Not for Trade/Sale: My Cat

Despite being overly attached to this comic box lid, he doesn’t come with the Cat­woman comics I have up for trade/sale. But if you throw in an extra $1, I’ll fish up some­thing extra spe­cial from his lit­ter box just for you.

Just doing my part to con­tribute more cats to the internet.

History, motherf*ckers! FDR: American Badass

It’s not often some­thing that’s actu­ally edu­ca­tional sneaks into my feed reader, and even less often when that some­thing per­fectly aligns with one of my weird inter­ests in some way and I end up giv­ing two shits and post­ing about it. Today is one of those days.

But first, here’s the his­tory les­son from Geekosys­tem that started this:

On this day in 1933, only eight days into his pres­i­dency, Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt made his national radio debut with the first of his famous “fire­side chats.”  Pres­i­den­tial speeches and addresses were prop­a­gated to the masses all the time, but what made FDR’s fire­side chats dif­fer­ent was their inti­macy. They were broad­cast via radio from the White House to the radios of every Amer­i­can who tuned in.

You can go read the whole arti­cle if you really care that much, or, if like my own high school days, Amer­i­can His­tory was just another period in which you could safely take naps (stay awe­some Mr. Hol­brook!) and you’ve for­got­ten why our 32nd Pres­i­dent of the United States was so bad ass.

Luck­ily I’m here to remind us all:

On Jan­u­ary 30th, 1882, a man was born that would go on to change the course of world his­tory as we know it. This man was a true Amer­i­can Badass.

I know…because I am him.

Badassery is not born, but often thrust upon you. The film you are about to see is ded­i­cated to Badasses every­where. If you have to ask your­self if you are one, you’re prob­a­bly not.

Sin­cerely,

Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt

I had the priv­i­lege of see­ing this movie over Valentine’s Day week­end (really, can you think of any­thing more roman­tic?) and I’ve been dying for an excuse to post about it ever since. How can I not love a movie about Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt in a rocket-powered wheel­chair con­trolled with Atari joy­sticks doing bat­tle with an army of Nazi were­wolves? At one point he gives an inspi­ra­tional speech that directly quotes Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer.” That was the exact moment I knew my love was true.

It also has this guy and his charm­ing wife/cousin:

He is slightly less awe­some than FDR him­self. But only slightly. When­ever he graced the screen, my heart swelled with a nat­ural warmth that invig­o­rated me and caused me to be able to do things I could only do when I was a fetus–I am sorry, I am quite ine­bri­ated and I was unaware that I was speak­ing out loud just now.

FDR: Amer­i­can Badass is ridicu­lously funny, and not even in a you-need-to-be-high-to-enjoy-it kind of way. I would rec­om­mend it to any­one who loves Amer­ica, peaches, shit­ting in vases, and not giv­ing any fucks.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

10 out of 10 stars.

Nicky & Alex voted most likely to be kicked out of Full House.

In last month’s poll, I asked you guys who should be kicked out of Full House. Per­son­ally, I threw in a vote for Joey, because what does Joey even  do ? Sure, he’s sup­pos­edly there to help raise the girls and be the comic relief, but what does he really con­tribute  besides wear­ing the most god-awful shirts you’ve ever seen and mak­ing shitty jokes? Even Kimmy Gib­bler does that job better.

My idea of hell is sit­ting through a two-hour long Joey Glad­stone com­edy spe­cial co-starring Mr. Wood­chuck. “Say, I don’t hear any­one laugh­ing! Are you peo­ple made of…” *looks around* “…WOOD!?”  It’s not that I dis­like Joey as a per­son, I just think it’d be bet­ter for every­one involved if he moved out. At least then the poor guy might have a chance at get­ting laid.

But if there is one character–ok, two char­ac­ters, but not by much of a stretch–that deserve to get the boot from Full House more than Joey Glad­stone, it is Nicky and Alex. If you don’t remem­ber them, they’re the cute but tal­ent­less shaggy-haired twins who were foist upon us from Becky’s gap­ing womb in Sea­son 5, car­ry­ing on the grand tra­di­tion of adding babies to TV shows because every­one loves babies, right?

I offered them up as a pack­age deal, which 47% of you jumped on:

Sorry lit­tle guys, but the two you were never as cute or inter­est­ing as one Michelle Tan­ner. We love our over-exploited twin child stars, but only when they’re play­ing the same per­son. Oth­er­wise it’s con­fus­ing and things just get boring.

Pop quiz: which one is Nicky and which one is Alex?

Answer: Nobody fuck­ing cares!

Also of note:

Your ani­mos­ity was divided evenly between DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle, who each got 10% of the vote. DJ’s a resource­ful girl, so I’d be the least wor­ried about her liv­ing out on the streets. She did, after all, move into the garage that one time because she was upset about not hav­ing her own room–which brings me back to Joey and why he’s kind of a self­ish prick for stick­ing around so long and tak­ing up valu­able bed­room space.

