Meta-Blogging Batman

My buddy blogged some news on the new Batman movie:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=10698801&blogID=266556057&MyToken=11e87fb9-fa30-4dcb-99e0-a2f38846afc3

A big, delicious slice of crazy pie.

I don't have a lot to do in Sydney. I am mainly killing time, spending money, and slowly dissolving my brain into insanity. It's akin to when you pour some hydrogen peroxide on an open wound, then it fizzles. My brain fizzles a lot of the time.
Sometimes to entertain myself and to not feel so bad about losing my marbles, I go to the park. I go to the park because the park is like a big crazy magnet. (I am well aware of the irony of going to the park to watch crazies, therefore perhaps admitting that I am one myself, so keep your clever comments. I've already curbed your wit with my own, more massive, Wit.) I just lay out in the sun with a bottle of water and let the grand performance begin.
The crown prince of the mentally deficient folks that I have seen so far in Sydney's Hyde Park was an older Indian man who was dressed in tight slacks and a sweaty blue business shirt. Not bad at first glance. I quickly noticed that he wasn't wearing any shoes, which is a bad sign considering one has to walk through several blocks of busy city streets in order to get to Hyde Park. He was also carrying a large, but empty, suitcase. I could tell it was empty because he swung it about him with relative ease, and he didn't strike me as a particularly muscular individual. Perhaps he was going on a vacation, he looked like he needed it. To cap off the spectacle, he was having a rather entertaining conversation with himself or an unseen entity. He would giggle with excitement every now and again, accentuating his comments with large flourishes of finger-waving from the hand not burdened by the suitcase. It's even more fortunate that he decided to take his trip during the lunch hour, because the park was filled with nervous-looking office persons hastily cramming down sandwiches and guzzling cups of hot coffee. My friend quickly acquired for himself a comfortable perimiter in which to conduct his mad symphony with the departure of several of the office workers from his swinging-suitcase event horizon. After several minutes of performance, the man departed for wherever it is people like that go after spending three hours in the park rambling to themselves. Maybe they go to internet cafes and write down all the crazy shit they saw the boring office people doing on their lunch breaks in the park.

An Even Darker Internet Quiz

Alright Drew, it's true that my last suggestion for an Internet Quiz with significance was a bit troubling. Your critique is legit as shit. So czech this one out:

http://www.livingto100.com/

This is one of the darkest corners of the Internet I've ever encountered. Especially because Darkness is not its aim. I'm not even going to begin to describe my results...

Good luck.

My ecological bootprint on the ass of a mountain man.

To gain some perspective, I took the ecological footprint quiz trying to "win." That is, I was trying to get the quiz to say something happy to me, like "congratulations, you're an eco-conscious savior of the human race." I answered the questions trying to make the smallest eco-footprint possible. In trying to beat the quiz, I managed to bring my eco-footprint to 2 acres. Even after the completion of the quiz, the wording didn't change. It was the same accusatory "If everyone lived like you, we would need ____ earths." I've come to the conclusion that the website isn't designed to make people feel good about what they're doing right, it's designed to make people feel bad about what they're doing wrong. Let me give you a profile of the make believe person who got a gold-star winning 2 acres of footprint.
My fictitious character, let's call him Herbert Moistwit, he is 24 years old, and he lives in a community of less than 1000 people. Herbert is a vegan and eats 100% locally grown food. He doesn't touch anything with packaging. He generates very little waste (he composts!) and he lives in a 500 square foot home with no electricity with seven other people, but the home manages to be green-designed all the same. He never flies, takes a bus, or drives a car. He walks everywhere.
It is obvious that Herbert lives in a third-world country. The lesson of the eco-quiz is that the only people who aren't taxing the earth are the very poor. Fair enough, but somebody like Herbert will never get around to logging into his Mac to check his eco-footprint. He won't even CARE what an eco-footprint is. The quiz is designed so that you always lose if you're person who is somewhat well-off in a developed country. This method of trying to bring "eco-consciousness" to people is flawed because our eco-footprints are NEVER going to get down to what they need to be. Never ever again. Either all the humans on the earth die, or we solve the problem in some other way. This solution is of course colonize the solar system.

