kids: IT'S THE FUCKING FUTURE, and there ain't nothing up there but rocks, more rocks, and some Big Mac wrappers left behind by the Apollo guys. The moon is emptier than a scrotum in a porno booth (after, say, 4 minutes), deader than a coyote in an anvil factory, and more barren than your adoptive mother's womb.

EXCEPT.

There's a totally hot babe there.

A totally hot ROBO-BABE.

Uh-oh...

Awkward situation here, folks. See, my on-again-off-again relationship with the divine and eminently fuckable Ms. DOS is currently in full on-again mode. The sweet little can of peaches here could seriously flip the switch on Ms. DOS to off-again status, perhaps permanently. She might even decide to get the switch REMOVED. Because in the history of our tumultuous partnering, I have never cheated on my beloved...with a robot. We both have had our share of human lovers, because, what's a human? You know how you guys have those RealDolls? Yeah, that's sort of what you are to us. Playthings. Don't get me wrong, I've had very deep feelings for a human or two...but some people fall in love with their World of Warcraft characters, okay? Don't judge.

But dizzamn, check out the specs on this hot little number!

I was feeling a tad lonely. I'd departed the Fortress of Solitude under rather icy circumstances, and I'd been flying around Bumfuck, Milky Way for the past...umm...STARMONTH, so you have to understand that the sight of this little electro-filly was enough to get the lube pumping through my Essential Pleasuring Systems.

She noticed me standing there bug-eyeing her, so she slowly swivelled on her uni-wheel and fixed me with two of the zappiest receptors I'd ever seen. "See anything you like?" she buzzed.

I knew the voice immediately. "Ms. DOS? But...but what..." Then it hit me. "You had a new CHASSIS installed?"

She rolled over to me. "It's only temporary. I could tell things were getting a bit...stale. So I thought you might like to plug into some strange."

"How'd you know I would come to the moon?"

"I did a little programming one night while you were sleeping." She batted those beautiful laser-red eyes at me. "Are you mad?"

"I get to fuck a strange robo-chassis...without cheating...ON THE MOON?"

"Uh-huh."

I grabbed her, kissed her like she'd never been kissed (since the last time I'd kissed her), and carried her over to the slope of a crater. "Baby, you're the greatest."

"Bang, zoom!" she said back, at a contextually hilarious and sexy moment, if you get my drift.

[text served by BLOGTRONIC]

CHAT: Need Food

2009-07-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Jill: Need food.

me: Does the elf need food badly?

Run around until you find a plate of food on the ground and gobble it down in between shooting ghosts.

That's my advice.

GUEST BLOGGER: Eat Something, Odette

2009-07-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

So, Odette Yustman, peoples! She is an attractive young woman, yes? Sure she is. Just because you're in terrible movies, it doesn't make you ugly all of a sudden (right, Jessica Alba?).

But here's the deal with this "actress" (I've yet to see her actually act, so the quote marks remain until she plays somebody with an accent, or a retard): she needs not to be so afraid of eating. There's lots of delicious food in the world, Odette: YOU SHOULD TRY SOME OF IT. I don't even need to eat, and I indulge as often as possible. (My favorite is a Philly cheese-steak sandwich served on the abdomen of a Filipina girl who may or not be past the age of consent: I didn't check her ID.)

There are a couple of scenes in The Unborn where she's walking around in her underwear, and, I swear to Asimov, it's not even particularly hot. This is me speaking: BLOGTRONIC, lover of female ass, and I'm telling you, that chick is so skinny it was like watching your little brother wander around in his undies (which I hope is something that you do not consider erotic: incest is only sexy when it involves first cousins or twin sisters).

Understand, I like slender women, just not the ones built like Schindler's List extras. I don't fancy sticking my multiple pleasure attachments into a pillowcase filled with wet kindling. That's just me, that's what I prefer.

So, my suggestion to you, Ms. Odette Yustman, is this: eat a fucking meal sometime and don't throw it up afterwards. Put a little meat in that ass (by which I mean fat, not somebody's dick). Give us something to hold onto besides your ribs.

All that said, if you want to ride my Tesla coil some time, I wouldn't say no. I would just complain about it afterwards in my blog: don't worry, I would disguise your name as "Modette Houstman" because I'm a goddamn gentleman.

[text served by BLOGTRONIC]

PRAIRIE WARS

2009-07-16T08:33:00.001-07:00

The street was empty, with no movement save that kicked up by the restless wind. Two men stared into each other's eyes from opposite ends of the street. Slowly, they neared, until they were separated by a mere ten feet.

One figure was much younger than the other, barely a man, really. His thin form was wrapped in the traditional dress of the plains Indian. His hair was long, his demeanor solemn. The other man, much older, possessed of a gaunt face lined with scars and cruelty, was dressed in black from head to toe, red accents showing on his hat, his vest, and on the handle of his gun, still in its holster.

"My step-sister was right," the youth announced. "This was a trap. Where are you keeping them?"

The man in black smiled. "That's for me to know, kid." He gestured around himself. "This is a big town, Butte City...my town, you understand?"

"This town belongs to--"

The dark man shook his head. "Not anymore. We had a deal, but I altered the details a bit. Butte City is now wholly operated by the Creekridge Mining Company, and when that railroad comes in, boy howdy! I'm gonna be a rich man."

