oh beets, there is that gosh darn honey mace again.

Going back a bit more beyond last week’s very important matter, there was a point in history during which the Honey Nut Cheerio Bee threatened to dump a jar actually labeled “honey” on to the cereal. Which also never happened even one time but I assure you it is closer to the truth than the dumb magic wand. I presume the wand was substituted because contemporary people believe they are more “sophisticated” than the people who came before them. Honey out of a jar? Like no way broseph, that’s PROCESSED FAKE GMO CORPORATE NON-ORGANIC honey! I only eat fake processed gmo corporate non-organic honey on my cereal when the corporation shows me a picture of that honey coming out of some stupid slimy striped thing on a stick.
Personally, I am more concerned about where those nuts are coming from. And where they are going, I suppose, since it isn’t into the bowl.

Grape gimpity the bee looks like it is in a cult. The wand touched the bee’s tiny insect hivemind and shorted it out.

Now that it has cracked, psychologically, it has fled society, leaving the cursed staff behind to corrupt a new generation. I would be concerned for the bee’s safety if I did not typically want it to die.

alright, it has returned and now it thinks it is batman. good work. And the stupid wand is back in business!

Looking closer it becomes apparent that Bee does not wear the full costume, so it must have some inkling that it is not batman. Although if its queen has been murdered that would explain its sudden lack of purpose and need of a new identity. A queenless hive will only produce male bees, who do not do any work, and this signifies the upcoming collapse and death of the colony. For a long time the honey nut cheerio bee believed its spokesperson job constituted work, which made it confused as to whether it was male or female. The Bat-Man persona may be an indication not of insanity, as I initially suspected, but of acceptance of its nature and purpose at last. Nonetheless that wand is stupid and has NO purpose.

Although, although: what IS a male bee’s “purpose?” None but to mate and die immediately afterward, with its endophallus action being so powerful as to paralyze the male bee and throw it backward, with no guarantee the queen was even able to receive the ejected fluid. Perhaps the wand has nothing to do with honey, but is a means to artificially inseminate queen bees with no harm brought to the initiator. Though the bee may be overconfident, choosing specifically NOT the clothe the one pertinent region of its body. Almost as if daring people to attack and attempt to make the bee mate with them. And beyond man, to bat-man specifically, it may be the case that Bee, knowing male bees lack stinging apparatuses, has equipped itself with compensatory measures, but preferring not to kill foes outright, and scare them into not attacking at all if possible. Though it may have gone too far in imitating Bat-Man since the cape is certain to, if not get tangled in the wings, certainly prevent them from working.
What is important is the bee is dangerous.

This picture is not technically relevant but I placed it in my folder for non sequitur website images in September 2006 and I do not think it is ever going to be totally relevant to anything.


On a side note, apart from my very important and focused discussion with myself, General Mills hired TWO artists of whom I am meant to have heard, judging by there being a pair of signatures beside it, to draw the bee for this box, and yet they, two people, with a corporate review board scrutinizing the job it at ever step, positioned the glove reaching out to strangle me so that one of the bee’s eyes is partially obscured, making the facial expression look screwy, even beyond the insane open-mouthed faces of agony I have already come to associate with modern incarnations of old cereal mascots. This is NOT an aesthetically functional art job. Apart from that, the detail level is about the same as the usual non-signatured bee so I am not totally sure why they bothered, apart from to make me feel compelled to write about it almost a year later, to keep me from writing about something much more significant and uplifting,

like winning the heart of the one you love through your barnyard vocalizations.

I have seen people promoting 2016 as the worst year for all humanity ever on the basis of all the celebrities that got dead, such as legendary Breath-Assure pitch-man George Kennedy and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and also Donaldo Trump’s presidenty election (even though he had yet to institute any executive orders). However, there is definitely an insufferable undercurrent of hyperbole to all the commentary I observe.

Regardless, most years-in-review focused exclusively on entertainment, and tried and yet try to suggest we are in the happiest, most talented, most gol-durned glorious period of all human existence, and consequently anything we don’t like must be the worst ever. And it just isn’t true. There is just more forced happiness and more push to not criticize something that is politically aligned with you than ever.

Yes I am still irritated about stupid hamilton. But it isn’t ONLY hamilton. However, seeing hamilton’s existence in the context of the forced enthusiasm makes me disinclined to doubt myself exclusively on the basis of my tendency to doubt myself. I saw the new Star Wars movie, and I saw the one last year, and both are nice, but are either special? Not really. Although I do not necessarily think the originals were the best movies of all time, but they weren’t desperately trying to remind me of themselves. Every movie that is made now wants to be thought of as existing now in today, the ultimate point of all times.

Lord of the Rings 3, there we go, something I like that won a record setting or matching number of osc-awards. Including “Best Song” despite my not having any recollection of any singing, background or otherwise, in the film, because it only plays over the credits, which makes it a matter apart from the film, really. As if the only reason the song is there at all is to be award-eligible. I am to believe this 11-award winning film is superior to films that just won 10 even though one of the awards is for something that isn’t even IN it. You might as well give an Academy award for best preview, best red carpet premier or best bootleg back of box summary. And maybe we will once we run out of records to advertise that we broke. I liked the movie but would not call it significantly superior to the other two. My favorite part is how long it is, which is the thing other people hate! Anyway all that was 13 years ago by this point, so we need to hurry and give even more awards to La la la la Land! Only the stuff that we like NOW can have the most awards! Best La! Best Land! Best title word duplication!

Although having said that, if La La Land does not at least win the best song award, and observe it is in there TWICE, that means Sting, Justin Timberload or Lin-Manuel Miramilton is getting one, so we keep it in the family whatever happens. Breaking news, somebody I’m already tired of gets more attention! I appreciate that Sting has the one song on there that by its title does not seem to be about forced smiling optimism, and furthermore does not have a page written about it already. Also, Sting at least is old. It makes sense that I am tired of him.

Gimme a break! They only GAVE that to you because you’re already famous!

There HAS been public figure-provided resistance to La Land Land, but primarily on the basis of it being “white people” entertainment. Which it IS, and I suppose we allow that since white people can presumably “take it,” but how much of that are they required to take before it is no longer considered a “dangerous” fascist viewpoint to criticize a decidedly non-white product for not being white enough? In fact Hamilton itself expressly forbade caucasian actors from even auditioning. Because it wanted to tell a story with non-white people (ignoring the fact that in terms of personal mannerisms and skin-tone, Lindy himself, praise be upon his name, is just as white as I am (in fact I might claim I am less white than he is since I didn’t go to private kindergarten, neither of my parents are doctors and one even stole a bunch of stuff)). And fiddle-dee-doodle it is allowed to do that. The only people who go out of their ways to be offended by that are INSANE. And as somebody who had to spend the 1990s pretending I didn’t hate the Beastie Boys to keep myself sane, I can tell you their annoyance to me was not owed to them being white. It was because they were tone-deaf screeching cretins. I don’t give a barbecue if one of them is dead now or supported great causes. If you would have me believe that La “The La” Land would be a perfect movie if it had all the same dialog, same songs, same dances, same smiles, but none of the actors were white, you would be just as much part of the problem as anybody. It is fun to call stuff “white” as a joke but we ought not accept that as a valid journalistic explanation for mediocrity.

Michael Phelps won the most gold medals of anybody, which is an objective accomplishment in a skill-based venue, whom nobody wants to disqualify on basis of extreme whiteness, and I got sick of him, even. The “greatest olympian of all time” ? Not really. All he did was swim (non-synchronously), and in an artificial environment. And it seemed like he got another medal each time he did it. in contrast to pentathlon competitors who need to do five different things that have nothing to do with each other (including Show Jumping on a dingdang HORSE), or team sport competitors who need to win four lengthy games across a week, thereby preventing them from competing in anything else, to get ONE medal. And of course Phelps worked for the Wenited States, who consistently have the most money and best resources for training, and the second-largest vat from which to pull eligible competitors. They almost consistently win the most gold medals in general. Only China doesn’t have an excuse for always losing (and it DID get the most gold at least in Summer 2008). I am past past past the point of caring if an American is the best at an athletic frivolity. If Michael Phelps won ONE swimming gold medal AND a badminton gold medal, by finkeldy then I would be impressed.

But Hamilton guy acts AND writes AND composes! And he drifts into songs from “Camelot” during interviews just like I probably would! THAT should impress me, right? No, because I hate his stupid beard. (also as of 2019 I have been forced through Moana multiple times and can say with total sincerity that I think its songs are awful)

I like Game of Thrones. Is it the best tv show ever? I would not say that it was. However, I have not seen every tv show ever. And to be fair, the format was greatly limited for a very long time. The 1980s and early 1990s were dominated by syndication, which likes to be able to air episodes in any order at any time of day and it wants a huge mess of the things, while reserving the right to dump any that it doesn’t like. There was less potential money, and consequently more difficulty in procuring investment in programs with limited numbers of episodes that don’t make sense unless all are seen, one after the other. Realistically it is only valid to compare Thronegame to shows made within the past twenty years, and I haven’t seen all of them either!

