Cats Playing with String Theory

NEW 95

"There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level,
and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so."
- -John Scalzi

Jump to the Newest of the New

9/21/08

If you throw at someone's head, it's very dangerous, because in the head is the brain.

Happy Autumn to you in the Northern Hemisphere, and Happy First Day of Vacation to me! I want you to read this with your pulse pounding in your temples on the edge of a seat electric with tension, as my wish-list for this week includes "Clean Closet" and "Laundry," and so this is as exciting as it's gonna get.

      I went to the Coventry farmer's market for the second and last time this year, as a 26-mile round trip is hard to justify. It was packed, both with vendors and customers, as harvest time is here. I saw a small llama, a lot of dogs barking, some merino sheep, a lot of barking dogs, and a rabbit in a cage nearly shaking to death in fear because of everybody's stupid barking smelly dumbass moron dogs. Oh, with some screaming toddlers poking the bunny. Sorry, I count this as animal abuse. Can you imagine a cat in that cage? People wouldn't think it was cute. They'd be too busy screaming about how poor dog, poor tot got their poor noses, poor hands ripped bloody by the razor claws of vengeance. I didn't notice what the booth was selling, just walked away angry.
      Next booth to catch my eye was selling Indian food. Chicken tikke! I fought the urge to buy some, but only because I've planned to buy that exact dish at Taj Mahal today for weeks. I used to go to Taj every 2 weeks, then every month, but I recently restricted myself to every other month. Eating out is expensive. It made no sense to buy the same thing twice in a few hours. But I felt bad about it, as no one was in line.
      Next I bought some fresh local salsa from SalsaDelivery. With a name like that, one would assume that they--no, no they don't deliver salsa. Right now, it's just the name. Like naming UPS with the PS standing for "Pretty much not at the moment--Sorry." Before I had a bit of their hot salsa I made my usual disgruntled comment on how "hot" store salsa is never hot, but more like chunky ketchup. Oh, this was good! "I like it a little hotter," I said, and bought some anyway. It took me a while to notice that the heat lingered on the tongue, and that's always a good sign. I was the only person in line there.
      Then I bought some Bartlett pears, 8 for $3, which is not cheap but they were fresh enough that one still had leaves on the stem. Finally, I got the reason I come to this place (when I can afford it), some Beltrane Farms goat cheese. I was the only person in line again. This, I think, is because most people are stupid.
      When home, I ate 6 Fritos Scoops' worth of the salsa. It was a lot hotter than I'd thought from my previous small taste. I didn't just need a glass of ice water, I needed to hold the water in my mouth surrounding my flaming tongue. That'd be a good superhero name, "The Flaming Tongue." Okay...maybe it'd be terrible.
      After a while, I wasn't just craving chicken tikke, I had a tongue aflame with desire for it! I pulled Taj Mahal's menu out and called up the first number. "Number not in service." Odd. So I dialed the second--"Number not in service." ARRGH! They've gone out of business in the last 2 months?! It's a mile away, and gas ain't cheap (especially after driving 26 miles), so I walked there, even if it meant crossing the deadliest street in town. They sure looked closed, with signs in the window. "Closed for Remodeling." That's a relief! There was a building permit in the window, and it looked like that was all they were doing. But why turn off the phone? Why not have an answering machine that says "Closed for remodeling, open again in XX/2008"? Most people will call once, then just throw the menu in the trash and check the Yellow Pages for the next closest Indian restaurant. I didn't think to ask when they'd reopen at the other Indian-owned restaurant in the plaza, the only place in town--maybe the world--where you can get chicken tikke pizza.
      After a period of disappointment, I ordered hot wings from the other place I can walk to, the comrades at the People's Choice Soviet. This involves not crossing the deadliest street in town, so naturally, I was almost run over. By some tard in his big gas-guzzling old van. He was driving from the apartment complex across the street to the...apartment complex directly across that street. A trip of mere yards. Wanna bet every time he fills up, he curses them greedy Ay-rabs, and hopes McCain begins to DRILL DRILL DRILL? But walk across 'm'street? He ain't no ECO-FAG!
      Is it a bad sign when you're leaving the Pizza Soviet, and one of the workers is returning with a big, empty bag of McDonalds? If that means the food is different than McD's, no, it is not. I suppose that if I worked in a pizza place, I'd get sick of even the smell of it. Then again, I work in a liquor store, and yet I believe that I will now have me another beer!
      You can now sit back in your chair and wipe your forehead and go "PHEWW!" I know my day's been a wild ride!

