Oh Ashley B, You So Crazy!

The True Story Revealed: Ashley Todd

Most of you have probably heard of the case of Ashley Todd, the former Ron Paul supporter turned College Republican/McCain campaign worker who shocked the dumb portion of the world with her story of being attacked by a large black man outside of an ATM who carved the letter B in her cheek. Here's a news article if you missed all this:

Todd handed the man $60 she had in her pocket and stepped away from him, investigators said. The man then noticed the bumper sticker on the woman's car, which was parked in front of the ATM. The man became very angry, made comments to Todd about John McCain and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, police said.

"He continued to kick and punch her repeatedly and said he would teach her a lesson for supporting John McCain," said police Chief Nate Harper.

The man then carved the "B" into Todd's right cheek.

Todd's friend offered to drive her back in the direction she came from to look at ATMs until she found the right one, police said. A police officer followed until Todd pointed out a Citizens Bank ATM at Liberty and Pearl, police said.

She declined medical treatment at the scene and said she would go to a hospital today.

There were some problems with her story, of course. The first is that, like me, she twitters her every waking moment, she obsessively documented on Twitter every step of her night. Except maybe she was setting things up a little too conveniently for what she would have no way of knowing was going to happen next. Oh, and maybe she got a few bits of info wrong too, referring to the Citizens Bank as a Bank of America, and saying things like "this is definitely a bad part of town, I'm gonna get mugged by an angry political black man I bet" about a not bad part of town.

Oh, also maybe the B was backwards and didn't break the skin. Like how it'd be if you drew one really hard with your fingernail in the mirror.

Then, despite her airtight story, Ashley failed to shock the world by announcing that she had made it all up.

Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, a police report said.

"This has wasted so much time...It's just a lot of wasted man hours," Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a briefing.

But there's a twist:

"She is stating that she was in her vehicle driving around, and she came up with this idea," [Bryant] said. "She said she has prior mental problems and doesn't know how the backward letter 'B' got on her face."

Wait. Hold it there.

She admits to making it up, but she doesn't know how she ended up with a fake black eye and a backwards B very very lightly carved on her face? I guess that makes perfect sense. Sometimes minor stuff just slips our minds.

Which is why I've decided to help jog her memory by coming up with a few possibilities as to how it all actually went down:

Scenario 1

Ashley Todd was at a Citizens Fargo Bank of America ATM, getting her money and minding her own business in a bad part of a good part of town when a large black man came up to her.

"Hi," he said. "I see you work for the McCain campaign."

"Yeah..." she said.

"Cool! I work for the McCain campaign as well," he said. "You want a temporary McCain tattoo?"

"Sure."

"Ok, I'm just going to put a J on your face for 'John'. So there's the first swoop and I'll finish it up and...oops."

"Ow!"

"Yeah, my hand slipped. Looks like I kinda added a second swoop on that J. My bad."

"No worries," said Ashley, "I'll just say that you kicked and punched me repeatedly and said you would teach me a lesson for supporting John McCain."

"Ha, good one. Alright, have a nice night now."

Scenario 2

Ashley Todd was about to head out the door to go for a late night food run when it suddenly struck her that she might forget what she was setting out to buy.

"My memory's usually so good," she said to her kitchen table, "but maybe I should make a list."

She searched and searched, but couldn't find a scrap of paper anywhere.

"Now what am I going to do?" she said to the microwave.

Then an idea struck her. It was a great idea. The perfect idea.

"The only thing I really need right now is bread. I'll just scratch a B on my face with the edge of my credit card."

And she did. She admired the fading pink B lightly etched in her cheek.

"Yeah," she said. "There's just no way I'll forget what this is for. Just no way."

Then she kissed the giant poster of McCain that covered like half her bedroom wall, and she left. Except as she was going she also said: "It would basically be impossible for me to carve a B in my face and then forget doing it. That's the best part of this idea.

"No way in hell I would forget this. Nope. Not gonna happen."

Scenario 3

"But I'm telling the truth," said Ashley. "I don't know what else you want to hear."

"It doesn't matter what we want to hear," said Police Chief Nate Harper. He leaned back, and unbuttoned his shirt halfway. Sweat glistened from the landscape of curly hair and bronzed skin that was his chest. "Honey, we're only keeping you here until we can reasonably say you cracked and admitted it was all fake."

Ashley felt herself flush with frustration, especially her cheek, which definitely had a real wound shaped like a backwards B.

"I don't believe it. I thought you people were here to help," she cried.

Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant threw down her styrofoam coffee cup in disgust and strode across the room.

"Don't waste our time, little girl!" Bryant sneered. "This has wasted so much time. ... It's just a lot of wasted man hours."

"I guess she still doesn't get it," said Harper. He took one thick meaty hand and dug into the flesh at the base of his broad neck. The skin began to warp and stretch like warm play-doh. His entire face peeled back revealing Barack Obama.

Bryant grabbed her pony tail and yanked up like she was taking off a hat. Her mask popped off instantly. It was also Barack Obama.

"Soon, little girl, your pitiful human race will belong to us," said the two in unison. They began to laugh. Cold, cruel, inhuman laughter.

Ashley looked back and forth at the two Obamas, their faces wet and slimy, like newborns. The backwards B was hard red against the soft white of her cheek. Then she grabbed her ears and pulled sideways.

"Oh, my bad. I didn't realize," the third Obama said, shaking off the last of the Ashley mask. "It can be hard to keep track of all of us. Whew, we almost tried to conspiracy each other!"

"Whoops ha ha!" said the second Obama.

"Classic," said the first Obama. "Ok, let's get these disguises back on and go bullshit the press."

The TV Run Down

The TV Run Down

I watch a lot of television, So I try everything out in a vain attempt to filter out the crap. For example, My Own Worst Enemy, because the premise seemed so outrageously stupid. A special agent shares a body with a meek family man, who suddenly starts waking up while there's still crazy shit happening. I wanted to hear how they'd explain the necessity of such an operation, but I couldn't stick around for the exposition because of a scene that happens soon after a government official tells the square side of the schizophrenic that he's a spy. He reacts by pounding out "Chopsticks" on a grand piano, bowing, then dramatically reciting "Roses are red/violets are blue/I'm a split personality/and so am I."

Fuck that. I deleted the show immediately, because nothing that followed could possibly redeem such a colossal lapse in intelligence. However, I became morbidly curious about what kind of spectacular retardation I might be missing by neglecting nbc and their lack of pilot episodes weeding out actual good content on TV. So I recorded three random "comedies," giving myself an out that I don't with the movies and music I review: When the suckage started siphoning out my soul, I'd stop watching. No samples from the test group went the distance in the initial installment of TV Threshold.

More like GAYry Unmarried.

Gary Unmarried: I should've stopped watching at the 30-second mark, when Gary triggered the overzealous laugh track by slaloming across a mopped floor in socks. At the very least, he should have fallen, preferably in a manner that caused serious injury or death. Let him come back as a wisecracking ghost, if you insist on making a stupid sitcom: At least we'd always have our awesome scene. Physical comedy without pain is like watching a fucking mime.

Gary is unmarried, as the title divulges, but he was married once, to a woman who bore him two flawed kids. Gary's son inherited his dickheadedness (he wears sunglasses indoors, hits on Gary's new girlfriend and makes horrible, just-like-pop jokes), while his daughter takes after her preachy mom (she gets a Henna tattoo of the recycling symbol). Gary forbids his ex-wife from befriending his girlfriend, but they abandon him, leaving him to bellow "the man of the house has spoken" in an empty kitchen. That's when I left him, too.

Time elapsed (when I turned it off): 13 minutes

Signature moment: The laugh track howls and wheezes after a numbingly unfunny Gary rant that ends with the phrase "permanent clownhood."

Suggested episode improvements: Gary slips on the slick floor, and the screen goes blank. Cue fantasy sequence in which each character imagines life without Gary, and realizes it would be a vast improvement. While Gary lays comatose, his ex-wife and girlfriend become lovers, and they give his kids a fresh start without his poisonous influence. When Gary wakes up and discovers everyone's gone, he thinks about his obnoxious behavior, and decides to become a better person. Inspirational music plays as he gets out of bed on his way to do good deeds. However, the hospital floor was just mopped, and Gary slips and falls, this time fatally. The words "permanent clownhood" echo in increasingly softer tones until the credits roll.

---

"They look like Spice Girls! Zing!" -- This show's writers

Kath and Kim: "You look old," Kim (Selma Blair) tells Kath (Molly Shannon). What's really old on this show are the pop-culture references: Heather Mills' 2007 appearance on Dancing with the Stars! The Olson Twins! Snoop Dogg! Take that, celebrities nobody talks about anymore! Kath watches a Salt 'n' Pepa video, which inspires her to use urban slang ("check it with the baditude") and sport a dollar-sign pendant. Comedy writers always think it's funny when white people act like black people, butchering hip-hop catch phrases while using exaggeratedly stiff enunciation, but it never has been, and it never fucking will be.

