This happened to me yesterday.

I was watching Caddyshack, and I suddenly didn't think it was funny. I mean, like, at all. But then after the commercial break it seemed funny again.

It was weird, man.

I'm surrounded by pussies and assholes

People,

Help.

I rode my bike to school today despite the winter weather advisory. Ya, I'm tough. On the way in it was fine, it was snowy on the ground, and a little slick here and there, but I just slip-slided my way there and even got used to skidding around enough that I was doing it for fun and profit*.

But then fast forward to this afternoon, when I rode home. Now the streets were actually in better condition, but there was a sleety snowy "wintery mix" coming out of the sky, and if I know one thing about drivers, it is that whenever something is coming out of the sky, about half of them turn into either a pussy or an asshole. Both of these are dangerous. Assholes get impatient, they swerve around from lane to lane, they jet down streets they ought not jet down, they honk a lot, they behave selfishly at four-way stops, and sometimes they even directly antagonize other bikers or drivers without cause. Pussies slow down too much, wait for every single other person to go at a four-way stop, brake for no seeming reason, antagonize assholes by being too passive, confuse other drivers by behaving in a ridiculously accomodating-to-the-point-of-what-the-fuck sort of way. See, both these types of drivers are dangerous enough on their own, but the bad thing is they tend to amplify one another's faults, especially when something is coming out of the sky.

Cases in point:

• Some asshole decides he can fit in my lane (he could not) and succeeds in simultaneously almost pushing me off the side of the road and almost making the car in the next lane over drive into oncoming traffic (the car in the next lane was too much of an asshole to accomodate the other asshole, see).
  
• Some pussy tails right behind me for about three blocks, wasting chance after chance to go around me because they were too pussy to go in the oncoming lane for like a second. Effect: now there is a funnel of assholes behind the pussy who are so pissed that when finally I go a different way from the pussy, the assholes swerve around me with fury and spray snow on me and end up driving way out of control in a school zone (nobody was hurt).
  
• Some pussy going perpendicular to me at a traffic light won't turn left on that last dying yellow light like people do. Therefore as I start on my own green, I am not ready for the asshole behind that pussy who has swerved around that pussy to turn left. {Corollary: at least the asshole just kept going when it was clear I saw and was not gonna get hit by him. In this case, a pussy would have been worse, because a pussy would have slowed way down and given a vague hand signal that maybe I should go but then would be all hesitant and would behave in a way that made it impossible to tell if they were gonna go or if I was.}
  
• Some pussy must've waited for like seven other cars to go in the other three directions at a 4-way stop at the bottom of a hill, so even though I had adjusted my speed so as not to have to stop, I ended up having to stop, thus losing my momentum that I was gonna use for the next hill.
  
• Some asshole pulls up to a stop light where there aren't really two lanes, but sometimes you can squeeze down the right side and turn right, but this time you obviously couldn't, but still this asshole jammed his nose in as far as he could and honked with rage and impotence, effectively shutting off my usual technique of creeping up to the red light and getting across the non-busy cross street far enough ahead of the drivers that I can get safely by the potentially-about-to-open doors of the row of parked cars on the next block.

Sheesh. Maybe I'm just being a dick.


*There were no profits.

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.

Post number 211, in which I go from Point A to Point B

Point A: Anton Chekhov's The Student.

* * *

I was driving down to Lee's Summit on I-70 and I came to my favorite part of the trip where this huge valley just opens up out of nowhere. Whenever I drive into that hollow, I look to the crest of the next hill and think to myself, "that is where I am gonna be in about a minute," and then I try to remember to notice when I get there. Usually I forget. Like when you are pumping gas and you say to yourself, "make sure you pay attention as you screw the gas cap on, because otherwise you won't be able to remember if you did it or not." But this time I remembered, and it was cool.

* * *

My grandpa told me something a friend of his had said about music. This friend said that musical sounds are only there for an instant, then they're gone. If they were random and unconnected, you'd not remember them, and not be able to predict them, and it wouldn't be music as you know it. But if each tiny instant has some connection to the one before and the one after, we can entrain ourselves to this string of instants and share in a way of experiencing time. My grandpa then defined music as a way of connecting sound and silence in time.

* * *

My uncle was talking about the pilgrims and how they believed in predetermination as far as who was getting into heaven. But their version of fate had this weird twist where earthly behavior, though it could not have any bearing on one's future after death, could reliably be taken as a reflection of that future. So if you go to church and live a pious life, it must be because you are one of those chosen few to begin with.

* * *

My grandpa told me about how amazed he is that the earth is in just the right place to sustain life. Not too hot, not too cold, enough water, and a good atmosphere. I told him I agreed, sort of, but also that the very basis of our conversation was the life that earth makes possible. The odds seem low, that is, but who could talk about those odds but us lucky few who are on a planet in which atoms can combine into people and not just rocks?

