Archive for March, 2009

Snake Bites

I’d like to welcome Cuisinart’s latest sadist, 655321. Can you spot the reference?
Winston had an inclination towards Snake Bites.

No, not the act of being bitten (stung, sucked, plowed, ie. orally demolished) by the ruthless beast kicked out of that sanctimonious garden they called Eden, but similar in side effects by traditional observational means. This was actually gum for adults aimed at children; morally innapropriate like cigarettes for senior citizens marketed towards toddlers (point of reference: Kool is not cool), or tight hot pants aimed at overweight transgenders (see: women should not have a bulge in their tights in your corporate handbook). This product was a highly caffeinated, performance enhancing, sugary taffy-like gum called “Snake Bite,” and it tasted sort of like cherry pie with a currently undiscovered periodic element injected into its core. “A temptation for your mouth,” the corporate entity would advertise. Yes it did induce the fear, shock, and the eventual high that any normal masochist with a flair for too much black and an obsession with sleeping in the ground may experience from an actual snake bite, but this was also a veritable fruit explosion; thus appropriately named “Snake Bite.”

These were individually wrapped candies with colors and designs that shouted louder than your uncles golf pants, “INGEST ME.” The commercials went something like “Tired of living below? Get to the top with a bite of that Snake!” (what does that even mean) or “Can’t stay up to cram for that test, Bite the Snake and stay awake” or even “Heart hurts? Make it EXPLODE with a Snake Bite.” This was creative advertising with irony.

“That’s the only way to get the kids into it these days; it’s code these kids understand code, you tell them sex= babies= responsibility, they think I need to buy a cherry slushy and a new cell phone.” Winston’s father was aware of all this, and he would make these claims in every board meeting he spearheaded. He knew how to sell to children, he was a child, he had a child, he was even a registered sex offender for a couple years but gave it up for lent when the neighbors started to frown (can’t beat the first hand research). These campaigns were his babies, his snake eggs waiting to hatch and feed. Cherry and some strange metal were just the beginning; he had ideas for Grape injected with a low dose of speed, Orange with B-12 and Red Bull, Peach Cobbler with Echinacea and Zoloft, Blue Rasberry mixed with Viagra and flax seed (that one didn’t really make much sense; deemed pending research contigent). There was literally a Snake Bite for every occasion and every mental or physical ailment.

Poppa Winston was aware of his impact on the youth of the 2000’s lets call them “Generation Indecisive.” He knew snake bites were an easy way of, A.) getting the consumer addicted and, B.) advertising a tasty snack that could prove “beneficial” to the illiterate and ignorant buyer; i.e. your average consumer. Poppa would take these juicy mineral injected delicacies in the most FDA unapproved of test states home and give them to the local children for observation. “Why charge the company for a test group of apes when we live amongst the most evolved animals one can find,” is what he used to claim. Snake Bites during the test stages were reserved for Johnny Phillips, and Suzie Crenshall, and even Gindi Mahresh when his father would let him leave the yard; but never Winston Caldwell. Winston was Poppa’s son and regardless of how much he would beg, Pops would not let him try the bites in their experimental stage. Everyone else’s son “not my son,” he would unfairly explain.snakebites

Winston was nearly 7 that fall and he had a habit of bringing the FDA untested Snake Bites to school. They helped with popularity (he was “black market cool” perhaps?), that and he had an addiction comparable to a 65 yr. old chain smoker as a result of his fathers lack of research and discretion in passing these candies out in their test stages. He was partial to Blue Rasberry, though the 24 hour erections and extra hormones were honestly a wasted if not hurtful side effect on poor Winston’s rapidly deteriorating health and body. An orange bite before school, a grape one before lunch, a cherry bite for the walk home, originally it was just something to keep his mouth busy. His teachers said he was a ‘talker,” not in a good way, if you’re chewing you aren’t talking he figured. Poppa had no idea how deep his son was into this kiddie smack, Pops was bringing products home in such excess to study the neighborhood children that he would never notice 3 bites a day missing.

