My fellow Americans.
How can anyone, no matter what their personal beliefs may be, vote for or against someone based solely on ad campaigns of rhetoric and propaganda without researching for themselves what that person really believes? Please people, I beg of you. Gather information, sift through the talking points, ignore the pundits and find the person worthy of your vote. Most of all, remember that voting with the herd can lead everyone over the cliff.
SmartVote2008
Inconceivable!
Have you seen the latest commercial for the Chevy Traverse that is being shown during the Olympics? If you haven’t here’s a somewhat clipped version of it. For those too lazy to click the link and watch the video, let me describe it to you via my inner monologue the first time I saw it.
“Commercial time! That means I can go to the bathroom before they get back to showing the women’s beach volleyball quarter finals…”
“What the hell…?”
“Why is there a guy with no shirt on my TV?”
“And why is he ironing something with a PINK iron?”
“What?! Six month anniversary?! Looooserrrr!”
“…”
“That’s a kids dress! For a little girl! Like a child!”
“Holy crap, this guy’s a pedophile!”
“What’s this commercial for?”
“A CAR?!?!?!?!”
“What the HELL does a p-whipped guy ironing little girl clothes have to do with a car?!”
“By the unholy alliance of mayo and pickles, what schmuck in marketing at Chevy thought it was a good idea to greenlight this commercial? How exactly does making Chevy the official pedophiles automobile of choice make any kind of sense?”
“And OMG, now he’s on his knees cleaning the toilet.”
“I think I’m going to need to douse my eyes with bleach to remove this from my head.”
“Chevy, you are sick, sick people. Seek professional help before someone gets hurt. Please.”
It’s haunting my dreams. I’m scared to sleep because if I close my eyes the scary pedophile in the bright red Chevy Traverse is going to drive into my head and steal my soul. I’ll never, ever be able to see a black toilet again without thinking of some shirtless pervert cleaning it. And don’t even get me started on how scary pink irons were BEFORE I saw this commercial.
Somebody hold me.
He’s stupid.
Yeah, yeah, I know Batman is supposed to be the World’s Greatest Detective and all, but seriously, he’s a moron. This is a guy with nearly unlimited wealth, near-super strength, agility, speed and constitution, and the intelligence of Einstein, Sherlock Holmes and Leonardo DaVinci rolled into one good looking, debonair, suave and sophisticated package. And, instead of curing cancer, or becoming President, or becoming a judge or policeman, or inventing some life-saving new device that might have helped save his parents lives, what does he do?
He puts on a mask and fights crime with his fists.
I mean, try to imagine if Bill Gates were to do something like that. Now, I’m not saying nerdy Bill is the equivalent of hunky Bruce Wayne… Hey, stop laughing! Well, OK. I admit that was a bad example. Let’s try someone like Jet Li, instead. This is a guy who, in his early years, you’d have no trouble seeing as a kick-ass kind of guy. He’s also pretty well off, earning over $60 million in 2007. So, it’s conceivable that someone with his physical skills and wealth could have potentially become a Batman-like superhero, right? In his 20’s he could very well have dressed up as a giant bat, or snake, or panda, or something and solved crimes while kicking the crap out of criminals in Hong Kong. The Chinese equivalent of Batman, Jet Li would be a very believable, real life, Chinese vigilante.
Hey! He could be PandaMan!
Imagine it, PandaMan swinging from rooftop to rooftop in Hong Kong, his shadowy, furry figure striking fear into the hearts of criminals. The police chief’s giant panda spotlight calling him forth from his Panda Cave, the PandaMan roars out into the night in his Pandacycle to right the wrongs done to those who lacked the means to buy their own justice. Solving crimes no one else can using only his improbably ultra-clever mind, and sometimes his astonishingly super-powerful PandaComputer, the Pandarangs he throws knock the villains he’s after on their collective butts as the thankful citizenry of the People’s Republic cheer him on.
I bet you’re literally laughing at all that nonsense.
Yet, when it’s Batman in Gotham city in his Batmobile, you’re willing to believe it, right? Because he’s supposed to be fictional, not real. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can I dislike Batman so much yet still call myself a Spider Man fan? There’s one very good reason, Spider Man has super powers, Batman doesn’t. Super powers make Spider Man, Superman, Wolverine and all the rest truly fictional. But Batman is supposed to be a “regular” guy who just happens to wear a mask to fight crime.
