it's not brainCandy, but it's totally brain candy. just when you thought the world had lost its religious bearing...

...satan speaks to a woman (in texas, no less), and tells her to cut off her baby's head and eat his brain. now that's what i'm talkin' about! of course, i think this woman is lying...

...i think god told her to do it. think about it. this story is positively abrahamic. we have received the next prophet! could this be the much anticipated 11th commandment?

thou shalt devour the delectable, juicy insides of thy firstborn's noggin?

you know, one of my favorite stories of all time is the one out of germany, where a man met a sexual partner online who openly agreed to be killed. the german man flew his potential partner/victim to germany, where they loaded up on cough medicine and other such things, the victim to a lethal level. once toasted, they engaged in sadomasochistic homosexual sex, until the victim lost consciousness, at which point the german man "finished himself off" (if you know what i mean) while his partner was either unconscious or already dead. post orgasm, as some people do, the german man got a hankering for a light snack. so he mutilated and ate the corpse. the german courts found that no charges could be pressed regarding the heinousness of the crime, as the victim had contractually agreed to everything that took place, including the eating.

this is such a fantastically twisted story, but where's the jesus fire in all this? the fact that the victim agreed to be eaten after death just goes to show that he does not believe in the after life, otherwise he might care a bit more about how his body was disposed of. and the german man finding his partner/victim online? if he were truly a pious man, he would have let god, not craigslist, choose his victim. and with no death row sentence handed down, how can this man be martyred? furthermore, homosexual sex? god would certainly not discredit his earthly voice, by requesting that he engage in any fruity backdoor stuff.

no no, this whole story smacks of godless blasphemers. besides, who is germany to get the next prophet? everyone knows america is the chosen land for the new christian world order. we get the next prophet. we called it! no fair!

meanwhile, back at crawford ranch (ok, not really in crawford, but back in texas, anyway), otty (yes otty) sanchez claims she felt the temptation of the dark lord (the one who's not voldemort) guiding her on wednesday. guiding her to chew off her 3 1/2 week old son's toes, then cut off his head, and eat his brain, after which satan apparently told her to stab herself in the heart and stomach.

ok, let's back up the popemobile here. this is why this woman must have heard god, and not the devil, speaking to her. first, i can't imagine it is that hard to kill a regular baby. unchecked, the chewing off of the baby's toes, alone, may have caused fatal bleeding. while those little piggies were going wee wee wee all the way to sanchez's lower intestine, that baby would have been going wee wee wee all the way to that ranch upstate. and we've all heard the stories of the messiah. that jesus fella wasn't so hard to kill. he died willingly, of standard mortal injuries.

so unless this baby was a zombie, why cut off his head? ahh, but there in lies the twist. sanchez ate the baby's brain, not the other way around. so perhaps it was sanchez, herself, who was the zombie. we all know zombies have an unquenchable blood lust for brains, sweet delicious braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins! and though sanchez proved, quite zombily, that she could not be killed by stab wounds to the heart or stomach, by stabbing herself when her sister made her presence in the house known, otty did not pursue her sister's tender, protein-rich brain. if she were truly a zombie, her hunger for brains surely would have driven her to lumber forward stiffly, arms in the air, take three rhythmic steps to the right, quickly turn left, then right, then left again, clap her hands over her head, shimmy her shoulders, thrust her hips, and then, ultimately lunge for her sister's head. yes, i think it's safe to say, if sanchez was a zombie, this story would have had a much more impressive dance number.

certainly neither sanchez nor the baby was a vampire, or the injuries the baby suffered wold have involved either bite marks, stake wounds to the heart, or holy water burns. so of course god told her to do it, because obviously this baby was the devil (he wasn't old enough to be on solid foods yet, but were he given the chance, it's almost certain his head would have spun around and he would have projectile vomited pureed peas all over leslie nielsen, and we won't even discuss what might have happened at his senior prom), and the only way to kill him was to cut off his head. although, i have seen enough movies to know that the truly evil must have their hearts removed, quartered, and buried at the four corners of the globe in ancient aztec urns. barring that, you are destined to be kidnapped by the coven of witches who live in the apartment next door, at which point sanchez would have slipped into a sorcery induced coma, waking up decades later to discover she has been written into a poorly executed sequel, which serves as a political allegory for the 2000 election.

and speaking of the damned trapped in an endless cycle of hell, forced to relive their mistakes over and over again. i'll be goddamned if i'm going to let some demon baby force us all to relive the last 9 years.

so i put it to you, good readers, was this woman possessed by god, or satan? or perhaps she was attempting to kill her zombie baby, and just got a little crazy there (i'll show you who eats the brains in this house, mister!),

of course there is always the possibility (read: reality) that miss otty sanchez was simply a drugged out schizophrenic who was raised on too much TV and jesus fire.

nah, that's just silly.

