Pancake City

Check out the tweets in the sidebar. I’m about to live-tweet putting on my pants.

Just about every detail of this incident makes me angry. Why are homophobic cops still raiding gay bars?

My roommate and “friend” Meghan is painting a mural over the 4th of July weekend. She mentioned she was thinking of ideas for the mural, and I kindly suggested a well-thought out, multi-layered concept involving monkeys, robots, and lasers.

I also created a narrative framework for the idea, richly describing the outdated robots and sentient monkeys who banded together to fight the ruthless cyber-monkeys, who are like the Borg, except with more lasers and more monkey.

I also said she could add a kitten kissing a Puggle, because she likes that girly type of shit.

Her response? Non-existent! She didn’t even acknowledge my Shakespearean epic, which I wrote gratis for her, another kindness because she absentmindedly forgot to ask me for my ideas (problem corrected).

As a compromise, I asked her to add just one monkey OR robot in her mural. It can be the new “Where’s Waldo?” “Where’s Robot-Monkey?” She could earn millions. No response.

It’s really hard to watch a friend make a bad decision and be powerless to stop it.  Monkeys, robots, and lasers are the trifecta of Cool Stuff to Put in a Mural, but it appears some of us are still stuck in Plato’s cave.

But good luck with your mural, Meghan! Whatever it may be.

We assume zombies only eat brains. But maybe that’s just what they do when they’re out for a night in the town. You know, like a special treat. Maybe it’s different at home.

ZOMBIE KID: “BRAAAAAINS.”
ZOMBIE MOM:: “No, we went out for brains last week.  Eat your vegetables.”

I need to write a letter to Quaker Instant Oats. Their packaging is a lie. It’s not instant at all. What’s worse, they don’t even need to lie. Two-minute oatmeal is amazing enough.

“So let me get this straight. All I have to do is empty the contents of this package into a bowl, pour hot water on it, and in two minutes I’ll have breakfast? And I don’t even need to stir it? Woah!”

For the past few years, my family has complained that I never read their emails. They also say I drive like a turtle with two broken legs, so I heavily discount everything they say for exaggeration. Although there are moments where I’ve been busy and forgot to write a response, I always thought I was doing a better job than I was given credit for.

But I have a horrible memory, so I could never defend myself against their accusations. I would regularly have conversations like this with my Mom or one of my sisters, Tina and Michele:

TINA: “How come you didn’t respond to that email about [MAJOR FAMILY EVENT]?”
ME: [MAJOR FAMILY EVENT]? When did that happen?
TINA: Ugh. We sent you an email about it five days ago. You just don’t read our emails.
ME: (sheepish) Sorry.
MOM: Why don’t you love us?
ME: I SAID I’M SORRY.
TINA: Ha ha. It’s fun annoying you. [high fives Mom]

On Saturday, I had almost the same conversation yet again about some email I didn’t respond to, but this time with a new twist:

TINA: “Hey, you know, I think we sent that to your other gmail account.”

My what?

I DON’T HAVE ANOTHER GMAIL ACCOUNT.

Let me revise that. I opened another gmail account five years ago based on my first and last name, but decided, like Thoreau, that an email address without a monkey reference in it wasn’t an email address worth having.

So I used the account for a few days and stopped. I forgot the password years ago. It took half an hour of guessing answers to my security question to finally log in. And lo and behold, the account is somehow stuffed with emails from my family.

Emails on travel reservations, new jobs, holiday plans, bodily injuries, it’s all there. There’s an announcement that my cousin Nicole had a baby (2 years ago), a request to edit a real estate ad (1 year ago) and an announcement of Tina getting her official job offer (2 months ago).

Here’s the thing. I never sent my family, or anyone, an email from that account.

Never. Just checked the sent folder. Completely empty. So not only have they been accusing me all these years for failing to fulfill my duties as a considerate, caring member of the family, they took it upon themselves to send dozens of messages to an email address that may not have even existed, may not have been my address if it did exist, and one that I have never, ever given them a shred of evidence or proof that I read.

They just kept sending emails to that address on blind faith, and also took it on faith that I was a lazy and thoughtless goober.

How do you not be insulted by that? I tell what’s going to happen now. One, I am claiming absolution for all past email offenses against my family. The evidence is tainted, the detectives incorrigibly biased. By the order of the court of Pancake City, the motion to dismiss all evidence is granted. [WHACK WHACK]

Two, this incident will now be my sword and shield against all slights and criticism flung at me by my family for at least the next few years. Oh, I drive slow? You know what’s really slow? Not realizing you’ve been sending emails for two years to an email address you shouldn’t even know exists.

Three,  in spite of the false blame I have received, I admit on rare occasions I have forgotten to respond to my family’s communicae. The house of which their opinion of me is based is not entirely made of sand.

Which is why I’m currently hunting for a program that can forge email headers. I’m not sure I can keep up with all their emails now that I’ll be receiving all of them. “Sorry, Mom. I would have responded, but you sent it to the other email address again. See?”

