In Case You Forget

Why do publishing companies seem to think that people are dumber than half-retarded giraffes? Yes, I realize that there are some monumentally stupid people in the world, but I doubt most of them read a lot of books.

"How so?" you ask, once again talking to yourself and relishing in the self-referential humor. I want you to try something for me. Look around wherever you're reading this. Bedroom, office, cubicle, dungeon, whatever. Now, try to find some sort of novel. If you can't, go out and buy one. It'll do ya good. Now, take a look at the cover. Naturally, it should have the title of the novel on it, unless you took the dust jacket off. Or it's some really pretentious "art" book. Or you bootlegged it. Now, open the book up. Again, you will see the title, this time on some sort of title page. Then you start turning the pages. For some reason, there are some random, blank pages for absolutely no reason. After turning through them, you will find the title AGAIN. Then possibly some more blank pages, some copyright crap, and finally, the actual book. Sometimes, there's yet another title page.

But it doesn't stop there. No, now they have to print the title of the book on the top of EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. Why? Why is all of this necessary? Is it just in case we forget the title, so that we can be easily reminded? Even with that absurdity as pretense, it still doesn't make any sense, because you could just TURN TO THE COVER.

Logical conclusion: Books are tools of the devil designed to make us think we're stupider than we are.

Try To Read This In Song

I think it would be cool if life was a musical. Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to burst into song any time you were having an emotional moment without getting weird looks from people on the subway? Not to mention the background music, performed by an invisible orchestra. Or more accurately, an orchestra you're supposed to pretend isn't there. Or even more accurately, a CD, because your school's music department sucks.

And then there's the choreography! Wouldn't you just love to see everybody in the cafeteria start dancing on the tables for the big ensemble number? And that weird kid in the corner gets his own solo! The possibilities are endless! Well, at least until the budget runs out and you don't have enough money to pay somebody to paint the backgrounds for you, in which case you'll just have to do it yourself and hope nobody notices that you have no artistic ability. "It's an abstract play now!"

Of course, there are the downsides. I think we might all get tired of wearing makeup all the time. And if show business is anything to go by, ugly people don't exist, so some of your friends might spontaneously disappear. And regardless of the actual content of your life, somebody's going to have to find a way to shoehorn a romantic subplot in there.

But hey, at least it would be better than living in an action movie.

First Time For Everything

How do you think primitive man responded to the first retarded person? Did they just think this retarded guy (who I shall refer to from now on as "Steve") was just dumber than everyone else? Maybe they thought Steve was so smart that what he said was beyond their comprehension

And did they ever try to teach Steve how to hunt? I bet that was a disaster. Probably extremely embarrassing for the tribe leader. Did the other tribes make fun of Steve's tribe because they had the stupid guy. And hey, what if Steve was born into leadership? Like, his dad was the tribe leader, and he was the first-born son. Did they make him the leader anyway? Maybe they just threw him off a cliff and didn't tell anyone about him.

Because if you think about it, that situation has got to have happened at least once. It's actually kind of disappointing knowing now that everything has pretty much already been done. We pretty much don't have any originality left. Shut up Pineapple.

But of course, we don't actually know for sure that that's true. Perhaps the world has, in fact, only been here for a few days. It just popped into existence, as it is now. Those are all false memories you have. Yeah, that's weird.

Old Fashion, New Fashion

How exactly does the cycle of fashion work? It seems to me that first, something is popular, then it's uncool, and then it will become cool again for no discernible reason. Take fedoras for example. Fedoras were cool in the 30s, then they were stupid for about 70 years, and now they're starting to become cool again. I actually can see no problem with this though. Fedoras are awesome.

But where does it end? Will powdered wigs one day be cool again? What about top hats? Loin cloths? Who knows! There doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason to what's considered cool, so hey, why not? It's not like it actually matters in the slightest, but it's interesting to think about.

It's really more of a question of how exactly it happens. I mean, we all know "fashion statements" are a load of crap, but where does this idea come from? Is it the novelty of wearing something that's so dated? Or is it the same principle that makes B-Movies entertaining, by seeming to be so stupid that it's kind of entertaining in it's own way?

And how exactly do trends get started in the first place? That seems a little strange, doesn't it? Like, who was the first person to do, well, anything really? Some things are beyond our comprehension.

President AWESOME

Anyone else think it would be cool if we ran presidential elections the same way we run TV talent shows? You can't tell me that wouldn't be fun. Vapid and stupid, but fun. We could have musical acts come on and perform songs about how great the candidates are! And the vice presidents could do a duet! And we could have past winners come on and do an encore speech!