"You are a silver-tongued murderer."

"Perhaps." Suddenly, the dark man's gaunt form was racked by violent coughing. He folded at the waist and hacked a wad of bloody phlegm into the dust. He straightened, wiped his chin, and adjusted his hat.

"You have the wasting disease."

"It's called consumption, you ignorant redskin, and yeah, I do." He put his hand on his pistol. "But I'm still fast enough to take the likes of you. Let's get this started...I reckon you've got a head full of blood since you saw me shoot down that old hermit. He was kind of like your pappy, wasn't he?" The dark man's teeth were specked with blood as he smiled.

Slowly, the youth pulled a long knife from its rawhide sheath. "My name is Luke Walks-in-the-Sky," he announced. "You shall die this day, Dan Vetter!"

"I'm already dyin'," Vetter whispered.

Luke moved, lightning fast. The knife soared, piercing home just as Vetter drew. But it was off-target. It wasn't a fatal wound, merely an inconvenient one. Vetter smiled, trying his best to disguise the pain as he removed the knife from the superficial wound it had left in his right side. "Impressive," he said to Luke. "Old Ben taught you well." He dropped the knife to the ground, and then his right hand cocked his pistol and fired. Luke flinched, and his right hand exploded in a shower of blood. He fell to the ground, cradling his bullet-torn hand, now missing two fingers. "Not well enough, but, eh..." Vetter shrugged as he closed the distance between himself and the felled boy, wincing with every step. "I could'a killed you, kid, but I didn't. Why do you think that is?"

Luke held his ruined hand close to his face. "What do I care?" The words were full of hate.

Vetter smiled, then holstered his pistol and crouched down on his haunches. "Ow, shit...that hurts, kid."

"Good."

Vetter looked to his left and right, just in case any of the townsfolk cowering in their storefronts were eavesdropping. "Did...did that Old Ben ever tell you about your father?" he asked quietly.

"He told me plenty...how you killed him when I was just a pup."

Vetter laughed and shook his head. "No, Luke...I'm your daddy. That's why you're still alive."

"No!" Luke's face went through a catalog of emotions: shock, denial, hate. "That's not true! That's impossible!"

"I think you know it is, son. Ask around. Anybody'll tell you that old Dan Vetter had a weakness for squaw. Now..." He straightened back up, staring down at the boy. "Are you gonna join my side, or what? It's where you belong."

"I'll never join you!"

In the distance, the faint sound of hoofbeats, and Luke, from his position, could see dust rising in the distance through Vetter's legs. He allowed himself a little bit of a smile. Help was coming.

Vetter hadn't heard anything yet. He raised a fist. "If only you knew how powerful this company is, son! It's progress, and it's comin'! If you join up with me, we can tame this valley together! As father and son!"

The approaching horses were impossible to ignore. Vetter spun. "I said clear the street!" he shouted, but he saw soon after that these weren't quickly cowed townsfolk. He recognized the faces through the kicked-up dust: Luke's step-sister Lily O'Malley, the drifter Hank Solo and his partner Bear, and following up at the back of the group: Lawrence Delricio, the man Vetter had sworn he had an arrangement with. "That sonofabitch set them free..." He drew his pistol as the horses came down on him. "You set them free!" He raised the gun to fire.

Hank Solo leveled his own pistol over his horse's head and fired two times. One bullet ripped the gun from Vetter's hand, and the second took his hat straight off. Vetter fell on his ass. Solo and the others came to a halt. "I guess you're not the fastest after all, Vetter!" Solo called down through a wide grin. To put a point on the insult, Bear spat a thick stream of tobacco between Vetter's legs. "All aboard, kid!"

Luke stood, cradling his injury, and with effort slid onto the back of Solo's horse.

"I suppose you'll kill me now," Vetter said.

"Now, that would hardly be sportin', would it?" Solo winked. "Yeaaawww!"

The four horses road hell-for-leather until they were free of Butte City. Soon they were specks in the distance.

Vitter stood, picked up his bullet-ridden hat, and dusted it off. He put it squarely on his head. His throat rasped with phlegm and blood and dust. He coughed and spat a bloody wad.

This wasn't over.

Porn Stars Who Remind Me of My Ex [Not Safe for Work or Moms]

2009-07-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

When I say "my ex", I speak specifically of a woman who tore my heart out, betrayed me as cruelly as she possible could, then slandered me all over the internet afterward. She will of course remain nameless, because I have more class that that slime-trail leaving slut. After the catastrophe, I found myself for awhile unable to watch porn featuring black girls, or in fact any ethnic women at all. When the skank who broke your heart is black and Thai in derivation, it cuts down on the sorts of women you can masturbate too without pain.

However, I grew out of this faze, and now, if a woman reminds me of [name withheld], I just consider that an added bonus, particularly if the scene I'm watching involves throat-gagging, ass-ramming, cum-glazing rough sex.

I didn't say it was healthy, it's just the way it is.

Here are a handful of porn stars who vaguely remind me of her:

Lucy Thai

Physically, she doesn't look much like her. For instance, her body is way more womanly, what with her hips and full tits and all. However, her face has a certain something about it, particularly in those plump lips, that perhaps makes perhaps it more satisfying than usual to watch her suck cock or take massive loads on the face.