* * *

Point B: Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics.

Shitty Food for Shitty People, Episode 12: APBizza

APB: Avocado, Pepperoni, and Banana. I should tell you right now: this isn't very good.

• Turn on your oven
  
• Smoosh up an avocado and a banana in a bowl with some salt and lime juice, like you were gonna make some kind of gross-ass banana guacamole or maybe like some real weird baby food or something.
  
• Take all the imitation pepperoni off a Tombstone pepperoni pizza and stack it up and cut it into smaller bits (I bet it would be even better if you used bacon instead though, maybe then it would push it over the edge of actually being pleasant)
  
• Stir those in with the gross banana and avocado paste
  
• Put that shit all on top of the pizza
  
• Try to hide the shame by grating some more cheese over top, like say some Swiss and some Cheddar or something like that.
  
• Bake it and eat some of it (you will probably get sick of it after you get 2/3 done, and then you should just probably throw the rest away, because, I mean, are you really gonna eat that? I mean, it isn't very good.)

See though, dear reader, I fucking hate bananas. I know they are so good for me so I make myself eat them, but they are disgusting and awful. So here was a way to trick me into eating them by mixing them with things I love. Because why should my nutritional decisions be based on Taste? Fuck Taste. Taste is boring and predictable. I propose the following alternatives to the outmoded idea of Taste as a decision-making tool vis-à-vis what you're gonna eat:

• Will I vomit?
  
• If so, how much?
  
• Is it cheap?
  
• Is it funny?
  
• Can I make a blog entry out of it?
  
• Will it take long enough to fill up the time I am trying to waste?
  
• And what of its nutritional value?
  
• Will it make me feel good about myself?
  
• What's it look like?
  
• How long will it make me not have to eat again for?
  
• Does it have a name that sounds cool?
  
• How fast can I eat it, in case I have to eat it really fast to get full before I fully realize it is disgusting?
  
• Is it biodegradable?
  
• Do I gotta worry about what happens on the other end of the ol' GI tract?
  
• Later on in the next day or two can I eat something that actually tastes good?
  
• What color is it?
  
• What time is it?
  
• Seriously?
  
• Fuck, gotta go, bye.
  

Two (2) revelations about the future

1. In the future, it is no longer up to you whether what you've just said is or isn't a joke.

2. The future is now.


Corollary 1-9A: We don't have to think stuff like Shakespeare comedies or 'I Love Lucy' are funny now. It's ok not to laugh.

Corollary 12: This kid made the funniest joke, and he didn't even know it.

spwned

This is a thing we invented Saturday where you sneak up behind someone and spoon them and hopefully snap a picture too. Then they have been spwned.* But have they have become "the littlest spoon?" This is a matter of some dispute.

Also, there is a secret way of giving five where you make your hands spoon.


Spwnman. Cum 2gether w yr hanzz.

Figure 12: Spwned


Figure 12b:Spwned.?.


Figure 12c: 5PWN3D!!!!11

* The internet claims that "spwn" is some kind of video game thing, but I'm pretty sure we have made that meaning obsolete.

Do you love me?

Laffy Taffy

Whachu readin' on?

Skelly remembers...

Dear would-be guacamole makers who don't have any lemon or lime juice but DO have some frozen lemonade concentrate,

Listen: I had an avocado, and some chips, so naturally I figured I'd make me a little guac. Now I know everybody's got a way to make it, but for me it is mainly a matter of avocados and salt. Sure, if I have some garlic I'll put that in there, some cilantro or some sour cream or even some tomatoes or onions or something. But I had none of that on hand. The one thing I thought I did have was some lemon or lime juice, which I like for guacamole, because it makes it not turn brown so fast (I think maybe this has to do with.. science...?). This is where my terrible mistake happened. I had no lemon juice, but I had a little lemonade concentrate in the freezer (you know, to make lemonade with). I thought, sure, it's sweet, but it also has lemon juice, right? So if I just use a little it won't be so bad?

Fuckin' WRONG, my friends. That shit tasted like lemon cupcakes. It was so gross, even my pride (which makes me eat just the most awful shit if I'm the one who cooked it) made it so I could only dip like four chips in there and tell myself it wasn't that bad before myself was like, it IS that bad, and I just threw that bullshit away.

DON'T DO IT.

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

An old man's possessions are cut in half

I had the following revelation

Just out of nowhere it popped into my head: Kermit the frog must have been riding fixed gear in that scene in the first Muppet Movie where he's biking through the park (damn you youtube for not having it). That way the pedals would keep going and his feet would go up and down with them, so it would look like he was pedalling, even though he is not an alive animal but a puppet.

Figure 12: This bike is unusual

Of course this is the internet and so like 1000 people have already had this same revelation.