9/22

9/23

HAD

Don't return used condoms to the distributor through the mail.

Science proves that you're more likely to be a right winger if you're scared by pictures of spiders. McCain should've passed on Palin and gone with Miss Muffet.

9/24

I was in Europe the whole summer, and all there is, is, like, French, I didn't see anything because I wasn't in America.

      If you're wondering how my vacation is progressing, yes, I successfully did my laundry! And watched some movies.
      Lord of the Rings, but I watch that every year on my fall vacation. This year, I decided to watch it as it was originally released, and not in the Expanded Version. That really only has one bit I really think should've been included in the theater release. Gimli starts off the first movie hating elves, but by the end of it, he thinks they're the totally awesome cool. The expanded version throws in the bit where he meets Galadriel and falls in chivalric love with her---which also improves the scene where she's tempted to take the Ring. I mean, it's not as "Why wasn't that in there?" as Star Trek II, and the excised scene that explicitly stated that the dead trainee was Scotty's nephew, or Aliens, when we're not told that the reason Ripley defends little Newt is because her own daughter died of old age in the time she was in both the rescue pod and suspended animation. Mainly because, crimeny, the LotR scene involved more than just dialogue. You need special effects to make Rhyss-Davies a fucking midget, but not to have the guy from My Two Dads read one line, and thus make the movie so much better.
      My Two Dads, if you've never seen it, was a late 80s sitcom set in a Bizarro universe where people had half a car in their living rooms, but didn't have paternity tests. In comparison, ALF was a docudrama.
      I saw The Great Race, a 1965 movie I loved as a kid and haven't seen since...Don't know when. But I watched it every time it came on TV, back in those pre-VCR days. I enjoyed seeing it again, but that may just be nostalgia. There was a bit too much slapstick in it for my current tastes. But that's what it wanted to be, a 60s version of a silent movie. It's even dedicated to "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy," and near the end everyone runs into a room full of pies. A scene like that never involves anyone sitting down and eating said pies.
      If you were ever a fan of the cartoon "Wacky Races," well, Hanna-Barbera never had an original idea, and this is where they stole that one. Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate and Peter Falk as Max--Dastardley and Muttley. They even stole the look of their car.
      (I get why did H-B stole all their ideas, but why, to this day, does the studio lie about it? "Flintstones" wasn't ripped from "Honeymooners"! "Top Cat" wasn't ripped from "Sgt. Bilko"! Sure, we got an actor from Bilko to voice the same character that we gave the same name, but that's just a coincidence!)
      Also, Superman Returns: I was never any great fan of either the comic books or the earlier movie series, and people who were never gave it any great reviews, so I made no attempt to seek this when it first came out. But I quite enjoyed it. Lowered expectations, maybe?
      But when it was over...it was just over. What was the deal with Superkid? That was so minor, it didn't even need to be in the movie. While the star, Whatshizname, was great as Superman, he didn't register as Clark Kent. In fact, for the first time I found myself wondering why there even is a Clark Kent. When the comic started 8,000 years ago, it was because working for the Planet was the way Superman found about world crises. Because they had teletype machines. Does he need to pretend to be this dweeb when he can sit at a PC with an internet connection? Or when, as the movie claims, he can just orbit the Earth and hear what he needs to deal with? Like Super Green Beret's magic hat? Umm, I think science told me a long time ago, you can't hear sound IN THE VACCUUM OF SPACE.
      But, okay, suppose you can. Dang, I went along with the "nobody knows who Clark is when he takes his glasses off" crap, even if as a kid I knew I couldn't become invisible by taking my glasses off. (I believed that nobody could tell who Spider-man was because he put on a mask, until 1968, when I went trick-or-treating in a Spider-Man mask and every parent in the neighborhood instantly knew who I was anyway) But why does he need to pretend to be anybody but Superman? If people start to pester him, shit, there's a place at the north pole and it's called "The Fortress of Solitude," and not "The Fortress of Pester-Me-A-Lot-tude," right? And since you don't need to eat or even breathe, go sit on Mars for a month. And if you have some desire to mingle with these fragile humans that you'll outlive by, what, a few millennia, jeez, wear a hoodie and go to Starbucks or something. Sure, maybe you need human companionship. But if you don't need food, if you don't need air--why the FUCK do you need A JOB?
      And you're a literal illegal alien from a town so small they fucking named it Smallville, no, you ain't getting a job at the only big newspaper. You'll get a job in retail. In the midwest, most likely at Wal-Mart. But you're fucking Superman. "OH NO! Braniac has launched a giant asteroid at the Earth! But my shift doesn't end until six!"
      Fuck that. Blast a hole through that store's roof, save the fucking planet, and don't bother to come back for your last paycheck. If you actually need money--wait, given that the needs for food, clothing and shelter are already crossed off your list, why would you? If you do, squeeze some fucking coal into diamonds. If the paparazzi bug you, either go to the Moon or, HMM, do they have cameras, or HEAT VISION? Set a few photographers on fire! AHHH-HAHAHAHA! They don't follow you NOW, do they! Sure, there's multiple murder warrants--but can they serve them to you on VENUS?
      Oh, wait--! Put your glasses back on! Now you're invisible!
      Well...I liked it except for that part. But it's possibly that I have mental problems.

