Here's some half-baked philosophizing

"My president is black. My lambo's blue."

I had this idea for a post a couple weeks back, possibly while high or riding my bike (not mutually exclusive). "Things, man. We're surrounded by stuff, and that ends up defining us, man," I said to myself in Tommy Chong's voice. No? Well to put it another way, certain items are what best describes yours truly. If I were to abducted by aliens/Mexicans/both and they forced me via technical interview to tell them what I derive the most enjoyment from, these are the like results, in physical form. Also a possible the answer to the question, "When did you realize you might be a hipster?"



Materialism. The only thing that exists is matter. Value, and values formed, by associating oneself with the doodads in life. There is nothing intrinsically bad about this. Being able to acquire some happiness from stuff around you can be a good, simple way to maintain a basic level of mental alacrity and health. At least that's what I think. As a specific example: After a particularly stressful day work, one where the Internet becomes less of a tool and more gaping maw filled with gears and angry illiterates for teeth, that stuff pictured is a kind of balm, for the brain. Even changing a flat tire on the bike is enough sometimes.

I'm not one of those hippy-dippy fucks that says shit like "Kill your television" or whatever (at least not while sober). I actually like technology most weeks. But that's not to say materialism can't be carried to dangerous (American?) extremes through status as competition, keeping up with the Joneses, and so forth. Which brings us to that quote up top. Really Young Jeezy? Hey, rapping about the first African-American president, and the next thing you need to mention is your exotic Italian car? Perhaps its folly to look to a piece of culture that includes a lyric about emailing Jesus (and forwarding to Moses and CCing Allah. So relevant!) as precedent for an argument.

And once again the attempted shoehorning in of cocaine rap* has driven a post here off into strange territory. My point as it stood was that forming attachments to and using objects in one's life is not necessarily a bad thing, but taken too far and you can end up writing a rap song with unfortunate lyrics. Or to put it into a movie quote ... the things you own end up owning you. Brad Pitt said that, and he was just a figment of Ed Norton's imagination. A life of the mind, so it makes sense that he would have a anti-materialist message.

*Blame gifs of popular rappers, probably

5 years dead

In college we used to joke about the "newly dead" versus the "oldly dead" or "freshly dead" or whatever the hell else adjectives of time we could come up with drunkenly to describe those who had passed on. It would make a good web site, even today. Mitch Hedberg is medium-rarely dead.

From the comments

The goats have been slacking off, having meetings about the future of newspapers (bleak), eating cans and what not. But fortunately for those of you who want a new post, Dan offered this video in the comments and I just got back from happy hour. It deserves a view I think, if only because one of my dreams is someday doing a story about a hooved animal that surfs. You win this round, South America. Also who doesn't like the phrase "peruvian surfer." The list of animals he has seen surf is impressively hilarious.

The existential dilemma of the Cornell bear

Look at that bear. So fucking pissed. A berth in the sweet sixteen is no consolation for him. He's all like "Get this goddamn giant C off of me. I find it constricting!" Or maybe he's like "Ge da fuck away fo ma C! It mines." And in case you couldn't tell in the second scenario the bear has a West Philly accent. Either way the bear is frustrated with it's existence, trapped and/or defending a giant red letter C.

And before you get all up in my face in the comments, like "Dude, why you repping Cornell?" "PAC-10 rulz, Ivy League droolz!" (don't deny these were your initial sentiments) keep in mind that I merely enjoy looking at that bear, and laughing at it because it can't get to me with an albatross of a giant letter around its neck (also: imaginary). A scarlet letter, even. Levels!

Pigeons don't have ears

And its a good thing too! Because "competitive pigeon racing" exists and Mike Tyson is involved in some official capacity via reality show. Fun fact: Tyson got into boxing after fighting to defend his beloved childhood pigeon pets, it has been reported. And now he takes that lifelong love of sky-rats to Animal Planet.

I think if there is one word I could use to describe this ... wait, what is this exactly? Grotesque. I didn't even make up that part about the pigeon-defense spurring Tyson's boxing career. It was from a press release/blog, in which an Animal Planet media rep (who I assume also wrote the release) says things like "Tyson’s passion for his pigeons takes my breath away" and that pigeons are the "king of the bird world" for their trainers. No doubt these pigeon fans will be watching in slow motion.