bokodes best thing to happen to lazy morons since color change coors light can. boy, great things happen to lazy morons more often than i thought.

forgive me if i sound a little andy in my rooney, today, but i have to question the actual importance of the invention of bokodes.

for those who haven't heard, bokodes are a proposed replacement for traditional barcodes, that consist of a tiny LED, covered with a mask, and a lens, that can be jam packed with all sorts of information, then stamped onto damn near anything. the bokode can then be read by any camera, including cameraphones, to unlock that treasure trove of knowledge.

what kind of applications do the inventors of the bokode envision? the most widespread use would of course be consumer products of any kind. anything that already has a barcode could be fitted with a bokode, and what's more, the bokode could house scores more information than a traditional barcode. information such as price, nutrition facts, a link to the company's website, satanic verses, the dead sea scrolls, or even a step by step guide on how squirrel rectums and processed corn sugar come together to make your hotdogs so delicious, could be included in the bokode. but wait, there's more! bokodes send out different information depending on what angle the picture is taken at, so while you're having a little photo shoot with the coco puffs, "your cookoo, your absolutely cookoo, baby! show me tasty! oh yeah, the camera loves you!" the generic caca poops (oh, kindergarten jokes, will you never get old?) to the left, can shoot over a message saying, "hey, look over here, the big ziplock bag with the cracked out dodo bird on it. i'm cheaper!" and the wheat chex to your right can sit there quietly, because they already know, if you're too goddamn lazy to reach out and pick up the 12 oz box 2 feet in front of your fat face, and read the fucking nutrition facts off the side, then glance one inch down and see how much they cost, you ain't eatin' nothin' that doesn't have a cracked out animal on the box and an easy to swallow decoder ring inside.

even better for the lazy consumer is this: while the standard barcode costs only a fraction of a fraction of a cent (the cost of the necessary black ink) to print on a product, the bokode can be available for the low, low price of $5 a piece. sweet! so now i have to stand in the cereal aisle, snapping pictures of every single box i might be interested in buying so i can find out how much they cost, and what the nutritional content is, and it will only double the price of the product? when can we make this happen?!

god forbid we all snap out of our comatose consumer stupor, and realize that socialized medicine means we save a couple hundred bucks a month on insurance bills, even though we have to pay a couple more bucks a month in taxes, yet apparently it's red team fuckin' go on adding a $5 computer chip to the rice krispies, because enough americans have become so disgustingly lazy, stupid, and machine dependent that they can't pick up the box to read the words on the side, let alone compare and contrast numerical values to figure out which wacky cartoon animal has the cheaper food thingies inside?

me hungry! me need put food in face! how much this cost?! what these markings on side box? no can understand. magic phone, make food no be mean to me! make food go in face!

another use of the bokode is quick information about buildings that are around you. just slap a bokode on the facade of the building and you can grind your car to a screeching halt in the middle of the street to take a photo of it, then hold up traffic while your phone unzips the information, and you process it the only way you know how: from a glowing rectangle.

"hey, ma, what's that there muck dunn alds? stop the dang car, let me take a pitcher phone of it. oh hey ma! look like they got them some burgers and whatnots up in that there muckdunnalds. and look at this here crazy clown they got a dancin' around on their dubbya dubbya site! ain't he funny to beat all? let's stop ma, let's stop and get us some burgers and such! i sure am hongry, on accounta i ain't ate nothin' since that poppies chicken we had fiteen minutes ago."

i'm not even going to dignify the other uses of the bokode with my ridicule (as they all serve similar functions), because my point is that it's pretty obvious to me that if this is the kind of sorry, pathetic shape we are in as a species, we need all the help and healthcare we can get. but i guess we're all happier wasting our money on new and improved ways to waste our money. besides, most americans won't be able to read this anyway, since it's got all kinds of fancy words in it (ironically, most americans can probably recognize the word "fancy", thanks to mcDonald's fancy "ketchup").

in summary, me no like bokode. bokode make not smart. me donate $5 bokode price to socialized medicine. MIT shove moron chip up caca poops hole.

and you know i'm right, because you read it on a glowing rectangle.

are we still playing spaceman?

look, you NASA idiots, this isn't rocket science. why the hell are we still in space?

what are we achieving? are we hoping to find a giant old man in a robe and sandals walking around up there? or perhaps we are looking for oil?

because i personally can't conceive of any reason to be up there, other than it seems like a cool place to vacation.

and now the toilet's broken. good one, morons. first the shingles are falling off, now the john is on the fritz. hey, look, if people want to go to space to hang out and piss on themselves, let them pay their own way. i'm sick of pretending like there's a reason to explore infinite nothingness. so what if, thousands of years in the future, we find life on another planet, or, it finds us? OK. sooooo... who cares? what are we going to do about it? and why is it any different than finding new life forms here on earth?