Us and Them and Him and Here and There

Well I am no political expert, you know, but I noticed this thing about Obama's acceptance speech that I thought was interesting. It seemed like his speech had kind of two climactic moments, both of which were encapsulated in a three-word phrase. About halfway through it was "we'll get there," and then at the end it was "yes we can."

"We'll get there" is my favorite. First off, we never know quite exactly where "there" is. So that's kind of nice, because it involves the listener in inventing their own there. Also, it is such a flexible phrase, to be found in exasperation by some parents to some kids in the back seat, in the desperate promise of a repentant lover, reassuringly from teacher to baffled student, in resignation by the leader of a slow-moving group, or even sidesteppingly by a slacker who would rather defer blame for a later day than face it head on.

"Yes we can" is similar in its vagueness and its catch-all quality: the go-to retort to "No you can't," the simple proclamation of simple entitlement, the mantra of the little engine that could and I'd imagine the hope-against-hope mantra of plenty of little engines that couldn't, the gambit of the motivational speaker, even the rallying cry of the willfully apathetic.

I like to imagine a Venn diagram for who the "we" (and its compadre the "they") is in both of these phrases. The way Obama talks makes the "we" region comparatively huge, and the election results are evidence enough that the majority of voting Americans reside there in "we"-land. But then I think maybe the most clever line of the speech puts a bigger bubble around "we" and "they": "And for those who did not vote for me I will still be your president." First off, this change of voice turns the grammatical subjects "we" and "they" into the political subjects "us" and "them" (grammatically, Obama becomes the subject, his 'subjects' become the object). Then by subsuming both under the presidency, Obama is able to say at the same time 'I will still listen to you,' but also 'you better do what I say because I'm the motherfuckin' president and I'm takin' ya there like it or not!' Boo-ya!

Figure 12: Some Political Topology

Soundtrack for this post generously provided by:

There's no accountin' for taste

They probably should have coordinated on this.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part VII

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I think I better ask first.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part VI

A stitch in time saves nine.

How you think the first plushy hit upon the first glory hole?

The Ass-Cam

Critique of Pure Reason, Part V

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Ain't nobody need no god-damn radio, Mr. Tesla. Ain't nobody.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part IV

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

There was this lady who was against banking and also interest. She had lots of friends who were makin' money off their money with various investments. She had lots of friends who were paying into IRAs and college funds and all that. But not her. She carried around all her money with her or hid it under her bed. But then one day she got mugged and they took all her money and then they got her address from her wallet and they stole the money from under her bed. Also they stole her bed. It was a real nice bed.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part III

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

There was this dude who tried to go over Niagara falls in a barrel and live to tell the tale. His barrel broke right before he got to the falls, and he went over as just himself, you know, without the barrel. He broke seventeen bones and almost drowned and had to have prosthetic eyebrows put in because his real ones had lodged below his cheeks. So he got to tell the tale, but he didn't really quite accomplish the deed itself. So a year later he went back, and this time he accomplished the deed, only he died before he got to tell the tale.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part II

Don't judge a book by its cover.

There was this lady who loved reading. But she was really, really against being judgmental. So she would just go to the libraries and bookstores and she just started reading from the authors that started with A, moving alphabetically. By the time she was 50, she had still only got halfway through the B's, and we're talkin' an AVID reader here, people. She signed up for a book club because, you know, she loved reading, and wanted to talk to other people. But then nobody had heard about all her favorite authors like James Aberdeen and Ronald Aardwall and Samantha Adren and Judith Allers and Thurston Applequist. Hell, how was she gonna know any Thomas Wolfe or Kurt Vonnegut when she hadn't even gotten to Emily Bronte yet? Shit, she thought to herself. Shit. I guess I should've judged those books by their covers.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part I

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

There was this dude named Thomas Pedison who was real into candles. He was just amazed by them. Every night he couldn't wait 'til it got dark, because then he'd get to light some. "They give so much light!" he would say. "They are so, so much better than, like, a torch, or just an open fire." He thought they were just the greatest thing since bread (not sliced bread, they didn't figure that one out until like 1945 or something). He also loved full moons in cloudless skies. He used to say "any more light than that is just a sin, a sin of gluttony."

Thomas Pedison never invented no damn lightbulb.

Dear /b/,

Tahnk U 4 all teh lulz.

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

Dear American Apparel website,

Just a quick line to say thanks. Thanks for the good times we had when I was lonely and the baseball game was getting kinda boring, and I had somehow got sick of the more explicit websites I so often turn to in times like these. It feels good to know that nobody had to work in a sweatshop to make those clothes which in turn made it so nobody had to get quite all the way naked to show me a good time on your internets. Thanks for having a weird and creepy guy who runs your company and makes this all so... probable (in the words of Alex Chilton).

