When the movie Dragon Train
This movie also lacks my own arbitrary childhud fixations, the green floaty diamond-shape logo and Sireaganol. The famous Sireaganol.
At one point the bear puts on a different silly costume than usual and approaches the king and introduces himself as that. I didn’t hear “Sir Reginald,” some ordinary noble figure of no import. I heard Sireaganol, one word, some great and powerful name whose significance is never explained, but it must belong to someone important, maybe just BECAUSE it isn’t explained; I really ought to know who it is already. He’s so great that he can wander out from behind some bushes like a tramp, approach a place of royalty without being accosted by guards, announce that he is Sireaganol and sit next to the king. This is particularly notable for being the only scene without swords or bows in it that I had any interest in as a small child, just because of Sireaganol. I had no idea what he was talking about to the king nor why, but Sireaganol is not bound by necessity. Sireaganol and I have much in common, although I dislike mustaches for myself and I wear my monocle on the other side, and only when watching 3d movies.
I often take issue with neologisms, because issues are what I take. Who decided that misheard bits of speech are “mondegreens?” ONE person did, and now everybody has to call it that. Why don’t we call them Sireaganols instead? Because I may decide that it is I who heard correctly, and everyone else who is wrong.
My mondegreen quarrel is similar to my tiff with tv tropes, another baffling website that doesn’t need my help (and won’t get it), in which one infallible oaf arbitrarily decides that a supporting character who wears a gauntlet is a The Quacksmash Sammy and any time somebody makes a sandwich with boomerangs instead of breaded chicken cutlets that’s called Dancing With the Hamburglar and a story about a hunt for treasure that no one gets to keep is a Big Bird Bar Mitzvah. No! I refuse to call them that! I’m also not going to read the three hundred exception-riddled examples of these occurring that all happened to be from shows aimed at five year-olds as analyzed by people two decades outside the target demographic. No spriggety, Fairy Oddlyparents is full of lame cliches because it’s not meant to be watched by people who already have a quarter century of cartoon viewing experience. Anyway, back to talking animals in a medieval England devoid of death, disease and monarchs who actually live in France.
It’s curious that even with my own spelling of Sireaganol is so close to “Sir Reginald” I didn’t quite make the connection until somewhere around twice as old as I was then or half as old as I am now. Even after that I continued to keep it in my memory. At the time when the thing I call nemitz was “Chesterfield Snapdragon McFisticuff,” I imagined that the thing I now call elpse might have been “Sireaganol Rumpole McFisticuff.” I reneged on this because I remembered that anything related to or inspired by Disney, whether they did it deliberately or otherwise was and is evil, and also that nobody liked green chesterfield anyway and thus a grand name the likes of Sireagonal would be inappropriate even if it hadn’t been invented in a Disney movie, and I’m never going to stop using Ms DOS based operating systems. You might also detect by the repetition of McFisticuff that I intended for the characters to be related. I did. I’m not sure if they still are. Possibly. I’m certain they’re not really really Scottish, however. I know they’re a bunch of uneducated bog-dwellers, but the mere thought of the annoying exaggerated accents they would need to have if I made a cartoon version forbids that.
One thing I am certain of which I discovered today is that the governess hen in the movie is named Klucky. With a K. Although the obvious error in Sireaganol’s name above and
“hand her a bouquet” being transcribed as “under a bookcase” may give me reason to doubt the accuracy of the captioneer’s work, I cannot deny that I heard something very much like “Klucky,” which is reason for alarm whatever consonants are involved.
If anything that’s Miss Klucky to you. The discreetness with which you conceal your ears does not distract me from your obvious lack of discipline.
Regarding the floaty green diamond-shape thing introduction sequence, I linked to the one I did because I like how defiantly the symbol freezes on the screen for about thirteen seconds, just long enough for you to resign yourself to standing up and seeking out the fast forward button because your vcr didn’t come with a remote control object only to have it end abruptly once you initiate action, followed by the longest youtube comment quasversation about absolutely nothing and without any racism I’ve yet encountered.
The thing I remembered so fondly was an old even then, and I now realize incredibly cheap “Disney Classics” home video line logo. It is commonly referred to as the “black diamond logo,” but both of us can see it’s clearly blue, so let’s not argue about that. Despite my familiarity, I never owned a copy of Robin Hood on VHS. Although I must have made my parents rent it enough times to cover the cost, I now realize that if they had bought me a copy it could only have been of the later edition, which I would not have tolerated, and as someone with two younger siblings who had their own favorite movies that we DID own copies of, I reckon if I’d had such easy access my own older brother would have hated me a few years earlier than I actually turned retarded around 9 or so.
I couldn’t read, but the cassette itself always had a tiny version of the pertinent logo printed on its label, so I KNEW before it even went in the VCR. Dangerous times. The later version of the tape had a different opening which featured a blue speck leaving a stain in the shape of the ol’ Walter’s name, flying off from the presenting hand of an immobile Mickey Mouse dressed like a druid. I already owned tapes with that logo on it! Unsatisfactory. Of note is that the green, cheap logo’s appearance features several blatant backward ‘S’es, things that would taunt me in successive years, but I did not notice them then; I was too preoccupied with what an entertaining anecdote this all would make twenty years later. I may even mention it twice. In fact, this was such a great story I don’t even feel like transitioning into the me-not-liking-normal-people’s-music themed material I threatened you with last time. Golly!
But speaking of dragons,
I am not afraid of this one. In fact, I’m generally not impressed by any gold thing that I can buy for five dollars. You will serve ME. You will do MY bidding! And you will also deliver my seller feedback.
The wimp isn’t even as big as that dumb bird! It’s so ashamed that it wants to vomit. Hey bird, how would you like to come work for me? I’ll pay you $7.50.
