12/11/09

Exciting New Contractions!

Jedi pedophile: Jedophile

Whore horse: Whorse

Sneaky eagle: Sneagle

Baby burglar: Bablar

False pony: Fauxny

Gay ankle: gaynkle

Fork spoon: Fpoon

Hot sauce: Hoss

Crazy Asian: Crasian

Craven raven: Craven

11/23/09

I finally learned what a “meme” is!


It turns out that “meme” is just a fancy word for saying something interesting about Chuck Norris! Like, “Chuck Norris has roundhouse kicked more people than he can count.” I thought “meme” had something to do with college. Wrong! With just a little research, memes come so easily! Who knew that being officially clever required so little effort? Watch:

Chuck Norris was born Carlos Ray Norris. Perhaps he goes by Chuck because he was ashamed of his alcoholic father, Ray.

Chuck Norris’ parents got divorced when he was only 16! Maybe he learned to kick things in half when he was 15!

Chuck Norris’ younger brother died in the Vietnam War!

Chuck Norris divorced his wife of 30 years in 1988. Ten years later, he married a woman the same age as his oldest son!

Chuck Norris’ daughter, Dina, was the product of an extramarital affair! She was 16 when she informed him of their relationship, and they met when she was 26!

Chuck Norris believes that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that people once lived with dinosaurs!

Chuck Norris believes homosexuality to be “aberrant”!

Chuck Norris founded the martial arts school of Chun Kuk Do, an anagram of Chuk Dunk-o and Chuk n’ Kudo! Who is Kudo?

Chuck Norris’ fifth rule of Chun Kuk Do is “If I have nothing good to say about a person, I will say nothing”!

Bad ass! How do I get these up on Chuck Norris’ blog?

11/4/09

Ganymede: The Story of Ganymede

Can you believe that that title isn’t a movie yet? It’s gonna be, though, because I just thought of it, and I need some money.

I haven’t decided exactly what it’s going to be about, though. I guess there was some prince a million years ago who was named Ganymede. He was either Greek or bisexual, but not both. If I remember correctly, it was sort of a Classic “Incredible Journey” tale—his father, who was not Greek, abandoned a golden retriever, a Persian cat, and a 28-year-old Ganymede beside the road somewhere in the Rhodope Mountains. The retriever became separated from the rest and was lost almost immediately, and the cat was accused of witchcraft by some villagers (and was very likely killed, if not actually killed and eaten… Greece, you know?), but Ganymede made it back to Troy within the week. I think he met Hercules at some point.

The other option, of course, is to tell the story of he original Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. It doesn’t have any resident aliens, unless they’re invisible, but legend has it that just below the surface the planet may be made of solid gold. So I’m inclined to go this route, and just have the movie be Ganymede (the moon): The Story of Ganymede (the moon). I don’t see any characters entering the story, though, which may be difficult for people to deal with. I suppose Ganymede (the lost boy) could show up at some point. I’d probably kill him off pretty quick. (No one likes a glory hog.) Maybe he could fall into a steep crater and hit his head on a rock. And as he slides down the crater wall, his path reveals the tantalizing, buttery gleam of gold…

Mid-blog interlude!
I finally got to feel what it’s like to be hit by an exploding airbag yesterday! It was okay. You can only use them once, though, before they have to be replaced. If I had known that was the case, I would have planned my evening totally differently, and maybe saved the airbags for a party or something.
Interlude over!

So, remember yesterday’s entry? I bet you do. Unless you found this entry on Google, while searching for “Ganymede: The Story of Ganymede.” In that case, you’ll just have to scroll down, or something.

Anyway, some of you remember that I posted that awesome drawing of Africa with a big butt crack. Again, it was created for one of my other jobs, but I retain rights to all my art, and so I didn’t see any problem posting it here as well. Little did I expect that the problems would come from my job, not my personal internet diary. It just so happens that I’ve been working with at least one cheesedick, possibly more. Said cheesedick(s?) saw my art, and became insanely jealous. That, or they have some personal attachment to the continent of Africa, and refuse to admit that it could possibly have a butt.

That’s stupid, you know. All continents have butts. Or at least cloacae. (Australia is the exception, and with no outlet for its waste, it has simply adapted so that it can repeatedly consume its own effluvia.) Africa is one of the few continents lucky enough to have both a vent for liquid waste (the Congo River) and what can more accurately be called a “butt.” (I’m referring to the Nile, of course, because it occasionally goes both ways.) North America, on the other hand, only has the Mississippi cloacal vent and that massive gall bladder, the Hudson Bay. Bleh. I’m throwing up a little bit. At any rate, these misguided sidewinder missiles at my work attempted to get me fired over it. It didn’t work out, though, which was fortunate. For them. Because, if it had worked out, I would have attempted to kidnap their pets. And my attempts never fail. Don’t believe me? Call up the humane society, and ask them what percentage of the animals I turn in are glued to other animals. (I’ll just tell you: one hundred percent.)

11/3/09

Upgrading the lexicon

As if I knew what "lexicon" meant. That one's for next year!

But I did just learn what "holla" means. It's pretty much just the latter day version of "ahoy!" I can deal with that. Ahoy, bitches, ahoy!

Sorry about the lack of bearded presidents. I've had a few legal issues with the Whitehouse, and, more significantly, I dropped my mouse in the bathtub.

I did, however, just draw something the old fashioned way for my other job. Here:



Basically, what we have here is the continent of Africa with pants and a butt crack, or an "intergluteal cleft." There's a story behind it, I'm sure, but I think we're all mature enough to simply appreciate it as a work of art.

Also, I recently entered a writing contest! I won't say where, because I feel that might be cheating, nor will I reprint the entry here, because I'm not made of ink, but here's the gist: a violent psycho-sexual fantasy. Not mine, necessarily. It's all puppets, at any rate, which are notoriously difficult to direct violent psycho-sexual acts at. (When it comes down to it, all you're really doing is grinding against your own hand, and, believe me, I don't have enough soap to deal with that. And my pastor has to be getting tired of hearing about it.)

Ding! Times up!

But hold your breath for more presidential beards! They could come any week now!

10/14/09

Not exactly presidential, but...


100% irresistible.

I give you Nostra-Biden, the prophet of delight.

He speaks words from on high, in a language not always understood by the ears of mortals. And he has a good attitude and a solid head on his shoulders. Way to go Joe!

10/13/09

TCR, making history... better!

Sooorrryyyyyyy…

Been a while, eh? I’ve been so busy.

You know how it is: you’re writing your blog, you black out, and when you wake up you don’t remember you were supposed to be writing. And then you get some other projects going, and suddenly a month has passed and you don’t remember the last time you ate.