And to me, that makes him stupid.
OK, maybe he’s not really all that stupid, and it’s the people around him that are the true idiots, but it amounts to nearly the same thing. Batman solves crimes in the most asinine and backwards ways possible. He also always winds up having to punch someone in the face in order to stop them from doing something evil instead of figuring everything out and telling someone who could end the problem in seconds. I mean, he’s friends with all the most powerful superhero characters in the DC universe, right? Why hasn’t anyone shackled him to his Batcomputer and made him solve crimes so that the other superheroes can go stop the bad guys? Or how about having him spend his time figuring out what the truly dangerous criminals were plotting next and come up with plans to stop them before they even begin? Or how about he spends his time discovering super-villain secret identities and then tell the police so they can raid their homes and arrest them? He could change his name to AnswerMan, or The Informer, or some such nonsense and, instead of getting his butt kicked by the Joker or Mr. Freeze again, make Superman capture them and spend his time wooing the ladies instead.
Doesn’t that sound a hell of a lot smarter than what he actually does as Batman?
Plus, Batman is always getting the better of every superhero he happens to fight, yet the bad guys almost always find a way to capture him, or beat him to a bloody pulp before he ultimately triumphs. It’s so frustrating. Does anyone truly believe Superman couldn’t beat Batman in a fight? I mean, Supes has super speed, strength, invulnerability, etc., etc., etc. Sure, old Bats might have some kryptonite somewhere, but if Supes seriously needed to take Batman down he could hit him so hard and fast Bats wouldn’t ever know he was down until he woke up in the hospital missing his lower jaw. Same goes for the Flash, or Wonder Woman, or hell, even Aquaman could kick his face in without a real problem if he wanted!
And seriously, if Aquaman can beat you up, you’re pretty pathetic.
Lastly, there’s the whole secret identity thing. Batman is a regular guy who regularly and repeatedly gets his face punched in. He’s constantly bleeding all over the place, usually in the bad guy’s lair or at a crime scene and yet no police officer seems to collect that blood and try to match it up to DNA evidence to find out who it might belong to. Doesn’t that strike you as farfetched? I mean, if there’s a string of crime scenes that happen to have blood everywhere from an unknown person, don’t you think someone on the police force would take notice? His mask doesn’t hide his chin does it? So why doesn’t someone scar his chin on purpose and then figure out who he is? Or how about all his gadgets? It’s a given that those would cost a hell of a lot, right? Can’t anyone figure out that if the toys are expensive then at the very least a rich person is financing Batman?
Can’t anyone in Gotham follow the money?
And what about Bruce’s face? He’s always being beat up, right? Doesn’t anyone notice when a billionaire playboy shows up at public events, speaking engagements, dinner parties and so on with a severely beat up face? No one puts that little puzzle together? There’s no celebrity rag in Gotham hunting for a big story on The Bruce Wayne? No private detective who’s hobby is trying to figure out who Batman is? The Riddler can’t deduce who Batman is? And yes, I realize he did last year, but still, it took him for-freaking-EVER to figure that out. None of the ladies he’s been with have noticed all the scars on his body? Not one of the people from his past who found out about his secret identity ever tried to blackmail him?
See? Now you’re wondering, too.
All in all, I find Batman to be the least believable super hero out there BECAUSE he’s supposed to be the most believable. Taken one at a time, you can overlook any of these arguments, but taken together you can’t deny that he’s a horrible, horrible superhero. If they gave him a power, even a lame one like super intelligence or something, then I could suspend my disbelief and like him. As it is though, I just don’t like him because he’s… well, he’s stupid.
…
Uuuuhhhh…
Ahem.
Of course, I’m still going to go see the movie. It’s gonna ROCK!
There is so much I wish I could talk about.
