Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
- veemer098
Dear veemer098,
Yes. Yes I am. Feed me, clothe me, grind away at a job you hate to keep me in health insurance, save diligently for my college education, and then sit by the phone broken-hearted because I never call. In about 20 years, we'll discuss nursing homes.
For The Love Of Astronauts!
For the love of astronauts, DO NOT wear flip-flops to work and then complain about injury or discomfort of your feet. That's what they make shoes for. You're basically wearing a dry sponge held on by a rubber thong. Of course it's going to be uncomfortable. By choosing to wear such impractical (and onomatopoeic) footwear in a professional environment, you've forfeited your right to complain about the state of your feet.
For The Love Of Astronauts...
I've decided that, in situations where a believer would invoke an omnipresent deity, I'm going to start swearing to astronauts.* After all, astronauts are the only beings that I know for sure have been smiling down on us from above the clouds.
*For purposes of this exercise, "astronauts" will include Russian cosmonauts, Chinese taikonauts, and any whatever-nauts from future manned space programs. My admiration for those who've flown in space is not bound by anything so silly as nationality.
Tales From The Blue Line
On my way home from work yesterday, I spotted a convergence of psychobabble chicanery that I'd previously seen only in unpleasant dreams. At one end of the car, a skinny, semi-professional looking blond woman reading The Secret. At the other end of the car, a rough, badly-used looking older gentleman cracking open a large envelope full of glossy Scientology paraphernalia. I swear I could see a fog bank of stupidity forming where their individual credulities converged.
I'm sure I've beaten you about the head quite enough with my outrage over The Secret, but I don't think I've ever broached the subject of Hollywood's favorite cult "religion." (I don't have a tag for it yet, and until I find an alternate reality where my memory isn't so porous, I'll have to trust the silicon overlord.)
I don't have the energy to get into it here. The alien warlords and ghosts are almost too ridiculous to comprehend. However, I will make this (not at all insightful) observation; any "religion" that charges you money to learn their teachings is a fucking cult, regardless of what any number of brain-addled celebrities would like you to believe.
By the way, Scientology is also Hollywood's most notoriously litigious cult "religion," so I'll be sure to post a link to my legal defense fund as soon as I receive the cease and desist letter.
New Comics, Part 1
I've added some new comics to my reading schedule as well my links list, and I thought I'd share. Because it's my blog, damn it.
Bad Gods: Lore Sjöberg is a venerable Internet humorist, inspiring belly laughs as one of the Brunching Shuttlecocks, as the creator of Table of Malcontents, and as the author of the Alt Text blog for Wired. Bad Gods started as a weekly Flash animation, went dormant for awhile, and recently resurfaced as a non-animated meta Internet observational humor sort of thing. I'm not quite sure where this new incarnation is going, but I've kept it in my RSS reader despite a year-long dearth of updates. Lore is the kind of funny I aspire to, before I devolve into fart jokes and incessant profanity. Updates M&W.
Gunnerkrigg Court: Gunnerkrigg Court concerns the supernatural goings-on at the spooky titular boarding school. It has a very graphic novel kind of feel, with interesting panel layouts and a rich color palette. Author/artist Tom Siddell writes convincing dialog for children, which is rare. Better yet, he knows when it's appropriate to drop the "blah blah" and let the visuals tell the story, which is nearly unheard of in a lot of online cartooning. The serialized story isn't comedy necessarily, but it does observe richly emotional and comic moments between the players (human and otherwise). Updates M,W&F.
CNN.com: Late To The Party
CNN.com apparently just noticed that the author of The Secret is getting rich by preying on the fears and desires of the desperate, credulous masses. Seriously, CNN? I was griping about this back in March, and even then it wasn't particularly breaking news. How are you just getting around to this now?
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
I heard you were in law school. How can you be that AND be such a slacker?
- Genevieve
Dear Genevieve,
Typical Answer: Thanks to secret alien time-travel technology, I was able to compete all three years of studying during one epic night on the toilet in 1963. Every Saturday night, I fire up the machine and pop back to pick up my completed assignments for the following week. This leaves my weeknights free for choking my liver with cheap vodka and posting angry screeds in random Livejournal communities.
"Aw, Snap!" Answer: The same way you find time to be such a bitch.
"Your Mom" Answer: My schedule is pretty open now that I've finally stopped banging your mom every night.
Passive Aggressive Answer: I have a lot more free time since I stopped hanging out in dank alleys, blowing strange men for crack. You should try it.
That clicking sound you just heard was Genevieve deleting me from her bookmarks. Pretty soon, my readership number will actually be negative.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Why are Tom and Jerry so mean to each other?
