A Fish.

Okay, I apologize for all the Video, wasn't going to post Video today, but this one I had to post:

Salvador Dali on the Fifties Gameshow "What's My Line."

Talk about Surreal.

The 'Net will Deconstruct Itself.

Catch up on your Internet Memes and related phenomenon while I'm gone. The series of tubes has begun to eat it's own tail with lolgeeks.

We'll talk about it when I get back from class ... Puh-lace Holder.

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So, things have gotten a little out of hand. First there was the "I M in ur x Killing ur y " thing.

This was similar to the "All your Base are Belong to Us" thing, except instead of "Engrish" this was "Leet Speak" and "All your Base..." didn't get re-appropriated like the "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing.

Let me back up, for those who have not been following this sort of thing, or who just have no idea what it is when they do see it.

The "All your Base..." thing really has nothing to do with it, (and anyway that's so 2001...) but if you still don't know what that's about (and many don't) Click Here, and Wikipedia will answer all your questions. The "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing just, initially, seemed to spread in the same fashion.

Bear with me, this goes someplace, but some background may be needed.

The original phrase is "I am in your base killin' your doodz." Encyclopedia Dramatica seems to have summed up the origin best:

Two players (one unnamed, the other known as 1337h4x (leetspeak for "Fucking Nerd") are in a game of Starcraft, with 1337h4x playing as the Zerg race, and the other as either the Terran or Protoss races. 1337h4x Zerg-rushed his opponent, and on finding that he was getting raped, his opponent asked:

[n00b] "dude, where are you?"

[1337h4x] "im in ur base, killing ur d00ds"

Leetspeak for "Fucking Nerd." heh. Indeed.

Any-fucking-way, around the same time as this inane bullshit started making it's way across the 'Net, the Cute Fucking Animal Picture thing started to swell into a Phenomenon. There is, of course, CuteOverload.com, with their daily deluge of cute baby animal pictures, and The Daily Kitten, with (you guessed it) new pictures of drowndably cute baby cats every damn day, and about a hundred clones.

Now, to be fair, part of the draw of these things, at least in the case of Cute Overload, is the self awareness. Meg, the woman who runs that site, knows just how saccharine sweet and ridiculous the whole thing is, and the somewhat self effacing humor with which she comments on everything makes the whole process enjoyable, rather than sickening.

This gave rise to the Captioned cute animal fad, (or maybe vice versa, but really, who can tell?) which attempts much the same thing with mixed results. I Can Has Cheezburger and LolCats are probably the most obvious examples.









Apparently most felines can speak, but they're kind of retarded. Walruses, it would seem, are obsessed with Buckets. (Yeah, I don't know either.) This is where the "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing really took off. Suddenly, all kinds of cute critters (among other things,) were in something of yours, engaging in some activity, upon something you held sacred.











So, okay, captioned pictures of parakeets standing in pasta, an odd place for Pop Culture to migrate, but, whatever. What's the big deal?

It has now started to come full circle.

A (relatively) new site is up: LolGeeks. LolGeeks is like LolCats, but they are using pictures of 'Net personalities and Alpha Geek Icons ... with the Cute Cat Captions. Apparently the Geek Elite also talk like retarded six year olds; I found this less surprising than the cats, really.








Geeks making fun of geeks making fun of themselves while making fun of themselves. It continues on like fucking Pi.

Someone said Pop will Eat Itself, I say the Net is Perpetrating its Own Deconstruction.




Everything ever via Boing Boing. (Bless Those Folks. Seriously, I get a lot of stuff and info from them. Follow the links for the various Photo Credits. I'll post them in future, but right now it's 4AM. Laterz.)

Like McAdams loves Gosling

It's weird how opportunities work themselves out, when you look at things from a certain perspective.

I'm a really lucky fucker in a lot of ways. Dues have been paid, make no mistake, but I'm a lucky fucker.

I forget that sometimes. But that's the very thing.

I'm at the top of the Food Chain, and by that I mean I've pretty much gone as far as one goes in the Food and Beverage industry while still being an employee and not an employer. I've reached the pinnacle of the "Would you like Fries with That?" game. There are people who make more than I do, but not many, and by and large it's one of the cooler places to work.

But it used to be so much cooler. So very much cooler.

It really did, that's not just a perspective thing. I'm not going to get into the laundry list, tempting as that is, but much has soured there. Yet, it is still a kick ass job. When I hear what people make at other places, man, I don't get out of bed for that kinda pay.

But it's all becoming clear now. All that souring, it's just oil on the Golden Handcuffs people. Those Golden Shackles are loosening, I can feel it, I can see it.