The only thing that could be cheaper than golden dragon is…
OH NO, FLAPSAIL
I apologize in advance if FLAPSAIL does not attain the same cult status within my mind as Deadly Armor.
I still don’t hear a D in Sireaganol.
Speaking of backs, I will be on Monday, but for now I must go. Oh, ho ho die.
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Good old Mxy “Maxwell Yezpitelok” Frebunkulus of the Bizarre Webcomic had a clever thing which he wrote posted on the website of the apparently now solvent crack’d. You may pretend some of the half million or so views on that were due to my pointing it out.
Speaking of dragons, because I was last time and just put that other note first because my leech sense tells me to mention people I sort of know who get exposure on popular websites although not that time Bridgeport Cat did it because she was writing under a pseudonym although that’s also a pseudonym and in any event AAAAACH I’VE BEEN PICKLED
speaking of dragons, I’m not, because this is at the end of the entry, but originally it was at top, and I did go on to say something about them dumb lizards, but I took too long getting there so I re positioned this at the end, where it is currently.
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I’ve been awake too long.
Unfortunately I had to start eating again. A pity. It eats so much time.
“”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
I haven’t eaten, and I haven’t had my sob fit yet today, but my nose continues to be just as inclined to stuff itself as usual. Just what AM I allergic to? Dust? Walls? Pixels? My own insufferable dullness?
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How do I still have solid excrement to pass? I haven’t eaten a proper meal in almost two days and the last substantial thing I remember ingesting made the complete tour fairly quickly.
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I think I’m going to be out sick for a while. You probably won’t notice!
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Breaking news: I believe in life after love.
I don’t much LIKE it, but that’s not news!
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I saw Shutter Island on Sunday. I have nothing to “spoil” for you, just that I’m rather sick of movies trying to pull that kind of trashbag on me. Also, prior to the show, between a coke ad about time travel that clearly cost way too much money to make for a stupid ad, a trailer for a movie about a time traveling uh hot tub that would NEVER have been MADE before the internet gave a bigger voice to the professionally retarded and ANOTHER trailer for ANOTHER movie about a time traveling pocket knife, I want to take a voyage in my own chrono-kayak to however many years in the future is necessary for everybody to get this out of their systems. That and the “ha ha, ’80s!” mentality that’s been ironically marketable now for longer than the 1980s themselves lasted.
Speaking of skulls, what on earth is going on with Comedy Central’s internet video ownership-designator? And why is some angry man shouting “DIH! DIH!” at me? Is he a mentally-imbalanced murderer who thinks my extracted head-bones are funny and he laughs in monosyllabic outbursts? Is he related to the guy who shouts “come on, yall!” and “HIT me!” for no reason? Are those both challenges at me so that the guy can make his deeds seem like self-defense?
Were the skulls the invention of the same master of design and draftsmanship and unnecessary clenched teeth who invented these? I hope the monkeys are better at building things than whoever built them. I will admit they did a good job digitally removing the notebook lines.
Oh incidentally I don’t see that little sequence anymore since comedy central withdrew its shows from the hew-loo I eventually came to watch them on, out of disgust for comedy central’s own website and video player, to be seen exclusively on its own website and video player, where instead of dih men I see ads for stuff like the eternally infallible South Park and what I showed after the monkeys because Todd forbid we have a prime-time animated series that doesn’t evoke Beavis and his posteriorcephalic companion or the opening sequence from Juno in some aesthetically repugnant way (although I understand that Todd’s cool).
But it’s GOOD to remind me of Maniac Mansion, right? It was so ZANY and INNOVATIVE! And it had the worst interface in the history of item-quest adventures. Or at least it did if you’ve only played the Tandy and NES versions, in which one must use standard four way directional arrow keys to control a mouse cursor to select nine different variants of “USE.” All of that is beside the point because I don’t get to make that guy get murdered for bragging about his recording contract to a jealous tentacle or blow up the mansion by pressing random buttons on the security keyboard and other stuff I’ve read you can do in that game that I never figured out. And anyway I was just commenting on how dopey the guy looks standing like that. I could be little less concerned with the actual content of the program.
This show is called Ugly Americans. And it’s ugly. And I don’t care. I don’t even feel like going through the ad and explaining point by point why each hilarious gag makes me mad. Here’s my tip to you, aspiring artists who don’t aspire to anything greater than aspiration: those free-floating black lines you use to indicate muscles in skin, folds in clothing and texture on various inorganic surfaces don’t look like anything else but black lines. I bet the artist has sketchbooks full of legless big-shouldered torsos. Which doesn’t mean anything to you but I once saw a sketchbook by someone who drew like this and it had a lot of legless big shouldered big necked male torsos in it and I was certain there was something to that. If there isn’t may I please be permitted to dis-remember it?
Not that this is any day for me to be criticizing the visual quality of sketchbooks.
Years ago, specifically on the very last line of this otherwise mystifying page from 2003, I scoffed, I sneered at the idea that internet video was then, or could ever be a replacement for television, but that was back when I had dial-up eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…eeeeeeeeeeeeeee oreorocfffeoroghcffgghhghg nyurrrrng, nyurrrrng internet at 50% functionality via america online or compuserve and compression algorithms were less sophisticated. Watching streaming video then was an unbearable hassle. It was slow, it was buggy, it was blurry, it was small, it couldn’t be viewed fullscreen. Some sites still won’t let you do that, but the holdouts are dwindling. When they try to force me I will start the video, pause it, wait for it to load in its entirety, copy the data from my browser cache and then watch it in a different program. Ha HA, I sure showed nobody!