And if that doesn’t work, I can always change my email address again.

I’m trying to get in the habit of posting short thoughts\jokes on Twitter. You can see them here if you are interested. Have any thoughts or advice about Twitter? I’m still new to the service.

For me, it’s Smooth Criminal. Twenty years later, it still holds up. Obviously, Thriller and Beat It are great, but I don’t want to highlight what everyone loves already.

I’m surprised that I’m a little wistful that Michael Jackson died. I’m not a fan of celebrity culture or feeling sad when strangers with nothing in common with you pass away, but his death reawoken some old memories I haven’t thought of in a while, like trying to learn how to moonwalk or (and this will seem bizarre to most of you) a sense of joy watching Weird Al Yankovic parody Beat It with Eat it.

Link to Smooth Criminal in the sidebar for a while…

I’ve only seen the first two parts, but it’s very entertaining so far.

You decide.

A few weeks ago, my blog beacme a Soviet satellite in the U.S.S.R. (United Spam Senders of Russia). Here’s some of my favorite spam comments from Russia and the former Soviet Bloc countries:

Everything dynamic and very positively! 
And a happy happy smiley yes to you!

Welcome, Wish to spend quality time with sophisticated young Kiev lady?. In Kiev. Kiev female companion. Look at me.
Woah. Hold on there, my Ukranian love blossom. I want out of this relationship.

Excuse, that I can not participate now in discussion - there is no free time. I will return - I will necessarily express the opinion on this question.
I feel like a chapter in a romance novel just ended. “No, don’t leave! I need to know what you think about the monkey tricycle video.”

It is remarkable, this rather valuable opinion
Why, thank you, penis enhancement bot! How kind.

When the Iranian protests started, some conservative columnists criticized President Obama for not denouncing the Iranian government and declaring the election a sham.

They were right. Nothing is more important in Iran than the words of an American president. Obama could have toppled the Iranian regime like a house of kabob sticks if he had spoken out.

How? The following may surprise non-American readers, but this is what happens whenever a U.S. President speaks out against evil.

1. The President says something.

Courtesy of Getty Images

2. His words are transferred to The U.S. Photoshop factory, where they are embossed and made shiny.

Courtesy of "How Stuff Works"

3. The words are strapped to the back of a flying unicorn, who soars overseas to deliver the words to the foreign leader in question.

Courtesy of All That Is Good In The World

4. After arriving, the flying unicorn hurls the words from the heavens like a javelin, killing the tyrant and making everyone yell “Yay!” and “We’re Happy!” And possibly other happy words, especially if the unicorn takes a poop, because unicorns poop Skittles.

So when criticizing President Obama for his handling of the Iranian election protests, make sure to ask him this:

PRESIDENT OBAMA, WHERE ARE THE FLYING UNICORNS?!!! I AM USING THREE EXCLAMATION POINTS BECAUSE I AM TRIPLE ANGRY. PEOPLE SAID IF YOU WERE ELECTED, YOU WOULD FLY IN ON A UNICORN AND FIX EVERYTHING. SO DO IT. LEAVE THE UNICORN HORN POLISH AT HOME—JUST GO!!!!!

Sincerely,

Charles Krauthammer

Good photo series.

I’ve been busy working on a freelance project for the past month, hence the few posts of substance. A better organized person could work + write a few monkey jokes on the side, but for me it’s an either/or propisition.

I keep telling myself I’m going to refocus on comedy writing after work slows down. I’m feel like I’m at the age where if I don’t start taking writing comedy seriously, I’m going to wake up in ten years with a lot of regrets and what ifs. I feel less funny than I was five years ago, and I don’t know if that’s age or lack of practice.

If I’m not posting daily a month from now, you’ll know which way I went…

This is so wrong I don’t even know where to start. Supposedly, it was the most popular form of birth control from 1930-1960.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), mustering the great oratorical history of the U.S. Senate in his response to Obama’s call on Congress to enact health care legislation:

“Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us ‘time to deliver’ on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.”

He then followed:

“Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a ‘hammer’ u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL.”

Grassley’s address was delivered on Twitter, the 21st century parchment and pen. While Grassley’s words may not match the Declaration of Independence, I think they rank right up there with the most famous Senate quotes, such as army attorney Joseph Welch’s challenge of Sen. McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Or, as Welch said   later in  his Twitter posting: “Dude, WTF?”

Can we create a new Congress whose sole responsibility would be to pass laws affecting the current Congress? Like “No Tweeting while angry\drunk” or, better yet, “No using any Internet phone at any point ever.”

Barring that, let me provide some advice for politicians using Twitter.

1. You don’t have to misspell words. It makes you look how we secretly suspect you are. Knowing our nation’s leaders  know how to use a phone is comforting enough.

2. Ditto for writing words in all caps. It comes off as yelling, and sometimes the big letters make your words get stuck in the Internet tubes.

3. If you tweet during the President’s State of the Union address, you  are no longer allowed to complain about the declining attention spans of our nation’s youths.