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

French toast

Dear Burrito from Saturday afternoon,

I will be the first to admit, I went into this with some trepidation. I mean, I knew I had this empty feeling, I knew I needed something to help me feel whole again. But I've been hurt before, and consider myself in a somewhat fragile state after being run through the wringer just last night. So forgive me if I seemed less than enthusiastic when you first suggested yourself to me this evening. Please don't take it personally. As the late, great Billy Joel (wait, what's that? He's not dead? Well, you know what I mean.) once sang,

I had second thoughts at the start
I said to myself
Hold on to your heart
Now I know the [burrito] that you are
You're wonderful so far
And it's more than I hoped for

I don't care what consequence it brings
I have been a fool for lesser things
I want you so bad
I think you ought to know that
I intend to [eat] you for [about seven minutes]

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

Strange Weather

A lady was aghast at my wagging finger

I wish I could have got a picture. Some lady pulls out in a way that would have caused her car to hit my very visible, very reasonably located bike, if I hadn't foreseen her pulling out without really looking, because she was clearly in an important cell phone conversation and just looked like "the type," if you hear what I'm saying. So I slowed down just enough to make it safe but not enough that she wouldn't see what she'd done, and right as she finally noticed me (a good ten feet or so after when she would have hit me) I gave her a stone-faced finger-wag accompanied by a very subtle "no" motion of the head. Her face was priceless. Agog, aghast, a mixture of ashamed and pissed and shocked. Good thing there wasn't some old lady crossing the street in front of her, because she kept going as she craned her neck around to look at this audacious finger-waggin' guy.

See, when I'm driving a car, I'm a firm believer in using the horn as a behavioral modification device. I'm a peaceful man, but if someone cuts me off, I lay on the horn in that special way that signifies FURIOUSNESS, because how else will they even know? So on a bike I have developed a repertoire ranging from the more subtle finger-wag to the "what the fuck are you doing" shrug to the screaming flip-off. I figure the next time she is at that intersection, she will think twice. And then maybe, just maybe, she will generalize it to other intersections. Maybe somewhere down the line some kid won't get run over because of MY making a total stranger feel shocked/disgusted/ashamed/aghast! I think that is called the "butterfly effect"?

Mr. Fuji's Halloween costume ideas

Pizza Talk

Vindication; Scopitones

First, vindication from Siskel and Ebert, who loved one of my favorite movies, Revenge of the Nerds:



I found this review on accident when, starting from a recommendation for this one, I was clicking around a site full of scopitones and discovered that the cheerleaders' portion of the talent show at the end of Revenge of the Nerds is a direct adaptation of an old, kinda pornographic scopitone (NSFW, but just barely, if you really crane your neck and get close to the screen). But that scopitone, awesome as it is, is just one of many. And most have cool pop songs from France or America and scantily clad 60s-lookin' chicks. My favorite might just be this one, or wait, maybe this one, or really it might just be this one. Hell, the thing to do is probably just go waste half a day watchin'em all yourself.

Figure 12: A Scopitone machine (they were like video jukeboxes, see)

Time to update that address book again...

...because I'm changing the names of my balls for the fall. Now they shall be known, from left to right, as Lonely and Friendless. I will let you know, to the extent decorum allows, if anything should change with my balls. If you would like to subscribe to an RSS feed that will keep you up to date with the status of my balls, click here.

Mr. Fuji inadvertently makes Skelly cry by describing what happens when you die to Bunny

Two old movies I saw last night: Part 2

So after The Hustler was over I was hungry, so during the credits I made some sandwiches. Then when I was eating them the next movie started, and it was The Shootist. This was John Wayne's last movie, and it has some neat parallels between the actors and the characters. The main character, J.B. Brooks, is an old, famous outlaw who comes to Carson City to confirm with a trusted doctor that he indeed is dying of cancer. Just a few years earlier John Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer and thought he might die (but instead he had a lung out and was fine for a few more years until it came back and got him in the stomach in the end). But besides the exact disease, the parallels are a lot cooler. J.B. Brooks wasn't an outlaw for the glory or anything, he lived by the motto "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." By all accounts John Wayne himself lived with a similar attitude (case in point: he made them change the script of this very movie so that he would get to ride his own favorite horse and so his character wouldn't shoot a dude in the back).

We don't know too much about his past, but there is a cool montage right in the beginning where acts and deeds supposedly in Brooks' past are represented by actual clips from previous John Wayne movies (I couldn't name them all, but I definitely noticed one scene from Rio Bravo). The lead female and vague romantic interest (this is an awesome aspect of the movie, that the romantic interest story is all a what-may-have-been) is played by Lauren Bacall, who in real life had watched her real husband Humphrey Bogart die of cancer. In 1976 the kinds of Westerns John Wayne had made a career with were getting to be out of style (is this even true? I'm no film scholar but it seems like it is. I mean, there were still Westerns, but I think they were getting more gritty and Clint Eastwood-y), and Wayne himself must have been feeling a bit like he outlived his time. Same with J.B. Brooks, who is surrounded during the whole movie with the beginnings of running water, electricity, and increased law and order in what used to be the wild wild west.