Not sur­pris­ingly, nobody voted to kick out Uncle Jesse and Becky, because HAVE MERCY!

I am, how­ever, a lit­tle shocked that some­one actu­ally voted to kick out Danny. Really? Not only does he make shit­piles of money (or at least we have to assume so, given his Wake Up San Fran­cisco gig almost single-handedly sup­ports eight other peo­ple) but that moth­er­fucker can cook AND he actu­ally enjoys clean­ing up after every­one. Plus, BOB SAGET. Respect.

Are you ready to go on a World Wide Webscapade!?

Reblog­ging because 90s!

You’re still run­ning Win­dows 95, right? Some­one over at Col­lege Humor –pre­sum­ably named Dou­glas Engelbert–has cre­ated a browser-based game (and I’m using the word “game” pretty loosely here) where lit­er­ally all you have to do is scroll your mouse! Note the extreme mid-90’s aes­thet­ics. You haven’t seen graph­ics this intense since Game Genie.

[Start Scrollin’!]

Take a ride on the infor­ma­tion super­high­way to hone your scroll­man­ship and do bat­tle with the evil Scrollex! Just be sure not to miss the Jam Break at the halfway point–you’ll be rewarded with awe­some music and there’s just enough time to go get some Dunkaroos.

I was just kid­ding about Win­dows 95, by the way. Though I’m kinda secretly hop­ing there’s one of you still out there who never upgraded for some crazy rea­son, brows­ing this page on Netscape.

[via Top­less Robot ]

My official reaction to the Megan Fox = April O’Neil news.

From Vari­ety :

After push­ing pro­duc­tion to do more work on the script, Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles” reboot looks back on track as the stu­dio has tapped Megan Fox to star as April O’Neil.

Megan Fox to play April O’Neil in Michael Bay’s TMNT movie? Every­one get some pop­corn and get ready for @shezcrafti to react.

— Team Hel­lions (@TeamHellions) Feb­ru­ary 22, 2013

Enjoy the show.

Also:

In what is pos­si­bly the BEST COMMENT EVER on this blog, Shawn Robare humbly sug­gests, “Maybe they hired her sim­ply as the mold­ing model for the Tur­tles hands, they’re going to mold her toethumbs and use them to make more accu­rate fin­gers for the Turtles.”

Look what you made me do, Shawn.

The most ridiculous(ly awesome) pirate songs I know.

My first impulse after see­ing this week’s League assign­ment was “pirates” was to make a list of my Top 5 Favorite Pirates, but then I remem­bered I kinda already did that . It’s not the most meaty or well thought-out of posts, but then again I threw it together in ten min­utes for National Talk Like a Pirate Day, which I almost for­got about, and if I’m being com­pletely hon­est, I really wanted an excuse to work “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” into my title as a verb. That’s just good writing.

My sec­ond impulse was to write about Sid Meier’s Pirates , the clas­sic pirate sim game, but then I remem­bered only a small per­cent­age of my read­ers give a shit about video games, so I’ll save that par­tic­u­lar ram­bling for Run­Jump­Fire .

Also, thanks to Disney’s abil­ity to milk its own theme park rides for obscene amounts at the box office, and Johnny Depp’s will­ing­ness to keep suck­ing on that teat ‚  Pirates of the Car­ribean is usu­ally the first thing I think of when­ever I hear the word “pirates.” I don’t like that.

I will also never have generic pirate toys with rich and engag­ing back­sto­ries as cool as The Good­will Geek’s, so I was kind of at a loss for ideas.

But then, all of a sud­den, I remem­bered some­thing impor­tant. Some­thing pro­found.  Some­thing that dick-slapped me in the face with INSPIRATION.

I am a pirate!
And being a pirate is all right to be.
And more impor­tantly,
I can do what I want
because a pirate is free!

Such lib­er­a­tion, such poetry  comes from the great­est song about pirates (and most dis­turb­ing video) the inter­net has ever known:

“You Are A Pirate!”

by what­ever coke­head pedophile is respon­si­ble for Lazy­Town

Okay, so what if it’s the de-facto theme song for any­body who’s ever down­loaded any­thing ille­gally? (Which I’ve never done. EVAR.) You have to admit it’s fuck­ing catchy. As in, I catch myself singing this all the damn time. And also pon­der­ing the lyric, “We’ll dig up the box–we know it’s full of pre­cious booty!” That’s like a total euphemism, right? It’s also one of my life’s ambi­tions to learn Stephanie’s dance moves.

But any­way, I was ener­gized and encour­aged because I sud­denly had my angle for this post: more awe­some pirate songs.