I remember a while ago reading some news article about the reasons Conan O’Brien’s latest television endeavor was canceled. Apart from Hugo Chavez I can’t name a single South American head of state, I don’t know who my own comptroller is and I’ve never even seen proof that my garbage isn’t taken away by fairies every week but I know why some dork who was on tv for a really long time now won’t be for a little while. One line bothered me, though, and I took note of it and complained about it without recording where I had found it or who had said it:
“Add to all the other issues the fact that Mr. O’Brien’s young fans did not really have to watch television to see him. His shows were made available later on Web sites like Hulu. And his best comedy bits would frequently be posted on other sites — and passed around by fans — shortly after they appeared.”
Then why was it ON Hulu if being watched there did not count? And why is that my fault? Nevermind that this could easily have been revealed prior to the program being removed. Once people have been liberated from timeslots, they won’t go back unless you force them to. And yet if you try to force them, by revoking their privileges, they still probably won’t go back. I know I won’t. But I won’t go back to watching anybody’s tv show at 11:30[5]. I gave my television box away back in August or thereabouts because my parents’ machine was broken and most of the shows I watched I could now get through the internet. It was not a supplement to normal television viewing; it was a replacement. It is hard to turn people away from a new convenience and you should never assume that you’ll be able to do it. That’s why pro-environmental legislation is worthless. And also because most of our business depends on wasting things.
Howevah, even in a relatively non-wasteful field of decisions, such as one electricity inhaling broadcast media or another, stepping “back” is hard to convince consumers to do. A week or two ago I made myself buy a music album thing online that I had been listening to illegally distributed digital recordings of for a few years. I felt like I had wasted my money, even though that was the proper thing to do. Right. Just 3000 more to go, then. For most of the games that HAVE sound tracks, the things have been out of eh print for years, possibly eh decades by this point, and the cost to make honest men out of them often seems to rely on paying off weirdos who will be charging for rarity, age and the fact that the things are imported. It was never meant that I in Americonia be able to have heard this stuff, but the people who made the games never assumed anyone would care about the music later. Which is also why they never provided clear credits, I reckon.
S. BIG LAND, will your identity never be revealed?
This is understandable; I have become accustomed to an illegal practice that is, in essence, cheating. Hulu is totally legal and partially owned by NBC. It is completely unfair to blame people for using it. I even used it after complaining about its stupid name and creepy ads. Why spend so much money on a commercial thing that does not earn money?
I also watched Colbert’s Report with that thing, with which the more interesting part of Conan’s show was competition, and that’s still on the air. But not on Hulu. Hulu is lethal, evidently. It’s not a plot to destroy the world (for one thing, it blocks users from other countries), just its own business partners.
I need to get my priorities in order for a number of reasons. Case in point: ordering my priorities is not a priority.
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It’s too cold in here to use my computer today. I… I’m going to try to read a book…
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Here’s a long boring one (page entry, not a book. I wrote that up there later. I don’t even know I am going to write that yet), just like the good old days, if we insist on classifying the old days as good.
It had BETTER be free if there’s a 1 in 5 chance you won’t know. I’m guessing the oblivious Tyrannosaurus is still on the payroll somehow. And Tom Ridge as well. It is not worth noting that green was bad before but now is good, yet I did so anyhow. It IS worth noting that these things aren’t really free, apart from a seven day trial (which is about the same as American Online declaring itself a free service because it mailed out those little discs), and that every page of the site includes a small print disclaimer stating, in essence, that nothing it will tell you for that nonfreeness has any value and that it additionally will not be held responsible for its deceit and uselessness.
Don’t bother reading that. That’s not why it’s there. In summary, it’s not about helping you with your credit, it’s a resource for teachers and people who write about credit and need stuff to refer to. The responsibility-shirking slackers of the internet need not bother. Which makes me all the more curious as to why this was advertising on Galbadia Hotel, the video game/anime mp3 archive.
But what about the score? The only thing it said was free was the credit score! That is true. You can sign up, attempt to get your score, and forget about it. Which also works well, because you’ll be billed automatically as a “member” once the trial ends. Even if you remember to cancel, you’ll still be charged a dollar and the priceless hassle of calling a corporate toll-free number as a screw you processing fee. Although the sources the page the page I link to didn’t bother linking to suggests you can’t even SEE your score unless you give up the membership fee. They have to pay for their ads, after all. And Ben Stein has to eat. One assumes.
Yes, Ben Stein again! As I understand it, he was fired from his job at the New York Dispatch for this sort of thing, though you wouldn’t guess it by the pudgy smirk he has in all of these. He doesn’t even look human anymore. Gosh, he reminds me of someone…
What a greedy, selfish beanst. It can’t stand the idea that I’m complaining about someone else.
Ben Stein is almost a muppet. A wrinkly, Yoda style muppet. Except instead of teaching you about the force he tries to sell you a free midi-chlorian report, when everybody knows the only FREE midi-chlorian report is issued annually by the galactic gargonian skrimpfly flambarrrrrrRRRRRRRRRGH “wookieepedia” is awful!
He’s not even necessarily promoting the thing. He’s just smugging it up off to the side. I don’t know WHY he has to do this after appearing in promotions for both Direc TV AND Comcast, competing companies. Clearly, he wins either way. Next he’s going to show up in an ad promoting not clicking ads.
Look at that! He has a CLIP BOARD! In these days of high-tech doohickery, you can’t go wrong with a clipboard. That means he has important information! It’s not for you, though. I checked, the free trial does not grant you clip board access. Also, I hear that printing Ben Stein in bold across your pelvic zone is an integral component to many “abstinence only” education programs. At least, it couldn’t be less effective than whatever it is those actually consist of and get millions of dollars in government funding to continue failing at.