But people will tell you with total doubtless confidence that it is best ever and best there ever will be, and ignore that they ever said that when the next trendy manly abusefest comes along. I think it could have been made with less cruelty, and less contrariness for the sake of being contrary. But I appreciate that it was permitted to be as cruel as it thought it needed to be. YES I watched all 60 episodes of it across a few months. But I could have lived without it. And I DID live without it for the first six years of its existence. And I am probably better for not having made any attempt to interact with the dumb fan cult around it (or anything). And also for the huge sacks of cash it would take to subscribe to the Hibbo network for ten or fewer episodes a year. I can get the dvds for free from a library! Or other ways.

There is no real fantasy in film anymore. Every one wants me to believe it is real, and filled with real people, and realer and nower than what came before it. Even when something is ludicrous from the outset, with your sharknadoes, snakes on planes and cowboys vs aliens, they are not sincere works of expression by filmmakers. They mean for you to think they are “badass” in how awful they are, like all those oafs with tv shows about them eating huge heaps of rancid meat. I remember being surprised when I learned Guy Fieri was a chef; I literally thought he was just some GUY, hence the name, who drove around shoving awful things in his mouth. And not because it is entertaining but because and I’ll have to get back to you on that. Because this is AMERICA. We don’t need to do something awful to ourselves for a reason. Once again, we have the president we deserve.

There is no fantasy in film anymore. Every one wants me to believe it is real, and filled with real people, and realer and nower than what came before it.
When the film Spider-Man was released in 2002, that was a new fast paced realistic spider-man unlike all past spidermen. Then in 2012 there was another spider-man even newer than that one. And apparently now there is a third newest spider-man and I am completely desensitized to it. What is he going to do that the other spidermen didn’t do which makes them obsolete? Is he going to save Uncle Ben? Is he going to get power by biting a spider? Is he going to skip the dumb origin story and trying to live a Normal Life for 75% of the movie and get to the point for once?

For that matter, I have completely lost track of or interest in swervy altered or updated “fairy tales.” And I had ten years ago. Every movie coming out looks like something I’ve seen before even though each one is purporting to be a new version of something I have seen before.
Just in my lifetime I have seen 3 spidermen, 5 batmen, 26 Cinderellas, 8 ghostbusters, not including extreme Ghostbusters or Filmation Ghost-hyphen-Busters, plus 4 Colonel Sanderses. None of these things function without presuming familiarity on my part.

For the last 2.5 decades solid, live action films are never rated G unless they are garbage for toddlers. Everything else must have realistic violence, abusive language, real sadness and offense emotion, and sex oh teehee.
Although I must note that the 1940 Errol Flynn feature film “The Sea Hawk,” which I inadvertently witnessed a piece of recently, is openly rated G as determined by a film review board that came into existence long after it did, despite the production showing whipped slave labor, death by musket, death by cutlass, presumed death by drowning and disdain for another nation on the basis of it being one. The British men I am meant to want to win try to board the Spanish ship by throwing Rygar grappling hooks, one of which catches a Spaniard in the neck. There is no blood but the recipient is plainly in pain and not able to get it loose. And of course all the important people are white men. Nonetheless the film is unmistakably a fantasy: everybody talks in a funny way, they are not afraid of the danger they are in and the music is jolly despite mass mutual deceasement for the parties depicted. I am meant to enjoy the depicted exploits without believing the on-screen characters share my culture, goals or fears.

It is possible older films would have been less fantasy-like if they had been permitted to do so by the standards of their times, but I think also film-goers appreciated escapism in a way that present American audiences don’t, or are not encouraged to. War to 1940s Americans wasn’t just something that other people had to deal with. Ironically of course there are American troops right now in more countries than ever. We offer this to them in lieu of medals!

Good news, you get as many gold arches as you can fit on your side of the wall!

I would prefer to wash my own hands!

preferably with water, rather than the vague, opache, slimy substance used for this demonstration. That is the magic of hollywood, I suppose.

Or perhaps it is this kraft orange green goop

Warning: do not be fooled by imitation brand generic “craft” goop. How do we even know that it is orange (or green)?

Another warning: you dang kids better stop bringing your beds to the beach!

While staying with parents and assorted relations amidst the summer I discovered that The Weather Channel, first of all, still exists, but also it had, at some point, fired its original music department and is now licensing crummy Late Night With Conan O’Barbarossa musical guests from the late 1990s.
I’ll never let youu go! I’ll never let you turrrn around falsetto each other, budget easy listening beegees promise to your mother Preposterous!
and it’s ME! YOU! and ALLonnaPEEEeeebul AWFUL.
is the idea supposed to be that the theoretical fans of those songs now have miserable, habitual weather-channel watching lives, but would watch something else if they didn’t recognize the songs?
would the channel have been doing this all along if it had the money? was I fortunate to evade Bay City Rollers excerpts coming at me every morning while I gave myself indigestion from a pop tart, a bad dessert for breakfast, 30 minutes before I went outside to wait for the bus because it would drive past my house at full speed without even slowing down if the driver didn’t see me from the far end of the street, so I could arrive early to wait in the perpetually cold, featureless Catholic school parking lot because we weren’t actually allowed inside for another 20 minutes after the buses left us there and nobody saw any way or reason to make this system more efficient? Do I need a therapist?
However, I’ve never one time heard anybody say “you know what song I like? that really miserable one with the guy whining about all the peebul or that goofy one with the guy singing like Bosko.”
Somebody at The Label told the bands “these are singles. These are the songs that will be played on radios. Try and make your other songs worse than these.” That way, people only buy the singles instead of the full album that’s 1 cd in 1 box that’s cheaper than buying 4 different cds in 4 boxes. There was less concern for good non-single songs if the singles themselves were also bad. You might ask “but doesn’t the lack of distinction make the singles seem less more appealing than the non-singles, which are now relatively less less appealling, and so more less deserving of non-purchase?” But hopefully you won’t. That’s just confusing. But anyway this then served the function of thoroughly demoralizing anyone who heard them, so that if they also became musicians their songs would be just as pathetic and unpleasant, and if they got uppity it would be also be simple to replace them with another mopey band that sounded exactly the same. I will go into more detail on this on a previous occasion.

Why watch the weather channel on vacation? It reminds me of that time I wrote about being reminded of having to get up at 6am for catholic school, especially if there is cloudy lighting outside that approximates dawn circumstances. I think the same lady is still the on-air personality, too. This picture is not actually from August… of 2012. I didn’t think to take any pictures of the television. Yes I neglected my responsibility. It’s from August 2010. The only time I encounter the weather channel is when I stay with my parents. Maybe they secretly invented it. They aren’t millionaires because they spent all their money licensing terrible songs and investing in whatever THIS is. The house they rented had some system for “interactive” content on certain channels. One of them was this weather channel. Even for people who will have it on all day under proper circumstances this is too much weather channel. Yes, you should have an idea what the precipitation and temperature are expected to be like when you’re planning a prolonged outing. However, this information is irrelevant if your plan ultimately ends up being to continue watching The Weather Channel. This extra information on screen only makes your continuing to leave it on make less sense. You don’t need to wait for the extended forecast or the radar view; now they are visible at all times. The only gripe you can now make is that the division of the screen space leaves the elements too small to be read. Oh dilemma! At least you can still hear those totally kickin’ sweet nonthreatening light FM hits! Keep ’em comin’!
ya da ta, hee dee tee, fu fa foy, it’s my greatest mistayeeake. WRETCHED.
Bland, unremarkable verses only to lead up to that? How does that nonsense make money and then become “classic?” That wasn’t on the weather channel, but rather one of the radio stations the driver temporarily listened to during the return. I can remember a time when I was tolerantly indifferent toward it, but now I find it upsetting. I’m imposing it on you because I think you’re making fun of me for not being able to drive.
Hard to SAY what it is ah SEE in yoUuUuU meowww meowww moaning fat guy wearing a fedoraAaaA and THAT I always hated, even before I knew fedoras were bad news. I just thought they meant you were Clark Kent (who I only recently decided was a scumbag for unrelated reasons) or on Carmen Sandiego’s trail.

It’s important to be discrete and blend in when you’re tracking a master criminal.


Incidentorally, we should not have been asking “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?” but -when.- Of COURSE we haven’t caught her.

I have a tumbler.eh page. I wish I didn’t. Not because of this, just because of it. In fact that’s irrelevant beyond explaining where I had taken this picture from. A person asked me this question. I do not dislike this person for this question. However, my dislike of the topic and of some others I associate it with throbs like a toothache to the extent that it is not clear what bridge I am burning today. Know that I burn no bridges, and if I break one it’s only by myself driving a truck over it in disregard of the posted weight limit, and it is reasonable to guess that sooner or later I am going to learn to drive.

But a question, of a television program based on a commercial franchise I don’t care about, from a decade I’ve been sick of for a decade, that airs on a tv channel I’ve never heard of and has repulsive character designs. So the only way I’d become aware of it is if it is it if of it is it being the focus of an obnoxious meme torrent that I would ignore out of spite absolutely whatever it was. Oh and did I! (yes)

Friendship is Magic, they call it. They call it a lot. Too much for me. I resisted making a complaint about this because I felt like I shouldn’t even know about it and half the people that will talk to me on the internet are fond of it. However, by now half of them don’t talk to me either (not after this, certainly), so I like to hope the remaining quarter only choose to remain because they must have accepted me and must have expected me to do this.