In addition to my regular job (I’m now working at a lab where we remove all the unnecessary parts from monkeys—more on that later!), I’ve had a few pretty major projects on the burner. I’m writing a screenplay, for one. I’m afraid I’ve committed exclusive rights to it to another website, however, so even after it’s finished, it might be a day or two before I forget about that and post it here.

I’ve also been contracted to do the editing for an independent film, written by and staring two local homosexuals, and one of their girlfriends. As payment, I have requested that I get exclusive release rights (what goes around comes around), and so you’ll likely see it here before it hits your local multiplex. It’s a slow process though, and, to be honest, coming home late most days, covered in monkey blood, I don’t even feel like touching it.

Finally, I’ve decided to become a pioneer in the fledgling art/science of adding beards to presidential portraits. I’m not the first to notice that despite some fleeting 19th century interest, facial hair has very much been taboo among our commanders in chief. Many have speculated as to the reasons for this, but few have done anything to remedy the situation. I’m not suggesting that we petition living presidents to grow beards and mustaches—they’d loose all their bible belt endorsement deals, and so it’d never fly—rather, I’m amending some of the shittier parts of history myself.

It’s not easy work, and I’m still experimenting with the best methods. (Acid etching or computer editing? The eternal battle.) I’m confident, however, that my skills will increase with practice.

That said, here are two of my earliest examples:



Here we have George Bush Jr., our most recent former president. For all my amateurish efforts, I think it's already apparent that a nice beard would have served him well in office. Flying in the face (literally) of suggestions that facial hair makes a person appear untrustworthy, it seems to me that the beard goes far in addressing both President Bush's credibility problems (and whether those were truly deserved is debatable) as well as general drinkability. He's so much more... dignified this way.

I chose to go with a natural salt and pepper to enhance his air of age and respectability. There's no denying, though, that ol' W is something of a wild man, and so his beard also has a taste of the unkempt mountain man to it. Mission accomplished, sir.

And, with some hesitancy regarding the policies of the Secret Service, I present this new portrait of our current president, Barack W. Obama:



I had a little bit of trouble with this one, despite my strong feelings for Mr. Obama. See, I don't just add facial hair willy-nilly; I look for the traces of the presidents' natural stubble, and try to build off of how their beards _would_ be. And, as near as I can tell, President Obama is a natural goatee grower. And yet... I never would have pegged him as a goatee man. Nor do I see him as mustache-only at this point in his life. So what now?

A compromise: the goatee with a hint of van dyke. Natural and subtle, but with an undeniable air of sophistication. Much like the president himself, but harrier. This is a beard that, in all likelihood, speaks at least two languages and knows well how to light the dark corners of the female heart.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm already feeling this project. There's a lot to complete here (so many beardless presidents!), and I only have photoshop at work, but they said the same things to Columbus, and look where he went anyway. I'm in. Game on!

Note: My subject line, by the way, is in the process of being trademarked.Yet another project...

8/25/09

Harry slash Draco slash Fun

That Star Trek movie got me all worked up over the creative potential of slash fiction, and the Harry Potter review put some ideas in my head. So I worked up this little piece for y'all. Just what is the relationship between Harry and Draco? There's more there than plain hate... Let's take a look at a scene not in any of the movies (yet!)

__________


Harry and Ron sit in the history of magic classroom. Harry is hunched over a desk, but Ron is clearly ready to leave. Class has long since ended, and Harry is struggling with a particularly tedious essay.

Ron: C’mon, mate. Hermione can help you out with that later. Let’s go play wizard baseball!

Harry: Sorry, Ron, but I want to do this myself. Hermione said she thought I was functionally retarded.

Ron: That minge! I’ll never understand girls.

Harry: You and me both. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up with you later.

Ron: All right then.

Ron starts to leave.

Harry: Hey! Ron… What’s “wizard baseball.”

Ron: Wizard baseball? Oh, Harry. It’s like muggle baseball, but with magic. I can’t explain it.

Harry and Ron chuckle and Ron’s oafishness. They both know which of them is functionally retarded. Ron leaves, and Harry turns back to his scroll.

Harry: Oh, what good is magic if it can’t write an essay on the gnome renaissance for me?

Harry sighs. He is frustrated and tense. He runs a hand through his dark, tousled hair. His fingers linger on his famous lightning-bolt scar, as his hand moves across his forehead. The scar is tingling.

Harry: Hmm.

A door opens silently in the back of the classroom. Although the entering figure is initially obscured by darkness, the white-blonde hair moving through the shadows like the rising moon reveal the intruder to be Draco Malfoy. Draco pads stealthily behind Harry, and places his long, pale fingers on Harry’s shoulders. He rubs the shoulders gently through the thin, regulation school robes.

Harry, unaware of just who the newcomer is: What happened to wizard baseball?

Draco composes his fine features into a careful sneer, and squeezes harder with his hands, rubbing the shoulders almost roughly.


Draco: Oh, I don’t know. It turned out that wizard baseball is a game for wizards too poor and stupid to appreciate the finer wizard sports.

Harry Potter nearly falls out of his desk in surprise. This would have saved him time, as he erupts from his seat, whirling theatrically to face Draco. His scar tingles like crazy.

Harry, sarcastically: And what sports can the “betters” of the wizarding world appreciate?

Draco: Muggle baiting, centaur riding. Goblin races. Nothing you’d know about, with a family like yours.

Harry: Better than a family that licks the boots of the Dark Lor… “Goblin races”?

Draco: Did I stutter, Potter? Do you speak English? Yes, goblin races. We unshackle some of the goblins for an afternoon, and watch as they chase each other across the gardens.

Harry: That sounds like the sort of thing you’d like.

Draco, sneering: Oh, it is. Maybe you’d enjoy it too, Potter, if you could step down from your pedestal.

Harry, his voice dripping with sarcasm: Maybe I would.

Draco takes a step towards Harry.

Draco: Perhaps you should come sometime. There’ll be free food there too, so maybe you should bring your friend, Weasley.

Harry, stepping forward himself: I wouldn’t put Ron through that. And your food would only make him sick.

Draco: Excuses, excuses. Don’t use poor Weasley as a scapegoat.

Harry: I never said I wouldn’t come.

Draco, rolling his eyes slightly: Oh, really? I guess I’ll see you there, then.

Harry: I guess you will.

Draco: Wonderful. I’ll tell my father.

Harry: Do that.

Harry gathers up his things, his eyes never leaving Draco’s. A smirk lingers on Draco’s face as Harry walks by, towards the exit.


Harry, pausing: Draco, maybe you could participate in them sometime.

Draco’s smirk falls with suspicion: Participate in what?

