now hiring!

Job title: Dennys Late Nite Music Selector

Key Responsibilities: Scouring the bottom of the pop culture barrel for the most insufferable "music" imaginable with which to punish late night clientele. Excessive auto tuning and inexplicable lyrics encouraged.

To apply, submit a mix tape consisting of equal parts ass rock, pop-hop, poorly remixed 80s duets, and Smashmouth.

EOE. Compensation commensurate with cultural obtuseness. Ke$ha fans encouraged to apply.

am i the only one who sees a huge problem with this?

Michael Jackson's memorial service will be taking place tomorrow at Los Angeles' Staples Center, and promises to be a massive spectacle. Streets will be blocked off, a basketball arena will be filled to capacity, and tickets to the service are being scalped for tens of thousands of dollars (in a depressed economy, no less). It will be a circus the likes of which the world has never seen. And if that's how the Jacksons want to honor the King of Pop, that's up to them. I have no problem with that.

I do have a problem, however, with the way this memorial service is being paid for: not by the Jackson family, or by Michael's estate, or by his plethora of obscenely wealthy friends, but by the City of Los Angeles.

In case you glossed over that, let me repeat it: A private citizen's memorial service is being paid for, 100%, by taxpayer dollars. Millions of them.

If you live in LA, this should piss you off big time. This kind of squandering is not only incredibly irresponsible, it's practically criminal. Heck, it almost makes San Diego look pretty good by comparison.

at least now someone's there to keep mr humphries company

Well, Mrs. Slocombe is now an official member of the June Deadlebrities club. Yeah, I know it's technically July, but just barely, and I think she made it in close enough to the others to warrant being on the same list.

No word yet on the health condition of her pussy.

(Relax, relax, the lady just loves her cat).

talk about june gloom...

June 2009 has sure been a monumental month for celebrity deaths, hasn't it? Those of you who know me know that I usually don't pay much mind to celebrities, and that famous people dying don't tend to concern me nearly as much as, say, the 30,000 children under age 5 who die every day from stupid causes like diarrhea and lack of food. But even I have to step back and say hot damn, we've got a lot of celebrities dying this month!

First we had Ed McMahon on 6/23. Ok, he was 86 years old, so nobody was too surprised. Everybody dies eventually, if they live long enough. America moved on before it even stopped to necessitate moving on.

But then, apparently-that-was-considered-hot-in-the-70's Charlie's Angels actress Farrah Fawcett died of cancer two days later, on 6/25. That one seemed to catch America off guard, although she'd been fighting cancer for a long time, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. What was unexpected, at least to me, was the collective mass disappointment that she never got to marry some guy I'd never heard of named Ryan O'Neal. Seriously, why are you people so emotionally involved in a total stranger's personal life? No wonder your own marriage is falling apart.

Not to be outdone, however, legendary freakshow and "King of Pop" Michael Jackson suddenly dropped dead mere hours after Fawcett, causing the entire world to exclaim, "Farrah who? Nevermind that drivel, someone important just died!" The entirety of Planet Earth reacted to the news as if every king, president, duke, and PM had just merged into one amazing superhuman demigod, and then imploded on itself, taking the sun, moon, and every firstborn male along with it. Lenin banged in vain on the sides of his glass coffin for attention, Eva Peron wondered why she got such a pauper's treatment, and Princess Diana still hasn't stopped pointing out the fact that a fake "king" gets more attention than a real duchess. Seven heads of state stepped down or killed themselves in acts of solidarity, and Ireland instituted a second potato famine as an expression of mourning. And all of this was seen as a right and proper response to such a tragedy.

The entire world was still in a state of mourning three days later (and now forgetting to even ask, Farrah who?), and it was just assumed that the Pope would fast-track Jackson to sainthood by the week's end. One man dared question the world's collective Jackomania, though, and that man was legendary infomercial yelling man Billy Mays. He knew what he had to do. On the morning of 6/28, Mays heroically died in a valiant effort to take the deadlebrity spotlight off of Michael Jackson, and thereby save humanity from itself. Unfortunately for humanity, though, Billy Mays' star power was not strong enough to distract a spiraling-to-the-depths mankind from its hopelessly mournful trajectory, and his untimely death proved to be in vain; he simply could not compete. It's exactly like when The Thirteenth Floor came out one month after The Matrix.