One who did not was a very good friend in fact, but who had happened to be developing a curious hobby of marginalizing my personal value a few months before the thing premiered. By the time it had, friendship was not so much magical as an occasional convenience easily explainable through basic logic and social science. Fox news enthusiasts would not even doubt that sort. So having accumulated increasing numbers of such enchanted friend types by blatanter and blatanter professions of admiration for stuff that it was fashionable to like, he no longer needed the ones that were harder to please than that. Also apparently I’m not over it yet. I’ll probably mention it again. I’ve probably already done it. I’ve probably already written the next one 79 times since January.

But the cartoon! It really needed to get made, since there weren’t enough hilarious pictures on the internet like this already.

I can’t vouch for the writing on the cartoon itself, but the people who produce tribute material are about on-level with every other popular rubbishoid which is to say they veer toward the stupid. I remember feeling left out during my family’s Soporanofest a few years back, myself somehow being the only person who’d not watched nearly enough of the program to be obsessed with it, and I got along with the perpetrators afterward. But for this there is no afterward, because people on the internet are not the same as regular human beings who can get over things, or have other layers to their lives apart from these things. I did not get endless waves of daft gangster-sonas in my art queue for nine solid months.

The worst of it is over it by now, so it’s receded to the level of a mere annoying fad, but I scrawled all these complaints about it and don’t know what else to do about them. Forget them and move on? Do something productive? Me? Never!

Tumblir is very good for not allowing me to get over things. Do you have nothing to say? Good news, you can just copy what somebody else says, and sooner or later somebody I know will also have nothing to say and I’ll see something like this (you’ll have to click on it to see it, as I’ll not display it; otherwise I welcome you to assume that what I am saying may be construed as valid under proper circumstances). Even if you disagree with a tumble you need to copy it onto your page to say something to it, and the original copier in the chain still gets points for it, and if nobody bothers to read your print they’ll assume you do agree. Tumblr? More like Stupidlr ha ha.

See see look, this character is WEIRD and THIS character is a NERD and THIS character is DUMB! This should be titled “if you put a stock character in a stock situation.”

I didn’t even GIVE the thing a cube. Somebody who wasn’t necessarily me left it in a place where the beast would find it. I think I have some impractically designed characters, but these are quadrupeds with fine motor skills. They can manipulate objects with their “hands” but are cursed to not ever be able to do so while in motion or stably balanced. Ha ha get it stablAAAAAARGH I’VE BEEN STAPLED
Using a mundane setup to exhibit personality variations, certainly I do it; most aspiring creative people have and do, but I do this with my own characters and I wouldn’t go out of my way to make it look like I used a template when in fact I implemented my own layout.

This artist actually directly sources facial expressions and poses from stills of the cartoon. I know this, because most of these artists do and I’ve seen these ones before. And not in a funny way, either, like in those Tintin pastiches, where the characters are ludicrously out of character, throwing bricks through windows during labor riots or having debaucherous holidays at the same location as everyone else they know also is, all while cursing indiscriminately in near-english. They’re just playing with a dumb old rainbow cube.

And then he used the exact same gag twice (while making sure another character[‘s head fragment] appeared to explain the gag). Frippits, twelve ding dang years ago I drew an equally dopey looking “tribal” character (an elpsoid) painting a rubik cube, and nobody cared, because I never showed anybody because I realized it was a really bland idea. And I still can’t show anybody because that page seems to have mercifully escaped its holding place,

but here’s a subsequent page with a frogfrimmed can of spam on it. That’s the kind of cleverness it takes for this.

They’re rewarding and praising this guy for matching old jokes with old artwork. Even the Pokemon fan-drawingers relegate the frame copiers to middle-tier, but since most of these people are frame-copiers there’s nowhere else for them to go. They literally have no talent. I don’t have to watch the program to know this derivation is garbage. However, I suspect watching the program has an impeding effect on people’s ability to determine that this is garbage.

This is intellectually worse, though; at least a rubik cube has a classical charm to it that this association cannot harm and that likewise does not make the pony-fans who like the combination any dumber for its part. When you are paying lazy homage to lazy bands and lazy cartoons at the same time then you’ve squared the twit appeal and fractioned the creative effort involved. I initially linked to a different band homage by a different person whom I ultimately decided wasn’t fair to single out… the original drawing was of REM as the ponies, which was, at least, the only drawing of REM ponies. I shouldn’t have to settle for least (and I must confess I have slightly more scorn for REM than the Beatles). However, I found countless Beatles-as-ponies examples, in under three minutes, often with the exact same color scheme, as if there are canonical Beatles ponies whose composition cannot be challenged. There isn’t; these people just aren’t even so clever that they can pull off a palette swap without being ordered to. I have no idea who those culprits were so I’ll feel no guilt for scorning them in a place they’ll never find out about.

The absolute worst thing I remember seeing, somebody had drawn the let’s say main character’s heads floating around the logo for the tv show Friends, against a white background, and called it a day. I was so ashamed for both of us that I won’t direct anyone to it unless I am challenged to.

I remember for a while years ago everybody who was cool had to draw their already mundane character as an utterly unremarkable sillouhette dancing against a solid colored background to pay homage and worship before a bloody COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENT for eyepods, but most of them didn’t do it more than once. I guess they must have, but I successfully avoided knowing it.

It’s always lucky for people when something that’s really easy to copy gets popular. Pog forbid we have a well-drawn animated series on television.

Hacks love their little ponoids. They memorize the shape of this one little horse and can draw different hats on it and bazoinga! ORIGINAL CHARACTER! It’s like Bob and George fan-authors, except Dr. Light and Rush ALSO look like Megaman.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GAY SEAMONSTER???
Nobody draws the seamonster so it doesn’t enter into my reckoning. It may even be from a different show that I failed to elude awareness of.

It has JOKES that KIDS DON’T GET!!!
That’s the same lure you put out to get me to watch Shreck/every remotely animated thing that got made since Shrek made money, and that didn’t work, and it’s a secondary characteristic at best! When I was twelve I used to listen to a late night radio program where people called in to ask for advice about sexual relations and I only did so because of the funny sound effects, and I was an idiot.

It has REFERENCES and MUSICAL NUMBERS!
Congratulations, you invented The Drew Carey show? I’m not swayed by this sort of spiel and I never will be! If the best you can muster is that it’s a less vulgar South Park that’s easier for you to wank out to you won’t succeed and I shouldn’t feel bad about complaining at it!

BUT didn’t YOU make THIS?
Yes! I wish I hadn’t! I felt dirty when I did and the person I made it for just assumed I made it because I wanted to because he couldn’t grasp the idea of anybody else not being as into the show as he was. In fact I only made it so he would talk to me, and he did, that time! And realizing that I did indeed have to do that to get him to talk to me made me mad. And then I didn’t do it again and he never flippin’ talked to me again. I suspected I might have transferred my annoyance at him to annoyance at the cartoon, but half a year later I want to punch them both in the nose so they may well both deserve it. Similarly I theorize that neither cares.

Why don’t you just WATCH IT?
Because I don’t have to! Unless this is a condition to get my financial aid or my passport renewed then I don’t have time to do stuff I don’t want to do that I don’t need to do. Yet I tried! I got through one and realized I would never want to like it, given everything about it and the way in which it had been brought to my attention, and its refusal to leave. This is like reading one of those “remember when?” pages out of somebody else’s high school year book. It’s like that picture of the corny floating head with a pipe in his mouth or referencing a “flying spaghetti monster.” It’s never going to be funny to me because I’m not in your club and it isn’t.

I know one person who insists the program is bringing femininist ideas to people who would otherwise not be concerned with them. And maybe this message is more important than how badly drawn or annoying it is, or whom I resent and why. I hope that is the case. My problem might that I know very few people and I have trouble letting go of the ones that really aren’t going to get any better. Lazy fan immersion is itself the total absense of ideas, and something these people have been doing their whole lives. I give the management credit for devising a template that is even easier for the least creative to insert their egos into than anything we’ve had previously.

For all their blank slate adaptibility, Sega style hedgehogs are kind of hard to draw, what with their messed up proportion and conjoined twin cell eyeballs, as this box art specialist proves.

Hi I have a psychological disorder in which I think I’m persecuted despite being in an insufferable majority that gets whole websites devoted to it and takes over others. See also: war on christmas. or “if we allow gay people to have rights then everyone will be gay and humanity will stop reproducing.” In fact it’s such a powerful majority that I was afraid to complain about it. That really isn’t fair at all, considering the lack of kindness I’ve displayed toward the favorite television programs, musical acts and films of people I’m far closer to than anybody who has a web page with red text on it.

