I always hate when people needlessly celebrate pointless anniversaries. And people love to do that. They especially love to celebrate their own anniversaries. Before I found the internet, I always thought a celebration involved more than one person, like a great party or festival. But when every single person is self publishing their own exclusive brand of monotony, they don't have time to worry about what anyone else is doing. Like this... thing I found once during a particularly disappointing search-engine engineered search:

Pay no heed to the fact that half the spaces on your little keenspace calendar are empty, right? Nevermind that you have some of the least original stereotype characters not currently being made to vaguely resemble office furniture or fine cheeses for the next Pixar film. Ignore possibly the most unappealing badly drawn once and copy-pasted three hundred times occasionally x-flipped artwork in my whole browser cache. Forget that your jokes consist largely of the least amusing arbitrary word combinations of all time. You did it for two years, and no one ever told you to stop. That's an accomplishment, isn't it? No one ever told me to stop. I wish someone would.

You know, I used to make comics, too. Yes, back before the internet betrayed and murdered my will to do anything, I had always wanted to be a cartoonist. At first I wanted to be like the ones whose work I'd seen. Once I learned to read I realized I'd have to be better, and it won't be hard, since they're all terrible, it turns out. This'll be an easy business to break into, I thought. The ones who can draw can't write, the ones who can write can't draw, and anyone who could do both is retired. Anyone who might be accused of talent is probably too concerned with exhibiting their current political views six weeks after relevance to be considered my competition. I only wish I had thought that then. Such a coherent and valid excuse eluded me during those years. When others wanted to grow up to be realistic things like cheerleaders and professional wrestlers, I sounded like a complete dope expressing my own aspirations. And my comics were very bad. They had some good jokes, but only in the context of the stories they were contained within, which were awful. The pictures were worse. Fortunately, I eventually stopped. Right around the time I discovered Dungeons of the Unforgiven. That's a complete coincidence, but I like reminding myself of one of the few things I ever did right. But there's a point in here somewhere. Unfortunately, in early 2001 I thought the time was coming to make comics again. It hadn't arrived just yet, but it called and said it was on its way. I later found out the time had been killed in a tragic blimp accident. But I had already started by then. It actually worked quite well for the first few pages, but suddenly dialogue wasn't fitting in the boxes, and boxes were drawn out of order, and then I stopped making boxes altogether. I'll add them later, I thought. And I'll add the dialogue later, too. And all of sudden we have seventy unlabeled disproportionate scribblings which may or may not be related in some way floating around the pages of a book that's much too big for the scanner I obtained exclusively for scanning from said book. And I still couldn't write a coherent story. The pictures were better, but not much. So I gave up again. This here is just a small part which has never before been seen by anyone. Possibly even me, as it would come as a surprise to no one if it were revealed that I drew it with my eyes closed. I swear it made sense in some way at one point.

It's 5:56am now, and I've been awake since slightly later than now yesterday. Do you really think I'd put something like this on the internet if I was properly rested? Wait, I've just looked down this page. Yes, I probably would. Oh well. Maybe now someone will tell me to stop.

Is there anything less exciting than a free-style rap battle? Whatever happened to when rappers used to shoot each other? Those were some fun times. Imagine this, if you will: two needlessly angry-at-each-other disadvantaged people unenthusiastically direct almost-rhyming monotone insults at one another whilst erratically flailing about the hand that isn't holding the microphone. Ha ha ha, wheeee. Hullarious, scathing, winner-take all competition. Now imagine that it's not scripted in advance and is overseen by Carson Daly. If you can't (sometimes I wish I was you), I'll just tell you that it's a disaster. There are only so many legitimate rhymes in existence, that happen to also be hurtful, so eventually it turns into a scatting contest. You can't beat me; spiggadda spoggada bee; climb a tree la-ta tee, ya jellybean. A scatting contest spectated by 300 people who only know how to say "ohhhh!"
I'm sick of Eminem making every bespectacled, white, sullen, uber-wuss think they are -or at least have anything resembling a potential to be- what we in the biz call "hot stuff." (I truly don't understand how anyone can reserve rage for goths dressed completely in calm, inoffensive black when these sleeveless shirt, oversized pants and Waldo-hat wearing fourteen-year-old dopes are out there not getting made fun of.) And I'm sick of 8-Mile making them think they don't need to write any of it down first. Just end every line with "me" and hope no one notices a word can't rhyme with itself, right? You know what happens to people who improvise everything? Just look at Wayne Brady. Making up songs on the spot about filling out tax forms, going on blind dates and getting stuck in traffic has made the man quite near retarded. And ABC can't afford to give you all prime-time variety shows, I'm afraid.