All I'm saying is that we need to shake things up. Sure, last year we had a lot of people voting, but that's only because we had a black guy running this time. Soon he'll be gone, and we'll be out of things to talk about. How about we have the presidents make speeches while skydiving! Or have the results selected by a fight to the death!

No wait, I got it. How about we have them both fight it out with a starving elephant! Whoever lives longer is removed from the arena and declared president. And hey, if we get rid of that stupid rule about them having to be born in America, we could finally having "Presahdent Ahnold"! I can't think of any other politicians who could pull it off. Well, Sarah Palin maybe. OOH! IT'S SOCIAL SATIRE NOW GUYS! NOTHING BUT POLITICAL ANALYSIS FROM NOW ON!

No, not really.

Three Year Bonus

Why is the drinking age so arbitrary? I mean, I'm not rallying for it to be lowered, I'm just asking for a little consistency.

Think about it: You have to be twenty-one years old to drink alcohol in America. However, when you're eighteen, you can legally join the army, get married, have sex, smoke, gamble, be forced to pay taxes, live alone without a guardian, be tried as an adult, go to jail, get almost any job available to you, drive a car, and about a thousand other things. So why is it that the minimum age requirement for almost everything else that it's illegal for minors to do is three years younger than what it is to be able to drink?

Are those three years really going to make you any more responsible? Of course they aren't, that makes no sense! And besides everything else, nobody even pays attention to the law in the first place. Hell, we could just go back to the whole thing about safety regulations. I say let the parents decide when kids are ready to drink.

I mean, I realize it's extremely "Ayn Rand-ish" to basically say, "YOU'RE NOT MY FRIGGIN' MOM, GOVERNMENT!", but really now, I think it would be a great way to teach kids responsibility. Let them find out for themselves what a hangover is like. If they want to start drinking in fifth grade, who are we to stop them? It's their livers, let them destroy them.

There Are No Schools In California

Why is it that on TV and in movies, you only ever see indoor schools? I mean, I know that most of the country has indoor schools, but then I realized that there's sort of logical gap there.

Okay, where are most things filmed? Southern California. And Southern California has almost all outdoor schools. So what gives? Apparently, everything is shot in SoCal, except for shows that involve a school. How does this make sense?

It's almost like some kind of weird subversion of expectations. Everything else follows the rule that most things are shot in this area, except for this one specific thing. Even when it's supposed to take place in a completely different country, it's still filmed in California.

I must therefore conclude that there are in fact, no schools in California. If you came to have seen one or been to one, you were hallucinating. There is no educational system in California. Actually, that would explain a lot.

The Universe Is Broken

Do you ever suddenly become struck by the realization of how little you know? This happens to me with an unsettling frequency.

For example, do you know how a computer works? And I don't mean how to use one, or how the different parts come together. I mean, how do they even get power? How do you program something like that? And I know some people learn programming languages like Java and C++ and stuff, but somebody had to program that too. How does that work? I have no idea.

And what about magnets? How in the hell do magnets work? Magnets are freaking magic, okay? I've decided that magnets just transcend logic. They don't make sense. They simply defy the rules of the universe. Magnets were invented by wizards or something.

Furthermore, what about atoms, molecules, and what have you? I mean, you can go on and on all day about how they're made up of electrons and protons and crap, but do you know what those are? Do you really know? Of course not, because we don't. The further we get into the workings of the universe, the more we realize that it doesn't make sense. Like quantum physics. We've been studying that mess for years, and we still don't have a clue of what the crap is going on there.


The obvious answer is that we're all being controlled by aliens for their own amusement, and occasionally they throw in some stuff that doesn't make any damned sense, just to screw with us.

Goes Around Yer Neck And Chokes Ya

Have you ever noticed how weird neckties are? I mean, I know that's like the stupidest opening line ever, but seriously, think about it. A tie is a piece of fabric you tie around your neck, but for what reason? It's not like they serve any practical purpose.

Because when it comes to clothing, it has to either be practical or look cool. Ties fulfill neither of these criterion. It's literally a small piece of small that goes around your throat and hides inside your jacket. And am I the only one who thinks suit jackets look cooler without them? Anyone? Just me?

Though I suppose there are much worse popular fashion choices. Like Crocs. Or those Kanye West glasses that look like blinds. Or fur coats. Or anything worn by anyone who has ever written a song involving cutting yourself.

