i consume, therefore i am

Mar 192016
 

The intrawebz is an interesting place.

Not because everything is literally here—well except good taste—but because of the bizarre and unusual and compelling stuff that constantly gets shifted to the front, sort of belched up into our consciousness for all of us to admire for a few moments before dissipating back into the morass.

It’s also an incredibly dangerous place. No, not because of the predators and conspiracy nuts and crazees who make this happen. Or the wingnuts who come up with crap like this—

wtf

(And yes the red text is not a formatting accident … thanks for noticing … I’ll explain in a bit)

No, this is a dangerous place because it can easily suck those precious allotted hours of your life away in a painless manner. Some days, opening your browser is like settling into a warm tub, slitting your wrists and slowly bleeding out while your consciousness drifts away …

Okay, maybe too dramatic there. But I can’t count the days where I’ve thought, “Oh look, I have a half hour before I have to go to work and I have an idea that might be amusing, maybe I can write a little something,” and I jump to my computer (not quite like Batman sliding down the Batpole, but I’m okay with the bataphor) and open my browser to get to the back-end tool (*insert Butthead like chortle here* “You said, ‘back end tool’ … heh heh*) that I use for this site and … “Oh hey look, I got an email. Oh look, I got a Facebook notification. Gee, I wonder what the Jets are up too? Hey, that looks like it’s going to hurt …”

… and then that precious 30 minutes of the one life I will ever have on this planet and that I will never get back is gone. Just. like. that.

(If you’re checking your watch, you’ve already lost about 8 minutes here depending on how much you clicked. Thanks for staying if you’re still here.)

But this isn’t new ground, right? “Down the rabbit hole” they call it, in honor of Alice in Wonderland (and if you choose to read a book rather than this right now, yay!) Let me enthusiastically suggest this one:

furhappy

Last season on South Park also addressed this too, where characters were trying to solve a mystery about internet ads becoming self-aware. They would go online to look for clues to solve the crime and then see an ad for 10 celebrities who use kale as an exfoliant, and then 15 minutes later, “regain consciousness” at the mall, where they would be buying sneakers and eating chicken nuggets, duped by the intrawebz.

Oh speaking of new sneakers, did you see that Inov8 has—

Damn! And nary a chicken nugget …

Okay, the funny part here is that I’ve written the entire first draft of this post in about 15 minutes on a morning before work—which is some sort of accomplishment/personal-record-that-no-one-in-their-right-mind-would-keep-but-we-all-do-like-how-we-all-know-the-day-we-got-to-work-the-quickest-or-took-the-biggest-dump. And it happened because I did NOT open my web browser to look for any of the examples, images, etc. that you’ve been reading that are in red. I went back and added all that later, and oddly enough, that took 68 minutes. (And in the original draft of this, I just wrote “xx time” and clocked it later.)

I guess my point here, if I have one, is that we’re all drifting into the Matrix, living vicariously living and defining our lives by how much social media, celebrity gossip, YouTube clips and other distractions we can find [*insert something worthless here—yes, that’s what I originally wrote in my first draft, and I wrote this too—it sort of feels like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where they’re like, “Oh, and then later, we’ll use the time machine to get my father’s keys and put them … HERE!”*]. Okay here’s one of my favorite time-sucking distractions. (Okay, actually just wasted 12 minutes here … but got a all-time best high score of 2,562 feet!)

Oh wait, you want the creamy and sweet intrawebz fluff that we all now need to consume on a daily basis—here, try this:

6 Things To Do Rather Than Mindlessly Consume Online Content

1. Live in the real world.

2. Do something stupid with your kids.

3. Do something stupid with your parents.

4. Do something stupid with your kids and parents, although I don’t recommend “Cards Against Humanity” because it will scar you, mainly because your 14-year-old son keeps bringing up the phrase “Grandma’s Anal Beads.”

5. Dust your house because the universe hates you. Seriously, dust—and having to address it—may be the most insidious thing on the planet. How else do you explain being penalized for having done absolutely nothing at all. I mean, vacuuming, I get: you walk on the floor, you get dirt in the house, it needs to be cleaned. But that top book shelf? I have done nothing about it for the past year, haven’t even looked at it, but now I have to clean it simply because it exists. Somewhere, The Lethargians weep.

6. Run, walk, sit in the sun like a lizard or DO SOMETHING LIKE CHURN OUT A BLOG POST IN UNDER 30 MINUTES. Or as I now call it: soaking up a little of what’s left of your precious time by creating not consuming.

Because, you know, life.

the friday five: jeeper creepers

Mar 292013
 

The other day we were talking about some of the child-oriented shows we used to watch. Luckily, my offspring fell between the eras of “Barney” and “Yo Gabba Gabba,” but it didn’t mean that there weren’t …

Five Craptastic Shows That My Kids Occasionally Watched

1. “Boohbah” 

Seriously, WTF IS THIS?! Really, watch the clip and you’ll see why mere words are not enough to describe this … this.