Harry puts his hands on Draco’s shoulders, and squeezes them firmly.


Harry: The goblin race, of course. You’ve got the legs for it.

Draco’s jaws tense, and his face darkens with intense emotion.


Harry, kneading Draco’s thin shoulders: You just need to loosen up a little.

Harry’s hand slowly trails down the side of Draco’s robes as he walks away, a final declaration of confidence and contempt for his adversary.

Draco, softly: You’ll get what’s coming to you, Potter.

Harry, over his shoulder: I hope so.

Harry Potter The Movie review: A wizard will teach us how to be a boy

I'm on a roll! More movie reviews!! Here goes:

The epic wartime struggles of an educational institution, as seen through the eyes of a little boy.

That about sums up this film. What we have here is yet another entry into the now venerable Harry Potter: The Movie series, which, like the others, can be highly entertaining if you’re willing to take some time to unpack the symbolism and visual metaphor.

I am not willing to do that. Not at the moment, anyway. But if you can just keep the following notes in mind, you’ll get the general idea of what’s happening beneath the surface; there’s magic in all of us, Harry may or may not be gay, and sometimes a wand is just a wand. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head on over to your local movie theater, and you won’t be disappointed.

Notes and nitpicks:

Wizard—I love seeing magic spells on screen!

Witch—You can clearly see the wires holding some of those spells up. C’mon, Warner Brothers, it’s the 21st century, let’s see some cgi!

Wizard—H.P. and the gang are finally developing those acting chops.

Witch—While a head wound (and the subsequent hormonal issues) early in the filming of the series has trapped Rupert Grint in a child’s body, Daniel Radcliffe is making a less convincing eleven-year-old with each passing year. Not much to be done about it, but… it distracts.

Wizard—Look for a well-played cameo by Lil’ Wayne! Seems like Hogwarts has a very interesting new astronomy teacher…

Witch—What the hell happened to Dobby?! Harry & Dobby are the Ross & Rachel of Middle Earth!

Wizard/Witch—Apparently Radcliffe was given to daily fits of apoplectic rage, during which his handlers would force him onto a specially made Snuggy to keep him from hurting himself or others on the set. Scary! But it looks like the merchandise machine behind the series is now making “the cloak of madness” available to all Target shoppers! One, please!

8/16/09

To the Ends of the Earth… and Beyond!

So, I watched the new Star Trek film last night, at one of the many local second-run theaters. The tickets there are cheap, but that also means that there’s always a little more shouting at the screen than I generally like. Still, I decided that it was about time for another one of my famous movie reviews, so I braved the masses and went on a voyage among the stars.

(Really, I don’t mean to be so bitter about movie audiences. It’s just that the woman sitting next to me “accidentally” put her hand on my thigh several times. An invasion of personal space to begin with, I’m pretty sure she also had peanut butter on her fingers. Oh well. As the man said, “America, America, this is you!”)

Star Trek: The Power of Love is on the surface a delightful story about spaceships and guns, but it quickly becomes apparent to the more astute viewers (ahem) that Star Trek: The Power of Love is, first and foremost, a love story. A sweet, yet very… intense love story.

It helps to have a grounding in the basic tenants of “slash fiction,” to really appreciate the new film, I think. To be perfectly honest, I was unfamiliar with the term until last night. Or, at least, I had been laboring under a misconception regarding slash fiction. When I got home from the theater, thoroughly entertained though I was, I struggled to put into words some of the concepts rolling around my head, and so I turned to the Internet. A quick search of “Kirk/Spock love” returned some remarkable images, which, while somewhat more explicit than anything in the actual movie, certainly felt honest about the overarching theme: a deep and abiding love between two men on a spaceship.

Maybe a quick summary is in order. I’ll leave out most of the names, because I don’t remember them, and, for the most part, going through particular scenes isn’t necessarily illustrative of the theme of the piece as a whole, so I’ll try to be concise.

The story starts with two young men, separated by light years of space, but united in their passions. Daniel Spock is a half alien (or, another useful way to think of him, half man, half… something else), struggling with the strange and forbidden feelings inside of him. He hides his true self under ridiculous fashions and distracts his powerful intellect with word puzzles and math-based computer games. Jimmy Kirk, on the other hand, is all man, but he spends his days in a flurry of self-destructive stunt behavior, and his nights, as he puts it, “chest deep in alien pussy.” (“You’re not fooling anyone,” offers an avuncular rear admiral.) There is a void in each of the young men’s lives, and like so many before them they eventually are drawn to the mystery, adventure, and dark, confined spaces promised by… the Navy! Fate has thrown his gossamer lasso about their waists, and they are slowly drawn together from across the galaxy.

Fast forward. Kirk and Spock are finally serving together aboard a dry-docked spaceship, answering the admiral’s fan mail and giving tours to civilians, and… they hate each other! What?! How is this possible? I’ll tell you how. Or, more accurately, Spock himself tells us. Drawn across space and time by a bond of love, a svelte and gentlemanly older version of Spock travels from the future to set eyes on his old friend Kirk one final time. He resolves not to reveal his true identity to the younger man, but a night spent huddling for warmth in an icy cave is more than Old Spock can handle. Many secrets are revealed.

Enter the third angle in this love triangle: a jealous and spurned admirer of Spock’s follows him from the future, and resolves to destroy the fledgling relationship between the pointy-eared half man, and the barrel-chested man-boy. And then the adventure begins, each explosion and claxon alarm drawing the young sailors closer together.

See, apparently the “slash” in slash fiction is what isn’t between two titular characters when they hug. If you know what I mean. Like “Kirk/Spock,” “Harry/Draco,” or “Captain Jack Sparrow/Legolas.” It goes a long way toward explaining the powerful tension that always exists in these relationships. They don’t hate each other, they hate themselves and the relationship they can’t have. I’m not saying that this relationship is necessarily sexual. But it is usually sexual. And here we have the old “Sam ‘n Frodo” dynamic all over again, but instead of the tension surfacing through Frodo’s catty comments towards Sam, and Sam’s constant threats of hitting Frodo with a frying pan, it appears in Kirk’s bizarre habit of putting Spock in headlocks for minutes at a time and Spock’s attempts at humiliating Kirk in front of the crew by constantly posing logic problems straight out of the Mensa study book.

It’s thought provoking stuff, and I’m surprised that the audience was as receptive as it seemed to be. But I suppose it was only a matter of time before a studio picked up on this aspect of the Star Trek mythos and expanded upon it with some CGI and b-list stars. I’m all for it. It’s been on our minds for years, whether we acknowledged it or not. I mean, I think I’ve been writing Kirk slash Spock fan fiction for years without even realizing it. Take a look at an excerpt from one of my mini-screenplays. (I always try to write them as screenplays, just in case.)