No, it’s appropriate to say Winston’s father was fully clueless, after all only Cherry Snake Bites were street legal, so to speak, and Winston’s father had only tried the product when it first reached the market. “You’d have to be crazy to snuff your own glue right, blow your own coke, inject your own black tar, chomp on your own Big Mac,” he’d reason. So Poppa was far from an addict and Winston, well, he didn’t know what his father did for a living as far as Poppa was concerned.

The worry or threat really didn’t build up at all, it hit like a crash test dummy into a GM test wall. Pops had a forced realization on a cold April morning that following spring when Winston’s body was wheeled into the coroner’s office, pockets full of Blue Raspberry Snake Bites, odd mounds forming breasts on his chest and an inappropriate bulge in his pants. Winston resembled a homeless circus clown more than he did a 7 and a half yr. old boy from the suburbs of Maryland. Children all around town began to come down with these strange side effects. First it was little Dan Dungall with a hyper activity disorder never before exhibited in his 12 years, then Jenny Gurtin with a propensity for licking all things made of plastic and a tick that put the word “Tourettes” to shame, and finally Robert Teelan whos heart actually exploded on the jungle gym one sunny Friday afternoon in May. Who was to blame, what was this horrible epidemic effecting the town? The only clue; each child held a different flavor of their choice of pure, hard, untested “Snake Bite” gum when the coroners wheeled their bodies in front of their teary-eyed parents.

Snake Bites equalled “kiddie cancer,” first a surpise disease or sickness, then months later a small plot next to Great Granny at St. Joseph’s. That’s when Pop’s realized children are a most unfortunate of control groups, that’s when he realized how to lie to the press, how to bury your son and deal with the guilt, how to say goodbye to your family because you are the corporate Anti-christ, and that’s when Pops began to snuff his own glue, that’s when Pops began to fill his pockets with “Snake Bite” gum, “A temptation for your mouth!!!.”

-655321

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655321 on March 31st 2009 in Comedy, Non-Fiction, Satire

Lion Dream

from Adam

There were three of us in a tree.  Much of our time out in the savannah was spent in this tree.  Most often, the savannah was plain and empty or dotted with harmless herbivores.  Occasionally there was the pride of lions, however.  One male and three or four females.  We would keep our distance and remain in the tree when they prowled.  One time as I recall, I was down foraging the savannah when I noticed the pride, absent its patriarch, back and to the left.  Warily I watched them as I moved to the tree.  I knew that if I took my eyes off them for more than a moment, they would begin to stalk and I would be pounced.  My fear impelled me a run and I noticed one of the females beginning to lurk low and towards me.savannah1

I made the tree.  My companions and I surveyed the approaching pride with great apprehension.  Of course they could scale trees, better than we in fact.  Our only hope was that we were foreigners here on the savannah and our strange appearance would deter them from feeling we were easy prey, as with the sharks.

Their final approach and arrival.  Three or four female lionesses sit eyeing us in our dendriform refuge.  All parties are aware of the futility of our position; they could reach us with a feline’s leap, no need for scaling.  We produce a cacophony of primal hoots and hollers in the hopes of frightening them.  To no avail.  In derision, they echo and amplify our calls.  Sensing an impending massacre, I try to reason with them.  “If you kill us, they will kill you.  They will kill all of you.”

The matriarch alone shows any concern for my remark. They all understand what I have said.  There is always a demand for retribution among those that feel it is in them to mete out justice.  Disregard the messiness of morality.  Punish the perpetrators and their kin.  Atrocities will not be suffered in grief alone, but in vengeance. The matriarch tempers her excitement for an anthropic feast.  The others remain eager.

“They will kill all of you.  What good would that do you?  Needless bloodshed.”

They are not convinced.  The desire to take flight, but nowhere to fly.

“We are your advocates.”  A half-formed notion.  Half bargain, half principle.  “There are so many of them that would let you pass, but we are your advocates.”

They know it is true.  Here a victory, but inevitably total defeat.  Before in the long before a victory, an act of survival without reprisal, but now things had changed. 62093393ha0wpbph The great assent had reversed much of the law.  Now was a time for diplomacy, even for those who once reigned absolutist kings and queens.  They relent in their siege.  We are their advocates, frightened in a tree.