9/25

Show me the verbal agreement! Show me the verbal agreement!

Oh, c'mon, Stupidest Things Ever Said Calendar! I can hear stupidester things on the evening news!

PALIN:
That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade - we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

Yes. Why, yes, exactly. "That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out." Yes. Why, yes. Just what I was going to say, possibly via a photo of an adorable LOLCat involving its hamburgers. Well--who hasn't said with who I'm speaking with themselves that? Looking to bail out that? And the rest of you--wait, oh crap! Palin's not speaking in TONGUES again, is the Veep?!
May I be pardoned for just a wee bit to Google an image?

Yeah, that looks like the one.

9/25

Wal-Mart is the largest company of its size in the world.

      Oh, CHUCK! I'm sorry that I blew off making fun of your drain-bamaged cartoons last week, or should I say--last WEAK?! Sorry to phrase my question in the form of an answer that matches how lame you were, Chuckles. Oh, but today, you give me such gifts! Such as the above!
      WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?! Yeah, the best way to show your 72-year-old candidate is in a boxing match with a younger and healthier guy. Wait, how long was McCain's medical report that he didn't allow anyone to read for more than an hour again? Like 1,100 pages? I'm sure that there's nothing so wrong with him that it requires 1,100 pages to list! Yeah, put him in the ring and get punched by someone! He's SO BRAV--
      Wait, BRAVE candidate who, until HOURS BEFORE IT, RAN AWAY from tonight's debate? THAT, my friends, is GUTS! He couldn't stand on a stage and have a civil debate with another candidate, he had to run--or limp, or drool, or whatever septugenarians do when startled. Fill their Depends, mayhap. He's afraid of A DEBATE, but he'll take on those bad guys, one on one! He'll tire them out, with all that running around the ring covering his face while screaming "Don't hit me!" while Benny Hill music plays! Hey, can't he just get his Veep to shoot those guys from her plane like wolves, while he hides under the covers sucking his Geritol?
      And there's plenty of guys to shoot! OH GOD NO NOT THE VENEZUELANS AAAHHHH! Every American's WORSTEST NIGHTMARE! is --Venezuelans! MY BED IS FULL OF THE SMELL OF ME PISSING IN FEAR FROM--THE VENEZUELANS!!! And, NO! not the dreaded North Kor--wait a minute, what, is North Korea just a retarded guy wearing a bike helmet? And "Terror" is wearing boxers with hearts on them? Whoa, and looka them Irans and Putins, drawn so TERRIFYI...Jesus, they're not fucking scary at all! Is this the "World Leader Look-Alike" contest held at the Special Olympics? Oh, no, wait! In the back is the hulking, dopey-grinned "DEFICIT"! Uh, Chuck--you DO realize that that's Bush-Cheney's retarded stepchild, right?
      Seriously, Chuck. You drew this drunk and sobbing in your Oxycontin, knowing your time has passed, and right-winged elites like you will be sucked into the morass of the banking deregulation disaster, right with us poor people.

