Filthy Frolicking

Keeping with my tradition of punctuated equilibrium when it comes to my postings, I feel the need to offer up an additional choice morsel this evening. While working from home earlier this evening, I had Dirty Dancing playing in the background. Admittedly, I’m behind the curve to offer any commentary regarding this film since it came out when I was not yet shaving; however, I would like to record a few observations I made while watching this film:

• Grind dancing has apparently been around since the early 60’s
• Being a hussy and getting knocked up are in no way related…in fact, it seems that the bigger hussy you are, the less likely you are to become impregnated
• Dancing dirty is bad, but wearing short shorts and tight tank tops is okay
• “Nobody puts baby in the corner” – whatever the hell that means
• Guys from Ivy League schools are dicks that are exclusively focused on getting into my pants
• Chicks dig it when guys lip synch to music
• You should wait to go all the way until you find someone that you are “like in love with”
• Patrick Swayze is a really good dancer, but Patrick Stewart is better
• Erin Grey was much better in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off
• The more ethnic you are, the more slutty you are on the dance floor
• Two young women dancing together is hot, but two old women dancing together is nauseating
• Patrick Swayze really hates shirts and loves tight pants.

You sir, are a doody head.

Greetings ladies and gentlemen,

That’s right, I’m back.

Now, you may have wondered where I had been for so long – well, to show my support for the Writers Guild, I have been on strike from my blog. Admittedly, I was on strike long before the guild assembled on its picket lines, but that is simply because I wanted to show this strike my full support. I wanted to make it clear that I was so far behind this boycott that I got out in front of it by a factor of months. That’s how behind I am…behind “it,” I mean.

So why have I now broken my silence? One reason – rage. No, not rage at the studios. Not rage at unequal pay scales. Not rage at the corporate fat cats who refuse to let go of a measly few percentage points to the actual creators of the content they profit from. Not rage at the unfairness of the universe.

No. It is at the runners of this Web site that I turn my ire.

According to these geniuses, I apparently write at an elementary school level. AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL? Well, I would like to take a moment to respond: These people are doody heads. That’s right! They are poo-poo faces that are stinky and smelly and are not my friends. They are dog-breathed boogers, and nobody likes them. They just don’t recognize good writing because they have poopy-pants dork brains that can’t comprehend how awesome I am.

Analyze that, jerkfaces.


UPDATE: Apparently the inclusion of this rant and the blog entry above have elevated my status to Junior High.

Doing a nickel out in Broomfield

Today commemorates my five-year anniversary with my current company. Among the festivities for today I will be treated to a free lunch at Wahoo's Fish Tacos. As further boon, an e-mail proclaiming my longevity was sent out to the entire company, inviting good tidings and well-wishings to clog the arteries of my inbox. Among the exchanges was this gem from a colleague:

"Yay! You finally get your pension!! No need to worry about getting fired now, right?! Congrats!"

My reply:

"Indeed. My non-stop campaign of sexual harassment and racial slurs shall commence shortly."

Finding my motivation

Since a crucial component of bloggery seems to be informing others of cool things you find on das Interweb, I would like to bring to your attention this site. Here, one may create personalized motivational posters - posters akin to those that one would typically find in an office environment.

While the service encourages you to purchase prints of your genius, much enjoyment may derived from the simple act of creation rather than acquisition. Of course, if I create something of sufficient wit, I will undoubtedly purchase it and probably hang it upon my mantle or barring the lack of a mantle around my neck. But until that happens, I figured I would post my efforts for the enjoyment of all...






I have a feeling that this will not be the last of these...

A Reflection on Terror

Mayhaps you have heard of the recent hullabaloo, but in case you hadn’t, I shall summarize. Recently, one of the bloggers on the New York Times Web site engaged in a discussion on terrorism – specifically, potential terror attacks. After briefly analyzing the uselessness of the TSA, the author began to speculate on how he would act were he a terrorist, indicating that the government’s current efforts would be unable to stop him or by extension any truly motivated terrorist. The author then invited his readers to add their suggestions at terrorist attacks, stating:

"I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them. Consider that posting them could be a form of public service: I presume that a lot more folks who oppose and fight terror read this blog than actual terrorists. So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur."

I have decided to accept this challenge. Over the past few days, I have focused my thoughts upon determining the most terrifying and morale-crippling actions that terrorists could take. In the same spirit as Messieur Levitt, I shall now post them for worldwide comment:

• Fire a baby cannon at the White House (Note: a baby cannon operates the same as a normal cannon, only using babies for ammunition)
• Found a hippie commune
• Sabotage the Hersheys manufacturing facility so that it can only produce white chocolate
• Have European women streak a national sporting event (they don’t shave their parts)
• Stampede a head of cattle through downtown Detroit
• Fire a baby catapult at the White House (Note: like a baby cannon, a baby catapult operates under the same principles as a catapult only using babies for ammunition)
• Make alarmist documentary about global warming
• Assassinate David Eick and Ronald D. Moore before they can finish Battlestar Galactica
• Bring back New Coke
• Cripple the U.S. economy by burning every dollar that they earn
• Build a fully operational Death Star
• Vote for someone in the Green Party
• Elect a woman president (Oh no he didn’t)
• Build a baby trebauchet (I think you’ve caught on to the principle at this point)
• Beat a dead horse
• Make out with Natalie Portman (Note: While this may not inspire terror, this item seems to show up on every to do list I make).