If I could speak, I might be able to tell you how spending the last month with my in-laws has been… interesting, to say the least. Were I able to utter the words, I might explain to you the massive differences between how our families show each other love; over-feeding people vs. humorously insulting people, for example. And I might also mention that what is normal for one household to do, even in their own home, might be interpreted as an insult to the others. Were I not under a gag order, I could mention in-law snore-offs during football games, some people’s inability to try new foods, their frightened dismissal of anything done differently from what they have done in the past and their complete lack of technical know-how that makes it impossible for them to properly use any household item from 1980 forward including, but not limited to; cooking using a Wolf stove, turning lights on and off using dimmer switches or operating a touchscreen TV remote. My current speech impediment keeps me from imparting to you the absolute insanity of someone I know of who might insist on using a $15 screwdriver to remove weeds from a patch of weed infested dirt that the homeowner has said many times over would be ripped up and replaced next summer with actual grass. I can’t possibly tell you about how some truly crazy people I know feel the need to collect every circular in the neighborhood on their daily morning walks only to loudly proclaim over breakfast how expensive everything is compared to where they live so maybe they should give you money because obviously you’re too poor to afford to eat. And, last but certainly not least, let us not forget how my zippered lips keep me from ever telling another living soul about all the ‘helpful’ advice on, and ‘constructive’ criticism of, the way HoBiscuit and I take care of the Mighty Baby.
Wow, the stories I could tell if only I could talk to you.
But I can’t.
Oh well, at least I can tell you that by next week I should really be back to a daily-ish posting schedule. And this time I actually mean it.
Oh, don’t try to hide that smile. I know that makes you happy.
I don’t like Superman.
I never really “got” Superman. He always seemed to be too much. Too powerful, too nice, too wonderful. It really irked me. I’m more of a flawed-hero or reluctant hero kind of guy, so I wasn’t in any rush to see the Superman Returns movie. But I got a copy this weekend and watched it and, while I enjoyed the movie, I came away from it with lots of questions. The more I thought about it, the less I liked the movie. And then, the less and less I liked the idea of a Superman character. But, after just a little while of thinking about it I began to… well, question the whole concept of the character. And I came to the conclusion that Superman, as a whole, is so flawed that it’s just dumb.
That’s right, I said it. Superman is dumb.
Superman, as a concept, sounds like a good character. A guy who can fly, shoot lasers from his eyes, lift a bajillion pounds and is invulnerable sure sounds like a great idea for a fun time, doesn’t it? But, even using the made-up logic of a comic book world or more recently of the movie world, Superman just doesn’t make sense. Let’s even forget the whole “flying so fast the world spins backward and time reverses itself” shenanigans and concentrate on simple things. Little things that, when looked at, cause the whole character and comic-movie world to fall apart.
How about we start with the sun?
Superman, no matter how human he might seem, is actually an alien who gets his powers from the sun because our sun is yellow and the sun from world he came from, Krypton, was red. Got that? Our yellow sun makes him Superman. Now, this alien planet he came from was so technologically advanced that they could shoot a baby into space, across millions of light-years, and not only keep that baby alive when it could not possibly eat anything on its own, but also land the spaceship on the far-away planet they chose without harming the child or ship. Amazing, right?
Then why the hell didn’t all those Kryptonians have super-powers?
All they needed was to change their red sun rays into yellow sun rays and voila! Instant Supermen and Superwomen. A race as techno-savvy as they were supposed to be couldn’t figure out that certain types of radiation would give them super-powers? Come on! That doesn’t make sense! But let’s forget about that. Let’s accept the fact that our yellow sun gives Superman his powers and no one on Krypton figured that out in time to save the planet from exploding and move on to other, even simpler things about Superman that don’t work.
How about sex?
Superman is not human. He’s an alien, with an aliens physiology. How amazing, how utterly astonishing it would be, for two species from two completely different worlds to be able to mate! I mean, a man and a monkey look pretty similar but can’t have offspring, yet somehow we are to believe that an alien and a human can just because they look outwardly similar?
But, OK. Let’s accept that, too.
Let’s say that somehow, through a miracle of evolution, Superman has the same equipment as humans do and he and Lois Lane have sex. What would happen? Well, sperm happen. And what are sperm? Basically, they are egg-seeking missiles. Their one mission is to find a female’s ovaries and fertilize an egg. So they swim upstream until they reach one and fertilize it, or die trying.
But, remember. These are Supersperm.
They wouldn’t be constrained by a woman’s body. They could reach their target at supersonic speeds by destroying any barrier in between it and its goal. Even the woman’s flesh itself. Plus, once the nearest egg was fertilized, the other 100 million sperm would seek out other eggs. And since these are supersperm they could fly around the world in seconds, impregnating 100 million women by ripping right through their bodies to reach their destination.
Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
There are a myriad of other problems with Superman. Like how the rock and dirt from his home world reached the earth at the same time as his ship, even though it should have taken those fragments millions of years. Or how about Kryptonite, Superman’s one weakness? Why is he weakened by it? Wouldn’t that mean he would have died at birth on his home world? And even if Kryptonite for some reason caused him to become ill, wouldn’t the yellow sun rays change the Kryptonite radiation into something harmless or even helpful to Superman? Yellow sun rays give Superman his powers, why wouldn’t it also make Kryptonian rocks good for him? But let’s say they do cause him harm, why aren’t there ever any lasting effects? If the sun heals him from the long-term effects, why not from the short term?
It’s crazy.
And how about the people around him? Despite the hundreds of photographs of Superman, no one thinks he and Clark Kent look alike? Lois Lane is such a bad investigative reporter that she can’t put two and two together when Clark disappears for the millionth time and Superman suddenly appears? Lex Luthor is a genius who can find Kryptonite almost anywhere whenever he needs it, but can’t figure out how to make Kryptonite bullets or a bomb? Doesn’t it all seem a bit… stupid?
But hey, what do I know? I’m a SpiderMan fan.
I got my face kicked yesterday.
I don’t know what happened, but yesterday morning I woke up dead. Not just feeling dead, but actually, clinically deceased. I’m not kidding. I really think someone with a mucus covered baseball bat snuck into my bedroom and hit me repeatedly in the face until I was dead. And then, just because the person was a real mean bastard, they resurrected me only to beat me to death again. They may also have thrown buckets of ice water on me and super-glued my nostrils closed just to make my death that much more horribly annoying.
The bastard.
I really cannot convey to you with mere words the amazingly crazy sickness that overtook me yesterday. I actually needed HoBiscuit to help me get out of bed so I could eat some soup! Walking was nearly impossible and every time I sneezed my entire body convulsed and wave upon wave of icy cold shudders flowed across my body like an Antarctic tsunami.
My freaking goose bumps had goose bumps!
What’s even more amazing than my being that sick yesterday is that today, a mere 24 hours later, I am almost 100% better! I’m very tired and I feel like someone’s been using sandpaper on my throat, but otherwise I’m fine. No headache, no cold spells, no shakes, nothing. Talk about freaky! How can I have been so sick that I honestly thought I was going to die and then, only a day later, be able to walk around and work as if nothing happened? Am I dead? Am I some sort of resurrected, undead zombie now? Should I take to shuffling around the city moaning, “Braaaiiinzzz!†and attacking attractive, single women until someone puts me out of my misery by re-killing me?
Mmmm… brains.
And honestly, why is it always brains, anyway? What is it about a brain that drives zombies crazy? Why not the heart, or the kidneys or even the gallbladder? What happens to the brains after the zombie eats them? The zombies are dead so they can’t actually digest the brains, which means that after only a few feedings their bodies would literally be full to bursting with brains and they physically couldn’t eat any more. Then what? Do the zombies stop hunting for more brains and sit around waiting for the ones they already have to rot away? Do other zombies attack the brain-stuffed zombies to steal their eaten-but-not-digested brains? What about zombies without stomachs? Do the brains just keep falling out of them and do other zombies then pick up the brains and eat them? Can a zombie, who has eaten someone’s brains, simply reach into their own body and re-consume the same brains to satiate their hunger? Do zombies love? Can they get married? What kind of cake would be served at a zombie wedding? Who would DJ and what music would be played? Where would a newlywed zombie couple go for a honeymoon?
Hey. Why do I have a sudden craving for brains?
Somebody help me… please?
I’m running into a CSS problem that I can’t seem to solve even after almost 10 hours of futzing around with it. So, if you know CSS and want to help me out before I paint the walls red using my own face as a paintbrush, drop me an email or IM me (MightyBoredGeeK). I think there’s a simple solution to my problem but dagnabbit, it’s driving me crazy!
Boogie, boogie, boogie, boo!
Wow, have I been busy.