“From the Seas to the Streets”

by Cap­tain Dan & The Scurvy Crew

You guys, PIRATE RAP EXISTS! I’m not just talk­ing about one sin­gle video here. THERE ARE LITERALLY WHOLE ALBUMS FULL OF THIS SHIT, with pirates rap­ping songs like “It’s All About The Booty” and “Real Swash­buck­lers (Throw Your Hooks In The Air).” I’d also like to take a moment to point out that Cap­tain Dan & The Scurvy Crew refer to their website’s home­page as “home port.” I don’t know why this excites me, but it does.

This is almost as awe­some as that time I dis­cov­ered Ninja Sex Party . Except not quite, because nin­jas > pirates.

“HOT Pirates of the Carribean”

A Sym­phony of the Word “Hot” by Hot Sym­phony

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, and the appeal of hot pirate bitches is obvi­ous. Plus, it’s easy to sing along with. HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT.

“The Gay Pirate Song”

by some guy named Trey Green

Okay, this one I actu­ally had no idea existed before today. I got to think­ing deep thoughts, as is so often the case when I’m writ­ing these posts, and said to myself, “Surely  some­one out there has made a song about pirates being gay.” A quick YouTube search later and I was well on my way to being enchanted by the sounds of Trey Green  (who is NOT a gay pirate, dis­ap­point­ingly) with lyrics like, “We pil­lage, we plun­der, for trea­sure and men, and for booty that’s free of dis­ease.” Just think of every ter­ri­ble pirate pun that could be twisted around to sound like some­thing homo­sex­ual (poop deck!), and you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect from this song. I like things that are straight­for­ward if you know what I mean.

Oh hey, speak­ing of Gay Pirates , I was doing some “research” for this post (look, just shut up and stop judg­ing me) when I stum­bled upon THIS masterpiece:

It’s a piece called “Gay Star Trek Pirate Uni­corn” by an artist named Kina . I also feel com­pelled to point out that this was a com­mis­sion. That’s right. Some­body out there envi­sioned this, and then paid an artist to birth this from her cre­ative loins. Amazing.

YOU ARE A SMELLY PIRATE HOOKER.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was the topic “pirates,” which appar­ently won the vote against infi­nitely more awe­some top­ics like “nin­jas” and “robots.” (Really guys?) Any­way, here’s a sam­pling of some of the pirate-y things my fel­low blog­gers wrote about:

• Cav­al­cade of Awe­some loves the Mup­pets Trea­sure Island soundtrack.
• Branded in the 80s gets all pirate-y about Thun­der­cats, Pirates of Dark Water, and Garbage Pail Kids. YES.
• Redis­cover the 80s lists the best pirate vil­lains from 80s and 90s cartoons!
• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks has some lit­tle plas­tic pirate friends he’d like to intro­duce you to.
• The Com­bat Work­shop cus­tomized his own pirate action figure!
• For­tune and Glory Days men­tions one of my per­sonal favorite pirate pair­ings, Orange­beard The Pirate and First Mate Odie!
• Achieve­ments in Gam­ing  remem­bers the strat­egy game, Pirates of the Span­ish Main.

You are now entering The Busey Zone.

I learned three impor­tant facts about Gary Busey (a.k.a The Poor Man’s Nick Nolte) today:

1. Gary Busey is still bat-shit crazy.

2. Gary Busey has a YouTube chan­nel called “The Busey Zone.”

3. Gary Busey wants to fuck an inner tube.

If you only watch one thing on YouTube today, please let it be the first 23 sec­onds of this video. I promise it is worth watch­ing for the bizarre, early 80s-esque intro sequence alone. And if you’re brave enough to con­tinue, you’ll be rewarded with Gary Busey describ­ing in great detail how you can “pump fuck” an inner tube with­out any­one noticing.

No shit, this is part of the actual quote:

“Get some rub­ber hos­ing that you can put around the hole of the inner tube. It looks like a round mouth. What you can do is find plea­sure by your­self with an inner tube in a beau­ti­ful body of water with trees, with birds fly­ing around and chirp­ing, doves honk­ing at you, it’s just beau­ti­ful and puts you in a roman­tic mood. But no one’s there but you.  And the inner tube.  So what you do insert yourself–your plea­sure body parts–into that hole on the inner tube, and then you can push and pull the inner tube and just smile and just smile and act like nothing’s hap­pen­ing. And that way you can PUMP-FUCK that inner tube from the top of the river to the bot­tom of the river!”

Had I known Gary Busey’s videos were THIS FUCKING AWESOME, I would have sub­scribed a long time ago.

[Hat tip to UPROXX ]

How did I know the Ravens were going to the Super Bowl?

Because I also saw Justin Bieber’s ass today. Noth­ing good ever hap­pens around here with­out being tainted by some­thing awful.

And now comes the part where I feel a sick sense of sat­is­fac­tion from hav­ing made you look at it, too, AND for the taint pun.

Patrick Bateman wants to show you his Pokemon.

