The Pussification of Humpty Dumpty

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a fairly liberal guy. Still, driving to/from work when the music mood doesn't strike me and NPR has something terribly boring on, I sometimes switch the radio over to the talk (rant) station which is inevitably someone like Michael Savage or Bill O'Reilly or Laura Ingram. While I disagree with most of what they have to say, I can't help but be entertained by the image of them spitting into the microphone, fists clenched and brows furrowed, leaning forward or even standing as they roar their disdain at the current state of America. At how the Liberals are destroying our children and turning them into godless Sodomites who eat kittens and have little cards in their wallets that get stamped after each abortion because the tenth one is free.

I laugh, and I laugh.

Tonight I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing because tonight I'm going to turn into one of those right-wing radio wackjobs, at least in spirit.

I just read this book to my two-year-old daughter. DK Baby Fun: Humpty Dumpty.

Ahhh, the classic tragedy. Humpty Dumpty.

Who among us hasn't been enraptured by this timeless story of daring, danger, and untimely death?

It's the king of nursery rhymes.

It's the king because it exemplifies the very purpose of nursery rhymes... to allow us to introduce the harsh realities of this world in bite-sized, neatly-wrapped packages.

So let's rewind to the reading of this particular version of Humpty Dumpty.

Page one:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

(Already my daughter is interested. I laugh. Oh that silly Humpty Dumpty. Won't he ever learn?)

Page two:

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

(That's what you get, you stupid egg! Sitting on the edge like that. My daughter shows appropriate concern. Already I see the lesson sinking in. Don't sit on ledges! Especially if you're an egg!)


Page three:

(This page has lots of explosions and bangs. A nice touch, I think.)

Page four:

All the King's Horses and all the King's Men

(A bunch of concerned citizens rush to Humpty's rescue. A glimmer of hope appears in my daughter's eye.)

Page five:

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

(Bam! That's right! That's what you get! My daughter realizes sometimes stories don't have happy endings, so you better be careful! She clutches onto to me more tightly so she doesn't fall. Lesson properly applied and learned. Thank you Humpty Dumpty for your lesson!

...but wtf is this? There's two more pages.)

Page six:

But if we close our eyes and imagine...

(But? But?! There's no freakin' "but's" in Humpty Dumpty! Already the lesson my daughter has learned is being wiped from her subconscious hardrive. I know I should stop, but I don't. )

Page seven:

We can put Humpty Dumpty back together again!

My daughter promptly leaps off my lap, assuming we can imagine away pain. Luckily I catch her in mid-air.

All lessons are promptly forgotten. The damage is irreparable.

This is worse than that Puppy Book Incident from last year.

This is like re-writing Romeo and Juliet and having the Montagues and Capulets get together to talk out their differences over Starbucks. It's like that wolf giving Old Yeller a hug instead of rabies. This is a literary slaughter of colossal proportions.

Before

Seriously, what the hell? Any parent who picks up Humpty Dumpty knows what's in store. This is the wholesale guerilla pussification of our children!

I'm all for happy endings. (Heh.) But write your own damn story if you want one! Don't bastardize a classic so you can sneak your agenda in! (Picture me standing at my laptop and spitting.)

After. And the End!

The Countries of the World

They don't make cartoons like they used to, even in the 90's. Meredyth hated the Animaniacs, but I thought it was brilliant.



Pinky and the Brain was better overall, but this was just awesome.

What horror outcome would you pick?

So I'm trying to think of the most common horror/scary/thriller movie villains.

We got

Zombies



Ghosts



Demons



Psychotic Killers



Psychotic Supernatural Killers



Aliens



Pissed-off animals



Monsters



Science gone awry



Disease



(Quick, off topic note. Don't ever, ever, ever do a Google Image Search for the term "herpes." You've been warned.)


Man-made destruction



Mother Nature



And I'm trying to think of all these situations, which of these I would most want to face if I had to. Like if The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones appeared and demanded I choose my fate, and the above were my choices, what would I pick?

I would probably avoid all the apocalyptic ones, so zombies, disease, disaster, etc. would be out because those movies never have happy endings. Ghosts/demons would be out as well because in those, the victims tend to be damned for eternity or have fates where the outcome doesn't necessarily end with just death.

Aliens are unpredictable, and they tend to come back in force after you kill the first one or two.

Serial Killers like to torture. I'm not a big fan of torture.

So that leaves supernatural killers, animals, and monsters.

The thing about supernatural killers is they tend to reincarnate after you kill them and kill you, the survivor, off at the very beginning of their next spree.

Monsters usually have a specific weakness, and the only way to kill them is to exploit it. I'm terrible at puzzles, especially when I'm being chased around by something with tentacles, so I would probably avoid that.

Animals kill you quickly. Usually. They leave a mess, but dead is dead. So I'd probably go that way.