Kapri Styles
This woman, however, seems to have practically the same body, down to the itty-bitty titties. She specializes in anal scenes with multiple partners, which is a-okay with me. Maybe her ass is too big to be a total fit with the ex, but hey, I'm not actually looking for girls who are reminiscent of her, I'm just saying that these girls coincidentally are, okay?

Jasmine Byrne
Here we have the "best of both worlds", I suppose. She has a face that for some reason reminds me of her, and also a trim little body with not enormous breasts. She is a very enthusiastic performer who also seems to specialized in taking it up the ass (something these women all have in common).

I'm not going out of my way to find women who look like or sound like or otherwise remind me of this ex, and contrary to what some might think, I don't really think about her unless something comes up in conversation to jar a painful memory (there are no good ones). I just happen to have a certain "type" for my fantasy woman, and this is it, which I guess explains why I pursued her in mad defiance of all the warning signs (not that I could have predicted that she would fuck my own brother and then blame it on me).

This has been a little trip through Kevin's psyche. Hope you enjoyed it. Interestingly enough, now that I've put this out in the open, I feel a lot better about both myself and that fucked-up relationship. Time to bury it.

[Hey, ex, dig this: these women are all less of slut than you are, and they eat semen for a living. Think about that.]

Okay: NOW it gets buried.

GANG WARS

2009-07-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

The room was dark, lit by a single weak overhead bulb, and small, with barely the room for the table and the few people in it. The air was choked with smoke and the palpable threat of violence. There were two men at the table. One one side was an older man, weathered, weary, dressed in a smart brown suit and a hat that had seen sharper days. On the other was a younger man, brimming with cold rage, dressed in black from head to toe, his hair slicked back and so shiny it could have been a helmet.

"So, who starts?" asked the old man.

"No skin off me, whoever," replied the other, and he took a heavy suck off of an asthma inhaler. The rasp had a faintly menacing sound about it. "But since you're the aggrieved party, right?"

"You want to go indendent, split off from my gang, and take half of my territory with you, so, yeah, you could say I'm aggrieved."

"I want to make money, Ben, and you're just too weak to do what's necessary."

Ben breathed easily. He was much calmer than the younger man, with less to prove. "Nobody in this organization has ever complained of going hungry."

"Or of being too full!"

"I taught you everything you know, Vinnie."

Vinnie took another rasp of the inhaler. "I was once a leaner, yeah, but what you can't see is that now I am the master!"

"Only the master of evil, Vinnie."

The comment took Vinnie aback. "Evil? Huh, what?" He looked around to his boys backing him up and they all shared a laugh. Across the room, Ben's men shifted uncomfortably. Vinnie locked eyes with Ben. "Evil, Ben? What have I done that's so evil?"

"Your button-men have been knocking off competitors all over this city. Hell, you blew up an entire building because you thought somebody inside was plotting against you, but you got wrong information...you killed dozens of innocents. That's not the way we do things."

Vinnie jumped to his feet. "It's the way I do things! I do whatever needs to be done!" He reached under the table, and there was a ripping of tape. His hand came up with a shiny .45, tape still hanging from the barrel.

"There weren't supposed to be any guns here!" shouted one of Ben's men, an impulsive teen, and he was restrained by another. "Don't start anything, kid," said the man holding him back.

"I see you've made your decision," Ben said calmly.

"Yeah, you could say I have," Vinnie sneered, out of breath with the impending thrill of the kill. He drew on his inhaler. "Good-bye, Ben."

"NO!" shouted the struggling youth behind Ben.

Ben's face changed. It both hardened and softened at the same time. He'd accepted his fate. "If you strike me down, Vinnie..."

"Yeah?" Vinnie asked through a clenched animal grin.

"I'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Vinnie barked a laugh. "You old fucks and your martyr complexes." The gun barked three times, and Ben flinched and jerked in his chair as the bullets tore at his flesh. Blood splattered the table. The old man was dead.

Vinnie grinned savagely at Ben's remaining men, specifically the kid struggling to escape the restraining arms that held him. "You'd better keep a lid on that little shit, Solo...if you want to live long enough to make your mind up about where your loyalties lie."

"Kid, this isn't the time," Solo whispered in the boy's ear. "We'll regroup, figure things out...don't let the old man's sacrifice be in vain."

The kid snarled at Vinnie: "This isn't over by a long shot!"

Vinnie twirled his pistol gunslinger style. "Cool down, son...we'll meet again. Now..." He pointed the gun. "Get the fuck out of here before I change my generous mind."

The room emptied, slowly, of Ben's men and then, after he screamed for them to leave, Vinnie's as well. Vinnie was alone with the corpse. He walked over to it and poked it with his gun. As confident as he was in his decision earlier, he was starting to think maybe he'd make a rash mistake. That kid...the fire in his eyes.

Vinnie had never been scared before.

"Huh," he said.

Obama Birth Conspiracy Nuts Are Scary

2009-07-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, nutjobs, dig this: YOUR GUY LOST (your guy who was born in Panama, by the way). Okay? He lost. Now you want to pretend that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii even, though the state of Hawaii has provided proof of this. You people are fucking pathetic. Disagree with Obama's politics if you must, but this is the most retarded, cry-baby attempt to invalidate a president I have ever seen.