If you lis­tened to the lat­est episode of the Cult Film Club pod­cast, you know I’m a huge Amer­i­can Psy­cho fan and ranked it #1 on my list of favorite cult films of all time. And just from a casual look around this blog, you know I love all things Nin­tendo. So I nearly shit a brick when this deleted scene sur­faced in my feed today, which re-cuts the infa­mous busi­ness card scene into a Pokemon-showing dick-measuring contest.

Oh my God. It even has a water­mark.

For a lit­tle more con­text, this scene was sup­posed to be included as a fun extra on Lionsgate’s 10th Anniver­sary Blu-ray release of the film, which never panned out. And now that I know this, I’m pretty upset. Like, mur­der my co-worker with an axe while lis­ten­ing to Huey Lewis upset.

[via Robot Mutant ]

Miss Bliss, we need to have a serious talk about your best friend’s wardrobe.

Ah, good old Tina Pal­adrino: Teacher. Side­kick. Fash­ion victim.

Even back in 1988, I have no idea where you would have been able to buy out­fits as tacky as hers. They’re even tacky for  Saved by the Bell, per­haps only a slight improve­ment over Nikki, who was kind of a Miss Pal­adrino in minia­ture — but at least Nikki has the excuse of being in junior high. As the show’s sec­ond fid­dle, Tina’s blind­ing, jewel tone palette stands in such stark con­trast to Miss Bliss’s taste­fully under­stated cou­ture, the whole thing comes off as a des­per­ate plea for atten­tion. The only thing more ridicu­lous than Miss Paladrino’s out­fits are her facial expressions.

Let’s cri­tique her Top 20 fash­ion abor­tions, shall we? Come on, it’ll be fun.

#1 — Bow Tie Tit Constrictor

This first one has it all: gigan­tic shoul­der pads, sus­penders (whose only pur­pose seem to be squash­ing Tina’s already too-small breasts), and more hot pink than should be allowed. It even has a theme . Do you know what it is? If you said “bow ties,” eh, okay. I would have also accepted “fugly.”

#2 — Pur­ple Regret

This out­fit belongs on a 12-year-old girl who plays with Bar­bies, not a grown-ass woman. Also, note the pur­ple scrunchie on her head. As you’ll soon learn, this is the start of a trend where Miss Pal­adrino con­tin­u­ally amazes me with her abil­ity to find match­ing hair acces­sories just as ugly if not more so than her outfits.

#3 — Re-purposed Pur­ple Regret

Believe it or not, this very familiar-looking get-up is from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent episode. I’m guess­ing this scene was shot back-to-back with the scene above, and the wardrobe peo­ple had to scram­ble to mod­ify Tina’s look in the hopes we wouldn’t notice the recy­cled scrunchie and cardi­gan. Either that or Miss Pal­adrino is a slob who doesn’t reg­u­larly do her laun­dry. Either way, this silk flower night­mare look is a slight improve­ment over the last. Slight.

#4 — Excess-ories

WTF are those things? Alli­ga­tors? Angry fish? Retarded sharks? The sad part is this out­fit would have been fine with­out them.

#5 — Tuxedon’t

Ladies, dress­ing like a man is not cute. The only time it’s accept­able is if your name is Paula Abdul and you’ve time trav­eled back to 1988 . And here again with the match­ing scrunchie.

#6 — Col­or­block Cockblock

The col­or­blocks really accen­tu­ate those shoul­der pads. Even her god­damn scrunchie is col­or­blocked. This out­fit repels cocks, is what I’m saying.

#7 — Neon Iden­tity Crisis

Her jacket can’t decide what color it wants to be. It also makes her look 50 pounds over­weight. SO HOT.

#8 — K-Mart Cowgirl

Oh my god, it’s a fuck­ing cow print skirt! And a parade of lit­tle cows printed across her shirt! WHERE DO YOU EVEN FIND THIS STUFF? I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed there isn’t also a cow-print scrunchie.

Let’s get a closer look at those chest cows (which by the way, lol):

#9 — Green Striped Shame

At this point Miss Pal­adrino is single-handedly keep­ing the scrunchie mak­ers in business.

#10 — Polka Dot Desperation

What’s worse than a frumpy cardi­gan with gigan­tic polka dots on it?

A frumpy skirt with tiny polka dots on it. Also, is the tie really nec­es­sary? At this point I have to assume she’s actively try­ing to make her­self more unattractive.

#11 — Bow Tie Polka Dot Bastard

If out­fits #1 and #5 had an ille­git­i­mate lovechild, this is what it would look like.

#12 — Whore of the Roses

Totally self-explanatory.

There are even more roses on her back, you guys. SIMPLY AMAZING.

#13 — Major Moron

The only thing more pathetic than wear­ing fake Army dec­o­ra­tions is the amount of time it must have taken to trans­form an ordi­nary t-shirt into what­ever the hell this is.