So J.B. goes to this wise old stuttering stammering doctor who seemed familiar, and it was because it was freakin' Jimmy freakin' Stewart.

Figure 12: Jimmy freakin' Stewart

So great old wonderful old Jimmy Stewart has to tell John Wayne how he's gonna die, but then suggests if he were a brave man he would find a cooler way to die. John Wayne takes it to heart. With the help of a young Ron Howard (you don't need me to link Ron Howard's wikipedia page, do you? I mean, come on, you know who Ron Howard is, he is in or has directed like every single movie there is) and that guy who has the Shining, he sets up an awesome way to go down in a blaze of glory.

Figure 12: That guy who has the Shining, aka Scatman Crothers

Figure 12: Not this kind of blaze of glory, but then again not too far off

All the while he is being hilariously taunted by that dude from MASH, and he also totally dresses down the father of the dude who would try to take that pebble out of that dude's hand.

Figure 12: The dude from MASH, who is freakin' hilarious in this movie

Figure 12: The dude from whose hand the dude in this movie's son would try to take a pebble

Also for good measure the producers originally didn't even want John Wayne, but rather this dude named George C. Scott, maybe you heard of him.

Figure 12: Maybe you heard of this dude

This movie is fucking brilliant. It is a great story in its own right, as nothing more than a story. The pacing is perfect, with little titles that count down from "1st day" to "6th day" or so to "last day." The humor is honest-to-god laugh-out-loud stuff, especially that dude from MASH and a lot of times the Duke himself. There is also some biting satire in the form of all the minor characters trying to make a buck off the death of a famous outlaw. But then it is also a really touching depiction of time passing one by, and of a proud and stubborn man facing his inevitable decline and death, which I can tell you is one of the saddest things. It really struck a chord with me on some of my own feelings about dying, like for instance when the Duke talks about a man's death being the most private part of his life. I mean, I cried.

You wanna cry too? Get this: the horse the Duke made them write in was his prized horse, and he wouldn't let others ride it. In this movie he gives away his horse to the young rascal Ron Howard, like he is saying, here, kid, my time's up, now you can ride my horse. And it kept its name it has in real life ("Ol' Dollor") as a character in the movie. So it was like the Duke was literally giving up his horse. It is eerie, a little, and sad, and beautiful. Go see it.

Two old movies I saw last night: Part 1

So last night I just never had that thing happen where you get sleepy. I watched all of both baseball games, then I was flippin' around the channels, and I landed on AMC for the very beginning of The Hustler. I was immediately interested because there was a guy named Fast Eddie, and living in St. Louis it would be almost impossible to avoid hearing Mike Shannon talk about Fast Eddie's Bon-Air in Alton, Illinois every single day of every single summer.

Figure 12: The most famous thing about Alton, Illinois

Well little did I know that Fast Eddies is named after Paul Newman's pool-hustlin' character. Also little did I know that Minnesota Fats (the real pool player) used to be called New York Fats until this movie came out and he adopted the name of Minnesota Fats (the character played by Jackie Gleason). And then there is the matter of the incredibly hot lead actress, Piper Laurie.

Figure 12: The incredibly hot lead actress, Piper Laurie

The great shock about this incredibly hot young woman is that she went on to play two extremely memorable roles later in her life:

Figure 12: The incredibly insane supporting actress, Piper Laurie

Figure 12: The incredibly sly supporting actress, Piper Laurie

Also for good measure there's a dude in the movie named George C. Scott, maybe you heard of him.

Figure 12: Maybe you heard of this dude

I guess what I'm trying to say was this movie was just really good. I'm not one of those guys who thinks movies are good just because they're old. In fact I think in general older movies suck compared to newer ones. So when I see an old one that is good, I am extra excited about it. I am excited about The Hustler. I think you should go see it.

P.S. My favorite line was when Paul Newman gets this faraway look in his eyes and says "I'm gonna beat that fat man."

I'm sorry but this is just so funny

Mr. Fuji, Skelly, and Bunny do a bumper for ABC Saturday Morning Cartoons

Based on the one at 1:05:

The oldest trick in the book

Please come to this if you live in St. Louis

Also we will play it again Sunday at 1:30 at the Ragtag Cinema in Columbia, MO. Why not see both?

Mr. Fuji kinda regrets asking Skelly such a personal question

No shit, Skelly. No shit.