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Adam Marc on March 30th 2009 in Essay, Visual

stage fright

Here is a poem from Shane, our newest and making a run at bluest Contributor, though he has some stiff competition….

you are the leading role in a play i’ve seen before
the shadows are bigger than the actors, and a violin sings the score
it looks like a comedy but ends as a tragedy
because your role requires you to be what you have to be
your words are written, and your lines all memorized
and you laugh at the clown with tears painted under his eyes
the tickets were expensive and too much to afford
and the real price that i paid is at the end of your sword
the crowd is snoring and the audience is bored
some are getting up and running toward the door
but still i sit here watching on the edge of my seat
biting my nails in anticipation for what I’ve already seen
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–something seathroughe

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Something Seathroughe on March 28th 2009 in Poetry, Tragedy

Photo Phantom

New From Adam Marc. I’ve added no photos to this one, for obvious reasons…

I have no intentions of following the linear model. No intentions of hanging a line with dazzling ornaments. There is no need. It is ever so cumbersome.

How long can an echo resonate before it is too faint to be heard? How far away can a home linger on the horizon before it is lost in an abyss of curvilinear uniformity? How long can we walk forward before we forget what’s behind us and what’s ahead?

I saw a photograph that chilled me. A family stood smiling some time decades ago. A homely family if ever I saw one. Four or five women in the front row, two men in the back. All smiling. Two of the women and the two men stood erect, proud in their middle-aged youth. The other women, all but one, bore the signs of a life of toil. Homely older women, but seasoned. Their ankles creased, their feet bound by their tight old black shoes. Their frocks loose fitting, flimsy linens doubtless many years old, also with the look of hard labor that begs respect from those who understand.

All smiling. A tradition, but something genuine there. They looked very much the family, very much the rural family, salt of the earth. Their smiles, the hardness of the old women and the pride in the youngers’ posture, all spoke of triumph. Triumph over hardships. An unending battle, still ongoing, but overcome. Perhaps their solidarity the source of the victory, perhaps their God. Yet the triumph plain as their appearance, simple yet durable.

Chilling, their deaths. Some decades ago. Already at least middle-aged. A reasonable presumption. Where are the remains? Not worth a photograph, too chilling, too mortifying. Gone their smiles. Gone their solidarity. What of their God? What of the triumph? The hardships overcome, the costs born, to what end and who will hear their legacy and who will carry their torch? All disintegrated. Scattered beyond recognition. Something lost, antiquated, frozen.

How unthinkable it would be to consider who might ponder your lifeless simulacrums after you have ceased to smile, after those that you huddled with to keep warm have cooled over. In what sands lay buried the remnants of Ozymandias?

Their lives, before the photograph, after the photograph, preoccupied with dreams, plans, struggles, life. All old and outdated, all expired. The black and white tells it all, so too the horror of the smiles.

The other, neither erect nor worn. A disabled. A woman disabled. Her face and limbs contorted by a haunted mind. Also smiling. Her right arm interlocked with one of the other women’s. An equal in love. Cherished, protected, a source of solidarity and triumph through hardship. A loved and a lover. Happy, if any of them were. She too taken by some decades. A testament to resilience, altruism, compassion, but undeniably of futility and fragility also.

Chilling, the future. Their future, our past. Our future, another their’s past. Look at a photograph behind glass and see a strange family passed. Look at the backlight, the reflection and see the familiar darkened face and glinting gaze of the past approaching. Youth, pride, triumph, struggles, toil, dreams, all to be washed away and disintegrated. Forget judgment and condemnation, who will keep you together? How long can you huddle for warmth before the embers die out? Good or bad, virtuous or vicious to be but a mortal?

The photograph family, all the appearances of happiness, yet they are gone. Is happiness a thing to be enjoyed only in the smallest temporal quantities, a transience more protean and ephemeral than a lifetime, itself soon to end? Photographs raise questions even as smiles offer answers. Carpe diem. Live for the moment. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. All sage, all hollow. Nothing, no toil, no huddling, no God to shield me, you, us from the curse of loneliness, the scourge of quietus. Damn the questions. Damn the answers if they are as I suspect. Is this the comeuppance of sentience, the bittersweet fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Cogito ergo sum. Mort.