#14 — Lesbian

Sorry, I don’t have any­thing more cre­ative to say about this one.

#15 — Printed Depression

In this episode, Miss Pal­adrino gets all depressed because her boyfriend Donny left her. I blame this shirt.

…and then her next out­fit plants her firmly in psy­cho ex-girlfriend territory.

#16 — Tiebreaker

The last of too-many times when Miss Pal­adrino wears a tie, with a spe­cial encore by The Scrunchie From Out­fit #11.

#17 — Check­ered Cheesevomit

This out­fit even makes Miss Bliss look like she wants to vomit.

#18 — Polka Dot Princess

It’s offi­cial now.

#19 — Polka Dot Princess II

Jesus this woman loves dots. It’s unhealthy.

#20 — Tina Plaidadrino

Puns are awe­some. Shut up.

Before it was ret­conned as the first sea­son of SBTB,  Good Morn­ing Miss Bliss  lasted for one brief, 13-episode sea­son before can­cel­la­tion. IS MISS PALADRINO’S WARDROBE TO BLAME?? I don’t think that’s too unrea­son­able an assumption.

There should be ‘Glamour Shots’ for 80s music videos.

There. That’s a free busi­ness idea I’m self­lessly bestow­ing upon the world. Mainly because I wish it were an actual thing.

You remem­ber Glam­our Shots , right? Think Deb from Napoleon Dyna­mite. Your local mall prob­a­bly had a Glam­our Shots at some point or another; most likely in the late 80s or early 90s. It was a chain of por­trait stu­dios where you got all gussied up in eye­liner and feather boas like some two-bit whore–the big­ger and more feath­ered your hair, the better–to pose for your very own “glam­our shot.” Some­times you cold even pose with props, like a sparkly micro­phone or stud­ded cow­girl hat. At Glam­our Shots, it didn’t mat­ter how young or old you were, fat or thin, wear­ing whore make-up and single-handedly deplet­ing the world’s sup­ply of Aqua Net was appro­pri­ate for all ages and body types. Some­times even men.

Oh Google Image Search, you never dis­ap­point. Here’re some of the finest exam­ples of Glam­our Shots the inter­net has to offer:

 This is also highly rel­e­vant and worth a few min­utes of your time: The 20 Worst Glam­our Shots

So any­way, back to my bril­liant idea. Imag­ine if there was a Glam­our Shots-like place you could go to get made over in the style of your favorite music video? Not  just a makeover, though–I’m talk­ing about actu­ally “star­ring” in one. That’s totally pos­si­ble nowa­days, what with Pho­to­shop and clever video edit­ing, right? Or maybe it could be done kind of like Jab-Jab where there’s these pre-recorded tem­plate videos of face­less peo­ple danc­ing the parts of your favorite music videos and all they’d have to do is insert your photo. Yeah…I’VE THOUGHT WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS. I sup­pose the idea wouldn’t need to be lim­ited to 80’s music videos, but 80’s music videos are obvi­ously the most rad AND the most ridiculous–kind of like Glam­our Shots themselves.

I’ve already got my dream videos all picked out:

I know it’s hard to put a pric­etag on liv­ing your dream , but whad­dya think–about $100 or so for the priv­i­lege? Dis­counts if you can sup­ply your own wardrobe. Just think how amaz­ing din­ner par­ties and fam­ily get-togethers will be when you can whip out a cheesy music video of your very own.

Getting by with a little help from Louis C.K.

If there is one good thing about being sick for over a week, it’s hav­ing a valid excuse to lay in bed all day and watch crap on Net­flix. At this point I’ve exhausted most of my Instant queue, dis­cov­ered a bunch of really great new (well, new to me) shows thanks to Netflix’s sug­ges­tions, and even crowd­sourced some addi­tional rec­om­men­da­tions on Twitter.

But the one show I’ve enjoyed above all others–which has become some­thing like ther­apy to me–has been Louie . I was famil­iar with Louis C.K. as a stand-up come­dian, but had never actu­ally watched his FX show until last week when I was holed up in bed with a 102-degree fever, heart­bro­ken , angry, bored, hat­ing life and feel­ing sorry for myself. As it turns out, this was the per­fect storm of emo­tions for acquaint­ing myself with The Gospel of Louie. (By the way, WHY didn’t any­one tell me how amaz­ing this show is?)

With a failed mar­riage and now a failed rela­tion­ship (which actu­ally lasted longer than the for­mer) hov­er­ing like black storm clouds on my subconscious–right next to those inse­cu­ri­ties about my body and the real­iza­tion that I’m not get­ting any younger–combined with all those famil­iar, every­day annoy­ances and small, per­sonal defeats, this show–especially Louic C.K’s per­for­mance in it–strikes me as one that is gen­uine, bru­tally hon­est, and com­pletely relateable.