Kirk sprawls in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise, one leg hooked over an arm rest, his chin cupped in a free hand. He is thinking.

Spock approaches Kirk from behind and sets his hands on the Captain’s broad shoulders. Kirk doesn’t immediately acknowledge the first officer’s presence, but he closes his eyes with pleasure. Spock’s strong hands and Vulcan training make for good shoulder rubs. It’s not for nothing that he has earned the nickname “Roofie-hands” among the crew.


Kirk, finally: I just wish… What are they up to?

Spock, humoring the captain: What who is up to?

Kirk: Good God, man, the Romulans! What have they got planned for the summit?

Spock: There has been no indication that the Romulan delegation has any designs beyond the scheduled negotiations. Perhaps they truly wish for peace this time.

Kirk: They’re fucking Romulans, Spock! You know they’re up to something!

Spock: I do not know that. But, as always, I will trust to your… intuition.

Kirk sighs and straightens in the chair. Reluctantly, he leans out of Spock’s grip and stands.


Kirk: I just need to clear my head. I’m going planet-side.

Spock: Green-tits?

Kirk: How did you know?

Spock: I… have come to understand what you mean by “clear your head.” Green-tits is a resident of this planet. It was not a difficult deduction.

Kirk, looking for his keys and wallet as he prepares to leave: Why do you call her that?

Spock: Every visible piece of her anatomy is green. Am I wrong in assuming that the tits are the exception to the rule?

Kirk: … No.

Kirk abandons the search for his wallet (which lies under a carelessly placed newspaper on a control console) to move behind Spock, putting his own hands on the half-Vulcan’s shoulders.


Kirk: It’s just a little bit of alien tail. It doesn’t mean anything.

His thick fingers dig gently into Spock’s carefully pressed uniform.

Spock, shrugging the hands away: If you say so, sir.

Kirk, becoming frustrated: You know I hate it when you call me sir.

Spock is silent for a moment. Kirk spots his hidden wallet, and begins to leave. Spock speaks again. Emotion makes the slightest fracture in his controlled Vulcan baritone.

Spock: We should be out having adventures.

See what I mean? It’s pretty tame, but trope is there. It’s always there. It just took a director as courageous as JJ Abrams to take it out of the drawer and display it in a way we can all appreciate.

6/8/09

Potter slips from the blazing world

I just ate a black grape sour jellybean. (Are those hierarchical adjectives? Fudge!) It was like eating the dark heart of a star. My mouth tastes like a chemical factory.

Speaking of the dark hearts of stars, let’s examine the recent behavior of one Daniel Radcliffe, a.k.a. Harry “the best boy” Potter.

The Boy Who Lived (and who eventually had sex with his best friend’s little sister) has been up to some distinctly un-Gryffindorish antics recently.

I’m not just talking about his nude scene in Equus, either. All the best wizards have to get buck now and again, probably to replenish their chi, etc. (I’m thinking of Gandalf specifically here, but no doubt Merlin, Dumbledore, Siegfried and certainly Roy all had their own NC-17 moments at some point.) No, I think we’re all mature enough to deal with a little exposed wand now and again. (I made that joke up in the first place, so keep all cries of plagiarism to yourself.) What first got me concerned, I think, was the arson.

We all bought the “er’buddy duz it in England” argument, I suppose, but now that he’s started with these hate crimes, I don’t think we can let that one fly. Who would have thought the little wizard could have so much hate in him? Wow. He sure does hate the physically disabled.

I don’t think we need to take it much further than that (and how could you?), but I did come across this probably-overlooked article (overshadowed as it was by “Boy Genius Sets Fire to Special Olympics”): it seems that D. Radcliffe, in his spare time, has been arranging “romantic” liaisons with older men through craigslist, and then publicly accusing them of pedophilia. When it was pointed out that, despite the outfits in his photographs, Radcliffe is well over the age of majority, he claimed that he was simply practicing a “shame spell.” He then indicated to reporters the finger-shaped bruises on his upper arms, and added “Abracadabra!” By and large, the journalists were not impressed.

What gives? What’s Lil’ Scarface up to? His agent claims that the behavior is simply a teaser for the plot of the next Potter film, but I had the book read to me, and I don’t recall any part in which Harry Potter tries to lock a blind couple in a freezer.

I’m more inclined to think that what we have here is yet another case of Gary Coleman Syndrome. The fading of childhood comforts is more than some personalities can bear, and the resulting anxiety is released in often violent outbursts. (It has been argued that Coleman was also mourning the loss of his career, but I disagree; anyone could see that he had a bright future of autograph signing and local television advertisements ahead of him.) Look at Mike Tyson, if you need another example. When The Dynamite Kid suddenly became The Strongest Man in the World, suddenly we were seeing ear-biting and children-eating.

I’m afraid that if we can’t somehow figure out a way to reverse Radcliffe’s aging (hormone therapy?), he will soon be on the road to punching women in shopping malls. That would be a tragedy, to say the least. Please write to your local Warner Brothers rep, and encourage them to take action.

4/30/09

"Dick" was my father's name. You can call me "Mister."

Seriously, though, a little respect pleaz?

Y'all hyped for the swine flu? I always said that no good could come from a man fucking a pig (or vice versa), but I'm not too proud to admit that I was wrong. Someone, somewhere, has done something... unfathomable to a piggy, and yet the coin of global karma has landed heads up! (Heads up is good.) We got a pandemic! Hooooray!

As of this writing, we are at "pandemic alert level 5." As I understand it, this means that the pathogen has us all by the balls, and there's no need anymore to be fucking pigs to get it (thank God!). The WHO's pandemic alert scale goes up to 6, but I have the feeling that they'll raise that level cap if it looks like everyone is having fun. Look no further than the World of Warcraft ("WoW"... "WHO"... coincidence?) for an example. Now, my own adventures in the world of Warcraft were tragically cut short at level 3, when the game administrators realized that I was spending all my time tracing out a giant penis on the game map. I figured if I walked that course long enough, I would wear a line in the Wargrass. I think I was on to something too, because after a few weeks the night elf Lord Dandy Hugepenisdrawer was kicked off the system. Hey, nerds... y'all can call me Mister now too.

Anyway, I've been told that level 60 used to be the maximum on WoW(za), but they raised it due to popular demand. I think that with a little effort, we can push this pandemic up to a fearsome level 50! That'd be, like, your eyes would melt whenever you looked at a pig, and saying any word that started with a "P" would cause you to lose a childhood memory. It would be... whorable! (i.e. great.)

