Dreams of the past…

We can all agree it is somewhat better to live today than the past.  But I was thinking and I suppose dreaming of how much more entertaining the presidential race would be back when real politicians ran.  If you forget about the fact that McCain would be dead, and Obama would… well he’s black.  I’m talking about the good times where a dude could challenge a dude to a duel for calling him a tallywhacker. (not because of shorter life expectancy and slavery, you negative nancy)   And they shot at each other.  Fuck yeah!  Guns and shit.  I think today because of the “law” or something like that they avoid this honorable pasttime, and we all suffer.  One of those unmentioned checks and balances built into the American government that got shut down bit by bit. Think about it, would a politician be a jerkoff if he was going to be legally gunned down?  A boy can dream.  Well, we don’t live in this happier time I’m thinking of, and I have stopped caring about this current presidential thing.  Balls.  8===D~

I’m the Angel Cat, motherfuckers

I've got wings, bitches.

Ho Yu’s Yoda Cat post reminded me of this badass motherfucker. I know that posting anything cat picture related on the internet is risky business, but one can never have too many mutant cat monsters.

It is caused by a mutation that causes vestigial limb structures cats have near their front shoulders to grow into badass fucking wings. It’s rare, but not unheard of, 20 some cats have been confirmed with this mutation, the minimum number to be granted a wikipedia entry by their human overlords. Sadly, while being in no way a hindrance to winged cats, there is no benefit, either. Except that they have fucking wings. If I grew vestigial wings, I’d be stoked.

“Hey, I’m an emissary from God. Wanna fuck?”

Yoda: The Cat With Four Ears

So I was just browsing through a few different articles from bizzarre.com to chron.com. Then I found this guy:

I want it. Let's catnap that pussy.

That’s right. A cat with four ears. He was found at an English bar being passed around by the customers being made fun of. That’s when Valerie and Ted Rock stepped in. They soon adopted the cat and named him Yoda for his pointy ears.

This pussy gets move coverage than the kind in porn. It receives calls from Good Morning America, Fox News, and even the Tyra Banks show, (Tyra, by the way, needs to drop off the face of the earth).

This genetic mutation has given Yoda supersonic hearing. He can hear the scratching of a mouse from about 4.3 miles away even with slight winds blowing. Though his new found popularity and hearing have sparked publicity, he is still just as cuddly and down to earth as any other cats. Are cats really down to earth?

^I just made that last bit up. I’m sure those ears don’t do anything more than just a strange appearance but it would be freaking awesome if it did. But I’m sure he’s still a cuddly cat.

My Current Retirement Plan & A Fun Story Where Everyone Learns a Life Lesson

Bhuty Call

Unlike some of the rabid Ron Paul supporters who swarm around the UCSB campus, I don’t want to return to the 19th century. For more than a few Americans, life after the Civil War was subsistence farming or hellish toil in a dimly lit factory. Far from the iconic image of a bronzed and glistening farmer eating fresh vegetables while gazing pensively at a beautiful sunset after a hard day’s work, having subsistence agriculture as one’s main mode of employ would actually be pretty fucking miserable. That is why it’s all the more shocking that the people of Bhutan, who for the most part earn their living that way, have been found by various studies to be some of the happiest in the world. The phrase “Gross National Happiness,” which was coined by their monarch some years ago, has in recent years become an actual way of quantifying how successful a country is. If the contents of the last several volumes of the Journal of Bhutan Studies are any indication, the Bhutanese themselves are absolutely obsessed with the shit. Some of that pride probably stems from the fact that this is one of the few indicators that would characterize their country as a success, but also because an indicator like that goes a long way in legitimizing whatever they have been doing for the past 100 years and affirming their culture and way of doing things. Despite the relative poverty of Bhutan (GDP per head is about $1300), their citizens are purportedly happier than those in most European countries. Bhutan comes in at #8 on a list of the world’s happiest nations.

So after the world’s economy collapses and everyone is banging on the gates of the Scandinavian countries begging to be let in so they can enjoy the awesome benefits of their efficient Nordic welfare states, I know where I’m headed. I’m not a naive westerner with Orientalist-notions about living it out in a bucolic Shangri-la; I know it’s going to be a hard-scrabble existence of meager rations and plowing fields. But somehow whatever is in the air or water over there will convince me that I’m completely contended. According to wikipedia, the main border crossing between Bhutan and India is guarded by only two people. I’m pretty sure I can take them.