I’m not quite THAT jaded and cyn­i­cal yet, but I’m well on my way.

Friendly Doomsday Reminder

It’s tomor­row, peo­ple! So I hope all your affairs are in order, all your meat clos­ets are stocked , you’ve spent qual­ity time with loved ones, and most impor­tantly, you’re all caught up on your favorite TV shows. It would’ve really sucked to die a fiery death with­out know­ing whether or not Mag­gie and Glenn ever made it out of the Governor’s camp alive.

One of the best Christ­mas gifts I got last year was this 2012 page-a-day Dooms­day count­down cal­en­dar from my boyfriend:

Like the  Jelly of the Month Club , it’s a gift that has kept on giv­ing the whole year. I’ve looked for­ward each and every day to Armaged­don pre­pared­ness tips, apoc­a­lyp­tic movie and music rec­om­men­da­tions, pop­u­lar end-of-days sce­nario pre­dic­tions, things to do before you die, failed Dooms­day prophe­cies (I assume they included those to keep my spir­its up), and all kinds of other apoc­a­lyp­tic fun.

I’m proud of myself for hav­ing suc­cess­fully resisted all temp­ta­tion this year to sneak a peek at what the cal­en­dar says for Decem­ber 21st and beyond, so tomor­row will be quite a big day for me, assum­ing, of course, I’ll still be alive to tear that page off.

Today’s entry was espe­cially poignant. I’ll type it here in case it’s too hard to read in the above pic:

The Day Before The Day Before The Day After

Big day tomor­row.
Rest up, drink plenty of flu­ids.
Pick out your clothes care­fully–
you may be wear­ing them for quite some time.
Also, set up your cof­fee machine tonight–
you’d hate to be fum­bling with beans and grinders
when Armaged­don comes.

You see what I mean? That’s the kind of prac­ti­cal wis­dom this cal­en­dar is full of.

Rejected Comics #1 — Superman is a dick.

This one goes out to Kal.

P.S. This might be the start of a new recur­ring fea­ture. We’ll see.

P.S.S. I love that I got to tag this post with the key­word “superballs.”

The day I discovered Ninja Sex Party.

Some­times the fab­ric of the uni­verse shifts and folds in such a way that serendip­ity bestows its won­ders upon us, and mere coin­ci­dences become life-changing dis­cov­er­ies. Yes­ter­day was such a day for me.

While prep­ping for my fourth chair guest spot on Nerd Lunch, for which the theme was Ninja Day (I’ll post the link once the episode drops), I was lis­ten­ing to Spo­tify as I went about my busi­ness when an artist called Ninja Sex Party popped up in my stream. I KNOW, I’ve never heard a more awe­some name either. The first song I lis­tened to–which became the first of EVERY song, since I made it my imme­di­ate “Nerd To-Do” to lis­ten to every­thing Ninja Sex Party has ever recorded–was “Dinosaur Laser Fight.” From that title alone, I’m sure you can imag­ine the ela­tion I felt when I dis­cov­ered the song also has an accom­pa­ny­ing video:

Upon fur­ther research, I learned Ninja Sex Party is actu­ally a com­edy duo whose work has been fea­tured on sites like Funny Or Die and Col­lege Humor ( thanks Wikipedia ), which makes me feel pretty uncool for not hav­ing heard of them already. That’s all right, though, because I’m writ­ing about them now, I tweeted about them last night, and I men­tioned them on Nerd Lunch (in fact I think my exact words were “Stan Bush meets Tena­cious D”), so already I feel slightly more awe­some, as if my free pub­lic­ity is some kind of atonement.

They’re a friendly cou­ple of guys, too.

@shezcrafti You have amaz­ing taste in music!

— Ninja Sex Party (@ninjasexparty) Novem­ber 28, 2012

Now I just need to fig­ure out which one I want to have sex with first.

Look at all the amazing dreams Balki helps make true!

It’s been a while since I checked in with Balki Bar­toko­mous  and asked him to help me make one of my dreams come true, but after wrap­ping up my first guest appear­ance on the  Nerd Lunch  pod­cast (which cer­tainly qual­i­fies) I was feel­ing par­tic­u­larly tri­umphant and wanted to do some­thing to cel­e­brate. The Per­fect Strangers game was the first thing that came to mind. Also fly­ing. And col­lect­ing stars. Prefer­ably col­lect­ing stars while flying.

Since I’ve already achieved my dream–well, mul­ti­ple dreams really, if we’re count­ing my scor­ing a box of Cap’n Crunch’s fabled Christ­mas Crunch cereal at the gro­cery store this past weekend–I decided to keep things casual and enter in a silly dream I made up on the spot:

Evi­dently to “fart” is not an accept­able dream, so I had to make mine a lit­tle more ambitious:

There we go. I went on to earn a respectable 72%. Not my high­est score, but enough for Balki to make my dream come true. But what­ever, that’s not why I play this game. The real fun is see­ing The Dream Board that puts everyone’s hilarious/terrible dreams on dis­play for all the world to see.