Exchanging office e-mail

E-mail from office receptionist to company:

Refrigerator cleanout tomorrow (Friday) at 2 pm. If you have something that you don't want thrown away, please take it to your desk. I will be throwing everything out.

I subsequently forwarded the e-mail to a coworker (Erik) with the following note:

Could I get your help carrying a bod--er, I mean about 120 lbs of...um...frozen dinners...yeah...down to my car from the freezers tonight?

More than enough to go around

A short while ago, a colleague of mine started a new blog to discuss articles of interest to Geek culture (e.g., comics, movies, music) and asked me to contribute. After dragging my heels for quite some time, I have finally done so.

Now I know what you're thinking - "Josh, you hardly ever post here. What makes you think that you can start blogging all over the Interweb? You're biting off more than you can chew." First off, let me point out that my bite marks are on record with at least three separate police departments, and all parties involved have agreed that my capacity to cram human tissue between chompers far exceeds that of most men. And let me further assure you that I am more than lazy enough to not post on two blogs simultaneously.

In fact, I make this promise to you, my faithful readers - I refuse to let my not writing for The Mind Blender interfere with my not writing for VentingPlasma.

Crisis averted - now go read my most recent brilliance.

Feel My Sting - A Photo Essay

To put it simply, the entire experience was thoroughly unpleasant. The apple flavor of the sucker was terrible, and the scorpion itself had an overt chemical taste. Whatever substances they use to treat the insect are what you get to taste when you eat it. I only came close to gagging once, so I'm fairly proud of myself with regards to the overall experience.

The best part, however, had to be the ingredients list - Malitol syrup, scorpion, artificial flavoring and color (yellow 5, blue 1).

Contest Entry

The School of EVIL

By Joshua A. Young

Peter was in high school and he was at school and knew that something was really wrong but he didn’t know what. And then at lunch he realized that he was the only kid in school. “Where is every body?” He asked the janitor. But he didn’t know. Then he asked Mr. Jake but he told him to shut up and finish his test. He didn’t know any of the answers to the test.

When Peter was in the bathroom he heard a scream and ran out. The principal yelled at him for running he said that someone was screaming and the principal told him that no one was. The principal gave him detention for being out of class but it was the passing period.

Peter knew that it was someone really screaming and began to investigate. He looked in each of the classrooms but they were all empty except for the teachers and desks and chairs. Then he found in one of the classrooms red stuff on the ground. He thought it was blood and smelled it. It was blood! The blood was on the ground in the classroom and in the hallway. He followed it on the ground until he found where it ended. It ended in the kitchen. He didn’t know why there was blood in the kitchen, so he started to investigate the kitchen. There was blood every where. It was on the counters, and the floors, and the ceiling, and everywhere. He wondered where all of the blood came from but he didn’t know. But he was going to find out! He heard a noise and hid in a closet. The cook came in and started cookinig. He picked up some carrots and started cutting them. They were on the counter and had blood all over them. The cook licked of f the blood and cut them. “Mmmm. I like blood but it is better when it is fresh isn’t it Peter.” He said to Peter because he knew that he was in the closet the whole time!

Peter jumped out of the closet and yelled “You won’t get away with this. Killing is against the law and you are going to go to jail now for doin it.” “He he he he he.” The cook laughed in an evil laugh. “You will never live long enough to let the cops know. And I have cut the phone lines.” The cook swung at him with a knife and cut his face. Blood shot out everywhere and he could taste the blood and smell it. It was running down his throat. His face hurt where he was cut really bad.

I grabbed a hammer off of the table and a nail too. “You might have won this fight, but my dad was in the army and taught me hwo to fight.” I said. Then I dropped to the ground and crawled up to him really fast. Then I drove the nail through his foot with the hammer in one strike just like my dad had taught me when he was a green buhray. The blood shot up out of his foot all the way up to the ceiling. He screamed really loud and yelled and his face was all scrunched up like he was in a bunch of pain. He tried to grab at me but he couldn’t move his foot so he was stuck.