Consider even just the website name “ponychan.” That means this one topic was so overwhelmingly popular on the oldest and most notoriously hornetly imageboard that it attained sentience and split off into a new entity. Saw never did that. There is no “saw chan.” At least it’s not a chan that I saw. When you get really popular and obvious, people are more inclined to look for and point out your faults. That’s just what happens. Our most profitable news media is kept in business by this alone. And for the record I don’t see much about friendship in those which are the subjects of my gripes. It’s simply “this character exists. Look at it a lot.” I don’t have a problem with people watching a cartoon. Not this one more than any other I’ve whined about, certainly. If it came down to little ponies, the shirt tales, the snorks and muppet babies, I would recuse myself from picking the winner. I have a problem with people never shutting up about it under any circumstances, unwilling to accept that some others just don’t want any part of it, and cannot be made to, and further that the harder you push them the harder they’ll resist. I don’t fleeplezeep how “well written” and referency a program is if its fundamental sensory components are idiotic and embarrassing, and those get the most mileage.

Eh but if I liked something a lot, and knew there were forces massing to decry that I did, certainly I would defend my position. Wouldn’t I? I have no idea. I’ve never liked anything that was so beloved that I could say so and have there be 309 people standing by to statistically agree with me.
I prefer melodic music without vocals. I avoid referring to myself with pronouns. I walk in the rain and look drunk. I know what it’s like to be chronically not-gotten on a daily basis. The pony craze is very much gotten, and I wish I might be so into something that was, someday. That would be so great, to have massive corporations just pumping out trash I liked by the week, for free, and be friend-branded-acquaintances with ten thousand other idiots who liked it, who also drew the same stuff that due to my willing suspension of disbelief I could pretend wasn’t totally inane degenerate drivel, and is worthy of the source product I liked to begin with, in the event that was good.

Me mad? Yes! I’m furious! The absolute worst people on the whole internet love the dumb rainbow horses more than anything. It would be unfair inductive reasoning to claim that makes it inherently bad; that only keeps it inherently impossible for me to want to like at this point.
My mother watched American Idol but she didn’t draw, quote or otherwise invoke Brian Dunkleman every day for a year. And if she had and I’d told her to stop she wouldn’t have accused me of being some kind of pop culture gestapo trying to censor her rights and freedom. And if she had she’d be a krippendorfing maniac.

So that was that. But eventually…

AND What the hack is this thing? It looks like somebody bought a lion king coloring book and just used whatever crayons they felt like on Scar. In every picture it has the exact same expression, and I’ve seen about fifty of them despite never once looking for one and the thing not bloody existing three weeks prior [to when I wrote this sentence]. The regular characters feature the full range of emotions from happy to douchey but this one is only douchey. I understand that villainous sorts are supposed to be less than friendly but one assumes it may get upset when inevitably foiled, and in any event there should be something to distinguish its bad smirkiness from the good smirkiness of the protagonists.
This is, I think, seven different people doing lame fan-traces based on the exact same shot, or simply reposting the frame verbatim as an original work and subsequently submitting this to the “group” gallery I found them in, since the cartoon had not yet aired, but some official images had been posted online from it, I guess? That’s so bad that I don’t even care that only the last one is unmistakably douchey at this size.

This first person had the clever insight to mirror the frame before tracing it. Ah and “good” here’s some passable douchiness. Even when these people try to think outside their own tumblr mandates all they can come up with is “He’s the puppet master!” or “he has them all on a chessboard!”

“Q trolls the ponies.” I saw a bunch of such remarks. The uninspiration hath folded in on itself! The thing people use as a pathetic launching point, to borrow characters from to use in their own stories, is itself borrowing characters? Is that what I’m to conject from this? Nerds love this stuff. Ah didn’t I once say that I loved that? I like when one writer finds a means of reusing their own characters in another situation where intellectual property restrictions seek to prohibit them from doing so. I don’t like when a point of nerd idolatry safely assumes, and REQUIRES that its audience be familiar with another bastion of nerddom. I’m not terribly proud I made that pointless page of video game references. But at least they were varied and over quickly. it wasn’t a drawn out reverent tribute to one series. Good gorf star trek. This IS just like Bob and George.

I hate alllllllllll these people! I can’t recall when last I loathed so many non-murderers because I self-administered shock therapy to forget that.

That’s everything they do. They consume, and imitate what they consume. Of COURSE they’ll love stuff that itself consumes and imitates. Does it matter if the program can stand on its own merit if you can sync it up to audio from The Big Ol’ Bowski? and then link it at me out of context after I already plainly didn’t care about the last six contextless clips you sent amidst not even asking me how I’m doing? One of the reasons I dislike Kevin Smith films is that there’s sure to be 10 to 20 minutes just of people talking about other movies. And this conversation will be the same every time you watch.

Also: do we truly require in this comic store a mal-configured widecreen tv to put Kevin Smith on? Isn’t he fat enough already? And why did the angel order alcohol if he can’t actually drink it and presumably never could? How would he have developed a taste for it? How does he even enjoy that?

If you had asked me but a week before this what my least favorite thing about the collective Star Trekkion was, I might have responded that it’s sterile, bland and slow-paced and there was no excuse for it to be that way after Star Wars* got made, much less in four consecutive series other than people themselves being boring. Further down the list might have been that invincible douchabix guy who I want to strangle that’s in some episodes, regardless of the series, for no reason, that isn’t a Romulan. I can’t stand Romulans. They’re such jerks. And at some point I gripe that the most exotic aliens at best have weird foreheads and funny skin colors. Right but the one guy I hate, apparently that’s the favorite character of everybody else. Especially furries. Why? Because they have no sense of subtlety and the smuggest, smirkiest character will always be their favorite. I was surprised when I found out anybody liked Spyro. I am no longer surprised.

*Star Wars the film, not Star Wars the Kevin Smith reference interlude. I grant all reference interludes the same right to be scorned.

One complaint that supposed little pony detractors commonly give is that this is a cartoon aimed at children, specifically heteronormative female children. That hurts their case, and if that’s the only case they can produce then they’re just as weak. I would question if in fact it is! I would then also question whether children comprise a majority of the total viewing audience. No reasonable child –apart from one making just such an advertising niche jump– could possibly care about a minor star trek character or that this show was mentioned on Jimmy Kimmy’s own abomination. I have never encountered this cartoon in the context of anyone under the age of 17 or off the internet*. Through being successfully targeted and then fudnuddling merchandise dollars and ad revenue into the enterprise, adults on the internet are the main audience. Additionally, by the show creators acknowledging the internet adult popularity and working to incorporate or be fully compatible with things they like, those become the target demographic, I say.
*excluding an embarrassing convention I attended, because those are essentially gatherings of real people acting out the internet.
**and then on September 29, some inconsequential loiter gang within my audible proximity at my university’s loiter area mentioned the cartoon, asking “is it at Hot Topic yet?” and they moved on within two minutes without anybody saying “bro.” Bro anything is bad news.

And I go to a school in which people talk about zombie apocalypses, hold “bake[d] sales” on April 20, wear shirts branded “winning” and all sorts of horrid rubbish that nobody should think is clever.

I have an unnatural, almost instinctive resistence to stuff that got too popular for no clear reason. This has surely saved me tens of thousands of dollars through the years on trendy clothes, music albums, cigarettes, beer, tomagotchis, furbies, skip-its and xboxes. I see no reason to give up on it for something that looks like this and that makes people act like this.

I’ve never encountered anybody who accepts video game music as a legitimate art form off the internet either, but I scarcely encounter them ON it unless I seek them out, and in any event it’s much more reasonable that something just one person likes should be a fringe matter; there are thousands of these pony dipes who exist exclusively in imaginary places. Sometimes I wish I was imaginary, but I am increasingly afraid I am.

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It did once come to my attention that somebody thought I made that, as well. I can thankfully remark that I did not, as much good as that would do for my public standing in the eyes of people I don’t want to be seen by. It’s not the worst in that gallery, but the worst in that gallery is enough to make me not want any. It might be well done but it’s nothing I want to look at.

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The next entry, on, let’s say, December 4, 2012, promises to bring a shocking exposing which you already knew.

It’s a pity that I make this website entirely for free. If I was paid for the deed, I’d have long since been fired for missing deadlines and then I wouldn’t feel compelled to do it anymore.

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Well I’m glad somebody does.
Maybe then I’ll be allowed to stop.

I’ve only heard it twice today –across approximately three minutes– and I’m already sick of the FOX FOOTBALL commercial break fanfare. Popular culture has no respect for instrumental music. If we hear it at all it will be three seconds long and looped endlessly. without variation, just right to be rapped or barely sung over. We have to marginalize it and restrict it, else people might realize that it’s a valid and functional art form and thousands of redundant, inspirationless vocalists could be out of jobs.

And the commercial breaks themselves. Yarp, Family Guy’s still ugly. Simpsons are still stagnant/animated at way too high a frame rate for how ugly they are. With the money you spend on these superfluous in-betweening you could get some much nicer artwork, but you never would because this show hasn’t evolved a scrap since I stopped watching it in 1992. Glee’s still grinsufferable. Aw grapes a kidz bop choir singing an irritating pandery song about New York City that I hated even when the real singer sang it. You want to be a millionaire? Be a skinny lady and sing about how great New York City is ha ha GOT EM. I do not miss network television. I do not miss bars. They get along so well together, they probably wouldn’t notice if I stayed home. I also do not miss not complaining about these things. I’ve said all this stuff before and better. Now it’s boring. I need NEW stupid things to inspire me (“these lights” also not cutting it).

