garfield minus garfield

Again thanks to my brother, here's another modified comic strip that qualifies as the funniest thing I've seen in a long fucking time.


And as long as you're here, go ahead and take another gander at the Nietzsche Family Circus.

a commercial to hate

Here's a new commercial to hate, as well as a compelling reason to dust off the ol' boycott of things I'd never buy anyway:



This commercial represents a bold shift in the faux-masculine marketing strategy that initially prompted my boycott. Rather than use crude stereotypes and homophobia to sell traditionally male products (like beer and fast food), the Mike's guys are betting these same tools can be used to sell something no male I know has ever purchased. My hunch is that market research found no demographic interested in buying an overly sweet, fruit-flavored malt beverage, so their last-ditch effort to turn things around was simply to tell people that Mike's Hard Lemonade is manly, then hope no one notices that the underlying product has always been about the wussiest thing on earth.

The optimist in me hopes this commercial represents nothing more than the death knell sounding on a really shitty product, rather than the beginning of another depressing cycle of commercials trafficking in tired gender clichés.

The optimist in me is small.

latest entry: 3 Ghostface Killah albums

I woke up this afternoon with exactly one thing on my to-do list: buy every Ghostface Killah album ever made. After brunch, I set out with my bemused but ultimately sympathetic companion (let's call her "BBUSC") for the Virgin Megastore at Union Square and was disappointed to find they only had four of Ghostface's seven records. I snatched them up and began to plot my next move.

BBUSC suggested we try the Barnes & Noble across the way. To her credit, she wasn't optimistic about B&N stocking any Ghostface albums, but it was nearby and seemed like a risk worth taking. (The embarrassing, unspoken subtext of this conversation was that neither of us could think of a nearby independent music store in downtown fucking Manhattan.) Of course those bitches at B&N didn't sell any Ghostface records, but the trip wasn't a total loss because it gave me the opportunity to try to convince BBUSC that Ghostface was also an accomplished novelist who published under the name Richard Russo. (Again to her credit, I failed.)

Fortunately, as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of remembering where the hell an actual record store is. Sure enough, my pressing need to own every Ghostface Killah album stoked my memory of a store over on 2nd Avenue down past St. Mark's Place. This place only had two Ghostface albums, but-- amazingly, when you think about it-- both happened to be among the three I still needed.

I was exhausted and decided to go home. Actually I couldn't remember for sure if Ghostface had six albums or seven, and I didn't want to waste valuable Ghostface listening time walking around NYC looking for a seventh album that maybe didn't even exist. (If anybody knows where I can find The Pretty Toney Album, do let me know.)

Anyhoo, all this is a pretty long way of getting to my point. Looking back at my search, I realized that the number of Ghostface albums for sale is a pretty good measure of how good a record store is. Think about it: in an ideal world, you could decide you finally want to own every Ghostface Killah album ever made, go to one store, then have nothing to worry about for the rest of your life. Conversely, what the fuck is the point of even calling yourself a fucking record store if your fucking customers always walk out with exactly the same fucking number of Ghostface albums they walked in with?

So yeah. Virgin Megastore? 4 Ghostface albums. B&N? 0 Ghostface Albums. Independent record store on 2nd Ave? 2 Ghostface albums. Seems about right.

I also thought it'd be fun to rate the rest of my day on this scale:

• brunch at Westville East: 6 Ghostface Killah albums
• Wet Hot American Summer: 4.5 Ghostface Killah albums
  
• afternoon thunderstorm: 7 Ghostface Killah albums
• attendant humidity: 0 Ghostface Killah albums
• midnight showing of Eraserhead: (pass)
• Ghostface Killah's last album: 5 Ghostface Killah albums
  

All fucking day

My bottle of Olay face lotion says, right there on the front, "all day moisture lotion SPF 15".

Great. But this morning I read the back for the first time: "Directions: For all day SPF 15 protection, apply liberally on face and neck as often as necessary." Kind of changes the tenor of the claim on the front, eh? Why not just call it lifetime moisture lotion?