Oh, no wait--you don't. You've lied so much about the Dodd/Frank Bill, you can't even remember which lie you told! They were trying to bail out average homeowners being foreclosed on, but you lied and pretended that they were all about bailing out the predatory lenders, and now that it's Bush/Cheney bailing out billionaires--NO NO NO, Congress did it! NO NO NO Mommy and Daddy say the bruises and broken bones are from me falling down the stairs! MOMMY AN' DADDY DON'T LIIIIE. They don't--sob--LIE! If I tell the truth, they'll--Me and the economy just walk into a lot of doors!
You're right, Chuck. Some people do keep voting for people who just make everything worse. Sometimes, they want to do it for the third time in 8 years!

      I normally don't make the cartoons this big, but I made an exception for this one. So that you couldn't figure out WTF the tiny labels say either! Let's just ignore the "Friendly Media" bullshit and try to read: "Energy Policy" (of course, it means "NO DRILL," as this is One-Note Chuck), "Surge Denial" and "Flip-Flops" and "Tax Policy" (I think I've gone over those lies here enough already), and "Reverend Wright" (what, AGAIN?!), and of course, the most important issues of the day:
      "Couch Pouch," "Brl Ayrr," "Born June Vote" and, worst of all, "Cungmmg to Goons and Reliq!"
      Obama CUNGMMGS TO GOONS AND RELIQ! And yet you still want to vote for him! Well, you should take a look at the McCain picture! You SHOULD be voting for the presidential candidate with the BIGGEST BOX OF USED HYPODERMIC NEEDLES.
      "YEAH, Babar! Right there! Just one more NEEDLE IN MY FACE! OhhhhOOOhhhHHh...feels...so GOOooOOood...That...BOTOXYCONTIN--yeah...yeah...Botox, that's what it is...Botox...I am SO READY for my DEBATE! Where's the exit, again? Just in case?"

There's one last one. It's another in Chuck's ongoing series of "There is no minority more abused and discriminated against than the incredibly over-rich! Am I right, my friends? Huh? Am I right?" And I'm not going to say any more about it, other than it's about how the LIE-berals want to--GASP!--cap CEO compensation, as a condition of BushCo. giving them a fucking trillion dollars of free taxpayer money. I'll just let you decide whether Chuck's cartoon makes you empathise with these poor, poor oppressed people...

...or cry, "TO THE GUILLOTINE!"

Chuckles, you are truly the master of your craft.

9/27

When I said that Chuck's cartoons of last week were "weak," I meant that they just didn't give me anything to work with. Sure, there was the one in which he used the phrase "BUSH/CHENEY FAILED POLICIES" and followed that with one blaming the Democrats for the economic meltdown, via a calm conversation on a park bench between an average citizen and the personification OF FUCKING DEATH. (You do know that you see the ones I don't dissect here, right?) However, there is one that's kept preying on my mind. It appeared the middle of last week, which is appropriate.