Isn’t there supposed to be some government agency in place that keeps the word “natural” out of the vocabulary of nugget peddlers? Even for Florida, a land where a town can be a wholly owned subsidiary of the disney corporation and be built on land that shouldn’t exist (and probably won’t in two years) I think that language is pushing it.

You know, consumer health advocate’s fundamental problem with chicken nuggets isn’t the chicken. I can imagine the meeting…

what can we do to make fruit less wholesome?

Have you tried making it into nuggets?

Good show!

In fact it’s such a good show I declare it shall be a mini-series. This builds suspenses for the next episode and has the added benefit of letting me go to my bed before 2 am when I have junk to do in the morning. I’ll talk about nuggets more next time. Unless I talk about something else.

Ah ha but here you are wrong, my good warlord! I suffer for my rest!

MAN, sleeping in beds is SO HARD.
And now, good NIGHT. IF that’s even POSSIBLE!

I notice this is a lot less interesting a week afterward.

Nobody wants nemitz in their homes, and apparently nature doesn’t want nemitz outside, either.

Last week on Bimshwel, State Street New Haven, Connecticut, Amelica residents were mildly inconvenienced by a dwindling hurricane that actually did damage in other places. I actually made this picture before that even happened and meant to post it on its own, in anticipation of the electricity going out, me thinking that a decent excuse to post an entry of minimal effort, but the electricity went out before I could, and then afterward I no longer had my justification.

Ehhhso the next day more trucks came and went. I considered that the tree may have been declared a cultural landmark that was actually being protected from removal.

12:30pmish: A slightly more organized rabble assembles at the usual meeting place. It’s about time some professionals took pictures of the tree. And this time with video cameras, just in case the tree tries anything.

Here they assess whether an apartment building is tragic-looking enough to film in front of. The sight of me living inside it must have clinched the deal.

Unfortunately I haven’t had local television access in a while so I didn’t recognize the famous Jocelyn Maminta of WTNH Action News 8. Though who would, with those magnificent sunglasses? That is twice as good as Clark Kent’s disguise. I might recognize Al Terzi, even though he defected to WFSB3 which I never watched in 1989. WTNH also hasn’t been called “Action News 8” since around the same time.

The Mayor said some things here, such as that approximately 100,000 manly hours had been expended in this aftermath. He did not clarify how many of the hours were devoted to driving up to stuff and then driving away from it, and if the county accountyants had multiplied this by the number of extra people in the vehicles who weren’t even driving.
I wanted to emerge from my doorway and proclaim something in the vein of

Please citizens, do not be alarmed! We are doing our best to drag this story out as long as possible! We are taking every measure necessary to keep up the illusion that we are the primary victims in this matter that was actually killing people and destroying homes two days before it made us ornery, and continue comparing it to an incident from 1985 that this is in no way comparable to. I am enormously honored to see that you deemed my apartment decrepitated enough to make your speeches in front of.

However, I should inform you that it looked like this before the hurricane, and as far as I can figure those trucks kept coming and leaving because you ordered them not to remove the tree until your schedule allowed you to personally admonish it.
I didn’t. I also just today didn’t go to a free local barbecue because I was terrified at the thought of having to speak to a stranger to get a hot dog. In food service situations it is alright because I can imagine I am paying people to not impose further social obligations on me.

I don’t know who was here with NBC; I assume it was the guy who kept glaring at me like I’d messed up his shot after I chose to emerge from my chamber with a queenly wave in the midst of the mayor’s words to take a picture of this van. I only know that if there’s any justice, it got legally held for ransom towed away and impounded, like what happens if somebody who actually lives here tries to park here. Don’t they know this lot is reserved for

sex limousines?

There are/were some legitimate disaster areas in Connecticut, and even further north in Vermont and such, but New Haven isn’t one. That’s why my parents were evacuated and came to where I was.

As to why they stuffed my kitchen with cucumbers and cans of beans and then left, I’m afraid that’s a personal, family matter and it’s highly inappropriate for you to bring it up.

The mayor should have posed in front of this. It is the apartment above mine. It was also like this before the storm. The people renovating it haven’t finished yet, I guess. They didn’t bother to lock the door to it, either.

I bet the mayor was ecstatic when he found out there were some locales under his juristiction without power. East Haven, my old haven, had some actual wrecked homes to shoot. All New Haven got was a tree that was due to fall over anyway.

Now only the stump is left, but still surrounded, and still presumably dangerous. Or maybe this is meant to be interpreted as a shrine. I thought this would be funny but actually it makes me kind of sad. It’s going to be even harder to park here now.

This is the zone of my previous dwelling, as seen by a picture telephone my mother sent before she rounded up the beans. Thankfully my brother Ibrow uploaded it at the internet through his aggregate-accessory fruit, because Verizon would have charged me twenty five cents if I’d done it.

Two people like that my ancestral home is in peril. The same number of people who historically have liked nemitz. There is no coincidence.

Here is how it looks from another angle. What a catastrophe! Oh and also this was from last year and a regular thunderstorm. This street floods EVERY year. Gobward it’s a good thing I made this story two entries; otherwise it would be lazy of me to use the same non-gag twice. Observe how I started out by implying this place was worse hit than the other place and then I dismissed that as folly. I wrote all this for nothing. It makes me sad. In the future I pledge only to address matters of substance.

Next week: exclusive before and after pictures detailing the tragic effects of a hurricane on disco.

8amish Sunday, I woke up to find this tree had overslept. The tree must work at the electric company because nobody had turned on the power until after it left.

Before then, some fire trucks and passengers gathered about for a while. After they determined no fire was on the premises they left in hot pursuit (ha ha) of more exciting tasks.

I can’t imagine they could see it very well with all these leaves in the way, though.

A few pedestrians strolled by to take pictures of the tree.

The hurricane was originally scheduled to stick around until late in the evening but when the lack of electricity terminated the free wi-fi it decided to get going and beat the traffic.

My own interest similarly spent on the matter, I wandered about in the rain, in search of things I understand.

Hey DUCK: this is NOT a lake or a pond. It is just WATER FROM THE SKY. There are no FISH in there because fish do not FALL FROM THE SKY. This wasn’t even THERE yesterday, dumb bird! They love finding the stupidest looking places possible to make their legs disappear.

Also on State Street: Aw frank, look at this disaster! What a mess! And i’ve just been reminded I actually took this picture the day before the hurricane showed up and that this scene has been blocking the road since last October.

As I returned to the climb scene at almost noon, an irritating alarm sounded from the liquor store that for once I’m going to assume I don’t need to show you. People love alarms. That’s why they always let the ones on their cars run for ten minutes before doing anything of pertinence to it. This situation was no different. Though the amount of people had increased in size, nobody bothered to take advantage of the already activated and blatantly ignored alarm noise and steal anything. They were too busy photographing the tree. I would approve their lawfulness and not deride their lack of initiative, but they also blatantly ignored the CAUTION tape around the tree. You fools! Don’t you know they’re more likely to bite when they’re injured!

A ha, progress, and order. Now a licensed work crew with reflective vests can take pictures of the tree.

They hung up some homemade stop signs about the intersection and departed.

By all meeps, get out of your car in the midst of the road to take several pictures of the tree. I’d put extra importance on this if your car has screen windows.

This yellow truck showed up in the vicinity of 3pm to make it clear that coalition forces now occupied both sides of the street. Also, some cones. The tree slowly starts to realize it is outnumbered. More people took pictures. If that thing doesn’t clean up its act in a hurry it’s going to be REALLY embarrassed on face book later.

A hobokin on the steps of the building nearest the tree observed me looking at the tree roots and interrogated “You know why this happened?” Before I could prepare my defense he answered his question and blamed it on the sidewalk which had been installed during the previous year. Supposedly the roots were cut from below this area for no reason I could guess and that made the tree feel more inclined to recline. Two hours later this fellow was still there, no doubt keeping the populace informed. I suppose he thought if electricity was never restored we’d revert to a tribal system and he had a shot at becoming village elder, getting control of the magic sword in the process, and then he could use that to rob the liquor store for real this time.

An industrial loader! Now we mean business. Enough to not call that a “bulldozer,” even. When the tree sees that unoccupied construction vehicle staring down its caution tape it will surely be intimidated into compliance. Despite the loader looking like a toy in this picture I assure you it only did the job of one. The loader’s driver continually asked a similarly dressed fellow “is it ON, stupid?” Oh it’s on NOW, with you calling me names and such.

The shovel machine was friends with a dumptruck. The dumptruck left when it realized somebody had already dumped on this street. The yellow truck was actually blinking its lights now.

5:30pim: The loader was gone when I came out to make another departure, and suddenly from the right it came speeding toward the object on the left. At last! Then it slowed down and stopped again. I think the tree is getting the message. The yellow truck had turned off its lights in the meantime.

Somebody bought the flashlight, I surmise. A pity for the scarcity; the best part of blackouts is frosted mini-wits standing in the street, illuminating the ground in front of them and then courteously blinding me when I approach to walk past them because if I just felt like staring at unchanging darkness without going anywhere I’d have stayed inside.

An hour or some such thing later, at about 7 in the PM, the yellow truck is gone but the tree remains. But what’s this? A van has just arrived branded UI, United Illuminating, a company that actually deals with electricity. THIS blinking light will get the tree’s attention finally.