and what makes us think other life in the universe wants to meet us? either they show up at our place, and discover what a disasterfuck of a species we are, or we show up at theirs, on a macgyvered space shuttle, with shingles falling off the roof, and a plastic bag full of excrement stapled to the escape hatch like we're the fucking beverly hillbillies. either way, we make for an unimpressive sight. meanwhile, we are removing things that sound sort of important (the boom sensor system?) to make room for some shit that japan wanted us to take up there for them. what are we, the goddamn interstellar pony express? take your own shit into space, japan. clearly we are having enough trouble taking a shit in space, as it is, we don't have time to take yours, too. what's more, we are considering flying japan's shit over to cape canaveral, and adding it to the shuttle's payload during the countdown. during the countdown? are we shipping it with DHL? can we not get it there a little earlier? or perhaps delay the countdown for 20 minutes while we get some lumpers to strap it to the roof? now we're really looking like the clampetts.

the huffington post is relieved to announce that, "the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off. fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally." hold on, wouldn't it be more fortunate if the part that wasn't working was the solid waste part?, at least then you could drop a loaf and maybe stick it in a box or a bag or something. instead we are relieved that these people are floating around up there in a cloud of piss, trying to fan it into the emergency escape pod somehow? the post also reports that, "russian officials don't know the cause of the problem and the crew has been unable to fix it." you idiots! you are supposed to be the most capable, intelligent, people on the planet, that's why you're astronauts, that's why everyone wants to be like you when they grow up, and you're telling me that the fat slob who can't manage to keep his pants all the way up, still makes jokes about "them beaners", and drives a busted van around town sticking his hand down clogged drains is more capable than you are?

sweet roto-rooter, i guess this really isn't rocket science, after all.

brainCandy

having kids is not a skill, but as it turns out, shutting up about it might be.

just when you thought it was safe to use your penis without getting a woman pregnant...

octomom is back on the scene! everybody, quick, put on two pairs of underwear and a safety condom! don't look directly into her eyes. she can conceive that way, too!

yes, in as many weeks, two, count them two, obnoxious, conniving, baby machines have shocked us by leaping back onto the scene. first it was palin, and her team of kids named after her favorite WB characters, and highschool classes she failed. this week the obnoxious disease known as the octomom is back in our faces like so much herpes. at least she isn't chock full o'nuts, this time.

no, this time she is here to announce her new reality TV show, produced by british company, eyeworks. great, so you're saying that america actually made the right choice this time, the choice to not pay this walking talking sperm bank to sell out her uterine prolificacy for all to see in super hi-def wide screen, and england is dragging us back in? you bloody wankers! we had your back in dubbya dubbya two! why are you doing this to us?!

fine! once more unto the breach, dear friends!

which is probably what the doctors said while delivering her gaggle of moron seed.

the beauty of this story is that... well, let's face it, there is so much beauty in this story for a misanthrope like me. sadly octopig's face is not part of that beauty. fitting that she be named octomom, because she is quite a sea hag.

so, like i was saying, the beauty of this is that first of all, this show is technically an adaptation of a danish show. so for all you people out there thinking that squeezing out a baby is some kind of special skill, think again, even being an octomom reality TV star has been done before. but what's more is that octopig has announced that she will be doing some of the filming herself. oh great, here's one more thing she sucks at that will no doubt be shoved down our throats, or perhaps artificially inserted into our uterii. more, still, is the fact that the show will not be some intrusive 24 hour a day affair, but will merely "document certain milestones, such as birthdays and special events". why would i want to watch "milestones" in their lives? i want to watch the 24 hour a day minutiae of a single moron raising 14 kids, as she slowly breaks down mentally and physically until she finally snaps and starts shoving them into the walk-in freezer she got from oprah. secondly, what makes birthdays milestones, anyway? i like to celebrate the birthdays of those i love because it gives me a chance to show them that i am glad they were born, that i'm glad they are in my life, and that i'm glad they are still alive. i am not glad that any one of the family octopig was born, i wish they were not even in my peripheral, and i wouldn't be heartbroken if they all fell off the face of the earth. literally, i would like very much to watch them all falling into the black abyss, the endless void, until i heard 15 little pop!s, like microwave orville redenbacher, as they exited the earth's atmosphere and imploded.

oh, but the beauty of this story marches on. the contract she has signed is for 3 years, and a grand total of... please, you may want to sit down, this number is staggering... $250,000!

what?! you stupid breeder! you sold the lives of your entire family for $250,000?! are you trying to avoid a high tax bracket? just get a real job! you could be making that much with a deVry "degree" in dental assisting, and still keep what's left of your children's dignity (at last count, what was left of her children's dignity was in the neighborhood of -63). oh, but there's apparently more dignity to be filched. the contract stipulates only the legal bare minimum in the state of california be set aside for the children. the legal bare minimum in california is 15% to be accessible only to the children at the time that they turn 18. meaning that the 14 of them get to split $37,500 beginning sometime in the 2020's. to break it down further, they will each be receiving $2,678.57, or just enough to purchase a moderately sized TV and the box set of the octopig series so that they may forever remember why they are minor international celebrities, but still have to haggle with the cashier at smart&final over whether or not you can buy cigarettes with food stamps.

but the final, and most glorious thing about this deal is this: though a contract has been reached, and a concept agreed upon, no american network has yet shown interest in the show.