A photograph chilled me to despair and cast me into desolation. It was of a family, a homely family. But all photographs bear this ghost, this specter of the present turned future, the future rotted to past. How prescient that red fellow, whichever one he was, may he rest in peace, that warned of the soul stealing of the photograph. The photographs of the present are never developed; they are always of the past, when more life was harbored. The quaint treasures that bedeck books, walls, and mantles, they are but grim reminders. Who can participate in the thrill of once was; who is relegated to the vicarious role of spectator of never again? What soul is there in the past? What soul was left in the family, may they rest in peace? Hollow.

A dreadful, calculating theory of a grand coping mechanism. Terror management theory. Cogito ergo sum. Mort. We know we die, yet we live and even rejoice. A peculiar thing, this perseverance. No matter our struggles, dreams, plans, pride, it ends in disintegration. How do we press on, fight, fight the dying of the light? We are no immovable object to the unstoppable force. Our mind’s weave a silken veil, a rose tinted concave glass of grand delusion through which hope may be grasped till death do we part. And what function God? Such is the theory. And if it malfunctions? A lame cow is put out to pasture. Plagued by the realization of the truth, we are crippled within society, useless if the plague is malignant. Van Gogh’s last painting was as ominous and more than the photograph. A road over a small hump through a field of wind swept wheat. Gray, tumultuous clouds gathered, crows circling. All in signature chaotic, foreboding swirls. To where, no answers, only questions. Crippled by the plague.

Manage the terror is a neat notion. Hem in a black tempest that perpetuates itself endlessly, a black hole. Lean over the event horizon and even time loses all meaning. Manage is neat like trimming hedges or emptying the recycling bin. Menial management that can’t triumph in perpetuity.

Yet what have we but to hedge our bets that happiness that is transient is well worth the stake we all must put in as big blind. The past is tragic, but the present refuses to be. So long as infinity persists, the present will be one step ahead, a flash of color in an endless spectrum of dead undulating energies, a sea of infras and ultras, greater thans and less thans.

I was chilled today as I stood alone in a stranger’s house before a photograph of people I will never know. I can only guess at their story and no one will record mine. Damn the questions and damn the answers if they are as I suspect, I will huddle close to you to keep warm while flames yet flare.

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Adam Marc on March 27th 2009 in Essay, Fiction

The Uphill Descent

He dreamed of writing
Famous films for the screen
For wealth and fame, and all in between

He took courses and classes
To improve his skill
He had a little talent, and more than enough will

But with no connections
Or friends well equipped
With power or influence, to sell his script

Networking takes time
And he hated to be
A small drop of water, in a vast open sea

He needed to meet a star
Of A-list quality
So he joined the Church, of Scientology

He’d meet Tom Cruise
And show him his play,
And Tom would fast-track production that day!

Now, a fraudulent sycophant
And in his mind he did posit
That he’d move up the ladder with every deposit

And so he gave to the church
The endowment his parents left him
And with no questions asked, the church made their collections

He acted his way
Up the OT rank and the file
Knowing L Ron would be proud of this duplicitous style

From OT I
To level VII in a year
He was so close now, well past “The Clear”

After all this dedication
He one day met Mr. Cruise
And shared his script, which he knew Tom would approve

But to shock and dismay,
And in true Hollywood reversal
Tom hated the story, and refused to call Universal

The dark moment had come
For this opportunistic endeavor
Because the Church wouldn’t let him leave; “You’re with us forever!”

He’d read about people
Who tried to break out on their own
They were beaten and harassed at work and at home

So he found other members
Planning an egress, just like he
And this was the reincarnation, of the “Galactic Confederacy”

The battle was fierce
Thetan meters violently destroyed
And soldiers of Xenu, soon were deployed

The bloggers and hackers
In V for Vendetta Masks
Joined him in this foreboding task

And together they fought
Against a Church, “So they say”
Though our hero just wanted someone to make his screenplay

Without truly knowing
If his story was worth making
He really wanted fame, and fortune for taking

Like Mr. Hubbard before
And like many to come
There’s millions to be made by exploiting the “dumb”