      ...as the middle of the week is Wednesday Thursday Friday!!
      Whoa, what is THAT about? The GOP is a bunch of fat drunken slobs? Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin is really ugly? (Seriously--how many teeth do you count in the first panel? I see ONE) Nice fucking dress, too, snowbilly, if it's 1933. And did your eye also think that those tiny, cold black hearts in panel 2 were flies hovering over the rotted stench of the males, too? And "babe!" Yes, ancient wrong-wingers like Chuckles really think that women will vote for McSame because Palin has a vagina, as that's the only reason that matters to them. And to please their drunken, smelly idiot husbands, of course!

9/28

When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room.

9/29

He is like a guardsman. Every part of him is erect.

The first half of my vacation: teh awesum! The second: wuz not so grate ackshually.
It basically rained Thursday night until Monday morning, but it didn't matter, as I spent Saturday morning through Monday afternoon sick with nausea and diarrhea. I wasn't utterly incapacitated. Except for all the sleeping. But there are better things to do on vacation than sleep and shit.

      And I apparently awoke in some Alternate Universe! They voted against the "Give Cheney a TRILLION DOLLARS, no questions asked" bill?! They gave him the PATRIOT Act, they gave him the Iraq War, but after 8 years of him beating the country with a baseball bat with spikes in it, they decided that maybe this time, it was a bad idea? What will they do when Cheney's beloved "I must eat ALL your babies!" bill comes up? Refuse him any mustard?
      I'm no economist, but "Give me a zillion smackers so's I can buy up bad debt with no strings attached, and no I seriously pinkie-swear, not one red cent will be going to Halliburton this time, HA! HA! HA!" crowed while Cheney lightly salts a squawling newborn...Ah, that doesn't seem like a very good idea. If every restaurant in America is about to go bankrupt because instead of buying food, they bought the rotting carcasses of diseased rats, um, why would I want to buy their dead rats? Aren't there better uses for 700 billion dollars than buying something that's worthless? Why am I supposed to be happy when a restaurant feeds me a dead rat, yet rush to them with bankloads of my cash when it looks like they might have to eat one, too?
      Enjoy your rats, assholes. And I mean the ones on your plate. Not the ones in the White House and Congress.

9/30

      Free bonus quote, which turned up today on QotD:
      "No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."--Elbert Hubbard
      ...At least if you're going to work still sick.
      I think it's done now; we'll see. And I think I know what caused it: POUTINE! Indirectly. On Friday I got it at Chez Ben for a second time. The last time I was there, I wondered why they had 2 rooms seperated only by a doorframe, as no one was in it. But that was during late June. In late September, there's a Catholic high school and a tech school right across the street, and it's not summer vacation. The students were all in the other room, and it was as loud as a school cafeteria in there. And schools are germ factories. Somebody gave me something while I ate. Hopefully, it's done, but I thought that yesterday, and it could be one of those "feel like crap for hours every day after getting up for a week" things I sometimes get. As I am a terrible, whiny sick person. I imagine even the near-deaf cat tires of listening to me.

Longer than most articles I link to, but worth the read, "like having Gidget address the Reichstag":

"Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It's the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant. Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the "difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick," blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese."

10/1

Once Tony Daley opens his legs you've got a problem.

Because of my work schedule, I have the time to watch the TVs tomorrow. I'm torn between watching the Vice Presidential debate or my Netflix rental, The Worst Witch. And, really, that is a total, unplanned coincidence.
One is supposed to be a near-legendarily badly-done unintended comedy, and the other is from Netflix.

10/2

If everyone wore my clothes, I don't think there would be wars, truly. Of course, then I would be the richest man in the world and most people would become bankrupt. My clothes are expensive. So maybe wars are better.

I noticed the time just before the Veep debate was to begin, and I still haven't eaten, so I guess I'm not watching it. I'm sure every political website tomorrow will be linking to YouTube clips anyway.