And that was when I realized that his blood was wrong color. It was yellow and not red like all of the other blood that was in the kitchen. I said “You’re blood is not the right color. It is yellow. What is wrong with you.” And he laughed again. He said with a look of disgust on his face “What you didn’t know is that Im not really a cook but I am an alien and I am here to eat everyone in your school. I like to eat people because they taste so yummy. Then he took a big bite out of a hand. A HUMAN HAND!!! Blood ran down his face and I puked everywhere and he licked that up and said MMMmmm I like that to.

That was when I got scared because he was an alien and I didn’t know how to kill him because he probably had crazy alien powers. I knew I had to get out of there so I ran out of the school and all the way home. I couldn’t find my parents even thought they didn’t have to work today because it was there day off. I had to think really hard. I was thinking real hard but I had a headache because the cook had cut me in the face and then I knew what I had to do. “Of course I said I will go to the secret science lab that is outside of the town that we live in.” They will stop him

The science lab was really far awy and I knew that it was going to be hard to get there and then a jeep pulled up next to me with a man in an army uniform. It was a army jeep. I said “You almost nocked me off of

(Editor's note: The fourth page of this epic tale has been lost to the sands of time. Mayhaps it was ingested by a canine or supressed by a provision of the Patriot Act. We now resume our tale already in progress.)

not really a alien. He is an android from the future. “How did you know that?” I asked the scientist guy. He said it was because they had caught the cook before and did tests on him and found out that he was a robot. I said “why would you let an evil killer robot cook go so that he could kill people. He killed every one in my school even my friends.” And the scientist guy said “We didn’t know yet.”

That was when the cook busted in the door. He stabbed all of the scientists, but I killed him when I hit himn in the weak spot in his head with a bat like the scientists told me to. I saved everyone int the world but noone ever knew.

THE END.

Word Smythery at its Finest

Since the company I work for is infested with liberals and hippies, we have a "give back" program in place that is intended to waste company assets and revenue in order to benefit the larger community. Most of this aforementioned program focuses on volunteering at a local middle school that is renowned for offering a substandard education. Luckily, I am able to dodge involvement in these efforts since I have a restraining order in place that bars me from being within 50 yards of any elementary, middle or high school in the State of Colorado - there was an incident of which my lawyer advises me not to speak.

As much as I avoid involvement, the other employees in my department embrace it. It seems like they pounce upon every opportunity they are presented that involves milling about with grubby adolescents. So, when this institute of learning held a short story competition, many of my colleagues volunteered to be judges.

While I did not participate in the actual judging, I was given the opportunity to read many of these stories. They were hypnotic. They were amazing. They were the worst writing ever performed by a human hand (or robot for that matter). Narrators shifted from third person omniscient to first person at the drop of a hat. People were simultaneously drowned while having conversations. Dogs magically appeared to be stabbed in the neck. Entire pages of story were missing. Girls told each other that they had fat asses.

I was enchanted by the very nature of these tales. They were so horrific that I could not turn my eyes away, and as I pawed through page after baffling page, I knew that I had to recreate this phenomenon. The mildly-retarded seventh-grader inside me beckoned me to write a story of equal caliber. It was a challenge I could not resist.

And lo, I organized among my colleagues a short story competition. There were only two rules:
- The story had to be roughly three pages long
- The story had to be written in the style of a poorly educated seventh grader.

My entry will now follow.

Spider-Man 3...more like Spider-Crap 3

Admittedly, it has been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen Spider-Man 3, but it has taken me a while to digest the film and determine why it was the worst movie in human history. “But, Josh,” you’ll say, “it wasn’t that bad. Sure it was the weakest of the trilogy, but it was still pretty good. The birth of Sandman scene was amazing, and Venom looked truly badass. And you know what, even when the script had some cringe-worthy dialogue, the actors pulled it off. It wasn’t ‘great,’ but it still was ‘good.’”

And my response to you would simply be, “Shut your retarded face before I beat you to death with my red stapler.”

As I was saying, I’ve been considering why the movie was so terrible, and I think that I’ve narrowed it down to a handful of critical flaws:

1. The coincidences. I mean, seriously, we’re to believe that Eddie Brock just so happens to be in the church where Peter is shedding his black costume. How ridiculous. What are the odds of that happening?

And honestly, how plausible was it that he even found the black costume in the first place. A meteor falls out of the sky, and it just so happens to land near him. They should have gone with the original comics storyline.

2. The continuity errors. I think we all remember that Eddie Brock was mentioned in the first movie, but in this one, he says that he was hired last week. Now I know you’re going to point out that they only mention an “Eddie” in the first movie and never say that its Brock, but come on. How many people in New York can be named Eddie and work in the newspaper industry?

3. There wasn’t enough plot in the epic fight scene at the end of the movie. They really should have covered some emotional ground at the same time. Maybe use it to explore what makes Venom tick or show Harry dealing with his father issues. Instead we just get a fight between two spider-themed ubermensches, a dude on a flying snowboard and a sand giant. Whoopedy-fracking-doo.