PS—The last mighty swine flu pandemic (some refer to it as the "Spanish Flu," but not me) in 1918 killed my great-grandfather! So this is like Swine Flu II: This Time it's Personal! Although the 1918 flu infected a third of the world's population, so it's probably personal for a lot of jerks out there.

4/19/09

I’m no hero, but who gives a nut?

I suppose it happens to everyone at some point: you realize—suddenly or gradually, it doesn’t matter—that you aren’t the person you imagined you would grow to be. You should have been happier. You should have been smarter. You should have been kinder. You should have been stronger. There are so many things you know you should have done, but you couldn’t… because what you are and what you always hoped to be aren’t the same, and never will be.

You’re not your father. You’re not JFK. You’re not a scholar. You’re not a lover. You’re not a hero.

But, hey, who gives a milk, right? Sure, I’d love to be able to fly, see through ladies’ clothes, and kill a whale with a single punch, but I can’t, and I’m fine with that. Because even though I’m no hero, I’m pretty sure I’d make a damn fine villain.

Let’s take a personal inventory:

I don’t have whale-killing strength… but I have whale-killing will! I’d do it if I could! In a second!

I have an intellect like a needle taped to the end of a pencil—very sharp. Villains need this kind of smarts for formulating plans. And for making deadly new weapons. Like… needles taped to pencils. Or a different type of flamethrower.

I’m not afraid to take what’s mine. Like someone else’s car. Or a kid that I could get a big ransom for.

I know the key to human life: the heart. Stop it, and you’re pretty much dead.

I’m not afraid of being changed by lots of money. I mean, that would have been the idea in the first place, right? To be changed into a really rich guy.

This sort of thing makes sense to me. Keep your tights, Kent. If I want a career change, I’m going the other direction.

4/13/09

Put this in your mouth, hippie (your foot)

Hey y’all.

Despite what my criminal record might or might not (or might) indicate, I’ve got nothing in particular against “hippie-types.” Really, I judge them like any other minority: based on statistical trends I’ve heard about. Some hippies are fine people, I’m sure.

They sure can be aggravating, though, am I right? Hey, Starchild, I want to have a conversation, not hum simultaneously with you! How do you shake someone out of a reverie like that? (Without accidentally touching any of their dreadlocks, of course.) How do you break that slow stride, and force some active reflection? Impossible, right? No, not impossible.

One D. Chesterton, as it happens, was able to do it not once, but twice last night alone, without even trying. It just came naturally to me during what I thought was a normal conversation. I am that talented.

Occasion #1: “Check out my High School Musical beach towel. It has Zack Ephron and everything! But when I wear this on the beach, it makes me look like a pedophile. What a drag!”

Smile and nod at that, peacenik!

Occasion #2: “… Well, it’s a pretty funny story. See, I’ve been kind of depressed lately, so I’ve been drinking a lot…”

Cha-ching! You can take that silence to the bank, because it’s golden!

On the other hand, I also have learned how to quickly and gently slip a stunned hippie back into a comfortable and dreamy distant state: “Sure, the Mesozoic is the best—obviously—but most people don’t even know about the Permian! I mean, therapsids were basically mammals, and this is 250 million years before the so-called “age of mammals.” They had differentiated dentition and everything!

I’m like a skilled tiger-trainer. I know when to pet the tiger, when to yell at it, when to give it pieces of chicken liver, and when to sneak up and douse its sphincter with pepper spray. It’s the same with hippie-types. (Although, despite the loose-fitting clothing, it’s often difficult to really spray a hippie’s privates with severe irritants to the extant that you might feel they deserve.)

PS—I met some very friendly people last night!

4/10/09

Best wear sunglasses

Or you'll end up like Helen Keller. You'll still be deaf and stuff, but at least your eyeballs will still work.

I'm referring, of course, to what you ought to do when looking at my new web-diary top thinger. The thing up there that says "The Chesterton Review, etc" That's the sort of thing people get payed millions of dollars for, because designing that kind of practical art is not easy. Millions.

So I suppose I'm understandably a little proud that I payed an immigrant just seventy bucks for this one. His normal rate is a hundred, but I just told him flat out, "Hey, mon ami, don't put any colors in there and lets make it eighty." (He was a French Canadian.) And then I slipped him seventy dollars. Apparently in French Canada they use different numbers, because he didn't even notice.

4/9/09

How many different ways can I say OMG?!?

I can only think of two ways, actually.

Still, can you believe the Internet? With the help of a marketing campaign for some movie (I think it's the sequel to Bicentennial Man. Tricentennial Man?) I was able to see the robot that's living inside me! Am I the robot? Or is the robot me?



I was inclined to think that I was the robot... and then I saw this: (!!)

I’ll give you something to follow: my orders to go rob a bank.


Look at that! I have two “followers”! This is a remarkable development, as I had been writing under the impression that this diary was not, in fact, even connected to the Internet.

JK, of course, I know what the Internet is, and sort of how it works. I had just assumed that no one knew where to find me.

Despite my natural suspicion regarding the motives of these two followers (hackers?), they will both be receiving medals of merit in the mail. Or, to be more accurate, “Angela Julin” will be receiving a medal of merit: The Desert Rat Medal of Merit, and with it the honor of the British 7th Armoured Division. Inbred, limey tank drivers for John Bull, and—to a man—mad with syphilis, the Desert Rats nonetheless could recognize a loyal follower when they saw one, an absolutely necessary characteristic for men stuck in the sweaty belly of an M3. Congratulations, “Angela Julin,” and keep blowing up those metaphorical Nazis, or whatever.

“Mike G,” on the other hand, will be getting the Like a Brother Award. While the Chestertons rarely have any actual siblings (we are notorious womb-wreckers), receiving the leather and glue statue of the Like a Brother Award is nearly as good. They are exceedingly rare, and fetch the bearer discounts at tobacco retail outlets across the Midwest.

Now down to business.

Get a load of this:

“I could have lived in that scope. If God has eyes… surely they have cross hairs."

Guess who said that. Correct: it was Jane Fonda.

I’ve never been one for revisionist-history, but as near as I can figure it, it wasn’t domestic criticism that silenced ol’ Hanoi Jane’s commie-hugging, anti-war blither blather. No, it was her personal revelation that she loved guns, probably more so than she loved anything else in the world. After this discovery, there was no way she could go back to bad-mouthing the most gun-rich organization in the world.