Many things have conspired this week to keep me from you, my loyal minions. Doctor appointments, new websites, family members in trouble, social gatherings and even the finale of Who Wants To Be A Super Hero, have all done their best to keep me from writing here, but fear not! They have all failed and I am still here for you!
What do you mean you’re all on vacation today?
Well, in the off chance that someone out there checks this website sometime during this holiday weekend let me just say, “You suck.†Not one person wrote to me this week to find out if I was ok, or to offer their help with my WordPress woes, or even just to say hi. And this saddens me. It makes me sad because it means that my readers who I know check this site regularly for updates, are a bunch of heartless, uncaring, Bread-worshipping, poopy-heads.
Yeah, I’m looking at you too, Jules.
Sigh. Well I guess that’s too be expected, what with my on again, off again Blogging schedule of late. In my defense it is summertime and I’ve been doing other things with my time during these hot summer months, but I know you don’t care. You just want me to bring on the funny, don’t you? To you I’m just a clown, a fricking comedian who is only here on the earth to bring a little humor to your day. OK, then. I’ve got your humor, jackhole.
I’ve got it right here!
Take that! Ha!
…
Huh? What do you mean, “It looks like you’re holding a broken pencil?!†I’m insulting you by holding my crotch, stupid. Aren’t you insulted? What was that? A pencil’s eraser?! Hey! You’re not supposed to insult me! I’m insulting you with my gangsta pose and attitude!
Uhm… beyatch.
…
Oh crap. Now I think I’m going to cry.
What the heck’s happened to me?
I used to sit down in front of my computer and, an hour later, have a 700 word piece of comical genius ready to be posted here. Nowadays, when I actually have the time to sit down here, I find myself struggling to string three sentences together and the best joke I can come up with is, “I just farted.â€
Heh. And it smells like rotten eggs.
I know it’s not really my normal modus operandi, but lately I’ve been so preoccupied with allergies, work, allergies, my apartment(s) and allergies that writing funny stories here has been pretty low on my priority list of things to do. I know you’re all crushed to hear that, but the truth of the matter is that it’s allergy season and right now all of my willpower is focused on breathing without swallowing gallons and gallons of mucus. It might sound disgusting, but this morning I woke up, rolled over in bed and had about half a cup of mucus pour out of my left nostril and onto my pillow.
The yellowish-green, semi-solid kind of mucus, too. Ewww.
I would love to be funny right now. You have no idea how lovely it would be for me to be funny right now. That’s because being funny would mean that I was feeling good, or at least better than I have been lately. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling so great right now and I can’t even imagine feeling better except in the most abstract and ethereal way.
You know, like The Ghost Of Healthiness Past.
Instead I’m going to go back to laying down on the couch, popping my allergy medication as often as possible and moaning to the walls about how unfair it is that I have to suffer this way when HoBiscuit, the love of my life who is supposed to care for me and understand my pain, insists that we go to the botanical gardens or the park because it’s such a beautiful day outside and how can I possibly want to stay indoors with the lights off, curtains closed and the air purifiers blasting in my face? And believe you me, when I answer her with, “Because otherwise I’ll die.†I never get any sympathy. All I get is a scornful look of disdain, that sucking in air over teeth sound, a toss of her head and two sentences that show just how clueless she is when it comes to my suffering. “Why don’t you just grow up and take it like a man? Don’t be such a baby all the time!†And then she stabs me in the heart with the most hurtful thing she can possibly say when I’m this low. “It’s not like you’re really sick. I mean, honestly, it’s just allergies!â€
And now you know why she hides the knives.
My nose is bleeding.
Not because I’ve been in a fight, or am up on some super-high mountain or anything. No, my nose is bleeding because I’ve blown it over 1,000,000,000 times in the last hour and its innards are so raw and cracked that even looking at it in the mirror causes blood to flow from it like a waterfall. What I need now isn’t another allergy pill, or a softer tissue, or even sympathy. What I really need right now is someone to cure my allergies because I’m about ready to run amok with a gun on the city streets until someone finally puts me out of my misery. My allergies are so bad right now that I’d rather eat sand and poop glass than blow my nose just one more time. It’s so bad, really, that I am going to go to my room, stick tissues in my nostrils, cover my bloodshot eyes with a wet towel and cry myself to sleep.
Somebody save me, please?