To recap, successful rappers:

• Wave one hand around. We can only hope they never discover the Britney Spears/1800-Collect operator headset technology, as this would allow them to wave both hands around, appear to be having epileptic seizures, and make epileptics want to become rappers as well.
• Don't rhyme all that often. There was this one a few years ago that went something like "I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn't, then why would I say I am?" You see, sometimes a single word not rhyming with itself is insufficient, so our prodigal scowling legend here is showing why he's the best there is by not rhyming with themselves a whole three words.
• Dress really, really badly. They've always dressed badly, but in the eighties they did it with alarm clocks on chains and giant felt hats, which provide sufficient entertainment value to be excusable, and even desired.

You'll call it delicious, you'll call it remarkable. But please, don't dare call it jelly.

How great can their coloring job really be? Look at that, they couldn't even come up with five colors for the word color. They had to use green twice. And then, they go and show me a scene from possibly the least colorful comic strip ever. "Ha ha, everyone wears green and the backgrounds are all white. This'll be easy." I think someone just accidentally ordered an extra basket of green ink, and is now trying a bit too hard to use it all. Not unlike McDonald's with the mayonnaise. I just thought I'd mention that, because today is Cinco de Mayonnaise, after all. No, I don't think I'm the only person to ever come up with that. But at least I made it kind of relevant. But back to that sign, I can't help but think some dadadadadadarn dirty hippie (note the dialogue bauble's utterly nonsensical grammar, as you'd expect from a stoner, if you knew nothing about being one, as I do) was responsible for this. We get this image of military life during wartime in which they're waking up every morning to do what? Why, read the comics page, of course. And they only want the best, so they have the New Haven Register and no other flown in first newspaper class every day, something well worth billing taxpayers for at any cost, let alone the outrageous one this carries, I would think. And I do.

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This next part I wrote when I was annoyed. I'm not especially creative, so this, this is what's keeping me from becoming a cannibal. That is a good thing, I think. Just ignore it. It will go away.

As I've mentioned, many times, no ever tells me what's so wrong with this site. Obviously, if I knew, I would either be trying to make it better or admitting defeat right now, neither of which it would seem I am doing. I realize, it's possible that only nice people have seen this site, those who would not want to hurt my feelings by telling me the truth. That's... well, nice, but it's not helpful. Perhaps you think I get some satisfaction out of knowing that only nice people feel compelled to click my links, but that's simply not true. Knowing that the creep-supreme who found this searching for http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=eric+von+detten+in+boxers is kind and personable doesn't make me feel better about anything.

I need to know what I'm doing wrong. Don't say that I haven't put anything worth reading here in months. That would be true, but I'll know that response is a lie, since even back then no one said a word. Unless I asked them first.