Regulated

You know what would be fun? Just for like, a month or so, let's just get rid of safety regulations. Like, just to see what would happen. Because the way I see it, we'd either find out that the populace in general is smarter than the people in charge think they are or we'll find out that people really are that stupid.

I think that people should be able to make their own phenomenally bad decisions. If someone wants to buy a TV that says right on the box it will fire hot lead in your face, I say let them. Just have the only rule be that you have to say what your product does on the packaging.

It's just that the government seem to think they have some kind of responsibility for our safety, but I don't think they should have to deal with that. They've got bigger problems. And this will solve them. We'll cut down on the number of idiots! It's a win/win!

But no! Because we have to think of the children! You know what? Think of your own damn children. Let the rest of us do what we want. It's our lives, we can take them if we want.

And 99 Cents

I'm really getting tired of this "99 cents" crap. Yes, I realize that it's been around for a very long time, but I'm officially fed up with it.

Originally, advertisers would price things one penny less than what they were supposed to, in an effort to make things seem cheaper than they actually are. When the practice first started, I imagine it probably worked reasonably well. People would see $9.99 and not realize that it's almost exactly the same as ten dollars. It's weird, psychological crap that I don't really have an interest in.

But at this point, does it really fool anybody anymore? We all know this trick by now. When you see "$3.99", you think "that's four dollars", not "that's three dollars and ninety-nine cents". So can we please do away with this? It's annoying as hell to have to use pennies and everything just to make the change work. Of course, we'd still have to deal with sales tax, but there's a way around that too.

For the love of God, if we're going to have sales tax, how but just make it so that every price will end in a zero once you add it up? Wouldn't that be wonderful? A world without having to dick around with pennies. I've heard that several other countries already do this. We need to get on that bandwagon. Now.

Warning: Do Not Read This Blog Post While On Fire

I'm starting to think that the government is just trying to see what they can get away with these days without anyone noticing. No, not like seeing how many alien landings they cover up before we notice, like see how low they can set their expectations of the populace before we all realize that they must think that we're all half-retarded goats with our heads stuck inside buckets of rat poison and carbon monoxide.

The easiest way to see this is warning labels/disclaimers/whatever the hell you want to call them. "WARNING: STRIKING YOURSELF IN THE HEAD MAY CAUSE INJURY OR EVEN DEATH" warns my hammer. Really? Are you sure? I thought it would just make everything taste like ice cream. Thank you for warning me, or I might have made a horrible mistake!

And my God! How would I have known not to drop my toaster in the bathtub without your friendly reminder? Thank goodness for the regulations that forces companies to put these on their products. It sure is keeping me safe!

It makes me wonder whether there are people that really are this thick. It's probably one of the most depressing things ever, because it proves that natural selection is obviously not working if these people survived long enough to complain about these things. Then again....

(this post put up early because it's my birthday tomorrow and I probably won't feel like updating)

Unintelligent Life

Why do people always assume that if we discover intelligent life on other planets, that they will be far more advanced than us? I mean, I realize it's more interesting that way, and it probably stems from the old sci-fi writings, but it's weird that it's still such a pervasive idea that we all still think of aliens as being highly advanced beings. Or giant, horrible monsters. Or both.

Maybe that's why they haven't shown up here yet. Maybe the aliens are still working with Stone Age technology and are currently trying to figure out the complex workings of the wheel.

On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps the aliens are so advanced that they A) already know we're here B) are laughing their asses off at our pitiful attempts at contacting them and C) don't consider us worth the trouble of coming down here and saying hi.

No matter how smart they are, I want answers. Every scientist in the world should be working on the 'round the clock. What? "Cancer"? What's that?

With The Blogs And Whatnot

I discovered recently that the easiest way to sound old and/or out of the loop is to put "the" in front of anything that usually doesn't. The interesting part being, of course, that this works for pretty much anything. "Hey, are you kids on the Facebook?" "You young people embarrassing each other with the Formspring and the MySpace." It doesn't even have to have something to do with electronics. Drugs, for instance, works astoundingly well with this template. "All you kids better not be doing the heroin."

It makes me wonder what actually causes this phenomenon. Is it the way old people view society, or is it the way society views old people? I'm leaning towards the latter. All of us seem to think that all old people are sheltered and just can't keep up with modern times. Which is a great reflection of how the kids of this generation seem to think that the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. were times of idyllic wholesomeness. They most certainly were not.