It reminded me of one time in college when I tried to buy a bottle of Pert Plus. I was looking for "Normal", but apparently they'd abandoned that label in favor of "Classically Clean". It was right there next to "Oily" and "Dry and Damaged". I remember thinking, "what the fuck kind of a way to promote a product is that? This hair cleaning product is meant for people with hair that's...already clean?"

I also remember coming back to the apartment that day and finding my roommate with this girl he'd been trying to date. I thought a good idea would be to sit down and explain to them why I thought labeling a shampoo bottle "Classically Clean" was a stupid fucking idea. I wanted the girl to think his roommates were funny and interesting, but maybe I was trying too hard.

Live and learn, I guess.

Kindly also retire these jokes

(5) The word "ginormous". Sure, this is just another example of my general proscription on mashing words together to make fake words, but this one deserves special mention. You know what I'll do? I'll take TWO FUCKING SYNONYMS and mash them together to make...ANOTHER FUCKING SYNONYM!!! Fuck me.

(6) Thinking clowns are scary and/or creepy. This is the most predictable thing on Earth. When was the last time you heard an adult talk about clowns without using this joke? And what's more, it's a stupid joke anyway. What's so scary about some asshole who dresses funny and talks to strangers? Are you afraid of the Pope, too?

i'll try not to be so selfish

My cousins are visiting from Charlotte this week. When I met them this afternoon, eight-year-old Lucy handed me a story she had written:

Once upon a time there were four mice who were in a family there names were David, Lucy, Nana Pat, and Grand dad. David was so lazy he only gatherd food for himself he played all day when Lucy, Nana pat, and Grandad worked all day. We worked so hard one day that david said we were lazy and he did all the work. Then one day david scarfed down the food at dinner time and didn't leav us any at all. so one day all of us but not david were so angry we said to david "We are tired of you eating are dinner every night look how skinny we are we have not eaten in ages because you are hoging every thing." Then Daivd said "Okay i'll try not to be so selfish." So then the four mice lived happliy ever after.

Huh.

I've got a new attitude

I've decided to start taking this blog much more seriously. Starting today, I'm going to start writing every day, hopefully contributing something more substantive than a link or a Youtube clip. I realized on the subway this morning that I have plenty to say; I've just been too lazy to get it out. I'd like to thank my readers for their patience during this dry spell, and I promise your loyalty will be rewarded in short order.

Today I'd like to talk about the economy.


APRIL FOOL'S MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!

I still don't have shit to say, but I'd be remiss not to pass along this link. It's the least I can do.

Get a load of this

Great as Full Metal Jacket is, I must admit I never really appreciated the ol' gun-as-penis metaphor. But now that I'm the owner of a huge fucking shotgun, it's starting to make sense.

Here's something interesting

The full story can be read here.

Isn't that interesting?

thing

We slept later than we'd meant to; it was a Sunday. Eventually we got up and put ourselves together for a run. We ran a while but I pulled up with a bad knee and we had to walk back. We needed milk for the pancakes but she'd remembered to slip a $5 bill in her sock before we left so we stopped at a gas station and bought some milk and a bottle of water that we shared in the sun.

The pancakes were buckwheat and not much by themselves but they were alright with fruit on them. We ate in front of the tv with the Redskins game on and read the Times intermittently. I gathered up the dishes when we were done and took them to the kitchen then she came over and we washed them together in silence. She told me later she thought about having sex then, which would have been alright but instead we went back to the couch and the game and she put her legs and her purple toenails over my lap which was alright too.

At some point my friend called and by the time I hung up the phone the Jets had tied the score and we got to watch overtime while I packed. She took some grapes and some Halloween-sized Kit Kats and another bottle of water and put it all in a brownbag for my flight and she did all of this without ceremony.

Then we went down to the corner and got me in a cab. We looked at each other as I drove away but the car was pointed in the wrong direction when I got in it and when it made a u-turn we had to look at each other some more. Finally it made a left, out of sight, and I went back to where I came from.