Is it because this looks too much like a weblog without being one? It isn't, you know. There's no cgi or phtml or shtml or xfltmlbleh in this thing. I seriously copy and paste the script-looking dividers and type in the dates myself. I don't enter stuff into a series of fields and click "submit." Is that what it is? The fact that I neither expect you to know who my friends are or assume that you also read their weblogs? I can make up some Joshes or some Kyles or some Carters to constantly refer to, but that would be dishonest, I think. Oh, wait. It's the fact that the text fills too much of the window, isn't it. You want me to force everthing into a non-resizable 384x384 box to maximize eye-strain, don't you. I thought the moving background would be enough, quite honestly. Oh, doy, that's what it is. I don't have any utterly pretensious weird uberphotoshop probably-involving-something-furry-or-japanese-that-i-pretend-is-me non-scrolling background image, I just noticed.

It's fully possible, I suppose, that it's not misdirected kindness or repulsion at my layout, and just good old fashioned shame. I can handle that. I'm ashamed of plenty of things I've seen on the internet. So ashamed, in fact, that I won't give you any examples. But now you'll probably think it's something worse than it is. Well, it's not that bad, it's just purely shameful. As in "ha ha ha, the people who like this stuff are morons. Wait a minute, I look at this every day. I'm so ashamed."

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But wait (meant in the same ironic fashion as an advertissiment for liquid leather might), there's more! Recently, I became bored with writing web-pages that no one will look at and once again resumed "work" on my overbloated Doom edit that no one will play even if I invent time travel and go back in time to eight years ago when people besides deranged recluses played Doom. Stuff like this I've been wasting my life away with:

Wow! How blandly, typically, undownloadingly mediocre!

Gosh! A fake "true-3d" bridge over a perfect rectangular chasm! I've never seen one of those before! Ugh.

I must be stopped. Feel free to do so.

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Lactose intolerant people should really try to be more open-minded.

Compuserve is continually showing the most idiotic poll results and latest studies. How can you tell if you're overweight? First you must ask yourself: “am I fat?” if the answer is yes, the answer is yes. If an article claims “Do this one thing (it's always this one thing) and you'll live longer!,” chances are it's just another three paragraphs that say nothing more than "eat right and exercise!" Wow. Winston could have told me that, and I can guarantee you he wasn't pondering it for twenty years. But then, I'd be surprised if he's ever thought about one thing for more than twenty seconds. And Compuserve is calling this a scoop. Why can't we save ourselves the "research project" and just use common sense? I can understand maybe once, this being closely studied reported on, but not every week. What happen?
“Well, uh... that other 25-year research project was looking like it was going to end up inconclusive, so we started another one before it was finished. Wouldn't you know it, they both say the exact same thing that everyone already knew. And they both came out at the same time. Oops. Our bad.”
In fact, a good portion of the time what's written will start out with essentially “you knew this already, but...” and but nothing. They never say anything more than that. Someone is paid for this. Sometimes they say to drink stuff because it prevents cancer. Stuff like coffee and wine. I'm sure. It's funny how the same stuff that prevents cancer is enjoyed to the greatest extent by the people I wish would get cancer. Chocolate prevents cancer too, I'm told. But it turns out it's just a chemical that trace amounts of are found in chocolate, that you'd have to eat several pounds of every day to get an adequate amount of, which will make you horribly fat, and you should eat carrots instead, which your mother probably told you to eat anyway. This is a legend on par with the one that states popcorn is a healthy snack, but only the kind without any butter or salt, that no one would want as a snack.

Another one, from this week: “What we want that money can't buy.” They claim some asinine magazine who's name I neglected to read and thus do not remember said it first, so I guess that means I'm supposed to care or something. If I'm so interested in what's in that magazine, why don't I buy it? Can money not buy that, either? And if it's what we want which cannot be bought, shouldn't I already know what it is? I'm pretty sure we includes me. Once more, why would I want to read what I already know? Ehhh. They gave some examples of what it is I apparently want.