Needless to say, humanity remains on the fast track to Michael-Jackson-induced self-destruction, and I have no idea what can save her at this point. Even Billy Mays was powerlesss to stop it. I just hope it doesn't take an infomercial pitchman double whammy, because I really like this guy:

everything to be said has already been said, but i'm going to say something anyway

The other day, my friend mentioned to me that she was surprised I hadn't posted anything about the Miss USA pageant controversy, as it is standard practice for me to comment on such things. I had no idea what she was talking about, as I hadn't yet read the internets that day, so I made my way to YouTube to find the incident in question. And I must admit, I was more than a little disappointed. Sorry, but beauty queens stammering out goofy drivel has been a little played out this past year, and it really isn't worth my time to comment on such old-hat anymore.

But then tonight, while enjoying a generator of random images, I found this cartoon, and couldn't resist posting it:



So now you can be happy, Kris; I've commented on your pageant scandal. Now I'm going to bed.

animator vs. animation

This is how we did it in 1953*:



And this is how we did it in 2006*:
A vs. A


*Of course, by saying we, I naturally mean they, obviously, as they were a part of, and I was not, something that they did, and I did not do, for I was not a part of the team (which, if I were, would be we) which carried out these respective projects, which were done by them and not me, making it they, and not we.

bob cratchit would shoot you in the face if he got the chance.

If I hear one more person complain about this alleged "war on Christmas," I'm gonna slap them silly. Nobody is out to get rid of Christmas. There are no supervillains sitting in their lairs, concocting diabolical schemes to rid the world of Christmas once and for all, laughing heartily with their henchmen about how now Chanukah will be the big winter holiday.

Seriously, if someone who doesn't know you wants to give you a friendly greeting, do you really expect them to say, "Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Super Solstice, and Bitchin' Festivus, depending on whichever holiday you happen to celebrate, as well as Happy Thanksgiving, Boxing Day, and a Happy New Year too"? No, because not only would that be stupid, it would be a waste of everybody's time and an annoyance. So shut up and quit complaining about "Happy Holidays" and just be glad that you're not getting a laundry list of seasonal greetings that will just piss you off and make you late for your pilates.

But wait, it gets even worse. I was at Souplantation the other day, and there was a family sitting at the table next to mine, and the mom seemed very agitated that there was a "Happy Happy Hanukah" sign hanging on one of the doors, but not a "Merry Christmas" sign. She made a fuss about it and even asked her server why there's not a "Merry Christmas" sign. Of course he doesn't know or care about the background of the holiday decorations, so he says he'd have to ask the manager about it. As time went by, I heard her continue to complain to her family about it, and wonder aloud why she hasn't gotten an answer yet. Thankfully I resisted the urge, but I really wanted to just get up and throttle her and be like, "You see the Christmas lights hanging up in here? You see the Christmas wreaths on the doors and windows? You see how the dessert bar is adorned with holly and garland, and the pillar holding the ceiling up is wrapped in candy cane stripes? You see the red and green Christmas bows on every lamp in the building? You see that little Christmas tree by the coffee machine, with the little Christmas presents beneath it? Why isn't all this enough for you? Why are you so bent up about not having a 'Merry Christmas' sign on the door to the freaking broom closet? Yes, there is a 'Happy Happy Hanukah sign displayed in an effort to include Jewish customers in the festivities. Why is that so offensive to you? Do you hate Chanukah? Are you an anti-Semite? Would you prefer that we exclude Jews from our celebration? Huh? Well answer me!" Yeah, clearly Souplantation is fighting on the front lines of America's war on family values by not including a "Merry Christmas" banner among their many, many Christmas decorations.

And what's everybody's problem with "Xmas"? "Oh, that's secular America's attempt to take Christ out of Christmas!" they keep telling me. Bull freaking crap. If you bothered to do any amount of learning up on the subject before you started complaining, you'd know that the Greek letter Chi, which is identical to our letter X, is the first letter in the Greek spelling of "Christ", and has been used for nearly 20 centuries as a shorthand abbreviation for His name. That's taking Christ out of Christmas, alright. Just like "E-mail" is a plot to take "electronic" out of "electronic mail service".