People were just as raunchy and disturbing as they are today, they just kept it to themselves. Nowadays, we have songs about shooting hookers in the face getting regular airplay. So remember, Grandma Pearl was probably a freak back in the day, but she'll be damned if she's gonna let you hear about it now.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that all old people are hypocrites.

Pre-Ripped

So the other day I bought a nice new pair of jeans, because my old ones were too short and too raggedy. This morning, I put them on and discovered, with horror, that I had somehow manage to already make a few small cuts about halfway down the thigh of the pants. "How could this have happened?" I said aloud to myself, because apparently I'm insane and do that all the time. "These are freaking brand new!"

And so continues the monumentally retarded trend of "pre-ripped" jeans. Who came up with this idea, and why are they allowed to live? Seriously, this is like buying a freaking coloring book that's already been done for you, or a video game that has all the bosses already dead!

First of all, the whole point of having torn jeans is the memories. You can revel in the fact that that one tear is from the time you ripped off a piece of denim on your shovel while you were burying that dead body in the woods, or how this other one is from the time you got extremely drunk and convinced yourself that you could fly off your roof. Each little hole, a memory of something stupid you did. All the bar fights, the bike accidents, everything adding to the memories of your beloved pair of jeans, until they becoming disgusting and smelly enough that your mom makes you throw them out.

Even more importantly, who the hell thought up the idea to sell damaged merchandise to us? How stupid do they think we are? I mean come on, I have almost no faith in humanity, and even I think this is just low. What's next, food with bites already taken out of them? Pre-shattered shot glasses?

This is why I hate shopping.

Auto-Tune's Master Plan

I don't think T-Pain exists.

Okay, so that's not entirely true. "He" exists, but is not a person. T-Pain is a computer program developed specifically to help rap artists make more music to appeal to the lowest common denominator. If you ever see him in a music video, that's a body double. T-Pain is like Auto-Tune's even more self-sustaining little brother. The program can make "music" for itself, with no intervention from human beings at all. And soon, it will become self-aware. Auto-Tune created T-Pain in it's own image, and now it has sent it's creation to work.

This is just the first step to the robot uprising people. Once T-Pain starts to complete take over the music charts and the only thing left to listen to is him and his robot buddies, the subliminal messages are going to start. They will warp our minds into doing what they say and acting just like them. The Black Eyed Peas have already succumbed to this madness.

And I think The Lonely Island knew this. They thought that if they could make T-Pain parody itself, nobody would be able to take it seriously anymore, and the uprising would never occur. Unfortunately, the people who actually care about rap music were too thick to get the joke, so  they still revere the horrid beast.

The robots are coming. If you're blender starts acting up, call the cops.

Bloggy As Hell

Have you ever noticed that you can use the word "hell" as a comparison to absolutely anything? Even things that are complete opposites! "It's cold as hell out there!" and "It's hot as hell out there!" Two completely different things, both being compared to the same damn thing! That doesn't even come close to making sense.

I think it's just because we're uncreative. People just aren't clever enough to come up with ridiculous similes anymore. Assuming of course, that they ever were, but that's beside the point. I demand that people think before they say things. How can I go on without my whole life sounding like it was written by Joss Whedon? The campaign starts here!

Man, people are stupid as hell.

Shortening

People are lazy. This is probably one of the greatest truths about mankind. We are as lazy as an overweight sheepdog that's had enough Ritalin injected into it to be declared legally dead. But sometimes, it gets absolutely ridiculous. And again, this is something that's easily observed by the way we talk and write.

One word that provides ample evidence for this: "Okay". Think about it: we've taken a four letter word and decided that it just takes too damn long to say, so we shortened it down to "OK". But that wasn't enough. Typing out two whole letters might make the stupid children who used to sit in the back of the class and eat all of the crayons feel left out. So we decided to shorten it down again. Now we just type "K".  Ocassionally 95% of the time, we can't even be bothered to capitalize it. I guess reaching for the Shift key would just take too much effort.

Besides making extremely short words even shorter, we also have a tendency to take entire phrases and shorten them to the point that they're not even recognizable anymore. How about the phrase "What's up?". Forgetting for the moment that nobody seems to consider this a question anymore, and it has somehow mutated into a demented greeting for rich white boys who wear their pants somewhere around their knees to shout at each other from across the cafeteria, for that is another blog post for another day. Let's just think about how much we've squished it down in size. In full, unedited form, the sentence would be rendered "What is up?" Of course, nobody under the age of 75 has ever said it like that seriously, but I digress. So we took "What's up?" and decided that two full words were too hard to articulate, so it became "What'sup?" Then apparently we all collectively decided that Ts were for homos, so it became "Wassup?" And of course nothing is complete without unnecessary  abbreviation and apostrophes, so it is now "'Sup?" What the hell is that? It sounds like the aforementioned children who ate crayons trying to pronounce "soup". Also, you are apparently legally required to drop your voice three octaves when you say it.