It’s all public record. J.F. made a lot of public statements in the 70’s, and after riding around on that NVA anti-aircraft gun, they were consistently gun-themed, not to mention increasingly nonsensical. During a 1976 interview with Walter Cronkite, Fonda describes the first time she held a gun, a North Vietnamese Kalashnikov: “It felt like holding a knife… but more so! Or, no, it was like holding a baby! A baby that could kill someone just by looking at them and barking. My baby…”

In the ensuing conversation, Fonda would use the phrase “bust a nut” no fewer than eight times, following the words in each instance with a “rapid-fire, machine gun sound.” (This is from Cronkite’s description of the interview.)

In the following decade, Fonda managed to gradually rein-in some of her peculiar commentary in favor of slightly more unusual outlet of expression for her obsession: body modification—extensive tattooing in particular. While some of the earlier tattoos can be seen in the photographs of magazine archives, Fonda began to wear less revealing clothing in public as the eighties wore on. It’s impossible to say just how far she went, but in an interview with Ink magazine Fonda’s regular tattoo artist from 1981 through 1987 said of the designs, “some of that shit was so damn graphic… and… and… and unnaturally sexual, it made me want to give up the art altogether. I have nightmares…”

So how about that? It’s amazing what you can turn up by hitting the books for a few hours. A librarian helped me out with it. I tell you, those broads don’t care what you’re doing as long as it gets them out from behind that desk. Mine kept telling me to “mention the exercise records” in my “report.” I told her that I wouldn’t be doing any damn thing like that under any damn circumstances, and she kept helping me anyway. Bless you, Jeannine!

4/5/09

PS—Don't try to pin me down, dickweed. Fascist.

So... I just noticed something: At the end of each of my posts there's a little bar for readers' "reactions."

Oooookay. First off, I don't think there's really any place here for reader reactions. I'm sure there's another website out there just for that. Y'all can react until your colons prolapse, but do it on your own time.

As it is, however, it seems that some fascist has stuck me with the "reactions" thinger whether I like it or not. (And we know that I don't like it.) What's more, there are only three options for reactions. Again, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how you react to stuff, but I have a hard time accepting that "interesting," "funny," and "cool" quite sum things up as accurately as possible.

In fact, if I started keeping track of my own reactions to stuff, I doubt that any of those would even make the top 10. Yeah, "Let's do it" and "Just do it" would be up there. So would "Puh-lease!" Probably "LOL!" or "Lulz" too. Until recently, "gay" might have been on the list, but I've come to understand that I have been completely misusing that term. In lieu of "gay," I'm now saying "Shazaam!" which pretty much encompasses what I thought I was saying all those times I called stuff "gay."

I suppose something along the lines of "Don't try to pin me down, dickweed" would be roaring up through the top three. Especially on days like today.

But "interesting," "funny" and "cool"? Bitch, puh-lease.

Keeping it real... in your head

Check it out—yet another Chesterton Productions gem. Lock this one up with the family jewels, because, like the family jewels, it's very valuable, and it's so good it could impregnate your wife.

This was, by the way, filmed entirely during what is known to professional filmmakers as "the magic hour." "The magic hour" is more than a little bit of a misnomer, I think, because it happens at least twice a day. It has to do with solar flares.

3/14/09

Look what I found!

I've been having some anxiety issues lately. My therapist keeps saying that they're the result of a biochemical imbalance in my brain, combined with relationship stress and lingering shock from a traumatic experience.

I say that it's because I recently realized that I will never be able to bear and give birth to a child. And who would know better? Me? Or her?

The culmination of this anxiety, I'd say, is the hole I punched in my refrigerator door. My fingers were very buttery and slippery, and the kept sliding off the door handle. This frustration, on top of the "Junior syndrome" (my term), prompted me to find a new way to retrieve my iced tea. Boom! Right through the door

It wasn't as rewarding as I had hoped. Aside from the tremendous pain in my hand, wrist, and radius bone, the hole was too small to pull the iced tea through (and believe me, I tried for some time), and the new crimps running through the door made it impossible to open in the normal way, buttery fingers or no. It was probably the low point of the day.

It was the sort of experience that makes you want to slump against a broken refrigerator, your hand still stuck inside, clasping a bottle of tea. But as my head dangled near the floor, I hear the strangest squeaking...

At maximum curiosity, I released the tea, and found the nearest head-sized hole in the floor. And look what I found:


I had to lure him out with a piece of cheese (which—the gods must be crazy—fit through the hole in the fridge door), but once he got out in the open and set his crossed eyes on the comforts of above-ground living... there was no going back for him.

I have decided to name him "Lancelot." (For now, at least.) He goes through cheese like you wouldn't believe, but I think things are finally looking up for me. For me and for Lancelot.

1/31/09

PS—explain this


I just stole this from "My Space." Is this a "transsexual"? Is that what that means? Holy Cats! remind me never to be a single dad, because I don't think I could deal with all the transsexuals.

25 things about me


Hey there, gworls and boils.

I know all y’all are into facebook, and feelings, and showing your feelings on facebook. And, really, that’s fine. I don’t respect that—at all—but it’s fine if you want to talk about yourself on facebook to strangers.

It makes a lot of sense, in some ways. I mean, it’s important that everybody knows about how much you like 80s music and about how sad sad sad you were when your stupid old grandma died (because she was old, probably not because she was stupid… but it’s sad either way, I’m sure), because these are the things that make you so interesting. But how are you supposed to let everyone know about this interesting crap? Because if you were to just walk up to some passing acquaintance and start telling them about this stuff—telling them with your mouth and noises, I mean—they’d probably punch you, assuming they didn’t fall asleep first. So… how? Facebook! This way, you can expose passing acquaintances to the facts regarding your rotten genitals and your dog’s clever name, and you don’t have to worry about them punching you in your talking mouth.

It’s not for me, though. I do have feelings (so many feelings), and I do have facebook (so many friends), but I’m not comfortable expressing one through the other. The C.R. seems like a much more logical forum .

So, in the loose tradition of facebook, I will now post 25 interesting little things about interesting me. I can’t tag 25 friends to do it too, however, because a) this isn’t facebook; b) I don’t know what that even means; and c) I don’t have 25 friends. Also, so far, I’m the only person in the world that knows the address of this blog. So I guess, just for appearances, I’d like to “tag” Angelina Jolie (before she had all those kids), Eartha Kitt (before she died), and also Jesus (whenever). The more I can learn about those interesting characters, the better.

And so, without further ado…

Why does it have to be 25 things? I’m not sure I can think of 25 things to say about myself, without resorting to describing body parts (and I can only think of about 15 body parts, so that’s not even going to do it). And I’m at work right now. We’ll just see how far I get.