YES! suck it hard, you limey bastards! you can't drag us into this one, yet!

once more unto the breach, dear friends?

nay! good sirs! for we are america, we do not return to, rectify, nor apologize for our mistakes, we do not surrender, and we are not retreating! we are simply advancing in the opposite direction!

brainCandy

toyota's new green promotion: using yesterday's innovation to create tomorrow's problems... today

toyota has launched a new ad campaign aimed at selling prii. the campaign involves a touring fleet of giant daisy statue installation art. the daisies do double duty as kitschy urban corporate art, and "recharge stations", where people can charge up their phones and other personal electronic devices thanks to the solar tiles mounted on the back of the flower, or simply sit and enjoy the free wifi while they recharge their own batteries (currently on the east coast, but headed westward soon). what does this have to do with selling hybrids?

nothing.

there's just something so beautiful about toyota's marketing plan. i think it has something to do with their ability to convince you that they are the best choice, despite the truth, by playing off of people's inborn desire to go with the trends while simultaneously craving the aplomb that comes with being a pioneer of new trends.

never mind that both GM, ford, and toyota themselves, had full electric vehicles years before the prius hybrid hit the scene. never mind that the first gen honda insight, as well as the older cr-x's have been doing the see-through trunk, abbreviated tear-drop rear end since years before toyota, and that the new insight is clearly a 4-door evolution of the original insight styling. never mind that the prius only averages 39mpg in most road tests that involve driving in the real world (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). never mind that toyota makes two of the biggest automobiles on the road (the tundra and sequoia), or that they have 17 cars in their lineup, 9 of which are trucks or SUVs, while big bad chevy has only 15, with 7 being trucks or SUVs.

never mind those facts, while toyota convinces you that the prius is the most advanced technology on the market, while they tell you that honda copied their styling, while they tell you that the prius gets 51/48 mpg, while they tell you that they are the small car captains of industry, while they tell you that they are the brand that is fighting for the little guy and his little car demands.

so how do they do it? how do they get the world to turn a blind eye to everything they are, and shout from the mountaintops everything they are not?

simple. catering to the simple minded.

the funny thing is, the simple minded may not be the ones your daddy told you about all those years. the simple minded, in this case, are the "hippies", or more accurately, the trustafarians, the neo-yuppies, and, occasionally, the new urban douchebags.

the simple fact about simple mindedness is this: there's a LOT of simple minded people out there; more than ever before, and they aren't just the people with the "cowboy up", "fuck dog, beware of owner", and "guns don't kill people, i kill people" bumper stickers. the sad truth is, the large majority of people driving around with "obama/biden", and "don't blame me, i voted for nader" stickers on their cars are just as simple minded as the rubes from any other demographic, they're just lucky enough to be en vogue these days.

so while chevy gets howie long to try and convince you that squeezing 1 more mpg out of their tahoe hybrid is a huge leap forward (and let's face it, it is for chevy), and ford gets the guy from dirty jobs to swing an F-150 around on a wrecking ball crane, by the trailer hitch, or dennis leary to yak about how real men need real-time integrated tow-assist, toyota gets a fleet of spandex clad interpretive dancers to pretend to be trees. or in the case of this newest ad blitz, not telling anyone (its not even on their website) that they are touring major cities throughout the US, installing temporary street art, using decades old technology, to create yet another quirky place to pamper your glowing rectangle obsession.

much like starbucks sucked in billions by convincing them of the "third place" concept (the idea that people have home to perfect their inner self, and work to perfect their outer citizen, but require a third place to allow the two to achieve harmony) toyota is taking it one step farther to convince you that, if the world just builds itself around you, you can be your own third place.

i think it's a great idea, this self contained third place. between giant daisy statues, and public outhouses (they are out there), all the world needs to do is provide some kind of public shower set up, and we can all live happy homeless.

the only problem with this as a way to sell toyotas, is that nothing about this ad campaign has anything to do with cars, nor does it display an ability to utilize innovative technology in a creative capacity. its just solar panels glued to the back of a giant daisy, which will no doubt, eventually end up in a scrap heap, or junk yard, or landfill, never biodegrading, or breaking down. just a whole garden of massive rusty flowers, like some sick alice in wonderland playset.

