Yes, I actually did it. I screwed your brains out I bought the 30 ounce JAR of Utz snack mix. I know it says “party” mix, but I don’t go to parties, and when I do there’s never stuff like this there. This is what I stay home and eat while other people have parties. This is my meth. That may not even be so far from the truth; Judging by the way it is sealed, this stuff is apparently prescription strength. Although the side label professes the presence of 30 servings, one per ounce, I reckon I can have this finished in under a week. Hopefully I won’t have to. I will give it my list of demands in short time.

Officially, it is a “barrel,” but anybody who’s played enough video games knows that barrels often contain life sustaining, fully cooked, nonrotting foodstuffs (occasionally on plates), and while edible, what I have is not quite food. Beside that, suggesting that I can eat the entire contents of a BARREL makes me seem like a fat glutton. My metabolism is too fast for that. I am a moderately skinny glutton. I have a physical appearance accurately described as “salvageable.” Come back when I’m thirty [years old]… If I’m still there, eating utz party mix alone, stop me.

Donkey Kong would not throw Utz Party Mix at Mario. Monkey Donkey would not… no, actually we could be on to something. It is a shame that the only web page documenting this phemonemonemon is over ten years old. Clearly it is a relevant, pressing, depressing issue.

Look at that, just while I was here talking to you. I would weigh the remnants, but my scale is broken. No, not because I stood on it, narf narf. I was merely incidentally mentioning that I own a scale which does not function. Why don’t I throw it away? Why don’t you throw it away? Am I on trial here? Fleeps, lemmelone!

This jarrel, though very orange inside, does not contain cheeseballs. Tell us about the cheeseballs, Utzy.

I reckon you’ll pay more attention to the weather once acid rain starts pouring out of those bright orange clouds.

Those are not the famous Planters Cheez Balls… I know Planters’ are famous because one person uploaded this picture to the flickr and google images turned up the exact same picture of the same obsolete package design with the same sickly, faded colors and the same dented paper on numerous sites that had ripped it off, sometimes with site logos and bonus jpeg artifacts, most not bothering to have searched the “all sizes” link and just went with the 280×500 pixel preview. Somebody had even re-uploaded the smaller one to a different flickr page (to make it even flickier). To distinguish my own ripoff from the others I will put it through a really stupid series of filters that I have never once used seriously in a decade of owning Paint Shop Pro 6.

The only way to make this classier would be to scroll the text.

But that is not important. What is important, to me, about Cheez Balls, is that they have Mr. Peanut pictured on the cans. MR. PEANUT CONTAINS NO CHEESE. Neither do cheez balls, but MR. PEANUT ALSO CONTAINS NO CHEEZ. Mr. Peanut is not qualified to act as spokesman for any cheez product, balls or otherwise.

I could make a childish remark about how the most common cheez incarnations are the ball and the doodle, but I wouldn’t be able to commit to it and would present it as a shameful yet courageously suppressed inclination and pretend it was your fault instead. You should work on that.

Cheez is also frequently seen in the form of the -it, about which the less said, the usual.

According to legend, the planters phased out Cheez Balls because they didn’t sell anymore they were unhealthy. You don’t get into the snack business is to sell people cheap to manufacture trash which they don’t need to be eating. Because you’re a nitwit with no head for business matters. But I tell you, there are worse things in this world than cheez.

I give you chiz. And you’re welcome.

In other news, Humpy Dumpy. NEW Humpy Dumpy. Don’t worry, it’s only margarine FLAVOR. This merely creates the impression of having dipped a corn chip directly into a goopy vat of generic butter substitute. Because who has the time these days?

Some people, as in: more than one, talking about cheez balls on the internet, say the balls were discontinued in 2006. Suddenly! A page from 2008 documents a person finding them in a store! Great piggly wiggly! But, you know, they’re CANNED. And the cans are sealed. Those things are probably from 1998. There’s a reason people fill their bomb shelters with cans apart from being lunatics. Even if the balls are NOT fresh you’ll never know because those things will make you sick under any circumstances. Not that one needs the help with this visual accompaniment. I can tell you that if there IS a nuclear war… and the only things in your shelter are cheez balls… then you probably caused the war by hoarding them! I can’t believe you sometimes!

I am not sure what is going on here. It may be a while before I do.

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I have so many messages to write to people, but all I want to do is make love to you. I mean… something else, right? At any rate, whatever it is isn’t productive.

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People who get gifts love to type out detailed descriptions of their gifts. The very idea strikes me as being very tiring. Almost as tiring as it is to read such lists. At least the junk I put here I don’t realize is tiring until I’ve already invested too much into it to not finish it.