1) I just don’t get “Rocky Raccoon.” Is he supposed to be some kind of animal? Whatev. I’ve poisoned dozens of raccoons (accidentally, and for a little pin money), and you know what? The poisoned raccoon’s mate doesn’t get all sad. No, it just goes and eats its fallen partner. And then it often dies too, if the initial poison dose was high enough. It’s very Romeo and Juliet, but it ain’t no pop song.
2) I am professional-comedian-funny.
3) My favorite country is America.
4) I would rather hug than argue.
5) I don’t vote.
6) Sometimes I’d rather argue than hug.
7) My least favorite race is Spanish.
8) When I was a little boy, I once punched through my garage wall. I was that strong.
9) I have never, ever killed anything that I thought deserved to live.
10) Arson and arsonists are two of my greatest fears. The thought of dying in fire is scary!! If anybody ever tries to burn me down… I’m going out like the Terminator (with a big damn fight).
11) I’m not sure what the Seven Wonders of the World are, exactly, but I bet they aren’t that great. Sorry to be controversial, everyone, but I’m no sheep.
12) Least favorite number.
13) Like Gandhi and the Beatles, I truly believe that love is the only real solution to those problems in the world that can’t be solved with violence. Take hunger, for instance—you aren’t going to end hunger with a war. It just takes love, which is awesome, because I don’t even have to do anything… except feel love for the hungry ones. Call me an idealist, but there it is.
14) Who the heck is Norman Mailer? I assume he’s an artist, and/or not heterosexual. But I don’t know! He could be a soldier, and/or some variation of heterosexual.
15) Favorite flavor: salty.
16) I actually don’t have a least favorite number. But sometimes I lie about that to fit in.
17) In tech school, I dabbled in Pentecostalism. But, you know what? I don’t regret it at all; college-like environments are where we’re supposed to have learning experience-like experiences. A side note (and, again, this isn’t an apology): I admit that I faked the speaking in tongues thing. I would just recite the plots to Ducktales episodes as fast as I could. It did feel a little like what I imagine the Holy Spirit feels like, though.
18) I am not a racist.
19) Sometimes I just look at the sun, and I think, “Holy shit! Really?”
20) I sympathize with Dr. Frankenstein. He just wanted a baby of his own, you know? I don’t want a baby, but I get what it’s like to want to make something that’s supposed to be impossible for you to make. (But at least my meatloaf never strangled any little girls.)
21) I’m a compulsive gambler. Like, everything I do, I have to say to myself, “I bet everything I own that I can make it across the street before the red hand starts flashing” (or whatever). It’s actually kind of scary, but so far I haven’t lost much.
22) Was it St. Francis who preached to the birds? I think that’s nice. Somebody has to do it, because those little suckers could die at any moment.
23) I figure that I can run about 25 miles an hour, because coyotes can run about 24 miles an hour, and I haven’t been caught by a coyote yet. Do the math.
24) If Lady Di had lived, we would have been married and divorced by now, and AIDS wouldn’t be real any more. Fact. Learn to live with it.
25) If I could have a super power, it would be invisibility*. This is so I wouldn’t have to look at myself naked in the shower. I’m just trying to get clean! I don’t need that distraction!
26) *25 subject to change.

1/25/09

I thought this was supposed to be a socialist paradise!

After decades of struggle, we’ve finally elected our first red president, and here I am, eating a scone (made in America), sitting on a chair (made for Americans), in a Barnes and Noble store (where very nearly everything is printed in American).

And yet… and yet I can’t get free internet! I was opposed to a communist president from the start, but I figure the Lord gives you a Red, you make red kool-aid. It’s been four days, however, and that red hasn’t given up a drop of the juice of the fruits of socialism. It makes me suspect that a) there are no fruits of socialism, or b) our president isn’t a true red.

If I have to put on a grey uniform and go to jumping jack classes every day, I want free internet! Is that so hard to understand, comrade?!?!

Yeah, don’t let the immediate tone of this diary fool you: this is not live. I’m writing it on a typewriter program, on the afternoon of the 24th of January, and I have been forced to save it and “post” it later. I sat down with my scone and clicked the “internet” button on my computer, but all that came up was effete ass-grabber in rectangle glasses from AT and T, saying that my ass needed to be grabbed before I got any internet. WTF. That’s not socialism, that’s the worst kind of capitalism, the kind where someone else takes advantage of ME.

And here’s the thing: I had important business to attend to on the internet. Let alone my internet diary (I had a great entry on the different terms for “vagina” I feel entitled to use), I needed to get some files downloaded from a file-stealing site.

Please, hold your criticisms for ineffective communist presidents. While technically I would be stealing these files, any ethicist worth his weight in salt would tell you that, in the most important sense, the files belong to me. Who else would own naked pictures of me?

Remember that whole cell phone camera/naked pictures debacle? Of course you do—it was a big deal. Well, I don’t know if my phone was “hacked,” or if I just accidentally called the internet one day, but somehow those pictures are on the web now. All two hundred of them.

I took it upon myself, then, to get these pictures back. It won’t be easy, but I figure if I can track down every where my pictures ended up, I can just download them all at once, and then break my computer. Problem solved, right?

Nope. When I started to download the first batch of nudie-me pics, I immediately received a notice from my “ISP” (don’t ask me what it stands for) saying that Warner Brothers was aware that I was attempting to illegally obtain these pictures, and that they would pursue legal recourse if further attempts at downloading were made on my part.

How the flock did the Warner brothers get legal ownership of naked pictures of me? I never saw any money for them! Once again, this is the worst form of capitalism.

Some days I think that there’s nothing good about the world.

PS—What are you going to call a vagina next time you see one? Beats me. Blame Barnes an Noble. And communism.

1/9/09

Don't get ahead of yourself D-bag

Wowsers!

Whoever wrote that last post must have been on smart pills or something!

Seriously, it was me who wrote it, but that's a Frisky Chesterton post if I've ever read one. Some times I feel like I'm David Jeckyll and Frisky is like Walter Hyde. That's if Hyde were really smart, I mean, not a creepy little midget.

So get a load of this:

"It was the strangest sensation. Two violent heaves, and there it was: I had vomited a human finger. 'Now, where,' I thought to myself, 'did that come from?'"

That's from the guy who wrote Winnie the Pooh! A.A. Milne, New Years' morning, 1932! I hope his resolution wasn't to stop eating fingers. (Although that could be a tricky one, depending on your situation. I guess I shouldn't judge.)

For some reason I have butter, or something buttery, all over my fingers right now. I can't for the life of me think where it could have come from. It's like I slapped a man made of butter, or something. I don't think I would ever eat my own fingers, even buttered up like this. Unless I was starving, and the only way to ensure that some of my fingers lived was to eat the rest of them—I might do it then. But that same sentiment goes for children, assuming I had children (multiple children, anyway). It's just common sense.