In fairness, I should say that Stein believes he was fired for criticizing the president, which seems unlikely to me, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised because the exact same thing happened when the last guy was president and deliberately disappointing people. That doesn’t excuse such a termination, and I wish people with positions of influence would grow up and deal with their problems rather than lying and sniveling, but I already said I doubt that’s actually what happened. But regardless of whether Stein was fired over the stated “conflict of interest,” or whether even for that he should have been, what’s important is that he did/does IS scummy, which is all I meant to come here to whine about. This guy is NOT an economist but he wears the label of one even when doing jobs he would never have gotten were he an actual economist rather than some guy people recognize from movies, or failing that, other ads. He is not utilizing expert financial expertise here any more than Gary Coleman was, but he pretends that he is. Regardless of whether anybody falls for the act, it’s dishonest and misleading. He’s not shilling for Pepsi, which will merely destroy your teeth and give you diabetes, but if he was he at least wouldn’t do so with the words “sommelier and dietician” floating beside him.
Anyway, I still see the ads, Ben Stein is still a millionaire and he still doesn’t believe he is anything but the subject of a conspiracy in this.
In his official rebuttal (which you shouldn’t look at unless you feel a void in your life where The Spectator getting in your business and ordering you to subscribe to it may fit), among other things, Mr. Stein claims to have criticized Goldman Sachs back when that could have made a difference and also laments the amount of “sick people” online who get inordinately upset over his antics. Well, I never said he was an idiot. Not recently, I don’t think. However, he also insists early on that there is “avid scientific disagreement” regarding the origin of life in a way that implies Intelligent Design is one of the theories argued by actual scientists, which it isn’t, and then he spends the rest of the page complaining about “neo-Darwinists.” I don’t know what it means when you put “neo” in front of a group name beyond making whoever you’re referring to seem instantly and indefensibly crazy, so I can’t take it too seriously.
He also claims those who protest the freescore ads have confused it with “other companies that did not have FreeScore’s unblemished record with consumer protection agencies. (FreeScore has a perfect record.)” It’s one of the GOOD credit report scams! I didn’t know any of them had blemishes, actually. I thought they just tricked people legally and got away with it. Also, Freescore is a relatively young site and surely has plenty of blem-like items yet to isshue. One must additionally keep in mind that Benjamin wrote this while still officially involved with the Freescore company, so he had an obligation to defend it and follow its capitalization guidelines lest he be accused of integrity.
At any rate, freeScore makes no effort to distinguish itself from others which also claim to be free but really aren’t. Further, that header image on that page is inexcusably dorky. Is it a crime to be a dork? Perhaps it ought to be.
I am not a “Ben Stein hater left over from the Expelled days.” I was annoyed by him prior to then and found out about it while I was having a problem with his comcast ad that he didn’t seem to think anybody had a problem with. Yes, so, isn’t this all fascinating! Our research/archeology department continues to probe the situation.
July 28:
Big trouble today. Big trouble tomorrow. Big trouble all week. Big trouble big bad. No good. Must make great kill at hunt and honor ancestor. Dance with mountain people. Thumpa thumpa yo! Sacrificial beneficial, nothing here is artificial. My teeth hurt.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWw
July 27:
Big trouble today. My rubbish AT&T internet connection has not helped. It is simply not feasible for me to update this page the way I desire to or talk to anybody. The replacement frame is just about the worst piece of artwork ever done. It looks like something out of the first issue of Ninja Turtles. Except it probably took me as long to draw that one frame as Laird Eastman did drawing the whole comic book. Oops. That’s all I have time to say.
999999999999999999999999
Ohhhh, busybusybusy.
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bad news: I crammed far too many words on this page
good news: I couldn’t cram in as many as I wanted
better news: the awful hospital part is almost over
bad news: “almost” means in about three or so pages, which will take me as many months to finish
worse news: I don’t know what happens next yet.
Elpz seems unconcerned with, or worse, entirely oblivious to the fact that it is the only character on the page that is naked. The hat, being an item of clothing, is exempt, and it wears a stylish feather, besides.
Yet one more indicator I should switch to a fixed width, vertical format without page barriers. Apparently eliminating excess dialogue and space-wasting non-gags is not an option. I just don’t like the idea of drawing big stupid backgrounds for frames where only one character is visible.
Also, it is becoming apparent I that have some perverse fascination with mail delivery. However, I do not. I merely am not terribly creative when it (it being something) comes to plot devices.
I am not soliciting them, but I am open to dialog simplification suggestions. Do you think you could write this better than I could? Then you’re probably right!
Ah! Almost done, but not close enough.
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Contrary to what might seem to be the case I actually write more than ever, it’s just less focused and more tiring.
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I box in yellow gox box socks.
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I am aware that the lifting device depicted in the image I posted last week is closer to a nineteenth century railroad crane than whatever it should be, but the only non-clipart construction cranes I could find had lifting things coming from the back of the unit and that interfered with what little image balance I had achieved, I thought. Considering that I did it free and not for an actual construction related project, and also that obviously whatever company is doing this construction is run by really stupid animals it seems like it should be of minimal significance. And yet I mentioned it.
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It is a bit early for me to have one of these on this entry, don’t you think?
I wonder if I shall ever be nostalgic for the 1990s. I question if that’s possible. Any potentially nostalgia-inspiring thing I liked about it I quickly retreated back to when the subsequent decade disappointed me, and nothing that I hated or was indifferent toward ever went away; they just got bigger and more plentiful. Why is Survivor still on? How is that possible? How did it ever have the audacity to include “outwit” in its masthead? All it’s ever been about has been randomly not getting voted away. If everybody on the show slacked off and put no effort into anything somebody would still have to win. Tuh. Survivor.
And… Resident Evil is still getting sequels and ripoffs, Rage against the machine is still getting national air time, Windows is still the dominant computer operating system, Macos still thinks it’s better, I’m still afraid of telephones, “Steve-O” is apparently still famous, The Disney Channel is still watched by people who are allowed to leave their homes and influence others.
At most I could have nostalgia for ten years ago when I still had nostalgia. It seems like so long past that someone could type “Skeletor” or “Optimus Prime” and I’d laugh for twenty seconds. Now they’re all over the place. “Lion-o” should still be good for a little while.