By 9pm the tree was still there, but we successfully set a record for most amount of diesel powered vehicles to idle outside a single apartment complex and then leave without doing anything.
I crossed the danger line to get this incredible footage. That was foolish, and I should not have put my life in peril. The wind blew a small speck of dirt into my left eye. But for 9:30pm, another truck shew up. THIS time it was one of those hauling/utility/whatnot trucks that I’m used to seeing around fallen objects during power outages. It left immediately. I’m glad some people still keep traditional values alive.

Eventually I went to my sleep lump, realizing my chances of the truck fairy compensating me for even one of them dwindled by the minute while I remained awake.

Ah I see. Yes of course, you’re supposed to bring in the noisy devastation machines after midnight so as to not disturb anybody. NOW things will be done.

For example, you can take pictures of the tree in a whole new context. I wish I’d written my website url on it.

A police car is over here. The tree is obviously resisting arrest. Collapsed in the street like that, it’s probably been abusing drugs. We expect to find high quantities of bud in its system, and not a little bit of weed.


On second thought we’ll let it go with a warning. But just this once! Goodnight folks. (imagine this is a picture of the loader rolling down the perpendicular street and not Snarf from Thundercats ambushing you in the dark)

This follows up, as I threatened, on the previous item, in which I seemed to take issue, without specifically saying so, with abuse of the concept of non-sanity for no great purpose. This isn’t very good but it isn’t very long either. I observe that in fictional media it’s common to see the “crazy” depicted as wearing straight jackets, babbling incoherently, getting tossed into cushion-covered rooms and then just being abandoned there.

Showing your less preferred presidential candidate wearing one is a step up from a Hitler mustache in political activism. Just about everybody involved with the previous presidential election has been seen that way by somebody. Except, oddly enough, Joe Biden, the one actually known for being difficult to control. However, he is also the only one that I found in Cabbage Patch doll form.
So eh sure, it can be funny, but let’s not pretend this has any basis in reality. It is a very unfortunate stereotype which I suspect we can attribute to the 1930s era cartoons which too many people use as their sole point of research into the mental health field (also, coincidentally, the 1930s were the last time Hitler mustaches were fashionable). We accept that their depictions of ethnic minorities and non-American cultures are often less than accurate but don’t give much thought to the dated, extreme measures used to restrain the slightly less brain-stable.

I’m glad to say that actual mental health institutions are more compassionate. They’re still pretty boring, though. Unless you have something to read or somebody to visit you you’ll just be waiting around all day while the staff test their medication on you. Well I hope they’re enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, sometimes hospitalization is used as punishment rather than treatment, for even many people in the field of special education regard the students as inferior, almost criminal beings who must be medicated and restrained into compliance rather than fellow humans who aren’t there through their own deliberate action. Or maybe that happened just one time.

The American special education system is most recognized for its funny looking transport vehicles. The reduced size buses used to segregate us problem students from the ones people care about are somewhat degrading, but they are a lot safer than the large buses; their turns aren’t nearly as wide and they have seat belts. In fact the primary reason for their design is just to be more maneuverable. Perhaps we ARE special.
Not that any image conscious child will wear a seat-belt unless commanded to… once they find out the small buses have seat belts the other kids are glad to not be burdened with them. Faha! Who’s smart now? (none of us because I didn’t want to wear seat belts either). Not that it’s possible to be image-conscious when you attend an institution of education on a comically abbreviated bus and everybody knows that you do.

School employees insisted these were not buses at all but rather “vans.” This was very helpful in precisely zero ways, because first of all they are obviously not vans and second of all when I actually started going to schools by vans instead of baby buses it was worse. They had yellow signs on their roofs stating “CARRYING SCHOOL CHILDREN” ostensibly to guilt reckless drivers into reconsidering their state of reck, because one generally drives haphazardly out of misdirected selflessness. It also has the benefit of alerting all literate persons that I must be more messed up than usual if I don’t even rate a funny looking bus. Another few years and I’d probably have to go in a Barbie Power Wheels wearing a bright yellow styrofoam helmet that says “I AM SCHOOL CHILD.”

The students I knew in those old days would call a small bus “the tart cart.” Some of these people rode on it with me. An inspiring example of “owning” one’s derogatory abuse words or a bunch of kids too dumb to realize they’re being made fun of? You eat the fudge. That’s “tart” as in “retart*,” incidibally. Well maybe some of us deserved to be there.

This is actually a trolley with monster truck wheels but people assume it’s a badly drawn bus so it works here. This may be the first time it’s worked!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t born smart enough to figure out the secret to succeeding in art.

*you would not ordinarily eat this kind with your fudge

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Get out of my sight!

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Monday: I was going to update this today but everything came up.

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Also, I evidently broke the internet at my home so this is now more difficult than it was.

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my name is finkledy breadcrumb stagecoach mcgandalf

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Friday now?

intentionally halved so I could fill two updates, popular with the robots | How to lose a guy in (4) days | !

On the subject of Don K. Kong…

Guess what happens next:
A: D. Kong grabs Pauline and climbs to the next stage, like in the real game
B: The ad loops over from the beginning
3: Mario installs some pipes so that the building can be finished since he’s supposed to be a plumber or something, right?
IV: I actually click the ad

The correct answer is W:

Donkey kong jumps in the air, spins 180 degrees and FALLS for NO REASON. Pauline continues to call for help. Kong remains emotionless despite the massive brain trauma certain to occur once he lands. I wouldn’t even mind this so much if Kong fell while upright or adopted an expression that acknowledged how horrible it is to suddenly be falling and rotated for NO REASON.

The vertical version is even worse because the graphic dork put as much effort into formatting the layout as you’d expect, so you don’t even see Mario reach his destination, and thus there’s even less than no reason. He scampers beyond the image boundary and a few seconds later kong falls for ever no-er reason than before! The amount of reason that there is cannot exist in physical space and requires hypothetical mathematics to express.

The proper D. Kong DOES inexplicably fall on his head, but only after the platform he’s standing on collapses and in any event we get to see that he acts surprised when this happens. I’d like to imagine that the kong in the ad jumped off deliberately, and he’s diving into a pool of pudding just below the image edge that was prepared specifically for such an occasion, but that possibility only occurred to me now and I don’t presume that’s what the ad designer had in mind.

This sort of thing has always bothered me. Like when

Roger Rabbit in the NES game gets stolen by an object meant to resemble a bird and then the detective guy just DROPS DEAD because he failed in whatever his task was.

The filename of the picture I started this with is kongarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.png I wondered why I insisted on putting an H at the end, the old Garfield way of spelling arrrgh, which then reminded me of how the Roger Rabbit game reminded me of a specific garfield cartoon.

I was TERRIFIED of this. I could not look at this page. I had no friends so I would re-read those little books all the time, memorized which strips came before this one and I’d worry when I saw them, not sure just how close I was. I would have to only look at the left side of the page and if I saw that clock oh oh oh! (It’s magic)

Oh, here’s the problem. The Roger Rabbit game was developed by the Battletoads people before they hired the person who could draw nice. I talk a mean trash about Battle Toads but it is one of very few Rare games I’ve seen that I consider to have any legitimate aesthetic appeal. This includes the Battle Toad sequels and Kong Country and actually I haven’t seen most of their games. But

the battletoads, featuring the most superfluous life bar since Rolling Thunder.

And SPEAKING of stuff happening for no reason

MAME DEMANDS TRIBUTE. I hadn’t used it in a while so it decided that I needed to pay it in new roms for old games that used to work.

Also, in trying to get pictures of the rabbit kidnapping; I didn’t realize the bird only starts chasing you down after a few minutes, so I had to also be reminded that there is an 8-bit police siren (that’s a .wav, watch out) that sounds anytime you’re outside of a building scene for longer than a few seconds, after which some cartoon rats appear and make you lose.

This is scary. If the rats just appeared it wouldn’t be so bad, but the noise announcing their presence speaks to my psychological errors. I have a deep fear of being arrested for a crime I committed accidentally or without realizing was a crime.

Such as standing really close to the highway. (although I was merely searched and escorted back to the road this time) Oops, you were in the wrong place! You have to go to jail forever.

Which I meant to imply was a bad thing, even if this is a poor example.

I also recall being scared of certain graphics and musical cues in the Roger Rabbit game. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of my disorders had their roots somewhere in there. Hidden timers, mystery crimes, terrifying noises, unexplainable voodoo deaths. It is an astounding feat to upset me in so many ways without any mirrored letters, vanish deaths or horizontally moving bosses that look at the player rather than their target. It doesn’t have a life bar either, which I mentioned earlier and have also decided are kind of creepy. Yes, and I saw the movie once when I was six or so years old and have no recollection as to how anything in the game relates to that. It seems possible that up to 13% of it could make sense in context.

Which is pretty good for the 1980s.

Or ever.

Hello there. Busy busy busy.