And regret he sure did
Infiltrating this bad sci-fi dream
With intergalactic wars, as the source of why we’re mean

Oh how silly we are,
Oh the lengths we will go
To seek ultimate truth, though we’ll surely never know

For art or religion
Or to be self-actualized
Don’t follow ambition, with two blinded eyes

And L Ron’s no different
From a rabbi or priest
Taking money from peasants, to enjoy they’re own feast

Our hero barely survived
After nearly kicking the pale
Don’t join a Church, just to make a movie sale

And he returned to LA
And started anew
And just as he thought, networking blew

But his will was as strong
And his desire as extreme
To see one of his movies, up on the silver screen.

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Stockton Borealis on March 26th 2009 in Fiction, Poetry, Tragedy

Bath Water

Dylan’s Newest. Don’t Worry, you won’t feel so illiterate at the sight of his veritable display of vocabulary this time…

- we are transferring power at this time…. Challenger is now running off its three onboard fuel cells…

The bath water splashed. Annoyed, bitter. Approximating her broken state. The letter dampened in her hand, the edges loosening from the water collected on her pruned fingertips. She read it over once again to make sure nothing was left out.

“Sweetie, is that the radio in there I hear?” Her mother pounded the door from the hallway.

“Of course,” she moaned.

“Oh, well… how much longer do you plan to contemplate suicide?”

For as long as is suitable, mother.

“Surely an hour and a half in the hot bath is enough.”

“It would be highly inappropriate to rush this decision ,” she spluttered. “And besides, the water is no longer hot.”

“So why do you insist on sitting in that tub with the door locked?”

She hit the water with frustration as the radio commented “…coming up on a go for all sequence start…”

Even the most superior of minds in history have required seclusion! If there is a morsel of compassion in your withered body you will grant me this lavatory’s occupancy for this one night!”

“But we only have the one in the house and I have been in need of a constitution since you first locked yourself in there.”

“The level of your insensitivity staggers the mind,” she coughed. “When you were bawling over the cancellation of your favorite magazine did I not pat your back and say ‘There there?’ It seems only reasonable to ask the same from you in this, my time of pain. What is wrong with the Reenebeds water closet?”

“Baby, it is nearing midnight. I will not knock on their door at this hour for such a request.”

“Well, surely I can not be blamed for your timidity.”

“It would be uncouth, my dear!”

“And this abominable act you’re putting on isn’t? How ironic!” she sighed violently.

…and we have a go for auto sequence start, Challenger’s onboard computers have primary control of all the vehicle’s critical functions…

“What are you listening to?”

“It is a rebroadcast of the Challenger launch.”

“Oh. Darling,” her mother pleaded. “please unlock this, if only for the reason that when you kill yourself I can then enter and properly mourn your passing.”

“Your mourning would just be a humiliating display of lachrymal clichés. Best to avoid it altogether. You will have to mourn in this exact manner - through the door.”

“Honey, that is absurd. And, if I may say so, I would rather you not follow through with this threat. I rarely understand your actions, and this is no exception.”

The nearby radio announced “…T minus 17 seconds and counting…” and at that moment she furiously spat water against the closed door.

“Did you just spit at me?” Her mother gasped.

“I was planning to spit at the door when the countdown began regardless of whether or not you were on the other side.”

… 8… 7…

And there in the bath, water beneath her, she reached to the lighter on the sinks counter, cued it, and leaned its flame to the letter. The parchment burned. The edges squirreled around to touch the words, which there, on the backside, read mirrored.

This is timeless, she thought.

“Do I smell smoke?” Her mother squealed.

And a few years before this, far away from this Idaho bathtub, a space shuttle exploded.

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DylanMayer on March 23rd 2009 in Fiction, Short Story, Tragedy

The Blank Page

Although I have nothing but disdain for graduate students, and although he looks like the junior counterpart of Sanford & Son, I do proudly make an exception, welcome, and present our newest Author: Adam Marc. Here is his first submission…


Art draws from us two of our greatest strengths, our capacity to feel and our ability to design. The former is a visceral experience, the latter an analytical tool. Combined, these two basic human attributes allow us to express and create beauty and ingenuity. They also allow us to reverse engineer the fruits of others’ labor; they grant us the privilege to critically engage with the art that surrounds us. Subject, form, and content are the constituent elements of art upon which to base any such appraisal. Though these elements may be most salient with visual art, they also apply to the written word. Indeed, both writer and reader stand to benefit enormously from assuming this perspective.