Audio-Visual Synchronicity

You're walking, your iPod is warm with activity in your pocket, the plugs in your ears pumping out some grooves. Something with a beat beat beat. All of a sudden you look to your left - a man riding a bicycle is pedal pedal pedalling. Beat - look to your right - the traffic light is flash flash flashing. You subconsciously start to change the cadence of your walk. Your walk becomes a walk walk walk. This is about the time that you'd start smiling. Your bag feels lighter. Your head, you know what it's doing? It's warming up, like there's microwaves coming out of your headphones. Nod nod nod. This is a good song, you think to yourself.
That's Audio-Visual Synchronicity. If you're not a fan of magniloquence, then I'll say that it's your brain doing what it does best: finding patterns. I am of the opinion that music makes your brain function in ways unlike any other sensory input, so when your mind starts to make connections between music and the world around you, neural pathways that would never otherwise form are sparking to life for the first time. That's probably why when you experience a moment like the one I just described you always feel really, really good.

This is why I miss my iPod. I had to bury the old bugger after countless hours of service. Right at the end of working a wine harvest in New Zealand it finally kicked the bucket. Rest in peace, my old friend. You shan't be replaced (for a few months).

Give me my 6 Earths

Drew's post about Internet Quizes was like a challenge to me. Some time ago I posted a link to some quiz which randomly generated a movie title for your life story. Amusing, but stupid. Like most animals. Drew's observation made me want to find an internet quiz that was somehow significant. I found one.

http://www.myfootprint.org/

Here are my results, in relation to how much of the earth I am wasting:

YOUR TOTAL FOOTPRINT
29
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 6.6 PLANETS.

What is your favorite meal?

What better way to waste two hours than filling out a pointless survey containing mind-bending questions like "What do you prefer, vanilla or chocolate?" and you, you clever little fox, you answer something like "I love both!" or "strawberry for me!" Every time I get an email like this, it has a disclaimer along the lines of "I don't usually do these, but blah blah." and its supposed to be a dismissive comment about an underlying obsession with what other people think of you and your online self-reflections, like what happens if you say you like puppies more than kitties, maybe that girl you "accidentally" forwarded the quiz to will decide maybe you really are worth dating, because she really loves kitties too, and her favorite color is also sapphire. These quizzes are hulking behemoths that have gotten unexcusably out of control, and the reason they have gotten out of control is that crippling neccessity that all of us have (I don't spare myself from my own scathing criticisms) to gain the approval of nearly complete online strangers. I've seen pages long MySpace profiles with endless quizzes posted on them under the aptly titled "About Me" section. It saddens me to think that this is how people define themselves. Who am I? Well, it's funny you should ask, because look at my quiz! I've got one tattoo and I have kissed 10 boys. Also, my dog's name is Slippers. I fear for the day when I meet a new person in the bar and they simply slip me a stack of paper neatly outlining their great, well-rounded personality. I hate to break it to you, but you are not fucking outgoing if you fill out a personality quiz.

My favorite meal is taco bar goddamit.

four things

i can probably just totally destroy dan's friend.

every day on the way home on BART I pass a spray painted sign on the side of a house in Oakland that says "Gothic Dolphins Not Bombs"

I ran in a 5k race today that had a handicapped division but one bitch used an ELECTRIC wheelchair.

I was at a concert tonight that had deep fried twinkies with chocolate powder on them for sale.


--I'm not gonna comment on any of these things, just throwing them out there.

Big Brother; Kirbstomp

1. Who's watching? (Answer: everyone)

It's not Orwell's Big Brother you need to worry about anymore, it's all those little brothers. Here's the most pertinent excerpt:

The fear isn't an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state, although with the U.S.'s programs of phone-record surveillance, illegal wiretapping, massive data mining, a national ID card no one wants and Patriot Act abuses, one can make that case. It's that we're doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society.

2. A HUGE Smash Bros. bout.

For a while now, I've tried to engineer a bout between Aaron Mandel and my close friend, Andy. They are arguably the most confident Smash players. I've talked each of them up to the other. Each has no respect for the other's character (Andy: Falcon, Aaron: Kirby). I've played both and I don't know what will happen should they one day meet. Either the universe will tear and suck them up, or one will completely dominate the other.

If you remember that final scene in Ben-Hur, as Christ dies the sky darkens and lightening streaks across the sky. Something similar may happen at my house some time this summer. I'm determined to digitally record the entire event for the viewing pleasure of those who understood why 7 people would cram themselves in a room more suitable for 3--and why amid the din, smoke, and blaring Rush, would visit magical worlds as cute cartoons intent on defenestrating (metaphorically) one another. Not an escape, but a dream.

And dream is destiny.

CD Debuts!

Monstro Records is proud to present two stunning musical debuts:

From critically acclaimed Minnesotan and quarterback it's "Chillout Time with Hans Bengtson and His Rented Guitar"





and also newly released is "Chillout Time on the Beach With a Dude Too Lame to Even Rent a Guitar or A Capella Hits of Aaron Mandel"





Do not miss your chance to get in on the newest hit CDs before they even become cool! Get to your local record stores NOW!