4. Why did Aunt May have to be all preachy all the time. I mean she was always going on and on about marriage this and revenge that. Old people never talk about those things; they only talk about denture cream and constipation. I’m just saying, why didn’t they make her younger, and hot? They should have got Jessica Biel to play her, and she could have been like a private detective that goes undercover as a lifeguard and helps Spidey save the day.

They should have at least made here more active and less talky.

5. Where the frack was Bruce Campbell’s chainsaw arm? We all know he has one. Why wasn’t he using it?

6. Why the hell did they pick the Sandman? and Venom for that matter? They should have picked a cooler pair of villains, like the Grizzly and the Gibbon. That would have been awesome.

7. And speaking of critical flaws, who really needs intersecting stories about two men being faced with the decision to forgive the person that they each believed had murdered their father/father figure. What kind of plotline is that? They should have based the story on this awesome fanfic that I wrote back in 7th grade. The Grizzly takes over my high school and Spider-Man shows up to stop him. And while they’re fighting each other, he gets the upper hand on Spidey, but I distract him, and Spidey beats him up. And then Spidey and I become best friends and we all eat ice cream and my step-dad stops beating me.

NBC Hates Black People!

Mayhaps an apology is in order to you all. It has been quite some time since I have dabbled in bloggery, but I assure you that I have not been resting on my supple, curv-ed laurels. I have, in fact, been fighting the good fight on behalf of you all. (And by you all, I mean roughly 13% of you…then again that number should probably be significantly lower with regards to this blog.)

I speak, of course, of the campaign that I have championed for these past few weeks. A cause that had drawn me from many of my responsibilities – blogging, bathing, even surfing for porn. Yes, I have wreaked like a French woman’s armpit for nigh a month now pursuing justice. Pursuing corporate responsibility. Pursuing the cancellation of the Black Donnelys.

The Black Donnelys. Pshaw! (If I could create an appropriate spit noise using only letters, I would insert it here.) Black my eye. If those gentlemen, those Donnely brothers, are supposed to be true representatives of my fellow Americans of African descent, then I am a Mexican-American hermaphroditic sheep-herder from the isle of Elba…I guess that would make me a Mexican-European. (And I’m not, by the way, Mexican-European or a sheep herder.)

(…I’m not a hermaphrodite either, come to think of it…)

Black. They dare call themselves “black.” In a show about four “black” men trying to overcome the odds laid against them by the racist society that dominates this nation, does NBC hire even one “black” actor to play the role? No. They hire four of the palest, thinnest, low-jumpingest crackers they can find. What an insult.

Don’t believe me? Just check out the show’s official Web site. I guess NBC thought that playing rap music in the background would make us overlook the pigmentation deficiency in Messiuers Tucker, Stahl-David, Lush and Guiry.

And, of course, the hits just keep on coming. Are these four “black” men fine, upstanding citizens? Are they businessmen or lawyers? Are they professors of physics? I know, they’re firefighters. Right? Oh wait, I remember now - they’re street thugs…How original. How very original. NBC should get a fracking award for originality.

And if that stereotype weren’t already played to the hilt, NBC is certain to make sure that these thugz fo’ life are capable of only the most subhuman of intelligence. They can barely speak English, and when they do, it comes across as a slurred, barely intelligible dialect. I’m sure that if these characters had descended from somewhere in Western Europe rather than the majestic African plains, they would not have been afflicted with this problem. And really, do they have to refer to each other as “brothas” every five minutes? Hasn’t that stereotype been played out already? Shouldn’t they being saying “nizzle” or dropping the word that must not be named. (You know, the n-bomb.)

Then again, perhaps we should get on our hands and knees and thank our “massah’s” at NBC that they were at least willing to grant them the gift of speech. Some are unwilling to do even that.

I would be lax in my duties not to mention another alarming theme that centers around the series’ main character, Tommy Donnely. When the show starts, this fine “black” lad is enrolled in college, making a better life for himself. Of course the thuggery of his “brothas” soon drags him back into the life of crime that he was trying to slough off. Unfortunately, this education seems to have only made young Tommy a more formidable threat to society at large. They should just save everybody’s time and start every episode with the phrase “An educated ‘black’ man, is a dangerous ‘black’ man.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the next theme used in those crappy “The More You Know” PSAs they’re always doing. Maybe they could get David Duke or Robert Byrd to do it for them…

But I digress. Yes, I have struggled. I have fought the good fight, and as of this week, my struggle is over. Victory is ours my friends. Rejoice. The blindfold has been pulled off our dear Lady Justice, and she is wicked pissed. We the people have once again joined our hands across this great nation to show that we shall rise above it all and have a dream of some kind that I can’t remember the nature of at this exact moment. Ultimately, we have shown Corporate Amerikkka that you cannot screw with the few, the proud, the Nubians.