Sometime midway through the most recent year I was in cars a lot again, and somehow we had jumped ahead ten years [from the unbearable 1980s session whose mentioning this was intended to follow] and I was hearing Black Hole Sun every friggin day, and which only made them more friggin. I never realized back in 1994 how long and horrible it was. There’s a solid two minutes of just some guy saying “
Around the same times I heard “Red Red Wine” in a supermarket (the perfect place to hear it) and it got cut off half way through like it usually does, because eleven forbid we air a song with any sort of progression in it. More recently I heard red x2 wine in a diner, again, totally appropriate, and again aborted before the deep voice man starts talking about breaking lions and choking monkeys. Black Hole Sun always finishes, and it has no further wilderness survival secrets to reveal.
And yet this really should make little difference to me, because the next song certainly won’t be better.
Would it not be more courteous of me to simply request that the radio machine be off-turned than to say nothing and then at some later point deliberately trash the musical taste of the persons I was sharing the automobile with? Could I not more effectively state my discontent by stating it? Ideally, I keep it to myself and don’t ruin someone else’s enjoyment. Except I don’t think they really enjoy it, they just have a compulsive need to have words coming at them always, and sometimes this occurs to me and I accidentally voice a complaint and then I feel bad, even when the end result ends up being what I want, the immediate stoppage of the alien noiseflow.
This has not, after all, removed the song and others like it from the radio station, nor has it removed the radio station. The songs are still out there, and I’ll probably hear them again, either in another person’s vehicle or in this one again once my grievance has been adequately forgotten. These pieces of misery are following me around. Ignoring them won’t solve the problem. Being contrary on the internet to what I perceive as public consensus doesn’t solve it either, but it does temporarily alleviate the other problem that is my need to be contrary.
Uh oh, here comes another one
No! I already have more birds in my business than I can handle. And you needn’t be spiteful when denying me this thing I do not want. All I want is silence occasionally. Is that unreasonable? The thing I want relief from mocking me for that is most unkind and only drives me further away, and I’ve been in other people’s transportation units long enough. Why don’t you go pick up my friend under the bridge? He told me he needs a lift. This song, I thought me and my brother Cobol were the only people who liked it. Now, with 50% of its known fanbase reporting an aversion to it, I don’t see how its return is justified.
The song “come out and play,” while I thankfully still cannot discern most of its words, nor feel (much less desire to feel as I might on a day when I could discern them) compelled to facsimilize any in green text, has revealed to me a melody that is the same pitch most of the way through. That, I would not even play indoors!
All request weekend — may I request you stop? Oh, ho ho.
So I wondered: why, after so many years of Train and Smashmouth and Good Cherlertt did the early 90s songs I had safely associated with my few decent memories mysteriously re-emerge and show themselves for the rubbish I was not as a child equipped –standards would have kept me from enjoying Sonic the Hedgehog “3d” bonus stages, Chef Boyardee Dinosaurs and Goof Troop– to recognize them as? My guess is that dopey guitar game is at fault. People obeyed the command to buy every identical dot-field simulator and in the process were reminded that songs also existed in the previous decade. And then the usual calls from call-enthusiasts to radio stations to demand to hear the wretched things that they listen to all day anyway merely changed to reflect the game’s influence. Listeners were initially confused at the absence of loud plastic clicking on every note, but eventually convinced themselves these were unreleased demos, and people love unreleased demos, because who needs a finished product when you can have a scrappy mess of partial thoughts? And when that was done they requested the other singles by the same bands which were not in the games. Non-singles still did not count. I suspect a Kraft konspiracy.
But I have so much more to tell you!
I link to my old pages too much.
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I remember, a year and pieces ago, I was trapped in a car for several hours going toward a sinister destination and the radio operator gave me a break from the same dumb cds I’d heard countless times recently and instead brought up a station comprised of songs I had heard countless times not recently. Or recently, but in the context of a “retro” or “throwback” media item not indicative of society’s tastes in general for anything other than retro throwbacks.
So, almost every 1980s song I heard in that car started with the exact same DIP DAH DIP DAH DIPN DOT drum introbe. There were a good (well, adequate) few years when I was convinced the 1980s music I used to like was of a nearly consistent higher quality than the modern rubbish constantly flinging itself at me. This was maybe 1998 – 2001ish. Now I realize it’s pretty much all simplistic repetive formulaic nonsense. Thank you, culture of regurgitation, for not permitting me to not be reminded always! And yet still I identified “Electric Avenue” in under two seconds, even though it’s doubtful I’d heard it more than three times prior to then. But then, most of these are the sort where when you’ve heard them once you’ve pretty much heard everything it can throw at you three times. They have minutes to fill. OUT! IN THE STREET! Also, Private Idaho, which only has two past exposures. While preferable to moment without an end!, some trashy ska song I heard one time –under unusual circumstance not involving a radio station or the particular set of tiresome CDs I’m used to being tired of– and probably never will again, whose obscurity likely means you will not hear it ever, and there’s no sense in complaining about it, or letting my complaints about detract from the more prevalent threat, I forgot how this sentence started.
[x4]! That’s not even a song, it’s an arena chant. What a bad bad band. DEET DEET DEET DEET DEET DEET great beat, guys. I hope you don’t get sued by birds. I’d love to hear it for five minutes and then another five minutes when the next track starts. Over that I’d like to hear a basic note sequence three times followed by a fourth that’s slightly different.
This is not good. I’m forming this sort of opinion on all possible things. My tastes are impossible to satisfy. It may be unreasonable of me to expect to be satisfied. Why, were I in the business of employing double-negatives for my business I might go so far as to suggest that I cain’t get no- ARRRRRRRGH I HATE THAT SONG TOO!