My favorites from this batch include “eat poop”, “mur­der Justin Bieber”, and the clear win­ner, “get 50 amaz­ingly hot porn stars preg­nant.” That guy was obvi­ously dream­ing big. I’m still a lit­tle unclear on how exactly one fucks a pizza, though. Also, I think some peo­ple got con­fused and inter­preted “dream” for “things you want to eat right now.”

One horseshoe to rule them all.

Because one does not sim­ply walk into Mare-dor, here’s Lord of the Rings re-enacted by ponies:

Lately MLP:FiM has become my go-to Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon to watch before Nick’s  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles at 11. Spend­ing an hour in the mag­i­cal, pastel-colored world of Eques­tria takes the edge off a crappy week and helps me ease into the week­end. I’m still anx­iously wait­ing for that Fight­ing is Magic game to hap­pen so I can button-mash my aggres­sion away, pony-style.

[via Robot Mutant ]

The Pink Starburst Conspiracy Theory

This year I ever-so-carefully pri­or­i­tized  my stash of Hal­loween candy  such that trick-or-treaters received candy in the order of my least to most favorite, leav­ing me with a plen­ti­ful sup­ply of left­over Candy That I Actu­ally Enjoy Eat­ing. The down­side of that bril­liant plan, how­ever, is that I’m ashamed to admit over the past few days I’ve eaten through an entire bag of Starburst.

Go ahead and judge me . But at least I learned some­thing valu­able from the expe­ri­ence, albeit some­thing dark and sin­is­ter. I learned there is a mas­sive  PINK STARBURST CONSPIRACY afoot.

Look, we all know Pink Star­bursts are the bomb dig­gity and the rea­son we buy Star­bursts (unless you’re one of those com­mu­nist Red Star­burst peo­ple, in which case, you’re going to have to work a lit­tle harder at earn­ing my trust) but after tear­ing through an entire bag of Star­burst only to get about a 10% return on my invest­ment, this lat­est expe­ri­ence has left a bad taste in my mouth. Well, actu­ally it left a deli­cious, slightly sour fruity taste in my mouth, but shut up, you know what I mean.

Accord­ing to this fel­low Pink-Starburst-loving guy who actu­ally called the Star­burst Candy Helpline (side note: Holy shit there’s actu­ally some­thing called the Star­burst Candy Helpline??), Star­burst claims you have an even 25% chance of unwrap­ping each of its four fla­vors. Well I call bullshit.

Do you see this photo? DO YOU SEE IT? Out of an entire 10.58 ounce “Fun Size” bag, I got a measly five Pink Star­bursts. FIVE! This shit is unacceptable.

Do you know how it feels to be strung out on fruit chews, tear­ing your way through pack after worth­less pack of Reds, Oranges, and Yel­lows (and the dreaded Dou­ble Yel­low com­bi­na­tion) pray­ing for a glimpse of that flirty pink wrap­per? For a glimpse OF HOPE ? If you’re really lucky you’ll find not one but two of those lit­tle pink squares in your Fun Size pack. There is no greater feel­ing of victory.

And while I’m on the sub­ject, let’s talk about Pink Starburst’s fla­vor and how it tastes NOTHING like Straw­berry as it pur­ports to be. Seri­ously, what the hell is that fla­vor? I’m con­vinced it was chem­i­cally engi­neered to be an addic­tive but uniden­ti­fi­able com­bi­na­tion of trop­i­cal fruit fla­vors that seduce your tongue like a suc­cubus, each bite unleash­ing a drib­ble of melony-sweet juices that tease and tease and tease but never sat­isfy. The world’s sci­en­tists are spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars on the Large Hadron Col­lider in pur­suit of the elu­sive God Par­ti­cle when I’m pretty sure all they have to do is reverse-engineer a Pink Star­burst to find it.

Gary Gulman crane-kicks my face with comedy.

It’s offi­cial. Gary Gul­man. I love him.

Last night I was lis­ten­ing to The Karate Kid sound­track on Spo­tify, or try­ing to, when one of the tracks from Gulman’s lat­est album No Can Defend — which hap­pened to include a bunch of Karate Kid jokes–popped into my stream and was so funny I pro­ceeded to com­pletely lose my shit.  You could say I dis­cov­ered this guy by acci­dent, but since I was also work­ing on my Karate Kid-themed post for The League when it hap­pened, I feel pretty com­fort­able using the word “destiny.”