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Why should I be impressed by any “future” that still includes manually adjusted neck ties? Where are the giant robot helmets and gauntlets? Where are the silver wetsuits as normal clothing? How about magnetic boots that magically hold your body completely steady and horizontal when you walk up a wall? The only astounding thing on display here is an electric crane that holds what appears to be a chalkboard eraser. Next they should invent a computer that automatically replaces the paper in my typewriter. Or just holds the paper up so that I can grab it and replace it myself. What? You’re kidding!

Well. And as for Conan

he has to be Archie AND Ozark Ike, so I can excuse one dopey endorsement deal.

ONE I said. Yeep. You were off television, for what, three months? Conan, sometimes you just need to take a break.

Like, whatever, man. Why’s Conan talking to THIS rube ovah heeyah?

Wuh whoa! I just realized I’M on tv, too! Woooooo yeah! I got my fake-retro prefaded Ghostbusters shirt and my RED SWEATPANTS on camera! Muh- muh- muh- METAL! Ninja surviiiiiiiiiive!

Eh. I suppose that’s better than KILLING me…

You know what, I hate ninjas.

Ninjas have gone soft. I remember when being a ninja MEANT somehing. A long time ago, in the glory days of ninja. Specifically, the 1980s. When to stop the shadowy killing machine of the east took nothing less than a…

AHHHH, BIRDS! BIRDS! GET THEM AWAY FROM ME! ABBBBBAAAAAAA!!!

Much like last month, I soon will go somewhere that I need to prepare for and am horrible at preparing for. As far as I know I have no such place to travel to next month, which means I will be very unprepared.

Evidently Stop & Shop has further to go on its journey to not be Brand X than I thought. This doesn’t even come with RIP.

I say, what a GYP. Gyp, incidentally, I was surprised to learn does not have its origin in racism or prejudice.

The council is still undecided on this Whac-a-mole stand artwork. I hesitate to type “whackkk-a-mole” because the official trademarked name does not include a K, but my hesitation was merely a moment to pause and reflect, and in this situation you may find that I went ahead and did the deed anyhow.

The Guaranteed Value squad I thought for certain would win the blandness war. It found a way to make carrots less exciting. Isn’t it kind of neat that they come from the GROUND, growing out of a tiny little SEED? It would be if it didn’t take months to happen. Yef, that’s right, I’m on to you, CARROTs. Somebody finally had the courage to stand up to root vegetables. I know you’re in this with the beets. Soon I shall send my champions to destroy your stronghold.

We really are in trouble, aren’t we.

I thought this entry was longer than this. Whoopth. Does anyone have suggestions for lengthening it?

Nobody? Goodnight, then.

orange, rogue clowns | How to lose a guy in (2) days | !

Pretzel companies love to brag about their great traditions on the back of their packages; often citing the dedication with which their founder hand twisted them and such. That would be relevant if you were trying to sell me a bag of hand-twisted, slow baked, 1900s style pretzels. What I have is a sack of tiny, cold, factory-mold prefabricated thingies flavored only by salt, designed to be eaten fifty at a time. The only tradition in the game here is my own tradition of gluttony. Even when I do see a big pretzel, it is still most likely a thing from a machine that has not earned the right to be shaped like an ampersand. I would settle for a circle if that meant you’d charge me less than five dollars for it.

What’s more wholesome than a big jar of salt? How about one that had been spilled and gathered up prior to usage? I would not trust desert-dwelling men without hats to handle these ingredients. Only to dance safely, and only if they want to.

Pretzels just think they’re better than every other snack, even though about a third of the way through the bag I always want to die. With popcorn, chex mix, p’tater chips, chocolate bars, and all the rest, I never want to die until after I’ve already eaten it all. Which means pretzels last longer, and I get sick more times on a single purchase. Very efficient. Something to keep in mind in a slow economy. So I suppose they are better. But they don’t need to get attitude about it.

Coca Cola is even older than a lot of pretzel brands and there’s no proud boasting printed on containers of that. Because it’s just dumb soda (and because it was originally sold as medicinal wine made with cocaine by a morphine addict with no business sense who suffered from Henniganism).

You don’t pick up a bag of cheetos (I hope) and see on the back something like

The grand Cheetos^® brand tradition dates back to 187X when our proud, humble founder Cheslinski Chitowski travelled from Bolshevik Mexico to the United States to fulfill his dream of opening his very own Cheeto stand in Michigan, where he used the old world cheeto method of hand mixing yellow 06 and monoglopxide mccarbonuke to make the original orange dust which he lovingly hand sprinkled over every individual hand misshapen cheeto skeleton. He declared his creation Chitowski’s Astonishing Curd Flavored Corn Wellness Supplement and sold them out of his humble horse drawn van. This dedication to craft, quality, and orange led Chitowski to coin the term “cheetostitude,” the feeling of joy and gradual loss of fine motor skills one gets eating properly prepared cheetos. By the 1930s cheetostitude had become nothing less than a national identity and is credited with ending the great depression, abolishing silent film and bringing Superman from Krypton. An outsider in his time, Chitowski never lived to profit from his work, and went to his death believing it was not easy being cheesy. And yet his message of peace, hard work and safe, reserved quantities of cheesiness lives on to this day in the Dangerously Cheesy^™ modern Cheetos^® brand Cheese and Bacon Balls snacks product.