So how about something that we know will be stupid! UPCHUCK!
This latest lot turned up all at once yesterday, much in the same way a vacant lot quickly fills up with garbage and old mattresses.

      FLY GUY's back! Wow, and all that stuff actually was working until January, 2001, just like it was with North Korea's nuke program! And then some guy started calling three countries, none of them allied to each other in any way, and two of them mortal enemies that had fought an 8 year war that killed millions, part of his made-up "Council of Doom". Then he invaded one of them over the objections of the whole world. And then the other two decided that the only way that they could be safe from this lunatic was to actually have WMDs. And every time Iran could be coaxed to the bargaining table, BushCo started screaming about bombing them, and, HUH, the negotiations failed. Sure, every UN inspection team said that Iran wasn't making bombs, but those dupes said the same about IRAQ!
      As I've said before, the only way to make a paranoid person less paranoid is to make him more paranoid! That's why we should elect a president who sings songs about bombing them! We Will Win--through KARAOKE!
      Also, bombs.
      Hey, what was that other country in the Axis of Evil, the one with the actually insane leader who told the world he was building an atomic bomb? The one Bush kept us safe from through direct diplomacy, when it became it was clear that they could deliver on their threat? No, not Pakistan! They only GAVE those two countries their nuclear bomb technology! Well, I guess that it was decided by The Decider that the North Koreans were nice and friendly and not a threat worth bombing and invading. At least until Exxon discovers a way to extrude oil from kimchii...
      The rest of Chuck's cartoons for the week were surely spilled out in a fever. You know how the "Bail Out Rich People (latest in a series) Bill" was defeated in the House by liberal Democrats and right-wing Republicans? I guess Chuck and me are on the same side of the fence! For different reasons, I'm sure. "Al Qaeda will kill us in our sleep! Pass the PATRIOT Act NOW! Don't think about it!" was the reason I was against the PATRIOT Act. The only votes against it came only from congressmen who actually read it. And this was quickly followed by "Iraq will kill us in our sleep! Invade them NOW! Don't think about it!" and THAT WORKED OUT GREAT. And now it's "The collapse of mumble mumble will kill us in our sleep! Give us a TRILLION FUCKING DOLLARS NOW! Don't think about it!" Hey...let's wait and think about it. After 25 years, we're still waiting for "trickle-down economics" to give any evidence that it works; let's actually think about this. Wasn't "Buy a house NOW! It's a super great idea DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!" one of the factors here?
      Of course, the right-wing Repubs are always in favor of deregulation and corporate profits and gummint non-interference, so that's why they voted against...wait, that's the main thing that caused it! I have no idea why they're against all that NOW! unless it's an election year and they're afraid being voted out by their constituents who've been stockpiling guns and canned goods since the USSR years.
      Chuck? He hates the bailout! I want time to figure out what we should do. Chuck? He's sure of what to do!

BEAT UP WOMEN!

KILL THE SPECULATORS! (These would be the same people that he held blameless for rising oil prices in this cartoon, where he blamed it on FLY GUY, less than 3 months ago)
NOW! Chuck says we should also KILL Congress and the Media! FASTER, Chucklehead! KILL! KILL!!

      "OW-OW-OWOOOO!"

      TOO LATE! The already-undead and GAY vampire Barney Franks-enstein will drag you into the graveyard, and there he'll vant to Suck your--probably not Blood! HE'S GAY!
      Oooh-hoo, boys and girls! He'll drag you into the cursed Graveyard of...Fannie Mac? Umm, what? He's still going on about that? The "Must stop Dodd-Franks Foreclosure Bill that would help average people, while throwing a small amount of money at"--ARRRGH! EVERY TIME he brings this up, it's not just farther from reality, it's farther from what he originally said and believed! NOW that bill is the cause of EVERYTHING wrong with the economy? In a month, what will he be blaming it for? His years of endless constipation? "My liberal doctor said it was my poor diet, but someday I'll prove that it was VAMPIRE BARNEY FRANKS, doing me up the butt while I slept!"