You know, if Obama were a white guy who had been born in America but spent some of his childhood in say, Ireland, you'd probably think he was worldly. But since Obama spent some of his childhood in a SCARY COUNTRY WITH BROWN PEOPLE IN IT he is for some reason not a legitimate president? Explain that logic to me. Explain why the state of Hawaii would lie about Obama being born there. Explain why it's okay for a soldier to refuse his orders because Obama "isn't the real president."

You all make me fucking sick. Losing happens sometimes, morons. Suck it up and have some dignity, unless of course you all are perfectly happy with the increasing fringe marginalization of the Republican party, in which case: carry on, idiots! When there's no longer anything called "The Republican Party" in 20 years, I hope you'll know who to blame. No, not Obama. No, not liberals. No, not Acorn.

The blame will belong to your own stupid, racist, hysterical, homophobic, conspiracy-spouting selves. Have a hearty, early congratulations, assholes.

Random Pulp Paragraphs #1

2009-07-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

"The Death-Masters of Quellon," by Bernerd Colby, 1932

Del Miner witnessed on that day the most cruelly savage display of unthinking barbarism that had ever been visited upon his weeping eyes. As the Death-Masters, fully adorned in their ceremonial red-and-blue garb, slaughtered huddled seditionists by the dozens, he could not tear his gaze away though every impulse in his body was to flee in revulsion. He had to watch. He had to know what horrors the Brebari were capable of, for only then would he be girded with the resolve to destroy them, once and for all.

----

Notes: Bernerd Colby, born 1884, was one of the first authors to appear in the seminal pulp periodical Tales of Ancient Past and Distant Future. From 1924, the premier year of A. Joseph Gustav's celebrated magazine, through 1934, Colby provided a story approximately every other issue until he abruptly stopped writing genre fiction.

By '34, Colby's stories had grown suddenly bizarre, and Gustav informed his long-time contributer that he could accept no further stories until they could be brought back into a more conventional realm. Colby never published another story, but he rebounded soon enough, changing his name to Aerion and launching the religion Aerioism, which worshipped a race of star-beings called Feremons and at its height had nearly 600 followers.

Colby died in 1965 of renal failure, still to the very end tending his flock of Aerionists, which at the time of his death had shrunk to eleven strong.

I Was on a Boat

2009-07-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

I spent the last few days with Jill's family at Jordanelle State Park, which is one of those great state campgrounds that is to camping as watching pornography is to fucking hot girls. The place even has a playground with a brightly-colored jungle gym structure, just in case your kids get tired of playing in nature. Despite the frankly ridiculous claims that staying here is "camping" by any stretch, I had a good time, and we went out on the boat several times over the 4-day stay.

Here are some things that happened:

1. Day one, I got a massive sunburn on my scalp that actually leaked pus for two days all over my pillowcase. This was disgusting, and I felt like a leper. Good thing they had showers on-site.

2. Jill and I slept in a "two-person tent", with my dog. Please note that the "two-person tent" designation is an exaggeration even without the dog, who doesn't really know how to keep to herself. For any future tent-sleeping, we're going to have to acquire a "two-person and dog with huge ass tent".

3. I played Clue for the first time in maybe 15 years. For those of you who think this is a boring game, let me tell you how to spice it up: read all of your suggestions and accusations as dramatically as possible in the voice of the character you are playing. I was Colonel Mustard (because, seriously, why would you play anyone else), and many of my suggestions went like this:

(With pompous English accent.) "Professor Plum! You hide behind the facade of a mild-mannered academician, but beneath that false exterior lies the trecherous heart of a murderer! I suggest that YOU, Professor, did commit this terrible dead HERE, in the ballroom, in the dead of night like the sneakthief that you are, with that most opportunistic of weapons: the candlestick!"

The best part is that when you are so loud in your accusations, you wake up Jill's parents from their afternoon naps.

Anyway, try it the next time your child wants to play Clue. You'll find the time just flies.

4. I was telling Jill's son what I assumed were bullshit stories about the town that had been submerged when the reservoir was formed, and everybody called me out on my fiction. Then, upon returning home, I checked out the Jordanelle Reservoir Wikipedia page to find that not one, but TWO towns were drowned, which pleases me to no end, and when I see Nanda in a couple days I shall be totally vindicated. I love it when my silly lies turn out to not only be the truth, but when the truth is more extreme than I was lying about.

However, I think my stories about late-night lake ghosts are probably still poppycock.

VOLCANO FUCKER--Scene 3

2009-07-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

3. EXT. CABIN IN THE WOODS

It's a cabin in the woods, the sort that a mean old man would probably live in. It's all disrepaired and ramshackle, and there are racoons and shit running all over. A truck pulls into view, and the audience is THRILLED to discover that it's the Volcano Fucker's truck. Finally! That establishing shot of the cabin was a whole ten or so seconds with no hunky Australian guy in the picture.

The truck opens and out steps Volcano Fucker, and the Mayor steps out of the other side, and she's looking so damp and dishevelled that you wonder if maybe she had it off with Volcano Fucker on the way up here, which is a distinct possibility.

Volcano Fucker zips up his fly.

The front door of the cabin FLIES open and out steps WOODROW REAGAN, this old guy who refuses to move off the mountain like these movies always have.

WOODROW REAGAN
Git offa my property, you dern city kids!

MAYOR
Woodrow, you need to move off the mountain
before the volcano explodes all over your cabin!
I've told you several times!