Oh, I don't think I ever mentioned it, but I've been going to therapy lately. I started going because I kept waking up with huge wedgies, and I wondered if I might be doing that to myself on purpose in my sleep. The real problem turned out to be related to the material of my pajamas, but I don't regret the therapy. You don't want to play around with something like that. Getting things stuck in your butt crack can be a serious problem (I've seen x-rays), and I feel pretty certain that it usually starts with wedgies. Anyway, it's nice to have that resolved, but I've continued with the therapy. I've always thought of therapy as sort of a status symbol, and now that I'm in it, I have to admit that it feels good. It's like driving a used Lexus. Very nice.

Life of D.C., day ?

Well, all, it's the new year. And not just the new year, but A new year. And I'm excited.

I'm all about a new year, as long time readers will no doubt already know. I like resolutions—I like making them, I like breaking them. The secret, I suppose, is to know which ones to break. This year, I think I'll break something related to transexual prostitutes. I'm sorry that I can't be more specific, but I haven't finished making all my resolutions, and I think talking about them too early is a sure fire way to jinx something special. Remember last year—the ill-fated "I wanna be a millionaire" resolution? That was a lesson I won't soon forget (there's a resolution for you—put it in the bank!).

Generally, I think "get regular" is probably a good, descriptive phrase for the resolutions of '09 (again, however, I can't say whether this relates to the trannies yet). Obviously this applies to my bowels, and to brushing my teeth. And, more importantly, to blogging! Get regular, Dandy!

It's not easy, but I do care about this crap after all, and I'm all about making the world more ready to remember me when I'm dead—so more blogging it is. To this effect, I have purchased my very first laptop computer. That wasn't an easy decision, I'll tell you. But I shopped around, and settled on a nice overlap between my price range and the abilities I expect my computer to have. So I purchased a Phu-Go Briteboy. Phu-Go is one of the up and coming Thai computer manufacturers, and they make an all around solid product for the price (sorry, you won't get that out of me). The device has more cardboard components than I'd expect from such a humid country, but I think its new temperate home will suit it well.

The keyboard is a little smaller than I'm used to, and my hands continue to grow at a rate that far outpaces the rest of my body, so you'll forgive me any typos as I get used to this key arrangement. Several of the keys—S, Y, O, "tab," and half a dozen Thai characters—are located on the underside of the machine, so speedy typing will take some practice. (Although maybe I could rig up some strings and, I don't know, levers that would remove the necessity of flipping the computer over every time I need to access those particular buttons.)

But back to blogging. As some of you know, I'm very much into history these days. Not trends, or dates, etc (although I'm good at those too), so much as quotes. I am astounded by the ability of dead people to express my own feelings so well. In fact, I look to the wisdom of the ancients whenever I'm uncertain of just what my own feelings are. Like the other day when I found that (possibly dead?) homeless man on the sidewalk; I just asked myself, "What would Roosevelt do in this situation?" Well, number one, he wouldn't touch whatever was coming out of the man's mouth, that's for sure. Check. Beyond that, I had to ask myself which Roosevelt I was referring to. Teddy probably would have skinned the sidewalk man, or at least robbed him (I don't judge—he was a product of his time), while F.D. probably would have just rolled away. Even if the latter Roosevelt wanted to help, he couldn't have (because of the polio), and he wouldn't have called an ambulance, because they didn't have cell phones before he died.

So, what did I do? I followed F.D.R.'s example, and left the body on the sidewalk.

Some people would say that he was our greatest president.

At any rate, my example got away from me there. I was discussing history, and quotes. And resolutions. And blogging, maybe. See, I was thinking about how it's often difficult for me to think of something I want to write about—at least getting started anyway. I mean, what do you people even want? This is my DIARY, after all, so why should it be beholding to you? But then... what would Roosevelt do? I have an obligation, I suppose.

I'm thinking that a little bite of history or literature might be enough to get me rolling.

It just so happens that I was thinking today of something the famous author/athlete C.S. Lewis once said: "I always called it 'channeling the bard,' until I was very nearly in my fifties. What had been a playful euphemism for my very fondest past time suddenly became a code for something I by no means enjoyed. Something that just about killed me."

Lewis' original application of the phrase, as you have likely guessed, refers to his extensive heroin use. As I understand it, the addiction dates to back to the days of his writers' workshop group "The Barrel Boys," which met every week in a local pub, The Chamberlain's Barrel. Tolkien, of course was the other notable member of the Barrel Boys, and Tolkien was largely responsible for getting Lewis hooked on heroin. Not a user himself, it seems like this was a practical joke of Tolkien's (well played, sir).

Although it cost him more than one marriage, the habit never took much of a physical toll on Lewis, and so he never saw fit to quit until the expression, not the addiction, got him into very serious trouble. After Tolkien moved to California, Lewis did his best to maintain The Barrel Boys, however, with the group's very own John Lennon off in Hollywood, the driving force was absent, and the meetings decayed into a semi-regular gathering of whichever "bright lads" were in that corner of the pub that night. The discussion of literature quickly fell away, replaced by... Well, Lewis himself had no idea. Immediately after Tolkien's departure, C.S. doubled his heroin intake (simply for "something to do"), and was never after in much of a receptive state at Barrel Boy gatherings. He must have at least expressed his own feelings at the meetings, however, because "Channeling the Bard" soon became a favorite expression of the young regulars of The Chamberlain's Barrel. Several months into the formation of the "New Barrel Boys" Lewis awoke in a prison cell, with a very insistent lieutenant asking him whether or not it was Lewis who had introduced "channeling the bard" to the youths of whatever the town was (Shropshire?).

Lewis admitted that it was likely his doing, but that he had spent the last several weeks in a state where he could be held fully responsible for very little. It was possible, more than possible, probable, that he had "given it to them" while he was waltzing a little further from sensibility than usual.

At this the lieutenant commenced a truly epic beating.

It turned out that "channeling the bard" was no longer an expression for the intravenous injection of heroin, but a secret phrase of the "bright lads" meaning "to give or receive anal sex" (generally to/from a stranger, although by this point there were very few strangers among the New Barrel Boys). The admission of Lewis' having "given it to them" put the lieutenant over the edge.

I'd like it if "channeling the bard" came back into the lexicon. It has a nice ring to it. I'm wondering, though, which meaning it should retain. I've never channeled the bard myself, but I wonder if there are any enthusiasts out there who might be willing to weigh in? I'm almost inclined to give it a very general definition—nearly anything that can be done in a bathroom, for example, could easily fit the phrase.

Oh, I think that's all for now. The edge of my Phu-Go is beginning to blacken slightly, and I need to consult the manual.
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