1. Family and Friends. Who needs family when you have a hired staff of friends? That's what they're after. I don't have any friends (surprise surprise), but from what I've seen they always either want you to loan them some money or drive them somewhere. Just like children except you can't use them to get tax deductions. (children, I'd be glad to say I also don't have, if not for the fact that people who don't want them only get them by being morons, and since you're not supposed to be a moron, it's nothing to be proud of)

2. Good Health. Can't money buy health? Isn't the entire field of scientific medicine built upon that concept? People with little money get paid to kill themselves testing experimental procedures, and people with lots of money get their pick of the few that actually work.

and I swear: 3. Money. And I'm not even sure that one's true. I can remember, back in the day, Phil Rossuto telling me all about The Money Store (from which I expect one would purchase money) during my afternoon Press Your Luck and High Rollers take-ins. But I wish I hadn't mentioned that. Now I want to complain about that. I have unfinished pages from December, and all I can think about are the bad (rendundant, I know) game shows I used to watch. I hate you, Compuserve!

Friday, April 25, 2003

I just realized, Bob Dole wasn't saying “down boy” to the dog. Wow, two years it took me to get that.

Finally! He's been caught! One of the Iraq's most sought after government officials was apprehended yesterday.

Yes, after years of serving in Saddam Hussein's crooked cabinet,* Henry Kissinger has at last been brought to justice! Jules Feiffer will surely rejoice!

*(apparently he got confused by the trilingual assembly instructions and made one of the legs too long)

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Pepsi Twist, which answers the question: “What if there were something yellow in Pepsi besides urine?

I'm really falling behind here, so I'll just get some stuff out of the way right now. Not that anyone cares, but that's always been the theme here. Imagined deadlines to excuse me from putting any work into anything.

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Watch me commit internet sacrilege: I wouldn't mind seeing Matrix 2. I could live without doing so, certainly, and not doing so won't personally torment me for months to come. If I miss it... so what?

You know what I'm really looking forward to, though, is another four years of uninspired parodies of some scene that will inevitably become a trademark of the new film. If you'll recall, last time it was a camera jerkily rotating around some dopes floating through the air firing really slow bullets at each other. There's simply no way you could not have seen some unfunny example of that being imitated. That's how overdone it is. But explain this: If I'm expected to remember a gimmick like that from a five or so year old movie, why shouldn't I also remember all the lerds who have thought themselves immensely original and clever telling the same joke about it? Another legend, remember Saving Private Ryan? Remember the millions... and millions of soulless whores who said the porn version would be called Saving Ryan's Privates? Apparently only I do, because that gets a huge, howling laugh from the studio audience every frupping time. HOW CREATIVE YOU JOKESMITHS ARE! I WOULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT ONE! UNLESS I WAS ALSO A COMEDIAN! BUT I'M NOT! YOU HAVE 'THE GIFT,' SIR! Sometimes, the real geniuses will even change “saving” to “shaving!” A'doiy! GREAT GOOBILY GOO, NOW A LOOP I HAVE SURELY BEEN THROWN FOR! A PLAY ON WORDS I HAD NOT THOUGHT POSSIBLE TO FURTHER ENFUNNY HAS EMERGED ANEW FRESHLY RECHARGED WITH GRADE S+ HILARITY!

Moving on.

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I hate that people tried to boycott the Dixy Chix. Not that they don't deserve it, but it should be because of their unbearable country ballads, not because one of them is ashamed to be from Texas. Aw ban, I'm ashamed to be from Texas, and I'm not from Texas. Hey, I know. People should boycott them for being from Texas. That would satisfy everyone.

Ehhh. Don't take this to mean that I hate country music because of ballads or ballads because of country music. That would be like hating Nathan Lane, but only because of Encore Encore.

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Have you ever seen that movie Barber Shop? I think I've figured out why people in “da ghetto” have such little money: It's because they're paying thirteen dollars to get one fourth of an inch of the the one inch of hair they ever have shaved off their head once a week. Seriously, not one of the people who walked in there had any reason to do so. And then this one twart gets too much shaved off in one place, and is outraged. Mother of said twart demands free haircut next time. How about this, shave it all off now, and eliminate the need for the next three next times. Crazy, crazy crazy. Ehhh, and the man who owned the place didn't have any money, either. That's because of the ghetto tax, which imposes stiff fines on any business owning slum dweller who doesn't have a crack habit to support.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Walcome, Jay. Here is the place I'll make your future over.