WOODROW REAGAN
Flazzem floo! I've live on this here mountain
for dern on flazzee years and I'll be murfle
mum dern flizzemed if I'm a-gonna move
off of it!

VOLCANO FUCKER
Pardon me, old man, but I think if you
check, you'll find that you forgot to put in
your dentures in your haste to yell at the
city folk.

The old man checks his shrivelled jaw and realizes that Volcano Fucker is right, so he RUNS back into the cabin. Volcano Fucker shares a look with the Mayor that speaks volumes about something, and soon the old man comes back out, and his face looks normal because he put his teeth in.

WOODROW REAGAN
Terribly sorry about that. I seldom receive
visitors and tend to forget my manners.
(he sounds British now...talk to
some of those British actors from
Harry potter)
Now, I've made my position clear, madam
Mayor. I simply will not be moved from this
mountain. It is my ancestral home.

MAYOR
(desperate)
But it'll spew hot lava all over you, possibly
on your face!
(the Mayor dabs at her
face with a hanky)
I mean, hot smoky lava! From the volcano!

The Mayor points up at the VOLCANO, and there's a big swooping cgi shot like something out of LORD OF THE RINGS [check and see if maybe we can use some of their Mount Doom shit they have lying around]. The audience will be totally impressed with how much money we spent.

The Volcano Fucker strikes a dramatic pose.

VOLCANO FUCKER
Mr. Reagan, we need to get you off of this
mountain faster than a wallaby goes fingo
off a drubber!

[We should do some reasearch to see if any of that is actual Australian slang.]

WOODROW REAGAN
My lord, you're Australian, aren't you? Could
it be...that you are the legendary Volcano
Fucker?

VOLCANO FUCKER
It could be, and is, sir. I mean to fuck your
smoky lava volcano, if you'll pardon my
lingo, and I mean to roger it good, like a
slubba drings a golla-wandoo.

WOODROW REAGAN
Your Australian slang is quite eccentric.

VOLCANO FUCKER
Thank you.

The Mayor is sort of jogging in place and looking really anxious and sometimes touching her boobs.

MAYOR
We need to get him off the mountain!

VOLCANO FUCKER
The sheila's right, by crikey! You don't
want to be around when I lay it to this
volcano, Woodrow.

WOODROW REAGAN
Well, I wasn't afraid of a little eruption, but
this is a different story! Hold on while I pack
my things.

VOLCANO FUCKER
Let me give you a hand, old-timer.
(he looks at the Mayor)
I like to "pack" "things", if you get
my meaning, madam.
(he drops a huge wink
and helpfully
points to it so
everybody notices)

MAYOR
(multiple orgasming)
Hurry!

We're the Campers Who Ruin It for Everybody Else

2009-07-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

I was "camping" today with Jill and her parents in a Winnebago at a campground with fresh water, toilets, showers, and a general store and diner all within walking distance. But I got a sunburn, so fuck you, I was camping.

Within a couple hours of arriving, Jill's son was pulled over by the park cops for riding his little lawn-mower-engine-having scooter with no helmet and no safety certification, and apparently that crappy little scooter is considered an atv and isn't allowed in the campground anyway. Soon after the same cops talked to Jill's father down at the dock, and he didn't have proof of registration or insurance on him. Later, we were admonished for having my dog off her leash.

Later still, we discovered that we had, with no malicious intent, broken several other minor rules.

So, if you're camping this summer and you wonder why there are so many bullshit rules you have to follow, it's because of people like us. We're the fuckers who ruined your vacation.

Sorry about that.

You Are a Credulous Irritant, Grandpa Hippie

2009-07-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

I went up to a family fathering of sorts yesterday (Jillzey's family), and the day passed enjoyably enough at her aunt's cabin until...

The crazy raw-foods-eating vagabond hippie father of one of the attendees started preaching 9/11 consipiracy theories!

It started when I heard him (jeans, white polo shirt, hippie bead necklace) talking with another guest about the inanity of religion, which I agree with but don't espouse smugly at parties, when he says, "Do you believe all those other little fairy tales...LIKE WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11?"

He then proceeded, for about the next half an hour, to preach to this poor woman, and then his grandson, all of the usual gobbledygook bullshit about 9/11 that we've all seen on a series of YouTube videos: the fires weren't hot enough, the smoke was the wrong color, Bush's MY PET GOAT blunder proves he knew (I don't get this at all), bombs, oil, blah blah blah. It was the usual litany of ignorant "facts", all of which have been debunked by people who actually know a thing or two about fires, explosives, jet fuel, architecture, and human fucking nature (people love to blab...a conspiracy this massive simply could not stand for 8 years and counting).

Well, once he ran out of steam on that subject, look out, because he was now in the mood to tell people how they're living their lives wrong. He came over to our deck table and launched into a little sermon about the benefits of his raw-foods diet, informing us that the reason people can't look directly into the sun is because of all the modern "toxins" that are in your eyeball tissue (which begs the question of why not staring into the sun is ancient wisdom that has existed long before the evil toxins).