but if you look through the bullshit, if you see this ad campaign for what it is: a "look at me, look at me!" use of deco urban art, dated technology, and future trash, to pander to the "me first" crowd, you actually get a pretty good look at what toyota really is. in fact, a prius that uses a basic combustion engine paired with a electric motor, with a solar panel on the roof (only hooked to the AC. why?), that tells you in real-time what kind of mpg you are getting (as though, if your mpg dips too low, you will just pull over to the side of the road and walk the rest of the way) is a total sham.

the jetta TDI clean diesel loyal edition averages 36mpg in real world driving without hybrid assistance, the chevy volt runs on pure electric power for 40 miles before switching over to gas, texas instruments has been making calculators that run purely on solar panels since before i was born, and both full electric vehicles, and 60 mile batteries were available over a decade ago. an innovative use of cutting edge technology would be a car that runs on pure electric for over 60 miles, then switches to a hybrid that marries an electric engine to a clean diesel engine, and powers all electric gizmos and doodads in the cabin with the roof mounted solar panel (the roof of a car accommodates a pretty healthy sized solar panel). now that car would sell itself. of course, if you read this last paragraph thoroughly, you would already be saying to yourself, "an innovative use of cutting edge technology would be to bring back full electric cars, and make giant daisy statues that you can use to recharge said cars".

so if toyota is nothing more than the starbucks to chevy's dunkin' donuts, what's got us all so hot and bothered to ride the prius wave? what do lycra-clad people trees, and solar powered daisy shaped surge protectors have to do with making a decent car or saving the environment? what does toyota have that isn't offered in a better, cheaper, or more advanced version somewhere else? what makes toyota so special?

nothing.

that's the beauty of it.

in re:

missionary position gets uncomfortable after a while...

...or...

nobody expects the turkish inquisition!!

so a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a monk walk into a bar. 5,000 years later their offspring are still killing each other over the ensuing argument. HA! HA!

i love that one.

but i heard this new one. it goes like this...

10 atheists are on a vacation in istanbul. they end up on a game show where a priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a monk try to convert them for prizes.

i guess that last one wasn't really a joke.

seriously, though, turkish television station, kanal T, has developed a show called tovbekarlar yarisiyor (penitents compete), in which the big four religions have a single representative competing to convert as many of the ten atheist contestants as they can in the alloted time. even though they aren't actually the ones competing, the atheists are considered the contestants because the competing religious representatives get their prize in the journey: a chance at fresh converts, whereas the atheists get both the prize of a free trip to the holy land of their new religion, and the ultimate prize: their soul's salvation. give me a break... so i can go on the haaj that i won by pretending to be a muslim convert.

first of all, they are rewarding a trip (to mecca, tibet, or jerusalem) to whomever is converted at the end of each episode?

look at me i'm so jewish! oi vey with how jewish i am. can you believe it with me? how jewish? what, i should tell the truth and miss out on this free trip? the chudspah on you! that me, a jew, would pass up something free. oi gavault!

of course, kanal T claims that they follow up with the contestant to make sure they were truly converted. oh yeah? how? and what if you do catch me not being jewish, somehow. what are you going to do, take my soul back? ooh, i'm shaking in my yarmulke and ridiculous sideburns.

kanal also claims that the show is designed to help the largely muslim population of turkey understand other religions. i suppose what they want people to understand about atheists is that they are not real people until they have embraced a silly, made up religion, with happy happy stories about clouds and virgins. in fact, what is most likely to happen with this show is that, in the spirit of competition, the members of the religions may see a little bit of something that they like in each other. that thing? hatred of nonbelievers. so where does this show leave atheists and agnostics? shit out of luck, and probably persecuted, in turkey, anyway. at the very least atheists will most likely soon find it very hard to get anything done in turkey with members of every major religion no doubt quoting lines from penitents at them all day. god help the turkish atheists if there are any snappy one liners, or catch phrases on this show.

i can see it now. just trying to get his work done at the office, ahmed the atheist is constantly bombarded with asinine comments. he stops at the coffee machine for a cup, but here comes margie, "is that your soul's final destination? ha haha ha ha!". upon admitting that he doesn't know where zayed keeps the toner, steve asks ahmed, "would you like to phone your infidel friend? get it? like on the show? it's funny because your soul is going to burn in hell for all eternity". telling mohammed that he's going to knock off early today, mo replies, "i'm sorry, ahmed, but you didn't phrase your confession in the form of a question. HAHAHA! you're not laughing. didn't you watch tovbekarlar last night? everyone watches tovbekarlar". the mail boy pushing his cart down the row of cubicles, "marge, mail for you. mo, something from corporate. zayed, here's that toner you ordered. uh oh, mail for ahmed. ahmed khoti! come on down... to hell! because that's where atheist blasphemers go!"