Because it is so often construed as the foundation of a work - debatably so - subject stands as a profitable starting point to understand writing’s essential qualities. Truth be told, subject is not so very important to the success or profundity of a piece of writing. The sublime can be universally educed from the mundane, so long as there is an adept observer willing to expend the resources in the process of extraction and refinement - a tall order to be sure. Here it is elucidating to invoke the meaning of Einstein’s famous e = mc2 equation. This simple mathematical formula conveys that each atom throughout the universe contains a staggering amount of energy, as evinced by the nuclear fission that at once provides us with a viable, albeit controversial, source of energy and a means of self-destruction, and also the nuclear fusion that can power our sun for billions of years. Similarly, everything we experience, corporeal, metaphysical, imaginary, is laden with the vast potential to transform the way we conceive meaning and purpose in our lives. This is no less true for writing as it is for nuclear physics.albert-einstein-at-beach-1945-celebrities-28954

A personal example that immediately comes to mind is D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. The novel tells the tale of three generations of a rural English family from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The details of the lives of this, the Brangwen, family are unremarkable. They are all decidedly average. And yet, the events of their lives, particularly their emotional reactions to those events, are the source of a resplendent order of narration. So well acquainted with the capricious, enchanting nature of love is Lawrence that no reader can walk away feeling as though they are alone in the intensity of their daily libidinal pleasures and pains.

We are collectively endowed with the ability to detect, record, distill, and embellish the poetry that fills our lives. This is an invaluable gift. Another example, albeit from another discipline, is the style of Paul Cézanne, the Frenchman who pioneered Post-Impressionism. Like Lawrence, forty-six years his junior, Cézanne was a master at capturing the highest qualities of the often-overlooked aspects of existence. In particular, he painted still lifes, an apple arrangement here, a landscape of his native Aix there, always devoting utmost attention to depicting the purities of visual forms. His signature tool was color. Cezanne radically transformed the artists’ palette by illustrating how light and natural color complements can yield a work that is as vivid and nuanced as a Realist painting. Heavily criticized during his own time, Cezanne has since come to be regarded as one of the few individuals to incite a paradigm shift in his craft. His contribution has little to do with subject.751px-paul_cezanne_-_pyramid_of_skulls

And yet despite how arbitrary the choice of subject may ultimately be, it is a persistent cause of much angst amongst novice and virtuosic writers alike. A blank page is an intimidating page. Being able to write about literally anything can be paralyzing for the writer who has so much to say (read: show) and no conduit through which to say it. In a recent address to a group of aspiring wordsmiths at Ithaca College, the author Tom Wolfe noted that every 20-something has one autobiography to write, but they don’t have two. Implicit in Wolfe’s remark is the notion that subjects accrue with the accumulation of experience. Experience does not have to be equated solely with a quantity or even a quality of life events. It may also refer to an enriched perspective on life. As time passes and lives follow their course, people naturally become more attuned to the highs and lows of the human condition and are thus increasingly capable of articulating them. Thus, a person might conceivably be able to write two categorically different autobiographies on the same period of their lives; the subject would be the same, but there would essentially be two different authors coloring the details.

In the end, subject is about exposure. An individual - a reflective mind - needs only remain open to either the breadth or depth the world has to offer in order to wax eloquent and prolific. The most moving accounts can come from intensely probing the presumably insignificant aspects of our daily routines, as in Robert Burns’ poem To a Louse, plumbing the vortices of our psyches à la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or circumnavigating swaths of the globe in the manner of Bill Bryson. Even subject can be the subject of writing. From one self-proclaimed aspiring wordsmith, explore your environs, both internal and external. Do not be afraid of the span of the horizon or the reach of the sky; they are your muses.fearpreview

Next installment: Form.