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Don’t read this, but…

Is there something wrong with me for thinking the Super Mario Wiki’s description of Pauline, from Donkey Kong, ‘s physical appearance is really creepy? The one for Princess Toadstool is similarly alarming, but there’s so much more silly rubbish on that page prior to that point you’d be unlikely to come across it unless you were looking for it, for comparison purposes. I can’t even get past the “contents” section. In my case, I had merely taken to wondering what Nintendo had done with D Kong’s preferred kidnap victim since the first game, since I know Nintendo loves to reuse old characters

(except for them), and before I knew what I was reading I had found that. With the princess, her being one of the primary Mario series characters, and this being the internet, it is not surprising that over the years someone with spare wiki-writing time would have developed a weird obsession (in contrast, I failed even to notice that her hair color changed between games). I didn’t think anyone could possibly care about Pauline. The writers are content to state that Mario himself is “a short, plump man.” If I was the sort who got into the businesses of others who have business, I would take it upon myself to edit that page to say something like

Mario is a rotund Italian American. He is approximately three feet tall but can grow to twice this by ingesting a magic mushroom. His mustache is composed of a brown arc with 6 humps along the convex side. He appears to be turning to stone. He often has four fingers on each hand but sometimes has five. The buttons on his overalls serve no apparent function.

I have a follow-up to this but it changes the subject entirely and I have a headache. Wondering what color nightshirt Mario’s father wears isn’t helping. Actually the more I think about it the more I think this information is presented in such a manner entirely as a joke. However, “the more I think about it” is further than that sentence should have gotten because I really should not be thinking about this.

One thing that I think is neat about last.fm, the website which was the topic of this post before it got too long and stupid and I had to remove the actual informative information from it to keep the length reasonable, are these little biographies that show up when I listen to music that I’ve liked for years but never gave much thought to the creators of.

I learned, for example, that before he become a game music composer, back in his younger days as a consulting detective, Koichi Sugiyama developed some solid theories linking video to the death of the radio star.

Later in life he of course went on to be Barack Obama.

Aw ban, that guy has so many albums of the same corny Dragon Warrior tunes, because people buy them. He must be rolling in dough. I, meanwhile, often find myself rolling in dopes. Yes that’s the only reason I mentioned it.


Although now I have decided that also I object to dumb Healie playing drums. Healie is like a floating dope with no torso or nose. Dopes often forget to have arms, so this seems like the next [totally il]logical step.

This puts me in a tough position because healers also remind me of c3po, who is my personal hero in life despite being a robot and not actually alive and not actually existent, but I stand by my principles. Healie cannot stand by its own principles because it has neither principles nor legs to actually stand with.

I’m not here to do things Healie would like! My parties are swingin’ occasions and healie isn’t welcome at them.

Healie is also a traitor to its own kind. I can understand the overwhelming desire to hit healers, but this strikes me as psychologically worrisome. Ragnar’s an admirable figure and all, what with his declining to receive any special treatment and enlisting in the army despite his famous father Rygar’s many connections

(who himself overcame the adversity of not having a face), and daring to go on quests wearing bright pink armor and refusing to shave his purple mustache, but Healie tries too hard to gain favor, and quite pinkly I find it sickening.

Excuse me, Ragnar’s party obtained the gold? As I see it, there’ll be no divvying of this plunder at journey’s end motel*.

^{*this was the name of some place I used to see from the highway when I went to visit my grandmother’s house. It was only there for a few years, no longer is, doesn’t seem to have been part of a chain and really there was nothing inherently funny about it, so my making reference to it is not at all fair, and talking about it in this way can only possibly bore you. This then causes me to giggle.}

Hey! I only put that thing in the front to draw the attacks of other monsters, no doubt resentful of Healie waiving its right to not be slaughtered by them in search of selfish gain. That does not shift authority and naming rights! Ragnar, I suggest you find more trustworthy companions.


Well now you’ve done it: you’ve emboldened Healie to commit the ultimate treachery: transforming into a skeleton. A jogging skeleton. You know you’re an inefficient being when becoming a skeleton enhances your skills. That is, if you are competent enough to know things.

we needn’t encourage this sort of behavior!

Now I just feel inadequate. I am blue with envy. I would be green but thankfully I’m not yella.

Although for some people being yella is the least of their problems.

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Sunday, the twenty-ninth: It is against my personal principles, but I am going to try and do something productive tomorrow.

I am told that the new These Green Eyes album Relapse to Recovery is now for sale at places where things get sold not necessarily in Connecticut. Remember: I’m not shamelessly, flagrantly betraying what I pass off as integrity to deliver a blatantly commercial message: I’m just related to somebody in the band.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

I used to love the 1980s. Now all I think of are awful songs, the same death-dealing fast food as now but with trans-fat and styrofoam, omegadouches on Vh1 channel plus Ads who think they’re better than the 80s (but are worse!), and bad intentionally plotless cartoons that have been referenced to death beyond death by onlinedom’s least adventurous jokesters.

Works whose sole redeeming quality is that they have better concept art than more recent referenceable reprehensibanality. A few months back, before my 2:am Thundarr the Barbarian (essentially, non-retarded He Man) rerun came on I accidentally saw an advertisement for a new cartoon about a kid with one tooth whose mouth was always open and somehow at the internet the next day I was less than one degree removed from a gang of like-minded enthusiasts who could do nothing but draw pictures of the thing and its putrid single strand of hair and unwashed feetsy pajamas and giant bacterious mouth breathing all over my gag reflex for no reason other than that it was new and on tv. It had “misadventures” in its title (and I shan’t type the rest). At least when the fan art cabal was ordered to draw “Chowder” a week or two prior it was safe for me to eat food half an hour before my daily mistakes (even if under no circumstances can I eat actual chowder). And thankfully, recently there was a curious jump in the amount of people I am immediately aware of and so it is harder to find a dominating theme among the unpleasant things their own awareness recipients have to like. I used to take issue with people who thoughtlessly aped what they regarded as “anime” style, but at least, when done properly, there were solid design concepts necessary to incorporate into that.

The picture I “wanted” showed just two of those heads between a pair of ‘P’s, but I figured it wasn’t worth aggressively hunting down.
And this, my old nemesis. I have many old nemeses. I have many new nemeses. I don’t have room for them all. Somebody has to go, and this one happens to stir up within me particularly boring, non-eloquent complaints. Like so:

I am beyond the point where I hate South Park because of teen-smoker beer pong afficionados that occasionally got arrested who happened to swap meaningless character impressions in between filling me in on just how gay I was and [different] lousy radio stations [than I mentioned last time] playing brief, scratchy voiced dramas from it out of context. Somehow the musical maestrosity that earned Kyle’s Mom’s a Big Fat Bitch in D Minor spot #1 in the nightly top arbitrarily-determined quantity countdown for a solid week was lost on me. I did not understand at the time that merely by being less than two minutes long it was surely preferable to whatever the other candidates were. That was over ten years ago, before I knew this thing was a tv show that would have looked better on radio, and that I hated radio.

Now, I don’t need to resent unfortunate behavior it inspired in others. I can merely hate it because every audiovisual aspect of it is repugnant. It is a disgrace to two of my primary senses and reminds me of disgraces to the others. I can’t get close enough to it to be concerned with how funny or clever it is or was. I’m just tired of it. I want it to go away. It will not. Maybe once it does I’ll look up some transcripts –it seems inconceivable that there aren’t people who make it their personal business to type out every single syllable ever spoken on that program– but as long as those awful sights are fresh in my memory I daren’t try. I remember once I was at Tommy K’s Video and South Park was being shown on the monitor despite south park content on rentable media not yet existing, and a bunch of bobbly south park people tried to stop an erupting volcano by forming a human chain around it and then the bright red lava poured over them and then all these freakish bright white skeletons could immediately be seen floating around in it and it made me sad even though it was supposed to be funny. I remember that.

I hate those round characters with their flibbity mouths. They’re too gross and they do too many gross things to be cute, and the only things grosser than gross things are “cute” gross things. The South Parxists are not as ugly and their mouths are not as flibbity as those of the Family Guys, but I don’t watch anything on FOX* channel so I don’t see nearly as many ads for that, and when I do they tend to be partitioned to include various ugly fat man wearing white t-shirt fox cartoons so there’s less time to focus on one specific unpleasantry.

*although if they keep this up…

Somehow I only realized this year how bad the southern park’s theme song is. There’s an interesting spasm of banjo noise at the start to trick you into thinking, “oh, what’s that?” and then awful voices saying stuff attack. I could tolerate the Simpsons music if I didn’t mentally associate it with Simpsons, but Suppark’s would be irredeemable in any situation.

I remember for a while it was totally gnarlburger for people to create “south park version”s of themselves, and I hated it. First, it’s ugly. Second, it’s obviously so easy that nobody could possibly be impressed who was worth impressing. And third, do you really want to go to the south park? Every person or sentient object there is horrible and they die all the time.

And you might say to me “hey mildred, all your characters look and act the same, too.” Right. And nobody gives a steaming rolodex about my characters! It’s really easy to not ever see junk that I made. It’s even easier to not ever see non-junk that I made. I wish people would stop looking at my junk.
Eh I think I’m done for now.

This goes on, unfortunately. I realized I hated “rock” music over time but didn’t pay attention to how many unrelated paragraphs I had accumulated saying this in different ways, and that somehow this was inseparably mingled with my hatings of the last two decades. It’s really not fair that there’s never been a month of my life during which I didn’t hear any Errorsmith songs or just something about Aerosmith in general. Is it any surprise I’m a failure? How can I succeed in a world where that is how success is defined?