Here’s why you’ll love him too:

• Karate Kid jokes. Like, A LOT OF THEM. In fact, there are two ded­i­cated tracks of Karate Kid jokes (if the album title wasn’t a good enough indicator).
• He’s addicted to watch­ing movies and gets into hilar­i­ous in-depth analy­ses debat­ing the mer­its of Net­flix, Block­buster, and cable On Demand services.
• Tons of 80s and 90s pop cul­ture jokes and ref­er­ences. Among some of the sub­jects touched upon are Dis­c­mans, New Jack City, and Vanilla Ice–and I quote:

“If you’re  a MAMMAL, you like Ice Ice Baby. It is an innate reac­tion to that song. When you’re alone in your car, when there’s nobody around to judge you, when you’re rollin’ in your 5.0 with the rag top down so your hair can blow, and all of a sud­den out of the ether you hear ‘bad­ing ding ding dada ling ding’ you turn up the vol­ume and you PRAY…it’s not Queen’s ‘Under Pressure.’”

• Nin­tendo vs. Sega
• Scholas­tic Book Club

So basi­cally his jokes revolve around every­thing that is impor­tant to me.  Plus, he shares my opin­ion that peo­ple who buy bot­tled water are schmucks.

If you’ve got Spo­tify, you can lis­ten to Gary Gul­man — No Can Defend right here.

What if Daniel lost the All Valley Tournament?

This week’s “What if…?” assign­ment from The League might be the most self-indulgent, fan­boy­ish one yet–because hon­estly, what do fan­boys love more than sit­ting around imag­in­ing alter­nate real­i­ties for their most beloved fan­doms? In case you haven’t noticed already WE’RE GROWNUPS WHO PLAY WITH TOYS.

As tempted as I was to write a “What if…?” sce­nario involv­ing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles, I decided that between the comics, car­toons and movies their uni­verse is already so frig­gin’ wacky my “What if Raphael acci­den­tally killed Leonardo in a blind­ing fit of rage?” idea wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch, which would be miss­ing the whole point of this exer­cise. (Also I already cov­ered that in my super secret fan-fiction and no you can­not read it.)

Instead I decided to plun­der from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Karate Kid .

I chose The Karate Kid specif­i­cally because to me it is one of those rare movies that is so ingrained into pop cul­ture (not to men­tion a per­ma­nent fix­ture of my child­hood happy place) that it’s above crit­i­cism. As far as I’m con­cerned, there is not one bad moment in this movie, freeze-frame end­ing, cheesy dat­ing mon­tage and all. It is PERFECT. Per­fect for me to poop on . Sorry, I don’t know where the hell Tri­umph came from.

I give you:

What if Daniel lost the All Val­ley Tournament?

Well, obvi­ously we’d never get The Karate Kid Part 2 or Part 3 , which is heart­break­ing in and of itself, but here’re some other things that would prob­a­bly happen:

Ali would get back together with Johnny.

We know from Part 2 she broke up with Daniel on prom night, so you know she’s a two-faced bitch anyway.

Mr. Miyagi would take some time to re-evaluate his priorities.

Because he real­ized he just spent months train­ing some punk kid karate FOR FREE and it was all for nothing.

John Kreese’s stock goes up.

The Cobra Kai Dojo flour­ishes, enroll­ment is at an all-time high (as are sales of black gis).

The Cobra Kai vow to remain dude­bros for life.

In ten years they will invest in some­thing called “Amer­ica Online” and become even more dis­gust­ingly rich. Dutch, always the loose can­non of the group, will lose his for­tune to hook­ers and blow.

Daniel’s mom finally caves and moves them back home to New Jersey.

Mrs. Larusso begins a slow, down­ward spi­ral of shame and resent­ment and starts drink­ing heav­ily after real­iz­ing her pussy son caused her to give up her dream so easily.

Daniel gets laid, becomes a man.

Pre­sum­ably by Judy or one of those other car-chasing sluts. He never men­tions his humil­i­at­ing defeat and resumes what­ever social sta­tus he orig­i­nally left behind. I bet you thought this wouldn’t have a happy end­ing, didn’t you?

BONUS:

Freddy would still wear awe­some shirts.

Like the classy one with the ‘Two Pigs Fuck­ing’ motif you see here.

In this alter­nate Karate Kid world, Johnny is no cream puff!

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to write an alter­nate turn of events for a pop cul­ture sto­ry­line. Go read some of their amazing/terrible ideas:

• Pre­dictably, more than one blog­ger cov­ered Star Wars. Check out these entries from Ran­dom Nerd­ness ‚  The Dork Horde  and Of Fly­ing Mon­keys and Ewoks, Oh My! .
• The Good­will Geek  didn’t write much about The Grem­lins vs. Crit­ters, but the con­cept is so awe­some he doesn’t have to.
• The Man Who Stares at Toys writes a whole lot of words about Aliens . I read most of them.
• The Clay­ma­tion Were­wolf dares to ask: What if Todd Mac­Far­lane had cre­ated the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?