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Adam Marc on March 21st 2009 in Essay, OpEd

HowCast

Hello Moto,

Recently, I was turned onto a website called HowCast, not to be confused with CastAway.

Basically the site accepts, publishes, and most importantly, pays you to make “How To” Videos. At first I was apprehensive, but then I heard that this website gave Quentin Tarantino his first paycheck for a film (How To Catch and Kill an Equine).

A friend and colleague of mine was recently selected to have his “How To” video posted on their website, and he received a check for a million dollars. A million F#U#$CK@##IN@#$G Dollars!!!!

So, if you want to make a movie, and make a million dollars, check out the site. Here is Russ’s…

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Stockton Borealis on March 9th 2009 in Uncategorized, Visual

Epitaph for a Forgotten Death

Latest from Shea (see more in his Author Page)…

Trivia is dead and the I-Phone killed it.

trivia-night

Take a moment between questions during your next barroom trivia. Look at the frequency of I-Phone and Blackberry usage and notice how that frequency increases dramatically when a question is asked. Coincidence

“But Shea, I wasn’t searching the Internet for an answer, I was just having a text conversation with my friend.” Get serious. Your friend, is he the one with the psychic connection to the VJ, because it seems like he only texts following the delivery of a question!

A Theory About Why They Do It and Why that Makes Them Stupid

They do it for the prize money. This is the stupidest of all reasons. Barring the crème of the crop trivia challenges, we’re looking at around 30 dollars as the grand prize, and typically its not even currency, but bar dollars.

Lets say you’re on a team of four people. Two drinks each at four dollars apiece, comes out to 32 dollars. You have, after only two drinks (and that is if you refuse to tip) broke even. You have entered into a self perpetuating cycle: you came to win thirty dollars in order to repay the thirty dollars you spent coming to win thirty dollars. Most of the time the tab is closer to seventy dollars, so essentially you’ve spent seventy to win thirty, a net loss of about ten dollars per person.

Now, everyone is guilty of this. Anyone who comes to trivia will leave with a lighter wallet, win or lose. But some people aren’t willing to cheat to achieve this end. It would be like bringing cliff notes to an SAT exam and getting a 600 anyway.

So it can’t be the money. It’s probably because these people need to hear their team name announced next to the highest point total. That way, in case we somehow forgot that “Quiz on My Chest” is without a doubt the pinnacle of all human creativity, we can remember that the folks behind the name weren’t just incredibly original and witty, but damn savvy intellectuals to boot!

The Nature of Cheating

I do not denounce cheating. It is natural and I believe it keeps man on his toes. It is a test of human ingenuity as trivia is a test of memory retention: yin to the yang, cunning to intellect. Without it, there would be no equalizer between people who have brains and people who have wits.

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But searching the Internet for an answer is not cheating. It’s just being a dick. A lazy, lazy dick.

It’s like cheating at cheating!

Here are some acceptable methods of cheating

Bathroom Barter Con: Enter the bathroom and slink in close to the man at the adjacent urinal. He will become uncomfortable, and thus his guard will lessen. Offer to trade him an answer for an answer. He will want nothing more than to terminate the current lavatory exchange, so he will agree without argument. After you have pertained the necessary answer, return the favor with a fake but plausible answer. Zip up and return.

Surreptitious Observation: Sometimes bars have televisions. The channels are usually fixed on celebrity gossip, or news, or sports. If a question pertains to any of these subjects, take the opportunity to use these televisions to your aid.

Accidental Eavesdrop: Anyone careless enough to shout an answer deserves to have it copied. People’s faults should be exploited at all times.

Shea O’Neill Solves the Trivia Problem:

Solution One: Random EMP Generation. At several points during the night, the bartender will generate a short wave EMP burst, effectively disabling all electronic devices in the premise. Any phone not turned off before the blast will find its circuits irrevocably fried, and justice will be served with electromagnetic precision.

Solution Two: Hold Trivia Contests in the Absolute Most Dangerous Neighborhoods Imaginable. I’m talking places that average three shootings a night, where muggings are as commonplace as hobos asking for change. Let’s see how many people bring their I-Phone’s into these neighborhoods.