the beauty of this show is that it encourages direct competition between the major, already warring, religions, this time for even stupider, more arbitrary reasons, as well as declares a jihad on the non religious. so really it can only last until the all the atheists in turkey kill themselves or move away to avoid the staggering pain in the ass it will be to listen to people belittle their beliefs using sound bytes and catch phrases from a popular gameshow. that, or the religious community of turkey descends upon the nonreligious in a brief, but nonetheless tragic holocaust (seriously how many atheists can their be in turkey?) of course there is always the option that turkey collapses under the weight of a religion based 5 sided civil war.

i only pray that i can get on the show and convince them to award me a trip to tibet before that happens.

circus: OUT!

the circus suspects man invented god, simply so we could play god. why not? that's why we invented the framptone, and look how good that worked out.

for milenia, man has been creating games and passtimes for the purpose of mimicking life on a smaller scale.

games like go, chess, and risk teach us the strategies of war. monopoly teaches us how to ruin the lives and well being of others by being a morally bankrupt real estate mogul. life helps us deal with the surrender of all meaning and ambition in our lives to the the empty, cookie-cutter minutiae of suburban living. jenga teaches us how to build precariously tall, structurally unsound towers, and grand theft auto teaches us how to punch a hooker in the teeth, rape her in the back seat of a stolen "toyolla corota", then steal her purse and leave her for dead. and, apparently, rubik's cube teaches me how to be some kind of queer who thinks he's better than you (that's what that guy at the bar told me, anyhow).

imagine what a bleak world we would live in if we didn't grow up subliminally learning these life skills, by making them into fun, family time games.

oh, it's raining out, what should we do? i know! let's bilk mom out of her rental properties on baltic avenue, then crush dad's railroad empire while he's in jail, shooting craps for his freedom.

done with your homework, hoytt? good boy. you've earned some xBox time. now run along and practice gunning down the cops. remember, old people make great human shields.

but as funny (and scary) as it is to think that our possible futures had been shaped by innocent games for ages 3-99 (the hundred+ crowd play much more dangerous versions. instead of operation, they play high risk invasive surgery. instead of risk, they play a game called dubbya dubbya 2: post traumatic stress. the point of that game is to avoid snapping into a dementia driven, fight-or-flight, homicidal rampage when everyone jumps out and yells "surprise!" at your birthday party, because they didn't know you haven't been taking your meds since your insurance filed your PTS as a pre-existing condition last month...) it's even scarier to think that a large part of the problems we face as adults, not just in our personal lives, but as a society, and a species, in general are probably caused by forced adherence to religion since before we are old enough understand what is going on in the world around us.

think about how many wars, invasions, revolutions, colonizations, coups, and crusades have been driven by religion. think about the fact that the founding fathers included not one instance of religion in the original constitution, declaration, pledge of allegiance, monetary imagery, or any political oath, aside from the protection of freedom of religion, which interestingly enough, comes secondarily to the statement "congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion...", yet, by now, god has found his way into every one of those things. think about the moral, and even simple life choices we make with religion on our minds. how many people care whether or not they have sex before they get married? how many people care that they are supposed to care? hell, the fact that anyone would even think of marriage as a part of life is a testament to how deeply ingrained religion is in our psyches.

but we've come to a funny little crook in the road of god-fearing human existence. we've come to a place where we now have the capacity to play god, and not just in the sense of games like the sims, or warcraft where we get to control every tiny little detail of an entire microverse, or a game like second life where we get to create an entirely new life for ourselves, and reimagine it the way we would prefer, if we were in charge of "godly" decisions like what color our skin is, how big our sexually desirables are, how much we get paid, and whether or not our garage alt-rock bands made it big after highschool. no, in the real world we have taken ourselves down a road to a place where we have no choice but to play god.

case in point, we have created (yes we have created them, however incidentally) intersex fish. not the kind that throw trash at you from the back of their pimp's scooter on a backstreet in bangkok, either. the kind that have both sets of reproductive organs and swim around in the potomac river.

the glorious potomac, once a babbling beacon of america, is now a sludge filed cesspool of liquid toxic crap (the title of babbling beacon of america is now held by gaffin' joe biden, and the title of sludge filed cesspool of liquid toxic crap is being hotly disputed by rush limbaugh) full of deformed, hermaphroditic fish swimming around in circles, impregnating themselves. herein lies the rub: we did this to nature, but nature is simply responding and evolving to a change in the environment that was put in place outside of natural control (does it seem funny to anyone else, that we can discuss human actions as though they are not natural actions, yet we refuse to believe that human behavior is unnatural?). so do we accept that humans are, in essence, the next ice age, the catastrophic element that will significantly alter the nature of life on earth forever after us? or do we try to change it back?