As long as we're on the subject, am I the only one who finds it ironic that people get themselves so worked up about this supposed usurpation of Christ from Christmas, and how we need to remember the true meaning of the holiday... meanwhile they're stepping over homeless people freezing to death on the street, on their way to Wal-Mart to spend extravagant sums on unnecessary gadgets and toys that were made by 9-year-old sweatshop workers who slave 60+ hours a week to just survive? That's the true meaning of Christmas, alright. Glad you're here to defend it against those damn liberals who are trying to keep us from worshipping materialism -- I mean Jesus Christ -- this Christmas season.

So if you don't like the dechristianization of Christmas, instead of bitching about it all day long, why don't you do something to put Christ back into it? Stop worrying about buying stupid crap for people, and instead worry about what you can do to make someone's life a little better. Instead of handing your money over to line Sam Walton's pockets, why don't you use it to put food in someone's mouth, or shoes on some kid's feet? Turn off the Christmas lights and use the money you save on your electric bill to buy a few Meals on Wheels for people who can't leave their homes. Go visit some old people in the local nursing home; the only human contact those poor folks usually get is people trying to shove pills down their throats. Or how about taking all the time and energy you'd spend protesting "Xmas" and putting it towards helping out that single mom who works 50 hours a week and has three kids to take care of? You wanna get Christ back into Christmas? Go show His love to the people who need it most.

And stop shopping at freaking Wal-Mart.


Above: A man dressed in a Santa suit protests Wal-Mart's "Home for the Holidays" ad campaign, saying that it denies Christ and cheapens the meaning of Christmas, which apparently is Santa Claus.

thefreakkingdom: Why is it that robots always become homicidal when they develop artificial intelligence?
thefreakkingdom: is that the benchmark for real intelligence? The desire to kill?
CalebJDuck: lol
CalebJDuck: apparently
thefreakkingdom: except Short Circuit
CalebJDuck: yes, but i'd be hard pressed to argue that he was really all that intelligent
thefreakkingdom: He did laugh at Steve Guttenberg, after all
CalebJDuck: haha, indeed
CalebJDuck: i rest my case

Finally, something awesome in my junk mail!

Well, turns out the star of the NBC reality show For Love Or Money is a sexual pervert. According to the website The Smoking Gun, reality TV ultratool Rob Campos was booted out of the United States Marine Corps' JAG program for groping a female officer's breasts. Campos (hereafter to be referred to as "the tool," "pervo," or "boobieman") admitted to keeping this little detail hidden during his screening for the part; however he denies that he actually did anything wrong — probably because he's embarrassed. And he should be. Check this out:

"...[A]n account of the incident provided by the female officer in an interview... said Campos rushed into the woman's room and grabbed her breasts. The woman said she struck Campos in the groin with her knee, causing him to enter the woman's bathroom and vomit." (Reuters)

The tool gives a different account of the incident. In his version, he never grabbed her ta-ta's, he never got kneed in the Charlies, and he never vomited. And it gets better: Señor Pervo turns it around and blames her for misconduct! "She was totally up in my junk," he says. "She wanted me like a polar bear wants a new set of snow shoes." (Note: this quote was made up for the purpose of demonstrating how big of a tool Mr. Boobieman is).

NBC says this new twist in the saga of sucky reality TV will not be announced on-air, nor will it affect the show in any way. Which begs the question: why the crap are you wasting all of our time with this "news" if it bears no consequence? Why is this story making front page headlines, while we've got Osama bin Laden and Michael Eisner stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, story on page F-17?

Someone must be really bored in the newsroom...


Above: Reality TV tool Rob Campos, who enjoys groping women's boobs both on-air in NBC's For Love Or Money, and off-air in the United States Marine Corps. (Reuters photo)

The Artrepublic gallery in Brighton, England seems to be getting in a bit of a legal spat with the Royal Mail service over its latest showpiece. The artwork features a mock postage stamp in which the Queen is sporting a gas mask. I figure it is either an anti-war piece, or perhaps it is suggestive of her majesty eating too much royal cabbage and beans. Either way, I think it's great. Unfortunately, the Queen does not share my sentiments, and neither does the Royal Mail, who says it infringes on copyrights. All I have to say on the matter is lighten up, kids. You worry about getting people their mail, and let the artists make their art.


Above: The USPS re-released this 1961 postage stamp earlier this week, which features Barbara Billingsley of Leave It To Beaver fame dawning a gas mask and protective headgear in preparation for the imminent nuclear winter to come, courtesy of those red pinko bastards