Why must it always be specified that the men and women of the United States armed forces are men and women? Is that so I don't think they're getting help from space aliens? Are the Roswell enthusiasts really regarded as that much of a threat? I know certainly the last time a count was taken, every country in the world ever had populations comprised largely of men and women, so it's not as if the term could be used to distinguish one side from another. Why aren't then, the “brave men and women” just called brave people? Because they're not people. They're robots. I have decided that they are robots. MEN and WOMEN being cryptic acronyms that I don't know the meaning of, only having decided that they were as such forty-five seconds ago. Ah, I know. Machines Engaging Nogoodniks. I'm not happy with it, but there it is. The WO stands for Women Operated. You can't make this stuff up. You'd be wasting everyone's time if you tried.

Monday, April 21, 2003

I'm prepared to read this entire list of pies.

...books with no pages. Gosh, we're all so proud of you, New Haven. Reading itself is accomplishment enough to advertise on a truck, but to be able to read what's not there is truly noteworthy. And I would swear that formless bird holding the book is reaching it's head over and reading the blank title. Upside-down, at that. Good jobe, by jobe!

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Sausage Ridge is-a mine!

I saw this written on a wall once. Actually, I saw it a whole bunch of times, because I see the wall a lot. ANYway...

So... Jesus doesn't love me anymore?

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Reading the next entry, you might get the impression (only because one person actually did, and that was fifty percent of the discernable feedback I've obtained in the past six months) that I seem to think killing Saddam Hussein should be the “coalition's” priority. Like he's the Riddler or something, and despite having his wealth and country seized/occupied/blown up, he can still construct an army of robots in days as long as he's alive. Well, no, I'm not saying I think that should be their priority. I'm saying that it was. So there.

Thursday, April 10, 2003

I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day in my fort.

At last! It's over! Amelica triumphs!

That cruel, brutal statue's reign of terror has finally come to an end!

Since day one, “pentagon officials” had been dropping hints (more like firing them at the floor with a cannon) that Saddam Hussein was dead. And when they realized that weren't convincing anyone, they said, essentially, “you know what, you were right. He wasn't dead. We know this because we actually killed him just yesterday.” But still no proof. Hey, I know. Maybe if we show the statue falling over, over and over again, three days after it happened, Saddam Hussein will eventually walk past it and be crushed by it as it comes down! Wow, I should get a job at CNN! And I hear that the fabled Mother of All Bombs (the mother being the newest bomb; some kind of ultra hillfolk breeding at work there, I guess) isn't even going to be used. Its existence is just supposed to have a “psychological effect” on whoever is intended to fear it. So how does anyone know it's even real, then? From those computer simulations? Right. While we're at it, we (as in them, not including me personally, but still we somehow) should broadcast selected bits from Jurassic Park 2 internationally and convince them we're sending over freight ships filled with dinosaurs, too.

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

It is sleeker, it is smaller, it is faster, and it does a different thing.

I hear that Cher's (last name withheld to protect ashamed relations) farewell tour is underway. I know that once Cher retires, I will certainly fare well. Or at least better than I've been.

Sophisticated Intellectual Dope who looks kind of like James Lipton but isn't: When they think of bimshwel, most people envision the spectacle of mindless hillbillies, grinning through toothless mouths, slopping cider, stomping through the cornfields, while a mindless banjo picker rips out variations on Yankee Doodle Dandy. In actuality, bimshwel has gone from the barn loft to the office apartment; from the hill and dale, to bloomingdale's. In short, bimshwel is what's happening. Man who resembles James Lipton

Note: the above message actually does represent the thoughts and words of a man similar in appearance to James Lipton, except he was talking about square dancing. Really.

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