Call it the "lagniappe effect"

One thing that I think is unique to this internetted age, and possibly also unique to my perspective, is how one will find some weirdly amazing site/blog/content online and check back on it obsessively for a while, look up the creators on facebook, do assorted google image searches if they are female (creepy!) and basically stalk the shit out of them in the form of consuming everything visual and aural and sometimes via touch in as short a time as possible. Then later the engrossment trails off and you forget to look at whatever it was for months. Drug related?

But then later still you remember it suddenly, and its like hey, wonder if that weirdo has any new content. And sometimes they do and you are amused/once again enjoy life for several seconds until the attention drifts elsewhere, like Human Taxidermy Services. Poses? But the point is when you go back and see if there is new content after several months of lying fallow and not looking/forgetting it existed, and there is a whole slew of new things there, its fun and almost like a gift for your mind. And unexpected free gifts are the best.

IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS THAT AFFECTS MY LIFE AND YOU PROBABLY DON'T CARE ABOUT: The bossman who started following me on the twitter just got shit-canned. This was the reason for its swift abandonment (It had nothing to do with laziness) (at all). Oh happy days are here again. There is much rejoicing and dancing in my brain in the form of an recalled image of an old black-and-white cartoon of a cow. And now I'm doing a jig. Literally jigging right now. Sucks for that guy though, the guy that was canned. Time to pawn the Lincoln Navigator.

Anyway. I wonder if there is some "real world" equivalent (or as the kids say: IRL) to that phenomenon I was describing above where you stumble back upon a thing you once liked but forgot about on the Internet. Except that thing had changed/grown slightly. It is thrilling in a way. Like if you had a girl that you forgot existed and then ran into her in the street decided to meet up for drinks at a dive bar and hooked up but she had a new tattoo or had a tattoo slightly altered? These are the things that run through my head it's sunny out. Tacos! No wait, Victory!

Ben Linus, on the nose

Ominous shrubs. That's what I thought of while watching Lost the other day, during the scene where Linus gets seduced by the sweet ankle restraint removing powers of the smokey/evil Locke. It seems a bit stupid now, in hindsight, probably because it is no longer taco tuesday. The blood should be riddled with both booze and mexican food for optimal Lost viewing, I have found through rigorous research. Double blind studies and so on. I think that focusing on the Locke concealing bushes (I'm just going to call him Locke, fuck it) was due to how stupidly obvious and on the nose everything had seemed to that point. And they looked scary and/or smoke-like? I don't know.

Meanwhile, in an alternate reality: Linus is a history teacher, under the thumb of Principal "Jerkass Newsguy from Die Hard" who makes him monitor detention despite his Ph.D. It's enough to make a pathetically single man just puke! Also there was the actress who played his daughter now as a student who is trying to get into Yale and blah blah blah this plotline was limp, except for the part with the always popular double reverse blackmail from Principal Dickless. It was also indicative of the island's powers, e.g. making Linus's daughter no longer his daughter, genetics be damned.

More entertaining was when Jack went all zen-crazy and was like, "There's no way this old-ass dynamite will blow us up because we are destined to do something in regards to the future and also pertaining to the island and Jacob, most likely. Also the smoke monster." This new faith-inspired yet still recklessly impulsive Jack is intriguing, despite the failure of the explosive suicide pact. He saw his childhood home! I did like the part when Richard fondled those slave chains though. Because it inferred his former slaveness -- which he escaped into another form of slavery, this time to the island, via Jacob touching. This show is mad deep, yo.

now point to where Jacob touched you

But boy did does this show lay it on thick sometimes. Lecturing about Napoleon's exile and quest for power, ON AN ISLAND? Subtle. Locke encouraging Ben to act out and make a play for principal? Ben's infirm dad wondering what would have happened if they had just stuck it out with the old Dharma Initiative? There are levels here people. This thing is mildly similar and comparable to that thing! ESOTERIC.

Lingering questions:
What was the deal with that shovel Linus was using to dig his own grave? Could it be more ineffective?
Will I ever delve into whole the "fate v. free will" theme after it got spiked from this post?
How did Ana Lucia Ilana separate the Jacob-derived ash from the other ash in the firepit? A strainer of some sort?
Where the fuck is Sawyer?

Do you realize??

Today I learned this is the official rock song of the state of Oklahoma, which was confusing until I realized Flaming Lips are from there. I also realized that I'd like to see them in concert, The Flaming Lips. They are playing Fourth of July in AC, anyone interested? Shit you could just gamble the whole time if you wanted.