What would you pick?

I think I just peed myself a little

Holy Crap






I would try this in a heartbeat, but probably without, you know, the giant mountain side ready to bash my head open at any moment.

Har Har

The best thing Jar Jar ever did.

The Golden Compass: The Anti-Narnia (dun dun dun duuuuunnn!)

I always get in trouble with somebody when I post something like this. It's been a while, so I might as well get it over with.

So the His Dark Materials trilogy is coming to the ol' big screen.

Here's the trailer for it:



I read all three books, and while they weren't the best books I ever read, I did think they were pretty cool. I'm jazzed for the films. Some of the battle scenes with the Armored Bears and whatnot should be pretty spiffy.

Anyway, my wife and I have somehow ended up on a local Presbyterian church's email list, and this letter recently showed up:

Subject: The Golden Compass - movie NOT for Kids

I just received this...All of you with children and/or grandchildren may want to check this out...The snopes link is below

so you can see for yourselves..

Subject: ALERT! Upcoming Children's Movie

This is for real. If you have or know those who have children that could attend this movie, please pass this on to them.

You may already know about this, but I just learned about a kids’ movie coming out in December 2007 starring Nicole Kidman. It's called “The Golden Compass”, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children's books about killing God (It is the anti-Narnia).

Please follow this link, and then pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie - which won't seem too bad - and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas.

The quotes from the author sum it all up. I'm going to tell everyone about this movie.

"SNOPES" verifies the above.

http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

So a quick translation is if I take my kids to see the movie, they're going to immediately become godless atheists who get pentagrams tattooed on their necks and drink the blood of the neighbor's cat whilst getting pregnant.

(In my opinion the series has some clear anti-religion themes, but until the movie actually comes out, no one knows how well--if at all--it gets translated to the screen. Plus, most of that stuff isn't all that apparent in the first book anyway. Either way, Christianity is hardly the sole target for author Phillip Pullman's derision.)

Every once in a while I'll read stuff like this and want to go into a giant rant about so-called Christian persecution and the intolerant nature of (some) religious folks.

But instead I'll just whine about how it's sad that people will actively campaign against an art form just because they disagree with the leanings of the creator. It happened with Narnia, too, just the other way around.

"I sucked on my own merits"

The whole thing is ridiculous. If you're going to pan a movie, do so because it sucks. Otherwise, you come across as someone with little faith in your own faith.

The Chair

So I have a new job.

I'm the manager of a small team of product photographers for a jewelry/bead company that sells its wares online. It's a good job, and I like everyone there. It's a lot different than working at the newspaper, but in all the right ways. It's a very good gig.

An actual picture I took

In fact, I only have one complaint:

My chair.

Look at it sitting there all sweet and innocent. All nice and poofy and comfortable-looking.

Don't listen. That chair is a lying bitch.

It's a magical chair that casts a spell upon you when you look at it, making you think happy thoughts. But the truth is revealed the moment you sit down.

This is what it feels like:

It's the Nazi Death Chair.

I know what you're thinking. ZOMG, jokes about Nazis are NEVER funny!

Well I'm not joking. I seriously believe this chair was designed by officers in some sort of torture brigade.

Have you ever had something like this? A chair, couch, or bed that looks perfectly fine until you actually set yourself down? It's terrible. It's like having a migraine in your butt.

And since we keep hiring all these new people, chairs are a bit short around the office, so I can't steal someone else's. I suppose I could just fire someone and take their chair, but I don't really have that power yet, and I like everyone I work with anyway.

Hopefully soon I'll be free, because everything else is peachy.

The Balloon, an update

Just a quick note before I get to my new post:

If you read the comments on my last post regarding The Balloon that Would Not Die, you'll notice that my very clever plan of having updates and whatnot regarding the balloon was quickly thwarted by a certain wife who shall remain nameless who released the balloon into the atmosphere. You can voice your displeasure at ruining what would've been months of bloggy fun over at her blog.

The Balloon

As a father, I have purchased and randomly obtained many balloons over the past several years.

The purchase of a balloon is a lot more complicated and requires more politics than one would think, especially when there's only one balloon to go around with four children. I have many balloon stories to tell, from the 7-2-03 incident involving a balloon, a light fixture in my son's room, and several birthday stitches to an epic battle just last year over balloon property rights between my then 1-year-old and 3-year-old daughters, which ended in a very, very loud tie.

In this particular case, however, we are going to study this balloon, AKA Lazarus the Death Cheater:

picture taken 11-13-07

You'll note that the balloon is currently floating in the laundry room where no one can get it.