Kath is getting married to a quirky dork who owns a sandwich shop. He tells her he's anxious about the reception, because he sucks at dancing. After this confession, Kath spots him with a mystery woman, and concludes that he's cheating on her. Could this lady actually be a dance instructor, with whom he's been meeting in secret in order to surprise Kath? I didn't make it to the end of this show, but on the basis of the television programs that I have watched in their entirety during my lifetime, I'll go ahead and say that's pretty fucking likely. In the useless side plot, Kim suspects her "enstranged" husband is cheating, too. Kath and Kim attempt to forget about their man problems by going to a gay bar. "I've had enough gay," Kim whines. So have I, Kim, so have I.

Time elapsed: 20 minutes

Signature moment: Kim screams "that's what you get for having no class," then turns around to reveal that her thong is sticking out above the top of her short shorts. Somewhere, a muted trumpet plays its mandatory tune.

Episode improvements: "You look old," Kath tells Kim. "Like, seriously, Selm- Kim, it's really weird having someone so old-looking be my daughter." Kim storms out to complain to her husband, but can't find him. Kath can't locate her fiancé, either, so they reconcile to look for their missing men. The trail leads to a gay bar, where they find their guys making out. "Had enough gay?," Kim's husband asks her with a wink. "You have no class," she screams. "Oh, be nice," responds a swishy voice from the crowd. Kath starts flailing spastically, then loudly announces "it's me, Mary KATHerine Gallagher, Superstar!" There's a silent, awkward pause after a comic record-scratch sound effect, then everyone dances to "What Is Love" from A Night at the Roxbury.

---

Another tender brother-sister moment.

The New Adventures of Old Christine: Did you know that you can spell "incest" using letters found within the name "Christine"? I bet the sick fucks who wrote this episode did. Old Christine, played by Elaine Seinfeld, can't stop cuddling with her six-year-old son in his tiny bed. Perhaps because he finds her a bit creepy, the kid won't say "I love you" to her, even though she pathetically repeats it four times during the opening sequence. Her brother spends his nights talking on the phone to their mom, answering her "I love you" declarations with "I love you too" for hours. He's so conditioned to do this, he claims, that he can't hear anyone say "I love you" without involuntarily blurting out "I love you too." Old Christine tests him by saying "I love you," then she keeps saying it, getting closer all the time, until she's whispering it between passionate kisses. Well, that didn't happen, although she mounts him twice (under the guise of 'wrestling'), and she sleeps next to him in lieu of spooning her little boy. Maybe they're saving the big brother/sister sex scene for the season-closing cliffhanger, or maybe it happened at the end of this episode: I turned it off after the second time she straddled him.

Time elapsed: 25 minutes

Signature moment: Two bitchy blondes observe Old Christine's futile attempts to get her kid to say "I love you." "That is so sad, it's not even funny," one says. "Oh wait, it's a little funny," she quips, and they cackle, and the laugh track activates. No, you were right the first time.

Episode improvements: The Old Christine writers left so much foreshadowing unfulfilled. For example, the first brother/sister scene reveals Old Christine never knocks before entering rooms. Later, we see that her son has a dartboard on his door. So, Old Christine barges in to her boy's room, only to catch a sharp projectile between the eyes. As she lays dying, the son finally says "I love you," and the laugh track says "awwww." Then the brother, offscreen, immediately responds "I love you too," and the hearty guffaws resume.

Rockin' out with your 'Mart out!

Who buys new AC/DC albums these days? It must be people willing to accept slight, diminished variations on the same tired set of songs because they fear change and deny artistic evolution. Also, they like that AC/DC still plays the simplest, dumbest music imaginable, both lyrically and musically -- no challenges, no surprises. So, the band's key consumers are conservative, lazy people looking for something easy, familiar, predictable and stupid. Really, it's a miracle that AC/DC didn't start its partnership with Wal-Mart until its brand new album Black Ice.

Buying music at Wal-Mart is like ordering sushi from a grocery store: You probably had better options, and if you somehow died as a result of the transaction, no one would feel the slightest sympathy for you. Instead of finding space for AC/DC's Black Ice in its CD section, Wal-Mart created a makeshift display in menswear. It's a savvy move, because while Young Men can bypass Wal-Mart's exclusive distribution deal (400,000 people ripped Black Ice from BitTorrent a week before its release), they can't download Freedom Panther T-shirts and jeans with bedazzled skulls on the butt. I can't imagine the olive-capped douchecake pictured in this banner buying Black Ice. He'll get his AC/DC fix at strip clubs, where "You Shook Me All Night Long" plays in perpetuity.