Somebody who I was aware of once linked those who were aware of him to an abysmal Naruto-branded vague contextless clipfest and I couldn’t concentrate on how abysmal it was because the music bothered me so much. It was a garbage techno remix of the first half of everyone’s favorite “scary” disgraced public domain orchestra piece that isn’t Ride of the Valkyries, In the Hall of the Mountain King, but artificially elongated by using extra repetitions which made it totally intolerable. People can’t comprehend music with more than a bit of variation in too short a period, and they’re too weak to write new music, so they dumb up old stuff to suit their needs. Yes, I know that. Overclocked Remix is almost ten years old, isn’t it? But this one baffled me… It’s not as if that particular Peer Gynty excerpt is an article of music that’s hard to make disgusting by pairing with unimaginative drivel.
A theatrick trailer for the 2009 feature film Bride Wars,
Somebody should have told the director that.
I wish I could show you that this was also the talk show clip, but just that one scene, in its entirety, with that music, and then with the audience having to applaud afterward. The pinnacle of the film, that which the whole thing should be building up to, and it was still awful, and the publicity campaign (henceforth referred to as “you”) showed it for free, with the expectation that this would encourage me to run out drop dollars to see that movie whose lame apex you just showed lamely (“you” now reverts to its previous owner). It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen. It was even sadder than going quite out of one’s way to create and arrange a comic strip to fit in a specific published book format and then putting it on a free, formless web page because it ended up only being kind of good. It was yet more sad than spending many hours of many days writing the sort of pointless thing whose climax might be a description of the climax of Bride Wars. I would avoid anybody who did both those things, though.
And now I am quite sad. I am sad that this sequence of thoughts is only about one third over. I was unprepared for realizing that I dislike the music I grew up with every bit as much as the music kids “today” are growing up with and that kids before me grew up with to bring so many of my other resentments together.
JUST ONE A THOSE DAYS!
This space reserved for anything at all else. I do not exaggerate when I say I’m seeing that bearded ruffian in my dreams now.
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Is America ready for a white Eddie Murphy?
His head is in the logo. That is never good.
I can’t believe I wrote another one of these.
I can totally believe I wrote another one of these. In a symbolic and totally pointless gesture I am retiring the “yimp” image subdirectory I’ve used since bimp. I’d like to think I’m also retiring endless, partially valid, miserable gripe-fountains I’m so wary of that I force onto separate pages, but I’d also like to think a diet composed largely of fried chicken, chocolate and iced tea is conducive to a long, pleasant life. Aw naw!
Like a lot of lazy shows these days, Late Night with Conan O’Brien has been soliciting audience submissions. Somehow my write-up of this has become more embarrassing than the personal embarrassment it was originally intended to focus upon, but twelve years and nine months from now I might be reminded of and want to read this again or link to it and so I will leave it alone.
I’ll spare myself the detail writing, but in the end Mr. O’Brien wanted viewers to send ideas and suggestions at the “Late Night Underground” website as to what he should do to bring down a stuffed raccoon wearing a jet-pack which had recently been flying in circles and screeching in the studio. Because seriously, what are you going to do about that? They don’t teach you that in talk show school. Eh, but when he says “ideas and suggestions,” what he actually wants are scribblings and drawings and elaborate paintings of himself doing the thing because those are the things he gives attention to on the program.
Conan thinks he’s Maddox, but Maddox only asked for pictures once and he gave people a couple days to come up with them. The raccoon was the third such solicitation from Late Night in a year-and-a-half and the second in three months. I like to think those things are done with now, but things I like to think are usually made up.
This image is therefore the property of “NBC Universal,” but I don’t think it knows that, because NBC Vivendi Universal doesn’t want it. I am being quite infringeful having this on my page, even though I made it. I think the Universe has bigger problems to worry about than a certain Capt’n does, but you know, a cease and give up letter from General Electric would constitute proof that somebody at some level of its employment saw this.
In the glass, they weren’t supposed to be ice cubes, but they looked like they were supposed to be ice cubes, so they became ice cubes.
I’m torn, ripped, shredded between admitting this is an ugly picture and protesting that it’s better than the ones which ultimately were displayed, and that were displayed in such a way as to suggest that’s all there were. No! They were not!
This took a bit under or over five hours, but that’s fast for me, and a lot of it was probably redundant anyway. This was not seen on the program, or any of the program’s websites, or acknowledged in any way beyond an automatic notification e-mail that you get even if you try to email them a virus (still more than I ever got from Maddox), but it did prove that I can do something fairly quickly if adequate motivation (eeg: being mentioned on television by someone I’ve watched for ten years) is provided. On the fire escape of artistic relevance, this is probably a step above drawing things eating sandwiches and half a step below painting sad clown portraits. I am not satisfied!
You’re probably thinking, you’ve probably thought, long before now “yeah, I guess your pictures are pretty good for someone who primarily writes junk, but you aren’t nearly good in a legitimate artistic sense, and you’re probably past your prime so it’s only going to get worse, and you’d be a better writer if you didn’t waste time on other things you’re clearly not suited for” and… I don’t have anything to say to that. You really know how to hurt people.
I think I thought if I spent time trying to make it actually look like Conan it would take too long. Ha ha ha? Yes, so, not only did it take plenty long, all I have to show for it is that awful picture I’d rather not look at/know other people are looking at. I thought, half asleep and paralyzed with really weak greed, that the bizarre nature of this thing would free it from the common “art class project on the internet” stigma and finally get Conan’s attention, but it is in fact an ugly pointless picture. And I STILL lost to paint.exe stick figures. Worst of all, all through that week in February, even after typing the part before this, I still secretly (from myself?) believed there was a chance it would be used. I typed this, here, now, before the week was finished, and would have told you if I’d posted it that my thing would not be shown. And I think I secretly SECRETLY thought THAT would cause fate to try and spite me by giving me what I wanted. I have very little respect for fate, apparently.