A Lost post is lurking, and also sprawling and nonsensical (can you do any less?). And I need to get some art for it. So it would have been up today but for those issues. Also, I had to build a blog for work called "A Day in the Life of a Sexologist" and that took up a good part of the day, what with the coordinating with the sexologist and whatnot. She majored in sexology. It's definitely not a made up term I once saw used in the Weekly World News. Blogtown!

These things

These are the crucial types of items that might have been posted to the twitter, if I didn't beat it over the head and knees with an iron pipe and then stomp on it with my handy jackboots. I think it fled to Venezuela after that. This was because of all of your advice, so thanks.

First, one more Oscar-related thingy ... the best films never nominated for any Oscar at all since 1980. I don't really know/care if it is "correct" or not, but hey it's interesting to briefly consider and then discard at the least.

Russia's angriest newspaper? Of course Taibbi is involved.

Fucking Lawyers. So arrogant.

And in conclusion how bout a Sabotage-Battlestar combination, until it gets removed due to numerous copyright violations? Can't stand it, ya know I planned it, etc. etc. etc.

This is about the Oscars

I don't think its any secret that movies can be worthwhile. Not all of course, but media made for a huge screen with crazy sound quality is not a bad idea in this post 9/11 world. "Once upon a time in Nazi-Occupied France" is a thing now because Quentin Tarantino is huge nerd. I'm no authority, but I do prefer my history in film form. As many once said somewhere, at some time, probably, "I like what I like." Or maybe it was "There's no accounting for taste."

But really -- the one thing that you should seek out for sure is animated short winner "Logorama" which I saw while back when it made a cameo on Vimeo. Vimeo Cameo. Maybe you haven't heard of this one? A Ronald McDonald goes on a violent criminal rampage taking Big Boy hostage and getting chased by Michelin Men who are performing in a cop-like capacity. Also there is an earthquake. Literally the entire movie is trademarks, I'm glad I saw it because it comes across as near straight Capitalist Samizdat*.



Additional comment:

Good that Hurt Locker beat Avatar. The only criticism I've read of Hurt Locker is that its an unrealistic depiction of war, what with the small number of characters diffusing deadly bombs in set pieces. This is like criticizing Point Break because of the surfing/skydiving scenes. So in other words, a stupid and without merit argument to make about a fictional movie. There have been many criticisms levied at Avatar -- like how its a FernGully rip off and dizzying and how it made billions of dollars and is long. I haven't seen a Cameron movie since True Lies and I'd like to keep it that way.

Also, its a crime the Black Dynamite wasn't recognized.

*This is likely IJ-influenced hyperbole, because Logorama's on iTunes.

A lost post, as demanded by two people who comment

Happy now? And thanks for all the twitter advice you good for nothing pieces of garbage. Maybe later today there will be something about the Oscars (Avatar sux). Cross your fingers.

I posit this to you good sirs

So I have a bit of a problem. A conundrum that has vexed me for the past week and precluded output here. The gist is this: My boss of bosses at work is now following the twitter feed I made a while back. The one over there on the right (until I take it down). Which obviously has nothing to do with work, except that maybe it was made out of professional curiosity. How the fuck he determined it to be me anyway? Did he even look at the page, with its squid-blasty goodness? This remains unexplained and I sure as hell ain't asking.

Now, maybe you are wondering why the hell I would care if this authority figure (who is a creationist, apparently, and doesn't believe in dinosaurs we joke) follows my twatting or whatever the cool thing to call it is. To that I say: Shut the fuck up you neophyte bastard. In case you hadn't noticed, I tend to use this blog, which has mercifully remained anonymous, and later the twitter for "creative content" that wouldn't fly at a community newspaper. For pop-culture comparison, it's like when Relationship George and Independent George are forced together.

So I've been mulling my options, none of which are post things on there while drunk, my previous secret to future success. No, the options are thus; a: block this man, possibly forcing a some sort of reckoning, b: deletion, c: abandonment. I put it to you, literate reader -- what is the best option? If you put the solution well it may be referred to at an upcoming "content conference" that I will be attending in 2 weeks as some sort of corporate stooge.

Ha ha, jive turkeys

5 things I enjoyed about this movie:

"Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery."

Roscoe's Chili and Donuts

That everyone calls the hero "Black Dynamite" in full throughout the film

"No! Not the orphans!"

The mocking self-aware tone