Regarding the same sort of thing as last week

Nobody likes to hear “my [family member or acquaintance] thinks you’re special,” much less “…or at least did 20 years ago –ehhh, or would have, had he known you wrote the material the cartoon was based on” so I sought to take a different approach when I encountered Larry Hama (seen here not being seen). However, you also shouldn’t say “I downloaded a bunch of your comics for free off the internet a few days ago and didn’t read far enough to get to anything you’re probably proud of,” so all I was left with was fumbliness slightly more informed than usual. Agent Waffle claimed afterwards to have been similarly uncomfortable when she asked questions, despite being closer to human than I, so maybe it wasn’t totally my fault. It probably was, though.

In the early 1980s it was Hama’s task to write a comic book series about the recently reincarnated Gijoe line of little plastic people with guns. What I wanted to ask was how much creative control he had, with regard to what characters there were and which must be used. I wondered how much of it was “Ok this guy has a head made of metal and he wears a yellow snake around his neck and his name is Destro and he’s bad. He needs to be in the next issue.” There’s probably a bit of that in all paid work, but I think in most cases your tasks are determined by a comic or cartoon company rather than a little plastic gun guy company. I don’t remember what I asked but the response was “I wrote all the character biographies myself,” which I knew, and so would not have asked about, so it was probably something unintentionally skeptical whose syllables I spoke. My curiosity often smells like skepticism and in The Big Apple there isn’t always time for a blind taste test.

I saw that Hama was using a pencil to draw something. I believe it was Snake Eyes the silent ninja. I pointed to one of the displayed comic books and said something to the effect of “but you didn’t do the art in these, though, right?” Once again, what I had meant to say was “I think that’s neat that you draw stuff even though you’re generally known as a writer, and that you have kept with it despite being more often contracted to do the other. How well did you know Bernard Krigstein? I think he was neat.” What I actually said sounded closer to “you think you’re hot stuff at this table here when clearly you’re not good enough to actually do that for a living.” Not what I meant at all. Probably not true, either, but as far as finding something he himself drew that nobody else drew over and potentially did fancy stuff to, the internet is not cooperating right just now. It’s more work than I’ve ever had, I do know that.

I suppose it’s nice to reaffirm every once in a while that I can be just as much an unintentional ass quickly in person as after spending hours fussing over some irrevocable semi-permanent typed statement. I just wish I didn’t have to pay a $20 admission fee days in advance and take a train twice for the privilege.

Somehow it happened that in addition to an artist named Hannibal King who occasionally draws vampire comics, there is, evidently, a comic vampire or vampire adversary named Hannibal King who is much better known to the internet due to his more consistent vampire associations, though neither of them are known to fraternize with the Jungle Women who also fight those vampires. Anyway, one of the Hannibals was in attendance. I seemed to make a better impression on him. Likely, alas, because I had no idea who he was. I worry that being afraid of people I am familiar with may negatively affect my big star hobnobbing prospects.

I saw “Hannibal” written on most of the man’s artwork and it was a surprising amount of time before I realized that was his name and not a unifying brand, making my needless “do they ride elephants?” joke defy science by being revealed as worse even than it already was. At this point I encountered the rare, difficult decision between having him think I was too dumb to figure out his name or too dumb to assume he hasn’t been hearing elephant jokes since everyone forgot their cannibal jokes. I hope by now you know me well enough to presume whichever decision I made, it was the wrong one, and that while you may not agree with it, I hope you can agree that I was willing to make that wrong decision.

And so I was particularly perplexed when Mr. King purchased one of the pictures I was carrying around after the third or fourth time I passed his table and finally accumulated the gall to ask if he would look the lot of them over. Pity can work both ways, but I don’t like it any better. That just means pity’s a ho.
Hannibal requested a price and I suggested five dollars? Maybe? He claimed to not be carrying such a small denomination and offered forth a ten dollar unit. Yoink! A tenner! Now for a feast, ‘eh readers? Arf arf!
I fiddled about for a five to return but Hannibal said not to bother. Though bothering is what I do best, greed sometimes wins out. And so, I unfortunately accepted the $10. It was not as bad as the fifty I undeservedly took for a past item, but since that guy was there with his stuff at his own table I still felt like I should reciprocate somehow. I did not. But now I see that the charging rate for his commission work varies by greater amounts than I’ve ever gotten away with in total, so the guy may just have loads of cash lying around. The visitor after me the third time (but before me the fourth) had something drawn for himself and undoubtedly paid a heap more than I received. Bah, I bet I could’ve gotten thirteen!

Although now I remember that I carry around an envelope of prints I made at Staples and not actual drawings, much less in ink, because mine always need computer help and generally suffer from a Catwoman deficiency, besides, so I will continue reveling in single unit transfers for amounts I couldn’t buy a case of Eli Soda with. It is also good to know I’ll never have to worry about former customers making e-bay listings like this.

Ehhh, that is, unless you have information to the contrary.

Why did I buy Life Water?

Because some oaf at this table took the last lemon-lime Foxon Park, that’s why.

But where, where was I put into such a traumatic situation?

C & C PIZZA
A Taste of New Haven.

And now,
A warning to consumers:

Do not go to C & C PIZZA, A Taste of New Haven. It’s more like a taste of Florida or whatever part of England I was at in 1989 when I got that pizza with scrambled eggs on it. Even for Madison (the town of me) I regarded the pizza I consumed as unpleasant. Also, there’s one garbage can and it is behind the service counter. Evidently I’m the only person in this town who generates refuse I’d rather not make someone else handle. I stumbled about in the little square of space dividing the outside from the in and I see Guy behind counter reach a hand out to get at what I’m holding, which suggests to me that this happens a lot but nothing changes because whoever’s in charge likes it that way. I suppose what the man did was nicer than let me walk around in a circle and go back to my table twelve feet away, yet something still feels incredibly wrong to me about blowing my nose on a napkin and then giving the result to someone.

It looks safe, but it is actually quite dangerous. This time I was lucky. The other person present agreed to take home the four slices which remained at the end. Otherwise I probably would have forced myself to eat them, and combined with the Life Water it might have killed me. Or someone else.

This television set is airing “Showbiz Tonight.” I have several problems with that. The first: there is a television set on in a restaurant. Second, it is airing “Showbiz Tonight.” But let me be specific. Hey, I don’t need your permission! I shall be specific! The program is Showbiz Tonight, but now is not night at all! According to CAM-RA I took this picture at 10:30 am. CAM-RA is behind by an hour, but that would make the actual time 11:30 am, and nevermind that I should not be awake at such a time of day; even if I should, Showbiz Tonight ought not to be a part of that. I consider it nothing less than a criminal act to impose night showbiz on unsuspecting diurnalists.

Also problematic: there was a discernible boot-print on the cushionoid beneath this television set, which suggests whoever operates it has lost the remote control and is standing on a seating place while wearing dirt-acquainted boots to turn the device on and presumably off at some point. Or maybe this was meant to be a hint to me. Suggesting that I ought to stand up and turn the thing off myself. Ah, hem. It seems obvious now, but in the moment there was no time to think. It was kill or be killed. It was do or die. It was Glen or Glenda. You have to understand, it was dog eat dog out there in here. In my panicked state, eating C&C pizza seemed a step above cannibalism so I did that instead. Luckily, there are three other tables in the whole place so I doubt this will bother anyone.

I wouldn’t sit over there anyway, as the only thing worse than an unstoppable voice going on and on about Justin Timberlin “drop[ping] trow” because Madonna said so and then people asking Justin to tell them that is my not being able to see where the voice is coming from. Especially when it’s a three-way split screen hydra of voices debating the details. I need to know which animatronic bust I agree with and whose to look for on the cover of the insider tell-all book I will hide behind other tell-all books the next time I’m in what technically is a book section at Target. ORLANDO BLOOM IS NOT GAY! I WILL DESTROY YOUR LIFE!

Who even says showbiz? The only people who call movies and such “showbiz” are people who call circuses “the big top;” salaried hack writers and the occasional redemption-ticket arcade game designer who hate their lives. I remember seeing the phrase “big top” used in a shockingly not disgusted Nintendo Power review of Arrow the Acro-bah and not knowing what it meant. And then I went out to Tommy K’s video and rented it anyway (I never rented Big Top Pee-Wee, thankfully). And now you’re out of business, ha ha. Fourteen years later, because you couldn’t compete with the internet or whatever and I actually find it depressing. That’s showbiz.

Oddly enough, Tommy’s Tanning still 100% in operation.

By the wuh, Tommy K should not be confused with his fellow North Branford Hamburger Hill Tommy, of Tommy Gun Choppers, which, yes, still sells cigars. Presumably, whatever wonderfully pleasant things choppers are, as well.

Showbiz. People who say showbiz. They are the same sort of people who invented the terminology “baby-boomers” or just unprotestingly allow themselves to be called that. Humans should not ever say “boom” unless describing a loud noise, but even then it should not be done in such a way as to attempt imitation of the noise. I also have very specific rules pertaining to the use of “baby” but I’ll save that topic for the newsletter.