I’m surprised they [the Conan people] didn’t call off the search after getting letters complaining about promoting the abuse of animals (assuming anyone writes letters to tv shows these days). Although this is the show that for a long time paid actors with electric prodding devices to pretend to shock a man in a bear suit to keep the bear from diddling its point of diddling, the bear has long since become a solo act. A solo solo act. I hate my life.
One of the pieces which did make air and wasn’t a heartless scribble but still kind of sickly looking was a scene involving a helicopter assaulting the cord suspending the raccoon. Conan liked this idea, said he liked it, and attempted to launch little toy helicopters at the raccoon. There is at the moment video of this bit but that site is horrible and there are better things you can watch on the internet, even just about Conan, but eh. I like the one with the honey.
You can see, if you look at the user comments on the specified Late Night show web-site object, and you shouldn’t, and I won’t even link to it because I’m afraid despite what I said earlier, that a great deal of people suggested solutions involving radio controlled helicopters. I don’t know why, but they did. I have to assume a couple even submitted those ideas properly. How many people suggested poisoning the raccoon’s drink? As far as I know, just me. Because it’s a stupid idea. But it’s an ORIGINAL stupid idea!
Also, about the comments: anyone who reads the body of the original message sees that ideas are supposed to be sent to the linked e-mail address, yet both times the announcements got well over a thousand public responses,
generally hashing and rehashing each other’s ideas in Dilbert list form, often involving Chuck Norris or the afore mentioned “masturbating bear.” Maybe it’s for the best that there’s no official, bold-faced addendum stating “remember, send your ideas in e-mail, not the comment form; legally we can’t claim ownership of comments, and if we don’t claim ownership then everybody can sue us and we can’t sue them and our position in the sue hierarchy is important to us” to keep out impulsive psychopaths (rather than paranoid rule-reading psychopathics who remember everything forever, like me), but the attitude still bothers me.
This whole thought “don’t worry boss, we’ll get enough in the e-mail that we can disregard any legitimate creativity which may have manifested itself elsewhere or come from someone whose email client is set up with a weird name…” I don’t like it. And then, of course, the idea that even the stuff they do look at is plentiful enough that they can toss aside 94% of it that has no other reason to exist. Those people wasted their time and possible effort for no fleepsing reason, on your request, never even knowing if an actual human being ever saw what they did, and it means nothing to you! That time amounts to no more than a couple minutes in most cases, but, oh… I don’t know. It just seems rude.
Also questionable, is that though the website is all like “oooh, we’re the Late Night Underground, yeah! We do what we want! We don’t take no guff from the man,” the e-mail address it demands sacrifices be sent to is @ nbc.com. It’s all totally phony. It’s like The Captain’s Blog, except instead of Captain Morgan it’s Aaron Bleyeart. He does various things related to the show, but he also seems to handle its websites. Someone that I assume was him but maybe wasn’t but probably was recently added a link to the underground site from the manatee site in the form of his enormous disembodied grinning soulless head. Otay, no one’s coming to see you, Aaron. The entries that aren’t mentioned on television and don’t have Conan in them are only slightly more popular than mine, and mine aren’t. You know there’s a chance people are helpless egomaniacs if they design major site graphics with pictures of themselves. I remember there was a website called “web pages that suck” which complained about poor web design, but the site itself was covered with this stupid bespectacled 50ish white haired man who thought he was the best person in the world, talking about how things sucked on the web all the time, and it was impossible to take any of his advice seriously, which is why I still put light text on dark backgrounds. I’ve only seen two people good enough to do this properly, and one wasn’t you. You don’t even know me! Don’t get that attitude, like anybody who comes to your site is automatically less than you. I want to wallop that guy. I should make a page called “Websites Called Web Pages That Suck Which Disappoint.” And then kill myself because I don’t need to be doing that. These days it has a picture of a baby. The only thing uglier than crazy men making crazy faces are babies.
The manatee site is an example of what happens when the NBC internet department does provide an exhibition for user sent material, but this is long enough already and besides I didn’t get on to that either.
But this did! above this text, not below it.
This here, another one from me, took considerably less time and came about around Thursday and got as much attention as anything else I did. Although it’s not as ugly as my previous, it’s probably even more shameful. And yet I made it and can’t do anything else with it than show you, to whom it should have no significance. The next time the subject came up, Conan produced a bunch of pictures of just himself cutting the cord in various ways (once again already addressed by the helicopter comments), suggesting that such an unimaginative outcome was the magnificent consensus among viewers. No! Some viewers wanted you to create balls of flame with your mind! I want to die.
I remember thinking, while the bit was progressing “wow, the viewer suggestions are much worse tonight! Mine has to be in there!”
My problem is that in my mind everything is a competition. That shouldn’t be a problem; scientific progress, the betterment of our lives as humans (at least it sometimes seems that way) comes frequently from one group of persons trying to outdo another. Except I’ve never won anything in my life except a kite that I never even got to use. But why should I care if Conan held up my picture? He’s not going to come visit me. And if he doesn’t, who ELSE is going to care that I drew him in a chariot racing down a vinegar volcano? Yeah, hokay, then I can say “Conan held up my picture! I’m special!” But I’m the only person I know who watches Late Night or anything. I could say that anyway. Whenever I mention something I’m interested in without saying I’m interested in it people always laugh or don’t care. Care care care I hate that word. I am going to say flimmb instead.
Why spend hours, few or many, on something I made no one flimmbs about when I can have them not flimmb just as easily by playing with my roms? Hey, I can show you a picture I already made, just because I felt like it, and tell you Conan held THAT up.