Nobody would take it seriously. THIS is what is printed on the back of a bag of cheetos:

and I forgot what my point was. If there’s anything that’s dangerously cheesy it’s the people writing the labels.

The sudden twitching of my right-side, more efficient eye’s lid, and subsequent revelation that the only treatment is surgically removing muscles from it or killing them with botox are things I find incredibly worrisome. Yet thinking about it makes me laugh uncontrollably. The fact that a recommendation to get more sleep is the primary alternative, when I already sleep too much to be accused of having responsibilities makes it more “hilarious.” This is unrelated to me not updating the website.

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Do not take love advice from Pepe Lepew. Or anyone who spells out their accent.

Oh those banner ad people. They never know what they’re talking about. Why do I let them upset me so? It’s certainly not as if this is an official “canonical” work of the Wib animation department meant to be regarded alongside masterworks of plausible wackiness such as Space Jam and Looney Tunes Back in Action. This was just made in three minutes by whatever poor schmuck was assigned the task.

Yes, yes. This is what I need.

Even better. I love it. You took some cartoon character from the 1930s who has to live in a dumpster due to its abhorrent stench and made gave it a big fancy apartment and a tacky modern telephone to send text messages to another character who hates him but now not only doesn’t but in fact has gone so far as to intentionally set off his white paint fetish. (I didn’t get a picture of that. I can tell you’re disappointed.)

Here are the reasons Pepo Lepo was supposedly funny: everybody in the world was afraid of him. The cat was particularly afraid of him. He was too dumb and confident to notice.

Perhaps you are of the opinion that in these days of increased awareness of and sensitivity to jokes about both cultural differences and sexual predators, it’s not really “funny” to have a bad smelling Frenchman chasing around and forcibly fondling a non-consenting female, is it. Even though they’re cartoon animals (which scarcely resemble their real life counterparts. A white-faced skunk? Seriously?). However, if you take that away, all that’s left is another smug squinting supersleaze sending trite messages through a telephone to a vapid swooning ditz-deluxe and we have plenty of those already. We certainly don’t need to be reaching back 70 years to find a suitable couple only to utterly disregard the primary reasons they were interesting. Even our most distinguished masturbatory webcomic authors know there’s nothing funny about pairing those two, as we now have them, with each other. If you want to have demographic appeal, Pepe has to live in an apartment with three lovesick cats and totally ignore them.

Even if we get past all that, still remains the underlying message that the most romantic thing you can possibly do at valentime is to type sentence fragments at the object of your affection. I may be a eunuch but even if I can see that’s not an act that proves anyone’s devotion to anything other than the stupid phone itself. At least… it might if you have fat, round inadequately numerous cartoon fingers, but it is my understanding that the target consumer typically does not.

Wow, matching mail in rebates? We really are soul mates!

Worst of all, as former MCI pitch-creatures the merry melodists’ loyalties should rightly lie with The Other Telephone Company, Verizon. Who is Michael Jordan going to call on his yellow cartoon phone now? It’s one thing to toss their character traits in a trash compactor, but how can I respect fictional animals who are bought so easily? I cannot tolerate such an attack on our most sacred American institution, the corporate sponsorship.

True enough, Peppy did not appear in the MCI ads, and it seems reasonable to assume factions may develop among the various characters, but if mortal enemies Tweetypie and Sylvesterpie can both agree that 5 Cent Sundays is the bee’s knees, surely another cat and a skunk that can’t tell a cat from a skunk shouldn’t be too hard to sell on it. Yes, yes, 10 years have elapsed, and 5 Cent Sundays is an utterly obsolete calling plan, plus probably not that good to have begun with, but these aren’t characters who are renowned for their ability to review circumstances and change their foolish, antisocial behaviors accordingly.

Or are they? Maybe I should be glad that for once it’s not an old tiresome gag being rehashed. That one’s relationship with another has improved. Maybe things really are changing, and for the better. Why, just last week I went to a McDonald’s with a relatively nice bathroom.

They even varied the fake marble texture on alternating tiles. Things might just be looking up.

Still, for the time being I prefer to remain as far below them as possible.

Another page of this, eventually, (or immediately) a bit dull, a bit redundant. I wanted to squeeze some more panels in there, but I know better than that by now. It’s good that I know better than something by now.

It’s hardly a “holiday tradition,” only going back to 2005, but I do like to watch the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life roundabout the time when Christmas occurs. I did so recently, and I just thought I’d share with you a few of my favorite scenes and persons.