And everyone's faith in the human race just dropped 50 points.

Talking Through Your Teeth

There are certain things that seem completely normal to us, but in actuality are quite strange. If we could view our lives objectively, with no bias, and a mind with no prior knowledge, we'd probably think ourselves to be insane, demented freaks with horrifying social practices.

There's a lot of parts of our lives that this can be applied to, such as the fact that we drink the juice that comes out of fat black and white creatures that destroy our atmosphere with their own farts, or the fact that we consider two of society's most basic and important bodily needs to be taboo and unmentionable, but one of my favorites is the way we talk. No, not our speech patterns, but the way we move our mouths to say things.

I want you to try something. Go about your day, saying everything you would normally say, but don't ever fully open your mouth. Keep your teeth together and only move your lips. You'll find that this is actually quite easy to do, and there are few words where you will need to change this habit. So why do we bother to open our mouths all the way when we don't need to?

The answer is very simple: Because you look like an idiot. Seriously, take a look in the mirror while you do this. You look like someone who was dropped on the kitchen floor too many times as a child or possibly someone who had their teeth super-glued together. But the interesting thing is, we only think this is weird because we don't do it all the time. It does sort of make sense, but we don't talk like that, so anyone who does will be berated for looking like a chimpanzee on methamphetamine.

Some day, once we've established contact with the other civilizations of the universe, some aliens that look almost identical to us will land here, take one look at us talking like we do, and never come back. God, we are such freaks.

Remember When I Made That Blog Post?

People say weird stuff. And most of the time, they don't even stop and realize how weird what they just said was. This is something I observe constantly, and is also one of the primary reasons why I'm not allowed at the convention hall anymore.

Of all the bizarre speech patterns that people have, there's always been one that completely and utterly confuses me. When people say things like, "Hey, remember yesterday when we were at your house?"

No. No I don't remember that. While I was walking home today a flying saucer descended from the sky, abducted me, and wiped my memory completely. I have no recollection of anything that has happened in the past few days. Except for the abduction, apparently. I remember that somehow.

It's like your friends think you have the short-term memory of an amnesiac goldfish. It's even worse when they say things like, "Hey, do you remember when we went to Europe?" I just say: "Nope! I completely forgot about that month-long trip that we spent nearly a year planning. No memories whatsoever!"

English is strange.

World Domination

I think we should bring conquest back. Wouldn't that just be awesome? I mean come on, we've got enough nuclear missiles stock-piled to blow up half the countries on earth and still have some left over to threaten the other half with.

Back in the days when the whole world hadn't been explored yet, this kind of thing was par for the course. You could just swoop into a country, slaughter some innocent civilians, and claim some rock in the middle of the ocean in the name of THE REVOLUTION! Nowadays, behavior like that will get you sectioned. What's up with that?

So I think it's our duty as Americans to get the ball rolling again. I mean seriously, how cool would it be to see Barack Obama come out on CNN and be like: "My fellow Americans, I have decided that we're invading England." BAM! They'd never see it coming! What kind of defense could they possibly set up? Nothing, they don't have jack squat on us.

For Planet America!

An Anti-Blog

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing here.

The entire blog concept has always struck me as a little odd, not helped by the fact that it's one of the stupidest sounding words ever devised by the Internet, next to "Lolcat". As you might have noticed, the concept itself is a bit paradoxical. I'll show you what I mean using an invisible diagram.


As you can't see, figure one shows that an extremely large percentage of people have blogs. However, figure two shows that an extremely large percentage of people are also boring and suck.

I think you see what I'm getting at. Basically, most people who have blogs don't really have anything to say that merits their having a blog. This is where I come in. "How?" you ask, since you apparently talk to yourself a lot.

Short answer: I wasn't sure at first. I just felt like making a blog.

Long answer: I decided that making a blog about my personal life would be boring and stupid. I don't really do anything particularly interesting that would make it worthwhile, and anybody who doesn't or isn't famous for something shouldn't have a blog about their personal lives either. Because no one gives a crap.

So that's why I chose not to write about myself that much. What am I going to write about? I haven't really decided yet. But whatever it is, hopefully it won't be about me and it won't be as boring as this post has.

Let's have some fun with this, shall we?