Solution Three: Random Decimations. On random nights, one in every ten IPhones should be taken outside and executed, gangland style

Solution Four: Accept it and Move On.

Editor’s Addendum:

Well said Shea. Cuisinart’s next item of busines: A crusade against the ’sub-mental’ social catastrophes who shout out answers that are obviously wrong, for all to hear. This is not wit. This is not even “Quarter-Wit.”

No one - save for the other sub-mental cromagnum men at your table - laughs at this. Never, ever. And when you’re “winning,” that does not make it OK, it makes it worse. You will be found. You will be confronted. You will be destroyed.

And another thing, Shea and I are not bitter about never winning the 30 dollars at our respective bar trivia nights, ok? We’re not! So shut up and leave us alone!

2 Comments »

SheaOneill on March 7th 2009 in Comedy, Essay, OpEd

The Great Animal Uprising is upon us!

Earlier today, while grazing over crumbs of uninspired internet pages, ruminating on future of tennis shoes and basket weaving, I encountered a series of troubling news articles.

Today, buried under the red-herring cover story of “Obama’s 6-Week Report Card,” hidden behind AT&T Ads, and headlines proclaiming that Rush Limbaugh’s head, is in fact, a suitable replacement for a reflector on film or television sets, I came across THIS ARTICLE (Whoops, forgot to put the link in- Here it is.)!

A miss Latreasa L. Goodman, called the police 3 times when her local McDonalds ran out of chicken McNuggets- after accepting her money - and refused to provide her with a refund! She was denied her menu item of choice, then denied a refund, then denied prompt police assistance, and finally was denied by her family and friends after the report surfaced. Who is to blame: Is it Latreasa? Is it the McDonalds? The Police? Her Family?

I know what you’re thinking, and I was thinking the same thing. It’s the CHICKENS who are to blame! I investigated further, and what I found was even more shocking than popularity of the insufferable Iron Butterfly song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Directly beneath the sordid McMnugget Mystery Tale, was THIS (Shit, I messed it up again, ok, HERE it is)!

Your eyes see true, another asteroid collision, barely averted (It’s a good thing I had my twenty-sided dice that day). This was no accident. Every day, trillions of asteroids nearly collide with Earth, and everyday hundreds strike and kill someone, somewhere on the planet (Citation needed).

We are not done yet! Obscured by large type face and flashy pictures of distracting, meaningless articles about the Sudanese President being Issued an Arrest Warrant for Darfur War-Crimes, was THIS ARTICLE! An ugly cat who looks more like an Orc from Lord of The Rings.

After hours of analysis, I’ve reached one possible conclusion. Due to the tremdous amounts of Ultra-Violet rays that reflect off of Rush Limbaugh’s head everyday during the time that he listens to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, while lampooning scientists (for trying to stop global warming)… Animals have become self-aware. They’re done being cute, they’ve stopped allowing us to make nuggets out of their McChicken, and they’ve already begun a campaign to re-direct asteroids to destroy the Earth.

But an asteroid disaster would kill them too- you say. Not quite, the only things to survive cataclysmic disasters are Cockroaches and all other forms of animals (Citation Needed). They now have access to the technology, the know-how, and the determination to use that power for evil. The chickens are the leaders, and they must be stopped!

While this may seem like post to distract from the fact that I had no ideas today, I implore you not to fall victim to that line of thinking. It’s just what the chickens want. Ignorance, and obliviousnessossity.

It was only a matter of time. We all read Animal Farm, we’ve all seen the capabilities they’ve demonstrated in the past, and we all watched on Pay-Per-View when they built an Arc and led Noah to freedom. Now, they think it’s they’re turn to drown us- The Great Animal Uprising has begun and we cannot sink. We must unite. We must fight. Will you be prepared when the platoon of Uggs, Chickens, and Endangered Species come to collect THEIR refund for HuMan McNuggets? I know I will. What’s the first step?….

EAT AS MANY CHICKEN NUGGETS AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. It’s only a matter of time before they successfully use reanimation to proliferate the size of their army.

Stay Tuned for more survival tips…

1 Comment »

Stockton Borealis on March 4th 2009 in Comedy, News, Non-Fiction, OpEd