All four of the children want a piece of the balloon. The oldest (boy) wants to beat it with a stick until it pops. The next one down (girl) wants to tie a note to it and send it off into the ether so a princess will find it and email her back. The next youngest wants to run in circles with it clutched in her hand, giggling until it either whips the cat into a frenzy or smacks someone in the face. The youngest (who in this particular case is the actual owner of the balloon) wants to either choke herself with it or bite it so it explodes in her face.

And they all want to do this at the exact same time.

Here's the thing. Laney's birthday was October 18th, and we got this balloon a day or two before. So just about three weeks ago. Most balloons suffer death through one of the four above-mentioned methods within 4-10 minutes of their entrance to the house, and that rare balloon lucky enough to survive the night usually lays defeated, dragged down to the floor by the weight of its own string by the next morning, deflated and unable to face another day of torture.

This particular balloon has been fought over, whipped about, sat upon, and all but stabbed right in the face. Yet it lives.

By God, it lives.

For three weeks it has persevered, with no sign of dying. We have moved it to the laundry room so it can live out its golden days in peace, but it just. won't. die.

I'll keep you posted.

Tyra Banks and the nightmare-inducing puppet

Rounding out Vulva Week here at Fireflies in the Cloud, we have this extremely educational clip from the Tyra show with a fairly NSFW puppet:



I can't stop watching.

My next car will be a G-6155 Interceptor

Every once in a while in random conversation the subject comes up, "What would you do if you had a bajillion dollars to just spend on whatever you want?"

Besides the obvious answers that everyone picks (my own island, toilet paper out of hundred dollar bills, a pet monkey decked out in a panda fur coat, etc.), there's something I've always wanted to do.

It's this. I would like to build a video arcade game room complete with tons of retro game systems and a blacklight carpet and the smell of spilled soda and hotdog relish.

Earlier this year the blogosphere was atwitter over a few articles about the death of the video arcade. Pretty much everywhere you go nowadays, that old arcade you used to spend countless hours and quarters in is gone. The X-boxes and PCs and Wiis are just too good. There's no reason for someone to leave their living room anymore. Sure there are a few arcades clinging to life here and there, but let's face it. Game over. The industry is pretty much dead.

And that makes me sad. Some of my favorite and least favorite memories of childhood happened in, near, on the way to, or running from a video arcade. Part of growing up and getting old and all that crap is having to let go of the things you held most dear. This is one of those things I don't want to let go of.

And as soon as I win that lottery, I'm going to hook myself up.

Here is a list of *my* top ten coin-operated arcade games of all time. Obviously they're not going to be the same as yours.

10. Pac-Man

(Everyone remembers their first. I actually remember playing this for the first time.)

9. Donkey Kong

8. Dig Dug

7. Zaxxon

This was one of those games that was more popular as a console even back in the early 80's, but I remember very clearly a pizza place we used to go to that had this in there. I loved this stupid game even though I sucked at it. The weird perspective was hard for me.

6. Super Mario Brothers 2

5. Joust

4. Gauntlet

3. Star Wars
(1983 sit down version)

After #1 on this list, the sit-down version of this game was one of the coolest video game experiences of all time. The bowling alley arcade near my house had this one, and I used to spend hours playing this, sometimes playing for as long as twenty to thirty minutes on a single quarter. This was one of the few games I was actually really, really good at.

2. Street Fighter 2

While I spent the most time playing #1 on this list, I spent the most time watching other people play this game. In high school, everyone went to Golf N Stuff and challenged each other in the battle to the death in this game.

While most enthusiasts played either Ryu or Ken, my dude was always Blanka.

1. Spy Hunter

I spent more time and more money playing this game than every other game on this list combined.

I could listen to this music all day.

Ahh, those wacky eBay-ites

If you have ever spent any time buying or selling on eBay, you've probably noticed the "Everything Else" category. I just spent some time this morning browsing through there to see what's for sale, and I gotta tell you: 1) People sell some weird-ass shit. 2) People who buy this stuff are crazy. Check out some of these things:

Mystery Auctions

Have you seen this? It even has its own category. It's a thriving subculture, like Monster Truck enthusiasts and Furrys. People bid hundreds of dollars on things like bottle caps and pizza rolls because there might be something added to the package. Or items with a 1 in 20 "chance" of doubling or tripling your money. Uh-huh.

Certain sellers gain reputations of throwing in different things, like naked pictures of themselves or cheap jewelry, and people learn about it through various grapevine-y methods.

People treat it like a game, and the folks selling these make serious bank.

Make Brazillians of dollars selling ____ if you buy this ebook!

AKA Get Rich Quick schemes. There are literally thousands upon thousands of people selling these schemes on eBay. And every single one fails that logic test... If this method is so successful, if you are making all this money using this secret method, then why-o-why are you trying to dilute your market for .99 a pop?