10/3

Is my right honorable friend saying that Wrens' [British women in the armed forces] skirts must be held up until all the soldiers have been satisfied?

I remember this short I saw once nearly 40 years ago, but I don't remember what Disney movie ran after it. That tells you something right there.
It would never be made today, and it hasn't been seen for years, so apparently Disney wants to pretend it never existed. Because it presents Evolution as a fact? Because it ends with 5 minutes of 1969 Gilliamesque clip-art trip-out cut-outs? Because the pro-vegan hero ends up as a meal? You be the judge of whether or not It's Tough to be a Bird. (Three YouTubes that play with a pause between segments)

10/4

10/5

I LIKE SINGING, I LIKE EATING, I LIKE POTATO CHIPS, I CHIPS

10/6

Dean Reece, 21, of Pennine Way, Kirkby, who pleaded guilty to seven robberies and possessing an imitation forearm with intent to commit robbery.

10/7

I'm writing this while also taking a survey for HomeScan. It's amusing when you say "No" to the question "Is there a female head of household?" and then they ask "Is there a male head of household?" Oddly, "hermaphrodite" is not a choice.
Just now they asked me "How many people live in your household, including yourself?" and the drop-down menu started at zero.

      Two years ago, Jessica and me were to go to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. It rained, so we went elsewhere. Last year, she couldn't go, so I went alone. The weather was reasonably warm and semi-sunny at home, but bizarrely became overcast, cold and windy 15 miles east at the RenFest. I stayed only 45 minutes, as I didn't bring a coat, and the events had 15 minute gaps between them. This Sunday's weather, when we tried to go again? The prediction was for Sunny and 62 degrees!
      ...When I went to bed. Twelve hours later when I awoke: 48 and RAIN. But we were determined! Fuck you, weather! We're going! Well...we didn't really fucked youed the weather. We wore coats. She wore a scarf, and I wore gloves (except when handling things, when I dropped gloves)
      For two smart people, we were rather stupid. We were given a program and a weekend schedule at the gate, and we only looked at the latter. This told us what was happening when where, but not what it was. That was in the program. Duh. So we just wandered around finding events as they happened. Usually, we just walked towards wherever there was noise.
      Jess stopped us at Su--no, I won't say the name, lest she find me via Google. She was a storyteller with sock puppets, and was so bad that we walked out when the little kids did. Some story about a bullfrog who sings "I'm a great big bullfrog!" as he meets other animals, all larger than him and slightly larger than the last. We lasted through porcupine, rabbit, pig and fox, although foxes really aren't bigger than pigs. There really didn't seem to be any point to the damn fable, and for all I know, she's still there, just now working her way up to "blue whale."
      We went to Curious Magic, which was a contortionist fire-eater and a sleight-of-hand guy. They were entertaining, but after the bullfrog story, what wouldn't be? We caught the end of "Zoltan the Adequate," who was a comic juggler. As opposed to a tragic juggler, I guess, one who fails at keeping the chainsaw aloft.
      We wandered towards the noise and ended at the Pub Sing, which was drinking songs, and part of a day-long theme, "The Wedding of Guinevere and King Arthur." It was fun, although if we'd read the program, we would've been elsewhere.
      Next was Smee and Blogg, Singing Executioners. Literal gallows humor, although since it was all-ages, they could also be called "Corn on the Macabre." At the end, I tipped them $2, as that would get me a fake tattoo (currently on the fridge). Jess gave them a buck, and also got one. Suuure, $2 for me, half-price for the hot babe!
      We had fair food, of course. A cup of hot cider, while the poor guy selling "ICE COLD LEMONADE" on this ice cold day had no business. I got a Scotch egg, what with being half-Scottish (we walked past the kilt shop, me explaining that as I was half-Scots, I could only wear half a kilt). A Scotch egg is a hardboiled egg, rolled in sausage and deep fried. Deee-lish! Jess got some fried dough, which was greasy even for something deep fried, so she only ate half. I bought the only other thing either of us bought, a little statue of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess. Because nothing says "Renaissance Faire" like "Ancient Egypt."