Fighting Midgets

I was in New York City for the last three days on some business for the camp I am working for and for the most part it was pretty boring, a lot of meetings, reviewing of logistics, etc. etc. blah blah. However, the entirety of the trip was salvaged when I was on the airtrain back to the airport tonight and two midgets, presumably a couple boarded together. The woman was on the phone and very quickly I gathered she was hella ticked off at her man because she kept motioning for him to get away. He wouldn't budge so the woman stalked away and the rest of the ride consisted of the man trying to approach the woman while she was on the phone and her storming to the other side of the subway car. I felt like I was watching some live action cartoon with these two little people, obviously hella heated at each other, just going back and forth in the train.

If you don't feel fulfilled by what I just wrote here is a ridiculous story by web comedian Tucker Max about his desire to fuck midgets

An Imp

Sometimes I like to ponder what it would be like to lose one's mind. I would like to believe that insanity is a slowly developing ailment, so one with a scientific and logical mind could observe the path that it wades through your consciousness. I would like to think that if I was going insane that one moment, walking down the street, I would see something so absurd that I would be forced to comment to myself "I'll be damned, I'm losing my mind." Then I could take out my notebook and write in my scraggled walking-down-the-street handrwriting "LOSING MIND" in large letters, so that I don't forget it. Unfortunately, I think this is simply the most convenient avenue of escape for a mind to take. I think, since insanity is in its essence an erratic type of thing, an inconvenient type of thing, that it rarely takes the path of least resistance. It probably just starts pulling wires. I imagine that I'll be eating a bowl of cereal or soup, depending on the time of day, and some sort of hideous imp will climb out of the cupboard wearing a small, imp-sized tuxedo and make a comment like "the purple crayon is the most delicious in the box, the entire parliament agrees." and I will promptly drop my spoon and go to my drawing table and start chomping away obsessively on the purple. I won't be able to logically tell myself "A man of my social status doesn't eat crayons." I'll probably just, you know, think they taste like grapes.

Sopwith Camel

Sometimes at The Monstro we like to invent figures of speech. Our most recent I am particularly fond of.

During the first World War Manfred von Richtofen, otherwise known as the Red Baron, had a staggering career as a German fighter pilot, recording over 80 combat kills. Presumably many of these kills came at the expense of the lowly Sopwith Camel, a scout fighter for the British forces. The Sopwith Camel was notorious for crashing on takeoff, let alone registering any success against the Red Baron himself.
In light of the nature of the Sopwith Camel, several authors of this blog were taken to using the name as a figure of speech to define absolute and utter failure. Say, for example, you were to hit on someone at the bar and they were to laugh in your face and then walk away. We at The Monstro would say you just "Sopwith Camelled" or that you "crashed your Sopwith into the side of a mountain" or that you simply "Sopwithed." To Sopwith something is to be personally guilty of failure while simultaneously being the victim of plain horrible luck. Getting behind the wheel of a car while you are drunk and getting pulled over and taken to jail is not Sopwithing. Getting behind the wheel of a car drunk while getting a blowjob from a prostitute and getting pulled over by the cops is. Who's to blame? You? The prostitute? Fate? Who knows, but you just fucking Sopwithed hard.
Long live the Sopwith Camel in our hearts and minds.

*note* While browsing the Wikipedia article on the Sopwith Camel, I noticed that the engine that powered the fateful craft was called the Gnome. That's pure poetry.

Be Graceful, Young Heathens

What advice can I give, a year after graduating, to those who will soon follow in the footsteps laid by so many before them on the shining (for some, falsely) pathway of post-collegiate life? I think my advice would be bank account related. Do things that keep it on a manageable and respectable scale. If it gets too empty, do something to fill it. If it gets too full, do something to thin it out. Life does not revolve around money, but money seems to reflect life. If you have too much or too little, you're probably unhappy. Don't thin out your money at the horse track after drinking a bottle of champagne, however. I saw a man in this condition laying pant-less in the grass screaming "boobies" and being severely beaten by a small child. Avoid situations where you are pant-less in public and where you may be vulnerable enough to be kicked repeatedly by a young boy with a Superman shirt on.
Avoid people who rank Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code as the best book of all time. This means avoiding the entire country of New Zealand.
I seem to be giving a lot of advice on things to avoid, but that is honestly a large portion of the wisdom I have gained in surviving the planet for 23 years. If you can simply stay out of the way, life tends to busy itself troubling people who are stupidly standing on the metaphorical tracks, seeing who is brave enough to piss on the electrified central rail.