Coupons

This is another one of those *huge* markets. While I can definitely see that a hard-to-find coupon for 30% off something that costs a couple hundred bucks would be worth all the effort, but there are pages of listings for things like $3.00 off a purchase of $10 or more type coupons that cost, after shipping, $1-$2.

People sell digital, online coupons, too. This is pretty much an all-out scam because most of these coupons one can find for free online with a bit of Google-Fu.

Pointless, shot in the dark auctions

"All I need is one buyer. Just one!"

Look at this. (Give me $100K. Just because. You get nothing out of it. You have to pay $15 shipping, too.)

And this. (Pay me $10K to go to college, and I'll tell you what I learned every day.)

It costs a couple bucks to list things with high ticket prices on eBay, and other than the weird, tangible items that used to get snatched up by GoldenPalace dot com, it's a waste. Just for entertainment value, I guess it's worth it.

Porn

I won't list any links because you have to sign in and have a credit card on file in order to look at the "Mature Audiences" listings on eBay, but there are currently 62,000+ listings in that section, mostly DVDs and sex toys and people selling pictures of themselves.

I don't know. I guess the anonymity of the net makes buying that 24" Double-ended Bifurcator much more pleasant, but I'd still be wary of buying it from a stranger who may or may not have used it beforehand and may or may not just throw it in the mail in its original packaging with a stamp on it for your next-door neighbor to see. But that's just me.

I much prefer the traditional method of slinking into the sex shop with your collar up, not making eye contact, and telling all your friends afterwards that you saw your old Government teacher from high school in there while you were "just driving by."

The real winner in all of this Ebay. I don't know how much money they take in every year, but it's gotta be a lot. Good for them, I say. If you don't make money on Joe's hopeless quest to get someone to pay for his college, then someone else will.

I want (to be) a Neapolitan Mastiff

So I was just reading Oliver Curry's controversial take on human evolution and how, he surmises, that in a thousand years humans will split into two different species.

Basically the good-looking and well-off folks will only hook up with other hotties, and the uggos will breed amongst themselves. The good-looking spawn will be all Blair Underwooded and Jessica Alba'd out--only times ten, so they'll have giant penises and boobs, respectively--and the troll spawn will be like the people who work at the Wendy's by my new work. (No offense to people who, in general, work at Wendy's. I'm very fond of your decision to allow me a baked potato and/or yogurt instead of fries with my value meal... And I have in my time seen a few rather fetching clerks behind that Wendy's cash register, but that's neither here nor there.)

I think it's pretty obvious this has already started to happen. Wendy's example aside, we have a society that's very segmented already. One look at any public high school cafeteria in the midst of lunch should be proof enough. The only thing currently holding us as a species together is 1) alcohol and 2) the fact that nerds can make a lot of money.

Look at dogs, for example. Look at these guys:

It's amazing to see a Leonberger next to a Chinese Crested next to a Shar Pei next to a Puli, etc. They are all the same species, but years of selective breeding have turned them into killing machines, loveable pets, and/or walking embodiments of humiliation.

So I believe it, that we're going to split. But I'm not too sure about the two species part. I think it's going to be more. We'll have our Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls and Neapolitan Mastiffs, and we'll all have breed-specific reputations.

I wonder what I would be? According to this test, I'd be an Irish Setter. But that's BS. I wanna be a Mastiff. A really jowly one that looks pissed off all the time, but likes my tummy rubbed.

On Super Busy-Ness, Being Outsourced, Strawberrys, and Hairy Vulvas.

Let's ketchup.

It's been a couple months. Well, almost three I guess. It's funny how much things can change in such a short amount of time.

As of tomorrow night, the newspaper is history. My department has ceased to exist. The industry as a whole is dying a long, painful death, and it's probably good I'm out now.

Thankfully I have a new job, and it seems like it's something I'll enjoy. I'm in the jewelry business now. Any day now I'll come home with a pinky ring and an accent. I'll post more about that later.

I've also been doing a bit of selling on eBay. That's a couple posts on its own.

I'm probably about 15-20 lbs lighter than I was the last time I posted, too. I'll post naked pictures for the ladies (and that one guy with the pink shirt who sometimes comments) if there's enough of interest.

Halloween was fun. Zach was the Grim Reaper, Gnat was Hannah Montana, Lili was Tinkerbell, and Laney was a very pleasant and cheerful Strawberry:

The good thing is it seems my level of sheer, utter super-busy-ness is starting to wane, and the ol' Fireflies in the Cloud won't be as neglected as she's been.

But enough about me. What I really want to talk about tonight is purses.

I'm thinking about getting this for Meredyth:

She recently got a new purse, but I don't like it too much. Quite frankly, once you see a purse named The Velvet Vulva, every other single purse you see from that moment forward is pretty much not the Velvet Vulva, and therefore teh suck.

That is all. I'll see you guys tomorrow.