George Bailey, what a guy. He just wants to help people. You want the moon? He’ll give it to you. But I must inform you that the moon is deceptively large and it’s unlikely you could find any place big enough to store it.

George put his own personal ambitions indefinitely on hold to save the family business, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Building and Loan, and all the Bedford Falls citizens who depend upon it. Also present are George’s coworkers, loanmeister Sonny Chips and gardener Chief Tinko.

Ever selfless, he gave his own college money to his brother, Harold Barnabas Bailey, who is here just returning from several years at Meeplethorpe University, with a surprise companion: his new wife Bobo Rabadule.

Mary Escape Hatch irons the new wallpaper to impress George, the love of her life, and who can blame her?

Seemingly invetibly the two do become married, grow several children and enjoy many a Christastic Christmas together.

George makes a last minute Christmas-eve run to 711 in the hopes of GOOD GUMPITO GET THOSE STUPID FAT ORANGE RADIOACTIVE TRAMPS OFF MY SCREEN ALREADY!

It’s hard enough watching a sincere yet not terribly hokey movie with modern, obnoxious ads in wherever they want to be, but do they have to be on during the movie itself? In color? Ironically, or perhaps not, that first picture occurs at a part of the movie which has no motion in it. Is that why? NBC doesn’t want me to think my set’s bust? On the blink? This is probably the oldest movie that gets shown on broadcast television. I think it could be treated better than a first run episode of Frank TV that didn’t have much going for it anyway.

Is that what you want? To be compared to something on TBS? The network whose name I cannot speak without giggling?

And this? Rainbow NBC logo? Wearing a hat? Tacky tacky tacky.

There’s a reason I don’t watch movies on the t v, and this isn’t even it. I don’t like the commercial breaks and especially that whole edited for time and content business. However, since this was made in 1946 and was granted a very generous, I thought, three hour timeslot, I didn’t expect too much to be missing. No, NBC would have to find some other way to make me hate it. Do these two events share the same audience? If I was such a big fan of that biggest loser that I forgot I wrote a web page two years ago about how much I hate it, how could I miss this bit of promotion the first six times it happened? If my eyes are that bad I wouldn’t watch a low contrast monochrome movie on a standard sized television set. And if I did I wouldn’t appreciate bright clashing neon Fruit by the Foot rolling across the screen all the time.

Ehhh, if I was in such a state that I spent my federal holidays watching the opening rounds of elimination shows 97% of whose conflicts, dilemmas, whineries and dumbfoundingly complicated gimmicks regarding simple acts will be irrelevant even within the show’s own irrelevant context in less than a month, I’d jump off a bridge myself. “What do you MEAN the significant lead I built up last week doesn’t carry over into this one?! What do you MEAN you’re merging the teams?! What do you MEAN only one of us can win?!” I’m going to the bathroom, now. When I come back this post had better be finished.

Did you know “I have a bad feeling about this” is a star wars reference? I didn’t. I don’t think most people who say it do. Not until maybe last year did I find out when I read it online, and then I forgot it until today when I read it again. And I’ve seen all the Star Warses! I contrast this with “I love it when a plan comes together,” which I know is from The *A* Team without having ever watched the A-Team or wanted to. I know that “kneel before Zod” and any remarks regarding a “son of Jor-El” are Superman references even though I’ve read less than 5 Superman comics my entire life and they weren’t about anything. So yes, I know a few things about distinct, unusual phrases which people quote for no reason.

Nerf herders and fuzzballs which laugh it up are Star Warsy. Bad feelings are not. Nerf fuzzballs are also not. I wish they were, though. The galaxy would be a much more peaceful place, then. One rarely experiences bad feelings when struck by the orange projectiles. In the situation of decimating, vaporizing destruction caused by photon torpedoes, death-stars and the like, it may well be nerf or nuthin’ [but scattered invisible atoms which I have no use for].

I don’t think bad feelings really are Star Wars references. The legend goes that every star wars movie contains that line at least once. But a lot of movies contain that line at least once. I don’t know if it was totally unheard of before 1977, but I do know that by 1994 it was absolutely generic, and so a nameless character saying it in a situation which there is good reason to have bad feelings about is unremarkable. I hardly think mentioning every time this is mentioned every time is not stupid. However, I wouldn’t dare attempt to amend a wiki page about Final Fantasy threevi or Star Wars. I can hardly handle the scrutiny, doubting and abuse when I edit pages that I keep to myself. I have a bad feeling about telling people to stop reporting on others’ reports of bad feelings.

I’ll grant that “I have a bad feeling” is a stupid, awkward, hackneyed thing to write into a script, but stupid hackney enthusiasts rarely realize they are that, tending to be somewhat stupid and hackneyed themselves. Saying “oh, well, I copied it from Star Wars” amounts to less than a valid excuse.