the fact is, we can't change it back now. sure, we might fix the river before the entire population of fish goes both ways. but what about the plastics we use? they can't be taken back, and will eventually have to be digested by some new animal, or some newly evolved animal that has the capacity to do so. if we don't allow this adaptation, then we risk living as humans for a far greater period of time, but in a pile of our own trash with no other living things to keep us company. what about the oil we pump out of the ground? we leave gaping caverns in the earth that will, once pressure is released, and pumping stops, collapse in on themselves, creating canyons and craters of gritty petroleum sludge, where nothing we know of today could live, and it's too late now, the corks have been popped and the tops of the oil reserves have been pumped. if we don't go all the way on this, we don't stand a chance of avoiding it, we only doom ourselves to rocky petroleum lakes, rather than goopy petroleum valleys.

the fact is, we've already shat all over the planet. we can't take it back now. the best we can do is stop. just, for the love of god, if you believe in one, stop for a moment and think about all the things we don't need in our lives, all the ways in which we play god, all the reasons for which we feel we are the gods of earth, all the reasons we care what god thinks of how we live our lives, and when we start our lives up again, leave out those things we don't need, stop living as though we are the most important thing in the natural world; the last line of defense. stop living as though we have a higher purpose that justifies the depletion and destruction of the natural world for our own devices. stop living as though an invisible geriatric in the sky will give us a good grade when we shuffle off this mortal coil (my highschool english teacher was right, i would use that later...)

stop and take a moment to come to terms with the fact that, if there is a god out there, we are nothing more to that god than a bunch of mutant fish swimming around in a diseased river. or perhaps, if there is a god, we are nothing more to that god than a silly game to pass the time.

brainCandy

man revealed to be $23 quadrillion in debt. source of worldwide budget deficit discovered in the process.

recently, new hampshire resident josh muszynski checked his bank account balance just after purchasing a pack of cigarettes, only to discover he was over-drafted by exactly $23,148,855,308,184,500, proving that, even outside of election years, things do happen in new hampshire, just not very interesting things.

the news of this staggering accounting error sent nicholas cage spiraling into a conspiracy theory driven madness in which he began to write aramaic texts on his bathroom mirror and demand that people be more afraid of the illuminati.

more importantly, we all have our habits, our vices, if you will, but $23 quadrillion dollars? jesus h, man, breathe some fresh air once in a while. averaging six dollars a pack, muszynski must have smoked roughly 4,000,000,000,000,000 packs of cigarettes in his lifetime. i know some people like to have a smoke when they get in their car, but you don't have to buy a new car every time you need a fag, although i know one gay car enthusiast who might say different.

so on behalf of the rest of entire world, "hey, muszynski, stop buying smokes on the bank's dollar, asswipe! the rest of us would like some money, too."

of course, the account balance was due to some sort of computer glitch in the system, or so said muszynski, as he puffed on a pipe made of a finger from the actual corpse of jesus christ. he then flew his UFO back to his unicorn ranch on uranus, where he pitched batting practice to the reanimated bodies of the 1927 yankees. "i'm just a working class joe, saving up for a house," said muszynski, as he lobbed up a meatball to lou gehrig.

said muszynski of the error (that the bank made, not the one he made on that slow grounder from gehrig, only adding to the embarrassment of letting a zombie with lateral sclerosis get his bat on the ball), "i thought my card had been compromised. i thought somebody bought europe with my credit card. it was very concerning. it's a lot of money in the negative, something i could never ever afford to pay back. my children couldn't afford. grandchildren. nothin' like that". said me of muszynski's attempt to churn a reasonable sound byte out of his obviously feeble mind, "the sky is blue, the sun is hot, and you're a moron who has low expectations of his progeny".

luckily for muszynski, the bank was willing to waive the $15 over-draft fee, which, i can only assume, was the least of his worries, considering that he suddenly found himself owing what he apparently thought to be the exact net worth of the european continent and its territories. although it is curious how he just pulled that awfully specific price off the top of his head, almost as though he had recently inquired about just such a purchase (...and now that i know how much europe costs, the only thing left to do is start saving. i will especially enjoy being your overlord, moldova).

so, perhaps this muszynski fella and his 40-million-pack-a-day habit is the cause of the economic disasterfuck that we find ourselves in the midst of, or perhaps we're just putting too much faith in a system that can "accidentally" charge a guy $23 quadrillion for a pack of smokes.

are we a god fearing, puritanical people, or aren't we?

now, i'm not rooting for "yes" on this one, but i'm just trying to figure out where we stand. on the one hand we have more pills for manipulating the functionality of our genitals than anything else. on the other hand, we also have more commercials for those pills and meds than anything else, yet those commercials can't seem to just break it down and say what they mean.