"Pizza"

Sometimes I get into a rut of eating way too much pizza. So I didn't want to eat pizza yet again last night. It is not a taste issue, it is a principles issue. So, as often one does when one confronts a principles issue, I compromised:

• Have an old pita bread (the wheat kind called "pocket bread," not the spongy Greek kind).
  
  

  Figure 12: That kind of pita bread I am talking about
  

  
  
• Have some of that "salsa" that comes in little cans (the kind whose consistensy is homogenous and kind of like enchilada sauce, only it is tomato-based and spicy).
  
  

  Figure 12: That kind of salsa I am talking about

  
  
• Have some of that spreadable cheese I love so much.
  
  

  Figure 12: That spreadable cheese I love so much
  

  
  
• Turn on your oven to about 375-ish, about five minutes ago.
  
• Spread a wedge of that cheese on the pita.
  
• Put some fresh-ground pepper on there (it goes so good with that cheese I want them to be close together).
  
• Spread half a can or so of the salsa on there.
  
• Put as many slices as you need of delicious Provel cheese over top to cover.
  
• Sprinkle on some oregano (crush it up in your fingers as you sprinkle, so it smells good) and some, I dunno, I bet garlic powder would be good.
  
• stick in the oven until the slices of Provel look like the cheese that comes draped over the top of French onion soup (oh god damn now I am really in the mood for French onion soup), about 8 or 9 minutes, I bet.
  
• Just eat the ever-living FUCK outta that shit.

If cooked properly, this meal should cause you to fall asleep on your chair, thus missing the end of the Angels-Sox game. It's cool, that was probably the one you cared the least about anyhow, right?

Provel cheese

I was at an Italian grocery store today because a.) I got paid and b.) I wanted a salami sandwich real bad. I didn't wanna fuck around with no lettuce or tomatoes and shit, just some salami, some Miracle Whip, and some cheese of some kind. So I got me some salami and some bread like usual, and then I had to decide what cheese. You gotta understand that a.) they have like fifty kinds of damn cheese at this place and b.) I had to ask this super-hot young lady to slice it up for me. So I was a little embarassed that of all these cheeses, the one I found myself craving was fuckin' Provel. I mean, PROVEL?!?! I never even heard of Provel until I moved to St. Louis. It's sort of a real mushy, real mild white processed cheese I'd put between a.) Velveeta and b.) American in texture and kind of just neutrally cheese-like in taste. At first my only experience of Provel was of the Oh-My-God-What-The-Fuck-Is-Wrong-With-Your-Pizza-Here variety. But I gradually came to love that mushy cheese on the almost matzo-like crust of St. Louis-style pizza from places like a.) Imo's or b.) Cecil Whittaker's (who, by the way, have a fuckin' awesome logo that for some reason I totally love):

Figure 12: Cecil Whittaker's Awesome Logo

Well damned if today I just didn't want some lightly toasted Italian bread (that real buttery kind with the sesame seeds on the crust) with a slice of Provel slapped on there right when they came outta the toaster so it would mush up nice, then some salami and a slather of Miracle Whip. God damn, people. God damn. To you doubters: try it before you knock it. To you provel-lovers: I am with you. To the hot young lady at the deli counter: I love you.

Fish, meet Bunny. Bunny, meet Fish.

The fish gets even more pissed off

I had a political idea

I usually don't get too caught up in political stuff. But lately I have been a little bit more. I guess cuz it's everywhere. But check it out, I got this cool idea. I hear all this talk about Palin, about what the hell is the idea with her, and I figured something out-- Palin is there to triangulate Obama. I mean, experience-wise. On the one hand, you got the wisened elder McCain who obviously knows everything since he's like 99 years old and has been doing politics and army stuff since he was like 7. Then you got Palin who obviously knows nothing since she was just like the secretary of the Alaska PTA or whatever. In the middle is Obama, who like had experience once but never inhaled, or maybe whose experience is like the Canadian girlfriend he said he got to second base with or something.

Point being, this way the republican ticket has Obama surrounded. When Obama seems like he is bringing hard "beginner's mind" "non-Washington" kind of game, they can hold up their even more beginnerish, even more non-Washington Palin to cash in. But then when Obama tries to bring a more experience-havin' game, they hold up McCain and his eyebrows which have seen it all before. By circumscribing Obama on either side, they can try to locate him just where they want to, public opinion-wise.

It is like Obama used to be a point, and so did McCain, and you could draw a line through both points, and it would be a straight line. Let's call it line segment OM. As long as that was the line segment, it was kind of an either/or, more/less kind of reasoning that could separate the two on any issue. Especially experience, which seemed so big there for a while, until the republicans started noticing nobody cared as much whether Obama had been in the senate for like four Strom Thurmonds (the new unit of Washington age) or not.