I used to really like going to work. Why, as good as it was, would I ever leave? Now that they have sapped the love out of my work place, and I truly used to love the place, but now that they robbed it of that, I have more motivation to find my way out, to move on. Oh, I fought, hell, I could have chosen a different career path and maybe won that fight, but I would have lost everything else. So glad I didn't do that. Now, I can still work at a kick ass place, yet I can be motivated by the sheer, ugh, clusterfuck of crappola now permeating the joint's very pores to go bigger and better, in whole new realms of work and career.

Kind of a great deal, if you think about it.

It doesn't have to totally suck, but it gets to suck just enough to motivate me elsewhere.

Hell, I got to wait on Chris Parnell tonight. He was eating dinner before going across the street to watch Elvis Costello. Sorry, that's pretty fucking cool.

If you don't know who Chris Parnell is, go check out Lazy Sunday right now. (No, bitch, I said Right Now.) If you don't know who Elvis Costello is, do a little research on a Decade know as The Eighties.

Underwear Perverts are on the loose

Terrifica is not alone, anymore. Maybe she can now find true love. (But she'll probably mace him.)

There's been a rash lately of people dressed as Super Heroes acting retarded. Well, more retarded.

First, (Well, in this latest string. Terrifica was way ahead of these "Johnny Storm come latelys.") there's the Grope-tastic Captain America. The guys at The Smoking Gun have all the details.

"Authorities said Adamcik was in possession of a large burrito and drugs."

That's probably my favorite News Story quote ever.

Next, Sergeant Superman. Since when do soldiers go to their Drill Sergeants about depression? This is a good reason not to do so.

And the latest, and well, not so perverted ... yet: Citizen Prime might be the best candidate yet for Our Girl Terrifica. I'm still sad that that Blind date with The Ultimate Warrior never panned out.

(Terrifica has been a favorite of the Gang over at Dead Pan Fury for many years now. In fact, she was the subject of one of our all-time favorite threads. Also the term "Underwear Perverts" is attributable to Warren Ellis. I don't know that Warren had the type of activity listed above in mind when he coined the term. Then again, he's been to enough Comic Book conventions; this may well be exactly what he meant. )

We're getting the Band back together.

So, today, my scene partner and I for The Blues Brothers put on our costumes and went walking around outside.

It was a very interesting day.

First of all, the casting is spot on. Everywhere we went people smiled. There were all kinds of hilarious exchanges with folks, I don't think I could even remember all of them. People literally pulled over in their cars to say, "Hi." It was more than a little surreal.

At one point we went into Virgin Records, where we pointed out to the Emo "My Chemical Death Cab" kid behind the counter that they only have eight foot of Blues Music for sale, and "What, a mile?" of this, "Rock/Pop Pop-rock stuff," which wouldn't exist without that eight foot of Blues. "How is eight foot supposed to support a mile? It's wobbley, that's what it is." The kid could not stop laughing while we talked to him. With us, at us, I give a fuck. It was hilarious.

Then we went down to Hollywood and Highland, in front of the Chinese Theater. People in various Character Costumes gather here every day of the week and try to make money off of the Tourists who snap pictures and take video and whatever. There are Street Performers, as well. These folks are not hired, they just show up. Everything from Hellraiser's Pinhead to Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, and pretty much everything in between.

We figured, what the fuck, we'd take Jake and Elwood down there and see what happened.

I was kind of expecting some slight hostility from these guys having some new guys show up, but this was not the case. "One of Us, One of Us, We Accept you, One of Us." We were strolling around, just getting our bearings a little bit, when this Homeless Guy came up to us. "Lemme show you something, lemme show you something," and the fucker whips out a harmonica and starts playing. And here's the thing; the fucker was good. I shit you not, he could play the harp. Turns out he had two, an A and a C.

So, what could we do? He played and Elwood and I fuckin' danced. Danced our asses off. Badly.

People took pictures and Video, I told 'em to give the Homeless guy, Enrice, the money. Enrice actually looks, talks and acts like Tony Montana. Anyway, we hung out with him and his friend for a while and actually bought him a bottle. Well, we needed an empty Night Train bottle for the scene anyway, and I'd have hated to waste the booze. So, what the fuck?

Crazy fuckin' day.

Elwood wants to go back, maybe get a boom box, put a little thing together. Why the fuck not, I say.

Why the fuck not?

Crime rates

It is said, apparently, in Crime Watch studies and Police Data Reports, that if a broken window is left unrepaired in a neighborhood for an extended period of time, the crime rate goes up. It would seem, if no one cares enough to fix a broken window, the general attitude of people in and around the area figure no one really cares what goes on, and slowly people just stop giving a shit, and the kind of folks who do things they don't want others to see start to do that sort of shit there. In the neighborhood with the broken window.

I missed two Blog posts this week. Well, almost. We'll say two. Sunday was a conscious decision. I took that day off, I wasn't going to count that. Thursday I flat forgot/didn't get it done. Right now it's Sunday Morning, 2:22 AM, and I just got off of work. This could, and should be considered Saturday's entry, but I didn't even get a place holder up.