The only other thing I’ll add to your future nightmare is this subliminal thought: “uncircumsized.”

2. “Teletubbies”

Like “Boobah,” my kids only watched this abomination a handful of times, but it was enough to scar me for life. Ironically, whenever we passed the large, grassy mound of a landfill on the River Road in Shelton, my youngest son would refer to it as “Teletubby Land.” Appropriate.

Still, I don’t know what bothered me so much about it. Possibly the incomprehensible language? I mean, accusations were always made against heavy metal gods Judas Priest for hiding subliminal Devil-worshipping messages in their music via backward masking, but has anyone done a proper audio study of the noises the Teletubbies made? I’m pretty sure what you’d hear would be along the lines of this:

“Hey boys and girls, we’re coming to kill you. Tinky Winky is going to snack on your tinky winky. La-La is thirsting for your blood. Dipsy will get ripsy on your heart. Po is just going to eat your soul,  s-l-o-w-l-y and without prejudice. And your brains? They will be feasted upon by that baby in the sun. Sleep tight!”

3. “Caillou”

I could never figure what the deal was with this bald, whiny twerp—did he have cancer? If he did, after watching a few episodes featuring this annoying, cloying dipshit, I could only actively root for his white cells to lose a long, protracted battle, sending him to a painful demise. I also think Caillou is a fromage-munching surrender monkey via Canada, which would explain—although not excuse—a lot.

The aspect of the show that really bothered me was the father—pretty sure that he kept on that terrible sweater all the time, even when he was driving his rape van around the neighborhood and collecting the innocence of Caillou’s vapid friends. “It’s okay … Caillou likes to be tickled like this.”

*shiver*

I also seem to recall that on the final episode of the series, Caillou finds his mother in a running bathtub with her wrists slit, a blood-stained note clutched in her pruned fingers … “No .. more .. tears …”

It’s funny—I tried to watch some of this clip and I so hate this show, I couldn’t stomach more than about 10 seconds. I have no idea what happens if you watch the whole thing—Caillou might get trampled to death by a pack of incontinent water buffaloes for all I know. (Now that would be entertainment!) Again, after about two or three episodes, my kids had enough, thankfully. So we didn’t watch anymore.

My spiritual inspiration Steve tells me that after his son started watching it, he couldn’t bear it anymore, so he told his son, “Sorry, but Caillou died. All gone!” If only.

4. “Thomas The Tank Engine”

TRAINS DON’T HAVE FREAKIN’ FACES!!!! OR SOULLESS, DEAD EYES!!!

5. “Franklin”

Why does Franklin wear only a red neckerchief and nothing else? Is his shell supposed to be his clothes? And why the hell is he the only one with a real name? The bear is called “Bear,” the snail is called “Snail,” the goose is “Goose,” the fox is “Fox,” and even the freaking beaver (a girl, by the way) is called “Beaver.”

Franklin also did extensive time in the “Caillou School of Perpetual Whinging,” which didn’t endear him to anyone. He also shared Caillou’s lack of hair, although at least he had the decency to put on a baseball cap on occasion.

I always hoped that we’d tune in one day to see Bear sitting in the middle of Franklin’s room, covered in blood and surrounded by three empty shells. After sucking bits of marrow out of a bone, he’d then wipe his mouth with that red neckerchief and belch.

Now that would be good TV!

 

jerk of the week: aaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!

Oct 232012
 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth a thousand nightmares, and then some.

This week’s

JERK OF THE WEEK—

Martin L. “Vlad” Evanick

Really, words fail me. Maybe tonight when I awaken in a cold sweat and screaming, clawing at my own eyeballs, something will come to me.

In the meantime, here’s the meat of the story cut-and-pasted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (because I can’t get away from my own blog post fast enough):

A Collinsville man who dresses as an evil clown as a member of a band has been accused of engaging in sexual activity with a minor and photographing it, prosecutors said this week.

Martin L. “Vlad” Evanick, 31, was indicted Oct. 17 on one federal felony charge of producing child porn and arrested Friday.

Prosecutors and the one-page indictment accuse Evanick of convincing a minor to engage in sexual activity sometime in April in Madison County and then photographing the minor’s genitals and himself engaging in a sex act with the minor.

Evanick plays drums and is the lead vocalist for the “thrash, death metal” band called The Core of Your Nightmares, according to Facebook pages for Evanick and the band.

Well, this jerk will certainly be at the core of my nightmares, and now I’m betting yours.

A special “thanks” to my “friend” Ian who posted the original link on my FB page.