      We decided to see the Royal Wedding, but the previous show was running late, so we wandered. Thank God! Literally! The show we missed because of the Pub Sing was "Pope and Cardinal." That was their G-rated show, and we'd stumbled into "Poprah!" the one that wasn't PG as listed in the schedule, but "R-rated, occasionally NC17 and running to Z" as the Pope said. Every other act we'd seen was funny, but clearly scripted. This was all improv, very rude and totally hilarious. We were talking as it was beginning, and I reacted when one of the characters said "fuckwad." We were pointed out to everyone by the Pope, although Jess wasn't even paying attention to them, as her reaction was a comeback to me calling her a dick. Some family tried to sit down, but they were shooed away. "This is adults only!" said one actor, and when they tried to sit down, the Pope said "We just said 'fuckwad'." Their 2 young, blonde, face-painted daughters looked a bit baffled, but dad finally took them away. Another little kid wandered in sans escort and carrying a box of granola bars. The Cardinal offered him a dollar for it before realizing it was just a box of trash. Okay, okay, you hadda be there. Eventually they began reading off the rules (after pointing out the "Woman in the black and white scarf and her husband, gay friend...?" "STRAIGHT gay friend!" I said, but that just caused more confusion and humor) and they were already near the end of their half-hour time slot. It was all improv, and face-achingly funny. A lot of these acts do ren fests for a living, traveling from one to another. I don't know if Pope and Cardinal are locals, although one actor's stage was named "Bolton Colchester" after a pair of nearby towns.
      Then we saw Zoltan's Weird Show--apparently, there are 3 different guys with different acts all being Zoltan. This was geek stuff, sucking on razor blades and lying on beds of nails while a cinderblock is sledgehammered on his chest, sticking a huge needle through his arm. The couple behind us left when the needle went in. Jess was sure it was fake, as his hands were dyed the same color as hers after she'd used fake blood for her daughter's school project and YES, we are both so strange that I never even asked what the hell type of school project THAT was. I wasn't so sure it was faked, although I suggested that latex "skin" might've been involved.
      We passed a guy on stilts in an Ent costume. While having a camera on me, I didn't take a shot of him or anything else. What a dope. In passing we heard that a joust was going on, and that was cool, albeit obviously staged. No one fell in the big pile of horseshit. Part of the shtick involved the joust being over the honor of a stablehand, the villainess taunted the stable girl with "If you are as good with cleaning up after the horses as they say, perhaps you will be as good cleaning my enemy's body off the field!" and yet she didn't point at the steaming pile and ad lib "By the way--YOU MISSED A SPOT!" I'd be a terrible jouster, but I think I'd be funnier.
      And then we left before it ended, before the traffic got medieval on our bumper. We stopped at the famous Rein's Deli, and due to the still-digesting Scotch egg, I barely finished my chic sal sandwich. With half a fried dough in her, Jess had a giant corned beef reuben, a side of fries, and 3 pickles. Yes, she has a supermodel's body and yet can eat like a pig. I'm glad I'm not a woman, as I think I'd hate her.
      Odd moment: abruptly realizing "There are only WHITE PEOPLE here!" Seriously, total Honky Town and Cracker Central. Also: you can see lots of (white) women walking around with their tits hanging out of tiny tops, and yet none of them are attractive. The hottest babe I saw (besides the one I was with) was a blonde in a wheelchair. The first underdressed woman we saw looked liked she was carrying a cafeteria tray of Jello shots chest-high. "It was like she just stuffed her boobs and fat up there!" said Jess in disgust. In retrospect, the only really overweight people we saw there were half-nekked women. Weird.
      We should've planned things better, but it was so much fun that we're going next year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUhuPn8_d0Q sound editor Kant Pan

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