remember when nobody could figure out what rogaine with monoxodil was? well i'm not lucky enough to have that same problem with viagra, cialis, enzyte, levitra, or anything else from the pharmacopia of "male enhancers". i don't need them, but i certainly can't avoid knowing what they're for. but i have to wonder, do the pharmaceutical companies and ad agencies really know? i mean, they apparently get that their products are for "male enhancement" or "overcoming ED", but why are they so shy to admit that neither of those things matter a good goddamn unless you plan on having a rockin' porn star sex life? don't tell me i need to get my dick up to participate in flowery romantic metaphors.

i can make suggestive, erotic gestures while bowling, swimming at the neighbors backyard bar-b-q, nascar racing, or camping, just fine without taking penis enlargement pills, thank you very much. i don't need my dick to work so me and my wife can sit in separate old timey bath tubs on the rim of the grand canyon, oh wait, they're holding hands now, is that what sex is? i wouldn't know, i'm not married yet ( ;) ). and give me a break, viagra. as the oldest in this family, i expect better from you. you're 11 years old now, and you should be learning the proper way in which male/female sexual relations work. these commercials where the husband and wife are enjoying a quiet evening at home, one's reading, one's watching the game, or what have you. all of a sudden the man gets a "guess who has a boner?!" look on his face, and they slowly and deliberately throw their "distractions" out on the lawn and begin to waltz. is this a new boring sexual position that i missed in the kama sutra? or is this guy willing to gamble that his erection will last the full 4 hours, by wasting it slow dancing, fully clothed? do we need to have "the talk" with the pharmaceutical companies? do we need to sit them down and explain the birds and the bees, and where babies come from, and all that?

i'm not saying we should be showing skinemax soft-core, or pay per view penetration shots, to sell penis pills... i'm just saying, if we are mature enough to show a cut away of a woman's uterus to demonstrate how the new tampax expands in a lotus shape for better leak protection, i think we can bring ourselves to admit that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, and all these pills exist so that we can enjoy grinding them together until we achieve orgasm.

genitals are for fucking, and so are "male enhancement" pills. grow up, pfizer.

is michael jackson in the ground, yet? and if so, can we throw the news story in there with him, and just hand me a shovel. i'll give this thing a proper burial.

it happened when dale eanhardt died, too.

people who had never met the guy, and never even had their lives touched by him directly or indirectly, aside from the fact that they liked to watch him on tv, are weeping like confused children.

no, i'm not sad michael jackson is dead. in fact, at first i was a little bit happy for the guy. he lived a fucked up, painful life. he is probably a lot less miserable right now. the only problem was, he might be out of his misery, but michael jackson's death put him right smack dab in the middle of our misery. shut the hell up about him, already. there are two reasons michael dying is a good thing. one: he's better off dead. two: the simpsons ran both the bartman video in its entirety, and the classic episode in which homer is commited to a mental institution where he befriends a michael jackson impersonator. these simpsons pieces brought back memories of a time when the simpsons was, without a doubt, the best thing to happen to television, rather than the inane, hacky, recycled crap it is today.

but the state of the simpsons is beside the point. these simpsons memories also stirred up my nostalgia for a time when i gave two shits about michael jackson; a time when i just had to watch the premier of his new video, a time when i memorized the words to his songs, and practiced dancing like him in my bedroom while i blasted thriller or beat it, a time when i would go out of my way to watch the wiz. jackson made some great music, sure, but he stopped making great music some time ago. quit clinging. it's not like his death in any way affects the chances that i will bump into him at the long john silver's and become his new BFF... yup, chances are still zero. not that i would want to be michael jackson's BFF. i'd end up at some deposition, explaining under oath about how he does or doesn't fondle little boys.

what's more, i don't think michael jackson went to heaven. for one, i don't think "heaven" exists. but mostly because i think heaven is not so much a place you go to after you die, but the state of your conscience at the time of death. to face death with confidence, with no regrets, with a feeling of satisfaction with your life; that's heaven. death as an afterlife? as an afterlife, to be carried on, with love, in the hearts and minds of those you leave behind, that is heaven as an afterlife, and michael jackson certainly will have that. people won't shut up about that. but to die a troubled soul. that is hell. to die knowing that your life was nothing more than an empty, materialistic, orgy of money, celebrity, and plastic, hollow, love. to die knowing that all you did with your life was try to be something you're not, and you never achieved this, but instead allowed this to cripple your soul. to die knowing that, whether or not you truly hurt other people, or whether or not you meant to, that you lived a life that caused people, for decades, to believe, with certainty, that you did. to know that your death meant nothing more to your family than free publicity to move some of their own wares, and that the people who "cared" most about you, are people that never knew the first thing about you, never saw the real you, and never loved you for who you are. to believe that the person you really are has to be hidden, to be mutilated into something that people can love more than the the real you. to look at the man in the mirror and not know who he is, or worse yet, to not love him. that is hell.

and i don't care how many weeping morons you pack into the staples center, or how many cars you get backed up on the 405 (like any one would notice), nothing is going to change the way michael felt about his life, now.