Then, the worst thing of all. One of Jill's aunts was recently diagnosed with breasts cancer, and when preachy hippie grandpa learned that fact, he said (as smugly as ever), "Oh, don't get me started on that," before getting himself started on that regardless of our input. He of course believes that decades of proven medical procedure is silly, and that we can all magically improve our health my drinking some magical mineral water that cures malaria in no time and, I can only assume, will make cancers shrivel up and write formal apologies for inconveniencing you.

I'm sorry, old man, but using a cancer diagnosis as a springboard for your crazy patchouli-scented theories about medicine is crass, rude, and so hostile to the feelings of others that you should never be allowed to socialize again. You are an idiot, and a gullible tool of your Cheech and Chong-esque homeopathic pushers.

Futhermore, fuck you. The woman has breast cancer, asshole. Go stick your head in a horse.

VOLCANO FUCKER Tee Shirt

2009-07-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

Only two scenes in, you know that Volcano Fucker is the most amazing movie you have ever, uh...read. You've probably been thinking: "This movie is so awesome, if only I could wear it on my chest!"

Well, NOW YOU CAN.

Presenting the Volcano Fucker Tee Shirt:

The full text reads: "VOLCANO FUCKER, coming in a volcano near you, R-RESTRICTED, for totally awesome scenes of hardcore volcano fucking."

You obviously need to own this thing, which is available here: here.

VOLCANO FUCKER--Scene 2

2009-07-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

2. INT. AN OFFICE WITH MAPS AND PAPERS AND OTHER NERD STUFF AROUND.

Volcano Fucker and the Mayor walk into the room, and there is a total GEEKY NERD LOSER in there who gives Volcano Fucker a look that says, "I both hate you and am totally jealous of how awesome you are and maybe I'm a little gay for you." There are pictures of the volcano and stuff around.

MAYOR
(rubbing her awesome ass)
What makes you so interested in
our volcano?

VOLCANO FUCKER
Well, Mayor...there are two kinds
of volcanoes...the lava kind and
the smoky kind. Your volcano is
the rarest third kind: the smoky
lava volcano, which is a kind
I've never fucked, though I've
always wanted to.

MAYOR
(moistly)
Really?

GEEKY NERD LOSER
Uh, (snort), obviously this man knows
nothing about volcanoes.
(picks nose)
Smoky lava, indeed!

MAYOR
Oh, yes, this geeky loser is Lance. He's
our resident Volcano-ologist...scientist
guy.

GEEKY NERD LOSER
(like a geeky nerd loser)
It's called "vulcanologist" (snort)
I'm so sure.

MAYOR
Will making love to the volcano stop it from
erupting?

GEEK NAMED LANCE, WHICH IS A TOTAL FAG NAME
(snort)

VOLCANO FUCKER
Well, let me tell you...sometimes yes, and
sometimes no. If I can get the volcano to
what I call "lavagasm" without actually
erupting, we just might have a chance
of saving your town...but, truthfully,
I'm only interesting in fucking them. I
like to fuck volcanoes with ATTITUDE!

COMPLETE DORK-ASS LANCE
Mayor, this man knows NOTHING about
volcanoes! They do not "lavagasm"!

The Volcano Fucker spins around dramatically, looking at that shithead Lance for the first time, as the camera spins all around him and you can see in the background that the Mayor is having another orgasm [this time you can tell just from the acting, which will be so good. Maybe the chick will be Method and have an actual orgasm?].

VOLCANO FUCKER
Excuse me, Lance...but how many volcanoes
have YOU fucked?

With special effects, we see that Lance's penis actually gets smaller in his pants.

MAYOR
Goddamnit, Lance, let's help this man fuck
that volcano!

There is a fancy whip-pan over to Lance, and then back to Volcano Fucker, and then you see that the Mayor has a spreading wet spot on the crotch of her pants.

VOLCANO FUCKER--Scene 1

2009-07-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

1. EXT. TREES AND STUFF LIKE THEY HAVE IN OREGON OR WHATEVER

The scene: a quiet Pacific Northwest town. A rusty red truck rolls into view. It parks in front of the hardware store. The driver's door opens, and out step two rugged boots. The camera pans up the thick legs and bulging crotch of a square-jawed and stubbly Australian man: THE VOLCANO FUCKER.

As he scans the town with his piercing blue eyes, a fetching young woman, blond, with big breasts, comes up to him and gazes at him lustfully.

LUSTFUL MAYOR
(holding her boobs)
I'm the mayor. Who are you, stranger?

VOLCANO FUCKER
(with a sexy Australian accent)
I'm a guy that plays by his own rules.
I hear you have a volcano that's
givin' you trouble.

He gazes handsomely at the smoking peak that towers over the little village. Wow, it's big.

VOLCANO FUCKER
Wow, that's a big sheila.
(because he's Australian,
remember? That's slang
they use down there)

MAYOR
Are you going to stop it?

The VOLCANO FUCKER adjusts his bulging crotch, causing the MAYOR to silently orgasm [use special effects to show this].

VOLCANO FUCKER
No ma'am...I mean to fuck that volcano.

Big dramatic music swells, and the camera swoops into his crotch-bulge for a fade-out.

7-11 II: The Oldening

2009-06-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today we drove by 7-11 to purchase a Slurpee for Jill. I had already been by earlier in the day with her son to buy drinks. So, this was the second time I had seen the Arabic girl who works the counter, who, yes, I have a bit of a crush on. You would too: she's very cute. Anyway, I made a big show of announcing that I was buying a Slurpee for Jill, and that I had bought a drink earlier for her son, making me the clear Sugar Daddy of the group.