Well so then they put in Palin, and so now we have a line segment POM, and now we can make a more exact judgment of who is closer to who. Which line segment is shorter, PO or OM? That is what I am talkin'. Geometry. Political geometry. Can you major in that? I wanna go back to school and major in political geometry. I got a compass and everything. Good bye.

P.S. There was a test today in class, so no Mr. Fuji. But don't worry cuz I got the next two planned out and they are gonna cause you to have one single chuckle, EACH.

Preemptive strike against pronoun prescriptivists

Steven Pinker says "they" and "they" are homonyms, so suck it. Plus check out these examples from the wikipedia page, so suck it some more.

• Eche of theym sholde ... make theymselfe redy. — Caxton
  
• Arise; one knocks. / ... / Hark, how they knock! — Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
  
• 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech. — Shakespeare, Hamlet
  
• I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly. — Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
  
• That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. — Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
  
• Caesar: "No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed." / Cleopatra: "But they do get killed". — Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)

Skeleton pisses off a giant fish by stating the obvious

A very special slo-mo edition

Mr. Fuji has felt the sting of road rage

The Bunny doesn't care about Mr. Fuji's heritage

MWF 10-11

Music Theory I

Prerequisite: something to do rather than pay attention to the class you've TA'd for like thirty times.

Recommendation: start drawing a comic using characters created in your youth.

Materials: pencil, paper, artistic skills that have not changed since the third grade.

Schedule: one strip per class meeting.

Grading: how bad you want that A, there, Ms. Palm?

Mr. Fuji slips on a banana and goes to the hospital

Mr. Fuji has seen Skeleton's carrots, all right.

Mr. Fuji just wanted to watch soccer

Dear Society,

I am sorry I swam in your pool without asking. I am now indebted to you, to the tune of fifty-five U.S. dollars and eight man-hours of community-geared labor. Please believe it is with utmost sincerity when I say I will pay you back. I will repay the man-hours tomorrow from eight a.m. until 5 p.m., and the dollars on October the second at four p.m. in courtroom four of your house.

We should hang out some time.

Matt

P.S. I hope things aren't gonna be "weird" between us now.

Mr. Fuji and the Skeleton

a new sandwich and a new name for my balls (unrelated)

• Get a couple little French bread loaves like they make bánh mì with
  
• Get some of those frozen potstickers and fry up exactly nine of them more or less according to the instructions on the package
  
• In the meantime get a little bowl or cup out to make this sauce in:
  
  • some garlic chili paste (like in the little bowls with the little spoons in Vietnamese restaurants)
    
  • some soy sauce
    
  • some rice vinegar
    
  • some barbecue sauce
    
  • some brown sugar
• Wash off four big leaves of romaine lettuce
  
• Cut open the bread and stick two lettuce leaves in each baguette, the opposite way from each other for optimal crunch distribution.
  
• Plop four and a half potstickers in between the lettuces and pour some sauce in there. Think meatball sub.

The lettuce will act as kind of a waterproof layer to keep the sauce from dribbling all over, as long as you keep your angles in mind as you eat. The crispy crust of the bread gives way to its soft innards, slowly soaking in lettuce juice and delicious sweet and spicy sauce which has escaped its romaine dungeon, giving way as you bite through the crunchy lettuce layer, followed finally by the soft and comforting surrender of the potstickers inside. This is not just a sandwich, it is an experience.

---

My balls will now be known as "the boys of summer." Please update your blackberries and cellular phones. And, in case you were wondering, the answer is yes, my love for you will still be strong after they are gone.

100 can be a lot of things, but today it is the number of days I haven't smoked

1. The number of days Rome wasn't built in.

2. The number of birds in a bush that are equal in worth to a bird in hand.

3. It is company, too.

4. How many stomachs a cow has.

5. It's five!


6. ...then the devil is 6

...and god is seven, or

7.


8. How many men were out in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

9. The number of stitches saved by a stitch in time.

10.


11. How many time zones there are were in the Soviet Union.

12. Come on, you really need me to tell you one for twelve? How about this: it is the lowest number that is evenly divisible by two, three, and four.

13. I heard it's tattoed on Glenn Danzig's neck.

14. How many gold medals Michael Phelps has. Ever heard of that guy?

15. Jim Edmonds' restaurant.

16. My favorite beat on my little brother's old keyboard was called "16 beat." It went like this:

  HH|x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|x-x-x-x-x-x-o---|
  S |--------o-------|--------o-------|
  B |o-----o---------|o---o-----------|

Also, the number of dollars that go with a bottle of wine in a song penned by the very same brother.

17. Sorry, Kip, that really is all the older she is.

18. A song that's kind of hilarious if you listen to it while reading the lyrics in Comic Sans.

19.