The show has artists. Conan wouldn’t say to them
I complain about the America Idol and its associates, and I’m not done, but at least rejects get rejected personally. Some of them, anyway. I have to assume there’s a primary audition to make sure you’re potentially whiny and bad-song-unhatey enough to be chosen or embarrassing enough to raise publicity for the show. And it’s not too bad when we’re talking about five second clips of cats falling off porches or men getting hit by tennis balls in the ear, but NBC, Comedy Central, Myspace, et everyone are expecting something resembling professional quality output. They want production values. And they want it when they say they want it. If Dimension Pictures can’t dress a couple people up like Borat and Paris Hilton for less than 20 million dollars, how does anyone get away with making these demands? I’m mad, and I didn’t spend very long or even stand to win anything. I find the principle frustrating. What happened to raffles? At least he’s a gentleman thug. (I just spent yet one more hour tossing things about in search of what I was going to scan to accompany and possibly explain that statement. Pretend you saw it and were mildly disappointed or confused.)
I need an editor.
25 tv commercial classics: am I the only person who thinks this is totally disgusting? Or am I just the only person who knows this exists? Should I just say nothing?
While it’s nice to hear, at last, unedited proper versions of the music that can’t help get raped by scoundrels due to being copyright free and scoundrels loving to rape, you should never listen to music BECAUSE it’s advertised products. No, you should listen to music because a passing online acquaintance of yours says “Buy this album. (period) Now.”
And nine of these are [Excerpt] so you’re still only hearing what they want you to hear. Yes, a lot of classical music is boring, but I know quite factually that Jupiter of The Planets (and Capt’ain Eli fame) is great for the whole seven minutes and to only listen to the middle is reprehensible. You’re just supposed to put this on, close your eyes and imagine never ending hideous voice overs, bowl haircut children, crystal-meth’ apron ladies, cars going nowhere, words floating in space, numbers that end in .99 and on and on. I’m lucky there’s no chance of a company building brand loyalty through selling do-it-yourself-hanging kits and thus no one selling them because I’d buy one.
It makes me mad. Some goofs want me to pay them money for music they got for free and then took stuff out of. You might as well pay someone to eat the sprinkles off your ice cream, after you specifically asked for sprinkles. Or rather, you asked for shots but they’re really sprinkles.
The orchestra has to be payed, right? Yes, and those are usually much larger than the usual group of scoundrels who make the tunes I can’t escape from, ehhhh, but no one orchestra member has the legal business cloutzenrupen of a contemporary moaning skank so I’m sure it comes out much cheaper. I bet most of the recordings are decades old anyway, so probably no one is getting paid. Ideally, that includes the people who sell this CD.
I found this searching for “aaron copland commercial,” –I’m actually a bit surprised this came up at all because as you can see by that track listing fragment it credits conductors but no composers– because all the music I’ve heard by him that sounds like anything makes me think of products, and so I sought existing commentary on the subject. And while some people mention it, they don’t seem all that bothered by it. They just acknowledge it and move on. Blogging scum. It’s always hey! Look at this! You! Watch this video! Queegysproggit, read these song lyrics! Comment my pics! Ration my rum! Change my diaper! Grease my knees and fleece my bees! I found my missing piece! Digg and fave it! Is it my job? They need to stop trying to make me angry at them and let me be angry at ads.
All these ads. Stupid ads that haven’t been on in years. I can’t always even remember what they were selling. All I remember is my rage. Yet despite all my rage I am still incapable of taking action to improve the situation. The world is a blood-sucking organism. This album’s so disgusting, it encourages use of the phrase “since sliced bread” which is only relevant as far as the irrelevant picture of bread, totally meaningless and only exists at all because dumb people have been saying it for no reason for years without realizing it’s ludicrous, just as they’ve been tolerating dumb ads and music abuse.
This reminds me, I’m sick of people trying to trick me into thinking ads are music videos by putting those stupid 1980s MTV squares of white letters in the lower left corners. I’m not fooled! If you really want me to pay attention, try black letters in the upper right corner. That’d shake things up, by Shakur. They’d never try lower right, because that’s where the never ending network logo goes and so the moment I didn’t see it obstructing what I was trying to read I’d know it wasn’t a real music video. Even though I already know it isn’t. Because the song was only thirty seconds and I was watching Jake and the Fat Man.
Ordinarily I would discourage further copying and usage of the most prolific image of something which can be found on the internet, but this is the best I’ve found to exhibit that the show is called Jake and the Fat Man, that there is a fat man, and that he is very fat man. If it depicted just Jake I wouldn’t bother. This image makes clear that while the fat man gets secondary billing, he is as more important than Jake as he and his name are fat, so much so that he needn’t even be given a proper name. He’s just a fat fat man.
Ehhh!
I’m also maddened by the popular parts of pomp+circumstance. (Me complain about before!) and Blue Danube. Put stupid Here Comes Johnny Woff forra Waf and Eye! That’s.what.I.like.about.you! songs that might as well be thirty seconds in as many dumb ads as you want (that is, assuming you acted under any inhibition before), but leave the stuff someone actually worked on alone. If you can’t do any sword tricks, don’t bother me with your saber dance!
Or your spring snake symphony! It could easily have incorporated more Danubery, but instead it used the first part twice, implying that the second part does not even exist! Someone gets a punch in the nose.
Yes, so, it was some doofus who released a “spring snake” at each part of the music where you might think he would have done that. It looked really easy. I coulda do’d it. Toward the end interesting mechanical apparratusses made things more complicated, but the guy activating them was totally out of synchronisation with the [wrong] music by then so I could still probably have done it.
I can’t find a single mention online of “Spring Snake Symphony” that doesn’t mention the D. Letterman Late Show, so I probably saw the debut performance, and maybe it can be improved, but I doubt it will be. If I had a TV show I wouldn’t let someone do something that stupid if I hadn’t seen it first and confirmed that it was the kind of stupid I wanted to be associated with. I imagine Eric Buss is quite proud of himself.