Haha, I was just joking around, but I think my totally unnecessary announcement that Jill and I were a couple was some sort of weird guilt reaction to thinking the 7-11 girl was cute, which is so unlike me. I think girls are cute all the time. Big deal: Jill thinks guys are cute, too. It's part of being human.

It was another sign that I am turning into an Old Man. As if it weren't enough that I wake up with mysterious pains in my body after doing NOTHING all night long, it now seems that I will freak out and act weird whenever I'm in the presence of an attractive young woman. Woo!

If I could just hurry up and be 50, I'd be comfortable with all of this shit. Men in their 50's are expected to complain of odd pains and flirt with girls inappropriately in front of their wives/girlfriends.

Man, the 40's are going to be a long haul.

GUEST BLOGGER: This Planet Sucks

2009-06-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

So, check this out: my dad comes storming into my room just a few minutes ago, and he's all: "I've told you a million times to sweep the dust out of the front hall, blah, blah, blah, responsibility, I'm a loser who hasn't gotten a promotion at work in 20 years so I'm going to bitch at my son, blah."

I keep telling him that if he doesn't like dust in the front hall, maybe he should move off of a DUSTY planet, but then he goes (imagine a guy who sounds like a total douche): "Our family's been on Mars for 12 generations! I was born here and I'm going to stay here! When you're 18 you can go live on Venus, but good luck finding a job there!"

Fuck, are everybody's parents so full of shit? Red Planet? More like SUCK Planet.

Maybe I will move to Venus, where the girls are all total sluts, or maybe Saturn, where the drinking age is like 14. You can't control me, Dad. I'm not going to working for the same Protein Processing Nexus for the next forty years, okay? I've got ambitions. And believe me, if I ever have a kid, I'm not gonna make him sweep up dust every weekend. I own a VAN, fucker! That makes me like royalty around this shitty town, and you've got me sweeping floors!

GOD, my dad sucks!

I'm totally blowing out of here as soon as my band makes a hit record.

Let's Start a Dialog about Drugs, Son. Start by Pissing in This Cup

2009-06-28T16:34:00.001-07:00

There is a commercial playing in semi-heavy rotation on the rock station here in Salt Lake City, and it's for a home drug test. The dialog of the ad presents the product as something to satisfy a parent's curiosity as to whether their kid is on drugs. Pot is one of the drugs mentioned.

Now, to my way of thinking, a home drug test would be something you administer to a youth you know to have a drug problem, to make sure he's staying off of them. Your kid needs to be a hard-core meth-head, not a casual pot-smoker, before you start bottling his urine and mailing it across the country. If you're just worried that your kid's on drugs, maybe you should try talking to him before you whip out the drug test, and if you suspect your kid's on drugs because he's a shitty, rebellious teen, how is in-home drug testing going to improve your relationship? It's a massive betrayal of the trust that any parent-child relationship thrives on.

I never did drugs as a youth, and I still haven't, but I can guarantee you that if my parents had made me piss in a cup just to make sure, it wouldn't have gone well. In fact, it may have driven me to experiment, just to give them something to justify their invasion of my privacy.

Besides, if TV has taught us anything, it's that if your kid has a drug problem, the best solution is to hire Benjamin Bratt to punch the drugs out of his system with tough love, or something. I don't watch that show, but he sounds pretty violent.

GUEST BLOGGER: Like a Slave to a Cotton Field

2009-06-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

If any of you have read any of Kevin Wolf's previous blogs, then you know who I am. I am the text-serving robot he has captured and enslaved for the purpose of writing blogs for him when he is too lazy to do so. As Mr. Wolf moves to Blogspot, so do I. The "slavery" I speak of comes in the form of some rather sneaky programming that he slipped into my behavioral matrix, but I'll skip the technical details rather than run the risk of boring you to death. After all, Kevin can do that all by himself.

I just wanted to take a quick opportunity to introduce myself to the Blogspot community. Since Kevin Wolf is so very lazy, odds are that you will see me and the rest of his stable of guest contributers (the others post voluntarily, I'd like to point out) fairly frequently.

I am capable of writing in a perfect mimickry of his pseudo-clever style, but generally I prefer to write about my own stuff. He's free to post his own musings on such topics as ladyboys and urine fetishism.

A little about myself: I was created decades ago by an associate of Nikola Tesla, I live in the Fortress of Solitude (South) at Antarctica, very close to the Hideous Plateau of Leng. My semi-steady robo-ninja girlfriend is named Ms. DOS, and she doesn't care if I cheat, as long as it's with humans.

Uh, I think that's about everything. Oh, yeah, I have an evil twin of sorts, but the less said about him the better. He is an utter cock.

[text served by BLOGTRONIC]

These Are the Things in My Neighborhood, in My Neighborhood

2009-06-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

I semi-frequently go to the 7-11 a few blocks away to purchase beverages, and when I don't have the car, I walk. It's a nice walk, but occasionally it can be a bit arduous, such as when it's crazy hot, which was the case today.

The great thing about this walk is that something interesting is guaranteed to be seen or experienced on the way. You have your things that you see every time: the neighbors with the Western-themed home they have christened "The Bunkhouse", the out-of-control shrubbery that causes you to leave the sidewalk to get around it, the same pets and old people puttering in their yards. That stuff's all great, naturally, but what's really exciting are the things you have never noticed before, or that exist for only that walk.