We're gonna score that at two missed.

Two posts, that's a busted window. One, what the hell, shit can happen. Two in a week, I gotta take care of that shit. Same shit has happened in my house. I start saying, "Fuck it," about one little thing, next it's uninhabitable for anyone but me and the cat again.

The place holder thing, it's good for me, I think. I'm not sure how it comes off on your end, for the reader, (If anyone is even reading the damn thing. Hi Mom! Sup, Brad?) but it tends to make me feel obligated to finish up with something, which keeps me thinking during my work day (night) what I might post. So, even if it seems cheesy, you may have to put up with it. Comments are, of course, appreciated.

Part of the point of doing it at all is that it seems, for me, writing begets writing. If I write in this damn thing, I tend to write other stuff, and I really need to be writing stuff.

Just now, as I left work, I was telling a friend of mine about back when I used to work at the Flower shop, when I was "The Punk Rock Florist." Just briefly, couple a minutes, telling him some of the circumstances around me getting the job, and the irony of me working there at all. "You gotta write a book," he says. It was nice, with the thought of this Personal Monologue/One Man Show thing on my mind, to be able to say, "I'm working on it," and mean it. I don't know that my working in a Flower shop is fodder for a whole Monologue segment.

But it might be Stand Up material.

Under the wire

Anyone notice how close I cut it yesterday on the time? Seven minutes to midnight, still got a Monday blog.

The 'Net is back on at my abode; loose connection just when I had no time to track it down. All fixed now.

I need to jump in the shower and run to Acting class just now, so we're gonna call this a place holder. Tuesday blog will be posted after class and before bed, but likely after the Witching Hour. So, watch this space.
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Back from Class. I have a ton of work coming up, and thus, a ton of work to do.

This class has what they call "Booking Week" where you sign up to schedule scenes for the following month. I have four different things that were posted tonight. That's four things, with four different people that I haven't even started yet, or really even picked scenes for. Hell, some of the stuff I've never even seen.

That's a lot.

Plus the scene I'm working on already, and like two or three other things that I'm supposed to start and work in, as well.

The good news about this is, well, apparently people want to work with me. That's pretty awesome. Let's just hope I don't stretch myself too thin, start to suck, and then people stop wanting to work with me.

How about I keep on top of that and not have it happen, eh?

I'm putting up Blues Brothers on Tuesday. We want to do several more scenes from it, plus a song. That's already a go. That's from last Booking Period. Coming up is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Cinderella Man, Mystic River and, apparently, Sin City. We haven't picked specific scenes from any of them, and, in fact, in the case of Sin City, we don't even know if we're doing the Movie, or something from a Graphic Novel. (But I've learned not to say, "No," when a pretty girl wants to do a scene with you where she's likely to be scantily clad.) I haven't even seen Cinderella Man or Mystic River yet.

Also in the works are Of Mice and Men and either True Romance or The Shining, quite possibly both.

I'mo be busy.

Meanwhile, ideas for comedy sketches are floating through my mind again, now. Been jotting those down. Gotta see if the name "A Street Car named Bob," is taken already. Also, need to figure out a follow up for my Monologue. I think that's the thing that got me into this mess.

I'm pretty happy with the mess, at the moment, I have to admit.

Holding...holding...

All right, everybody be cool, this is a Bloggery!

Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll line execute every motherfucking last one of ya!

Just got out of a meeting, on my way to Class, this is a place holder; there'll be more tonight. I have some stuff I wanna post but time is short. Hopefully, I'll remember what I wanted to write here in a few hours. I'll throw on a little edit up in here.

See yeh then. (I know you just can't wait.

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I was in such a hurry, I couldn't close a parenthesis, apparently. Put the placeholder up 'cause I knew I wouldn't sit down 'til after midnight, but this is well before I retire for the night, so as far as I'm concerned this is still Thursday's Blog.

So much shit running through my brain lately, but in a good way. (Mostly)

New Stand up shit, which can probably be directly attributed to my giving more thought to the personal monologue/one man show assignment, though that's in a completely different vein, ideas for other shit, just...almost too much. Shit. Where's that Dung Beetle?

Simultaneously, I'm starting to hate going into work, seriously. I'm broke as shit, I need to work as much as possible right now, but I feel like the place is sucking the soul out of my chest. The truth is probably more that being so constantly on the go, that is the least satisfying, and the one thing I'd really like to skip.

The only way out is really to work even harder for awhile. That really sucks, actually. There's some shit really pissing me off about the job site lately, but I don't wanna go into it now. Could easily get a whole post out of it, but...nah, not right now, at least. Whatever.

I felt the need to pick up a new copy of The Tao of Pooh today. Not sure why now, but that's kind of how that is. Mary took her copy back, but that was, I dunno, a year ago or more. Guess it's just time.