- Jennifer
Dear Jennifer,
The struggle between a physically powerful oppressor and a diminutive but intellectually gifted challenger is as old as the biblical story of David & Goliath. And considering the liberal ways that the bible borrows from previous mythology, chances are it's considerably older. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera simply transposed the ageless struggle into the anthropomorphized animal oeuvre and added modern household instruments of torture to the combatants' arsenals.
Alternate Answer: Because cats like to eat mice, whereas mice generally prefer to remain uneaten. Duh.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Why is douche such a funny word?
- jenny
Dear jenny,
Douche is a great word. First off, it's just fun to say. Douche, douche, douche, douche, douche. Like the best profanities, it's a single syllable that's easy to yell at the top of your lungs.
Douche also has advantages over many of the traditional swear words. It fits into the "dirty" category of "things intended to go in a vagina" (see also: dildo) without the usual sexual connotation (see: dildo). As an insult, it carries the added bonus of association with the dreaded no-so-fresh feeling. When you call someone a douche, you're impliedly telling them they deserved to be jammed in a skanky vagina, in a way that will be pleasurable for no one. It's simultaneously skeevy and emasculating, like a crack whore who laughs at your teeny winky.
Spotted On A Sweltering June Day:
Two boys, alike enough to be brothers, approximately 10 and 12 years old, respectively. Both of them were built like a "before" picture on an ad for some fad diet. Big, round bellies had completely engulfed the waistlines of their shorts; slabs of boy-breast that would have failed the pencil test even if a small dog were substituted for a trusty #2.
How does that happen? Is there not a single adult in their lives that thinks "maybe these boys shouldn't need training bras?"
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
How come the El train in Philly turns into a subway in Center City? Also, why does the subway turn into an El train when it's not in Center City?
- Blue Line Bandit
Dear Blue Line Bandit,
There is doubtless a Perfectly Reasonable Explanation, involving water tables, soil densities, and other dull technical information. However, my Wildly Uninformed Perspective is skeptical about all that blather. In the early 20th Century when the line was being constructed, Center City's roster of well-to-do residents and businesses was "important" in a way that the poorer western and northeastern neighborhoods weren't. That disparity of economic swagger still holds true today. Coincidentally, Center City's residents and businesses get to have their rail transportation buried underground, while people living in Kensington and West Philly have the pleasure of a gigantic metal monstrosity covering their streets and trains rattling by at the level of their second-story windows.
This is, of course, rank speculation. If anyone has a less invidious explanation, I'd be willing to entertain it.
SEPTA Update:
When it's hot and humid - as if it's EVER hot WITHOUT being humid in this town - the back of the bus smells like ground in BO rinsed in stale urine. Then again, so does most of the city. When the bus exhaust is the best-smelling part of your commute, it's time to buy a gas mask.
EDIT: If I ever publish a book, I hope a typo somewhere will label me a "poorly-smelling author." That would rule.
Rethinking My Sartorial Choices
I stopped wearing t-shirts that were wittier than myself a few years back, but this new design has me pondering a reprieve on the ban. 
Webcomics OG Jeffrey Rowland (When I Grow Up, Wigu, and the semi-true journal comic Overcompensating) has a designers eye and a zeitgeist radar that's visible from space. His t-shirt designs are consistently among the smartest and most visually appealing product to crawl out of the shameless merchandising whore-factory that is the sole means of revenue generation for most webcomic artists. If you're a t-shirt guy or gal, and my endorsement means anything at all, you'll buy a shirt (or twelve) at Topatoco.com. My birthday is in October.
Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Why oh why? Delilah?
- Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
Samson has been asking himself the same question since Long Ago, BCE. Delilah was Samson's wife; she coaxed him into revealing that his long hair was the secret of his Herculean strength, and then gave him a quick trim and betrayed him to his enemies. Fortunately for Samson, Old Testament God (before he got all New-Agey and lame) was cool with guys who bludgeoned hundreds of non-believers to death, so he got his revenge in the end.
I always think of this story when Trolling Fundies decry the morals of modern entertainment. Here's a tale prominently featuring thousands of beating deaths. At the end, the hero commits what can only be called a low-tech suicide bombing; he pulls the Philistine temple down on himself, killing "many more as he died than while he lived." (Judges 16:30). But if someone says "fuck" on TV, the world will explode and we'll all be cast into hell. Or something.
When I was a kid, I had a set of View-Master discs featuring illustrated bible stories. The only thing more awesome for a pre-adolescent boy than a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant is a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant in 3-D!
In other news, Wikipedia has an entry for hair. Seriously? Does anybody sophisticated enough to look things up in an online encyclopedia not know what hair is?