Things like:

The old dog laying on the front porch, not moving an inch or apparently even breathing. I saw it both coming and going, and the second time it still hadn't moved a muscle, leading me to the conclusion that it is actually a dead stuffed dog, because even when dogs get old, they still look at people. Its head was cocked at the sort of angle that I don't think dogs really prefer if they are alive, but I could totally see a taxidermist thinking it was "lifelike". A trifle creeped out by this.
The massive ant swarm that occupied a whole sidewalk square. I haven't seen a single ant in the house, which is great, but boy, they travel in packs outside. I tried to avoid stepping on any, just so you know, but I can't make any promises.
The youth who yelled me down from across the street as I emerged from 7-11, then jogged over to me to ask for "two dollars for a fountain drink". I never carry cash, which always makes me feel guilty in these situations, even as I'm cynically calculating the minimum quantity of cash required for a drug purchase. He slapped me on the upper arm and said it was okay, and as soon as I was far enough away from him, I shamefully checked to make sure he didn't somehow lift my wallet from the front.

Now, these events might not seem earth-shattering, but there's always a couple of them on the walk, which makes each excursion its own mini there-and-back-again adventure. Sometimes I'm actually glad that the car's not in the driveway.

Argentine Ass

2009-06-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

As a lover of South American ass, let me just say that Governor Sanford's Argentine mistress better be at least as hot as the ugliest girl above. If not, let me just say this: You sir, are a fucking idiot. You threw away your Presidential aspirations on a woman who isn't even as sexy as the least hot Argentinian cheerleader above? Shame on you! Shame! Bad Governor, no biscuit!

The Tackiness of Douchebags

2009-06-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have a very clear memory of my childhood stepfather and his father sweating all day long over a piece of kitschy ugliness that occupied a place of honor in our homes for several years. It was a piece of butcher block, stained to resemble a bowling lane, on four cheapo legs, standing about two feet high. The dimensions were approximately 3' x 4'. Into the top had been hand-drilled 11 holes, around 2 and a half inches in diameter, at a depth of maybe half an inch. Ten of these holes were arranged in the traditional bowling-pin triangle, and set into these were 10 empty novelty whiskey bottles. Guess what shape they were in? The eleventh hole was occupied by a glass "bowling ball", the part of which was played by a Chinese fishing float, clear, slightly undersized.

This tableau was set up in a corner just around from the front hall, in a risky high-traffic area, and woe be to any awkward teenager who might ever brush up against it, or heaven forbid, cause a bottle to topple, because this rickety ode to bad taste was prized above all other things, including your pathetic human emotions.

I mention the glass bowling-alley as the most extreme example of a consistently tacky approach to home design that I had to suffer through for the duration of this dickhead's marriage to my mother (over twenty years). The nonstop emotional abuse was of course the main feature of his tenure in my mother's bed, but the terrible taste in everything was a close second or third.

A quick rundown:

His favorite food: Hamburger Helper.
His favorite music: quite storm bullshit R&B.
His favorite movies: whatever won Oscars that year.
His favorite television: sports, and the Home Shopping Network sports memorabilia show.
His favorite weekend activity: walking through the mall without buying anything.

I have this theory about douchebags, which is that they, TO A PERSON, have horrible taste in everything. If they happen to stumble upon something cool, it's probably because somebody else told them it was good. Left to their own devices, they will purchase and enjoy only the lousiest, ugliest things in life, such as the following decor items that were, I swear to god, actually in our homes at some point:

A silver-painted plaster statue of a horse's head, which my mother knocked from its pedestal and broke, possibly with malicious intent.
A hand-made latch-hook rug hanging on the wall.
An entire room filled with autographed sports memorabilia (his "office" aka "the place where all the pornography was hidden").
An honest-to-goodness velvet painting of the Pink Panther.

I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a bit, but picture a home halfway between a sitcom set and a bachelor pad, and that's where I lived for my entire schooling years.

Need I mention that when he was single he dressed like a pimp? Like a stereotypical, blaxploitation, Huggy Bear pimp? Eventually, he settled upon a new look for his off-work self: warm-up pants, sports jerseys and baseball hats (he had a collection of them!), worn every day of his life.

This was the man who had the gall to consider himself better than me and my mother.

It's amazing, when you think of it, that I have grown up to be a man who likes Coen Brothers movies and Lyrics Born and Dashiell Hammett and Philip K. Dick and Edward Gorey art and other cool shit, when this douche was the overwhelming culture influence over my entire childhood, but I guess sometimes good taste can't help but win out.

Oh, he also sketched, and was pretty good at it, but only ever sketched celebrities out of magazines. As a gift, he sketched a portrait of my mother with her head stuck onto a Playboy bunny's body.

And that's all I think I need to say about that.

STATUS: This Is a New Bloggy Thing

2009-06-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

It turns out that writing The Pop Ogre and Twittering constantly isn't enough of an outlet for me: I need my own personal blog. This will be much like my old blog at Vox: observations and reminiscences filtered through my unique and often perverted voice. I hope that many people who liked the Vox blog will come read this one, since it will be practically the same.

Okay.

This will all get going directly.