I’m Not a Stalker, Just a Highly Engaged Anthropological Observer

One of my friends and I spent the last few hours of my time in Florida investigating what came up when we googled our screen names/general internet handles. Mine by far returned more embarrassing results, including some book reviews I’d written in high school with spectacularly nerdy recommendations and a “parody religion” I had made in middle school whose object of worship was an N64 game. I hadn’t been to the site since 1999 (when I made it) and didn’t really suspect anyone else had either, so it came as a great surprise that someone had posted on it as recently as 2006.

The mysterious poster called us all idiots, said our site wasn’t funny, and told us that we should all get lives. What the hell? Even though I would acknowledge the site is stupid, come on – I made it when I was 12. I resolved to track the bastard down and rub in his face the obvious irony that he had gone to the trouble of calling people losers on a site that had not had any visitors or updates for seven years. Using the e-mail associated with his forum account as my starting point, over the next hour or so I managed to find out the following about my new friend:

-His name, location, birth date, familial situation, and alma mater
-His likes (anime, gaming, the film Ghostbusters) and dislikes (his town, his job, some guy at his high school)
-His hobbies (drawing, writing manga)

All relatively conventional stuff, at least for someone who spends a lot of time on the internet. After digging a little deeper, though, I found that he:

-Has a sneezing fetish and frequents a forum dedicated to the celebration of said fetish
-Writes bondage-themed homosexual Dragon Ball Z fan fiction
-He lives in a new, sparsely populated area and feels very alone

Ok, now I felt a little bad. Not because he has somewhat unconventional sexual proclivities, but because he probably didn’t want any of his friends to know about it, much less a stranger bent on humiliating him. Now I had a more complete picture of the guy: he wasn’t just an unfunny, Ghostbusters-quoting wiseass who trolled message boards, but a (mostly) normal guy who felt really alienated and yearned to go back to San Francisco, his original hometown, and start a new life. Partially because of the relative anonymity of the internet and because of this guy’s idiotic behavior, I had found it pretty easy to dehumanize him. In my quest for vengeance, though, I unwittingly shed the blinders that allowed me to envision him as a fat dork in need of comeuppance. At the end of the day, after finding a veritable gold mine of humiliating information, I no longer wanted revenge. So rather than reveal his name to the world or torment him via e-mail, I think I’ll leave him anonymous. Maybe I’ll even warn him. I would hate to lose a job because my employer did a background check and found out all my dirty secrets. They’re not exactly on par with having a sneeze fetish, but I still don’t want the wider world to know I had recommended Yasser Seirawan’s Winning Chess Strategies back in 2002.

Mccain/Palin Wikipedia Vandalism Fun

Now, first of all, I want to make it clear that I do not condone vandalism on Wikipedia at all. It’s childish and stupid as a lot of people depend on this information for various legitimate uses. Since I have that out of the way, I would like to share this really fucking hilarious Mccain/Palin Wikipedia vandalism that I just uncovered. On my regularly scheduled article browsing I eventually stumbled on the article for the classic 1913 play by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion. Upon reading the article I checked the Adaptations subsection. I noticed the usual expected list of adaptations including one very interesting medium for an adaptation of a play.

• Hoi Polloi (1935), a film adaptation by The Three Stooges
• Pygmalion (1938), a film adaptation by Shaw.
• My Fair Lady (1956), the Broadway musical by Lerner and Loewe, based on the 1938 film.
• My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
• Trading Places (1983), a comedy film starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis.
• Pretty Woman (1990), a modern film take on Pygmalion starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
• The John McCain presidential campaign, 2008, starring Sarah Palin and John McCain.

Upon further scanning of the article and about five minutes of uncontrollable laughter at the inherent truth in the current political situation, I came across another gem under the References In Pop Culture section.

• In The Fresh Prince of Bel Air episode “Kiss My Butler”, Geoffrey uses Naomi Campbell’s accent to work out her precise residence in London, although he is mistaken by one block. This is a reference to the way that people’s accents were used to identify their location within London in the play.
• In The Simpsons episode “Pygmoelian“, Moe Szyslak has cosmetic surgery in order to be socially accepted. The show also made reference to Pygmalion in the episode “My Fair Laddy” where Lisa Simpson makes a bet with her brother Bart Simpson that she can turn Groundskeeper Willie into a proper gentleman by the school science fair.
• In the Boy Meets World episode “Turnaround”, Cory and Shawn enlist the help of a friend to turn Cory’s date to the dance popular. Shawn gets the idea from reading Pygmalion in English Class.
• In 2008, John McCain nominated Eliza Doolittle to be his VP candidate.

Well, you know what they say; you can put lipstick on a Pygmalion but…

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