20. How many questions you get to ask in the game called twenty questions.

21. Used to play it at recess. Other places it's called "tip-in." Remember?

22. The caliber of the first gun I ever shot. At a milk carton. I missed.

23. The number of flavors in Dr. Pepper. Is that what Jim Carrey was talking about?

24. What Chingo Bling and Kiotti are rollin' on.

25. My first birthday where I started getting depressed instead of excited.

26. My second birthday where I started getting depressed instead of excited.

27. The age at which all those famous singers died.

28. It seems like a lot of girls I know get real bitchy and unreasonable every 28 days or so. What is the deal with that?

29. What I'm rollin' on.

30. How many years the Thirty Years' War lasted.

31. This is my age in years.

32. I can't believe I'm gonna be this old next year.

33. How old Jesus was when he got crucified. Also, by amazing coincidence, the year he was crucified.

34. Sometimes when I buy pants I buy them with a 34 inch waist.

35. Used to drive it all the time between Minneapolis and Des Moines.

36. If spoken twice, with 24 in between, then only if she's 5'3".

37. How many feet tall the Green Monster is.

38. Small Change got rained on with his own.

39. In the year of '39 assembled here the volunteers, in the days when lands were few.

40. The age at which my mom decided to start youthening rather than aging. I think I'll do that too.

41. Put an 11 in front of it and it's the address of my first house, on Madrid Drive, in Akron, Ohio.

42. Isn't there some book where this is featured prominently?

43. In the year of '43 Albert Hoffman took what I gotta imagine was a really fuckin' weird bicycle ride.

44. This great baseball number will always belong to Hank Aaron. No, wait, Willie McCovey. No, hold on, Reggie Jackson.

45. How fast to spin'em if you got'em.

46.


47.


48. Number of hours in which this movie and this movie were made.

49.


50. How many ways there are to leave your lover.

51. The Area where all those aliens and shit are.

52. Wanna play 52 pickup? Let's talk.

53.


54.


55. To get from St. Louis to Chicago and back.

56. The number of consecutive games in which Joe Dimaggio got at least one base hit.

57. How many channels there are, but nothin's on.

58. The poem of that number.

59. The street on whose bridge Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel felt groovy. (Looks like some of those fans are feelin' pretty damned groovy themselves).

60. There are this many seconds in a minute. There are this many minutes in an hour. There are this many hours in two and a half days.

61. Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren't right
My complexion she said is much too white
He said come here and step into the light he says hmm you're right
Let me tell the second mother this has been done
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.

62. One more home run than Roger Maris hit in 1961, without steroids or HGH or all that.

63. That's how many chromosomes a mule has.

64. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?

65. At three score and five
I'm very much alive
I still got the jive to survive with the heroes and villains.

66. It is a route you may have heard of. Also Sergio Mendez and Brazil I think may have something to do with it?

67. Our nation had a summer of love this year, as I understand it. I wasn't born yet.

68. In Lincoln Park the dark was turning.


69. How the past Bill and Ted knew the future Bill and Ted were themselves.

70. A concept that is apparently so confusing to the French that they have to call it "sixty-ten."

71. Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls.


72. How many names they say God has. (I'm still gonna stick with "God," though.)

73. How many men sailed up from the San Francisco bay on that ol' Mystery Ship.

74. How many episodes of Jeopardy! that Ken Jennings dude was on.

75. If you are over 75 years old, you can just forget about being a senator in Canada.

76. Well that was the year I was born.

77. The branches of faith number 77, so some say. I am not a terrorist.

78. Those old records would have to spin this many times a minute. What a pain in the ass. Plus they were so easy to break.

79.


80. (see below)

81. (see above)

82. times three, is how many toothpicks fell on the floor.


83. How many kids died of the flu last flu season.

84. There is a town called this in Pennsylvania. For real.

85. Man, and I hardly know one of them.

86. It is a number, but it is also a verb.

87. Fourscore and seven years ago... (and then there is the matter of this, as well...)

88. Number of millimeters in the name of a production company I am proud to have worked with.

89.


90. How far, in feet, you gotta run to get from a base to a next base in the game of baseball.

91. If you take one each of a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, and a half dollar, you got yourself 91 cents. If you take the squares of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and add them together, you got 91. Coincidence?

92. The number Peter Greenaway is obsessed with.

93. How old Strom Thurmond was the last time he was elected to the senate. He was the oldest senator before he died. Man, it's like that title is cursed or something.

94. How many floors there are in the John Hancock Center (that huge building in Chicago with the two big white sticks coming off the top).

95. '95, '95, let's hear it for the class of '95...

96.


97. How many pitches Don Larsen threw in his perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

98. The number of degrees specified by the name of the boy band called 98 Degrees.

99. How many problems I got but a bitch ain't one, oder wie vielen Luftballons.


99.9 The number of degrees Suzanne Vega thinks could be normal but isn't quite.

100. The number of days I haven't smoked.