This panoramic view illuminates AC/DC's core fanbase -- old white dudes and gamer kids with weird shit shaved in the back of their heads. The representative from the latter group is playing the Wal-Mart/MTV collaboration "AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack," a desperate attempt to get young people to acknowledge that AC/DC still exists in the present tense. They're preparing to recreate selections such as "Smash 'n' Grab" and "War Machine," which they'll soon discover are much more boring than their titles suggest. The instrumental tedium might render the guitarist and rhythm section comatose, but the singer has the hardest task. I wonder how many forks you would have to swallow in order to replicate Brian Johnson's corroded yowl

Wal-Mart sells AC/DC hats, here contrasted with Chiefs caps: Both once-proud franchises have experienced an embarrassing decline. The placement of the lightning-crotched AC/DC boxers between NASCAR and Budweiser patterns suggests racing-sponsorship possibilities, especially since Black Ice contains a brainless song called "Wheels" that seemingly exists solely for future use in car-related commercials. However, NASCAR morons like fast things, and Black Ice operates at two settings: "School speed limit" and "idling." Some of these sluggardly tracks would need juice from a generator just to qualify as power ballads.

Because it unfurls so slowly, Black Ice continually reminds fans that they're listening to rock and not, say, quiet storm R&B. Four songs contain "rock" in their titles ("Rock 'N' Roll Train," "She Likes Rock 'N' Roll," "Rock 'N' Roll Dream" and "Rocking All The Way"), while five others reference "rock" in lyrics like "rockin' rollin' soldier," "got a taste of a rocking band" and "decibel/that's the story of rock 'n' roll." AC/DC might as well be named Rock at this point, so when they sing about it all the goddamn time, the songs shift into Malkovichian overdrive. Mercifully, AC/DC doesn't perform much fuck talk on this disc, though between the group's inherent sleaziness and its members' burgeoning senility, it's hard to tell how many of these lines are attempted euphemisms:

• "She's like a spinning dynamo."
• "You know she's blowing away all the others."
• "You better razzle dazzle"
• "He's the only one who got a full sack."

AC/DC has been opposed to the online sale of individual tracks for some time, ostensibly in order to preserve the artistic integrity of the initial sequencing. ("Hard As A Rock" must segue into "Cover You in Oil," or else you've ruined the intellectual cohesion of the album Ballbreaker!) Black Ice demonstrates another way to thwart single-track downloading: Make every song so lethargic and indistinct that no one has incentive to differentiate between them. But fuck those computer nerds, anyway. Black Ice is made for the sort of Young Men who buy their music (along with their pants and their pre-faded football jerseys) in person at Wal-Mart.

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worse Of Times

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worse Of Times

Google has done a terrible thing.

Though Google's corporate motto is "Don't be evil" they've released a terrible, sinful evil unto the world this past week. As part of the celebration of the search engine's tenth anniversary Google is making available their earliest index from January 2001, and it has the potential to turn our modern Internet world upside down.

It was a simpler, more optimistic Internet back then, when a search for VRML resulted in "VRML: The next big thing!" not "VRML: What went wrong?" On Internet 2001, searching for "Facebook" results in information about actual facebooks. "MySpace" refers to web hosting companies. "YouTube" returns zero results, the way it should be.

Wow. It's amazing how far logos have come.

When I type in Blogosphere it comes back with no returns. As you can see it was a simple time, it was a better time. 9/11 was nothing more than a reminder to watch Dr. Laura's TV show and Obama comes up with very few results. McCain even comes back as being seen as a maverick and there's not a single mention of Sarah Palin. Miracles of miracles.

Internet 2001 wasn't perfect. But when I discovered that Internet 2001 only returns 6 results for "Ebaum's World" and Internet 2008 returns nearly 4 million, I wanted to bash my head in. In remembering this old Internet I've fallen into an equally old habit. I've started drinking again. Four years of sobriety down the drain. Thanks Google.

God help you if you've ever posted anything embarrassing on the Internet before 2001. Today those results are buried underneath hundreds of millions of links to other nonsense, but not on Internet 2001. They are right on top of the shitheap. Your old Geocities page doesn't exist anymore, but chances are that the Internet Archive is holding a copy for your friends to find. Your Pokemon hentai fanart gallery is about to become very popular again. I know my poor attempts of a website still linger out there waiting to be released when I'm good and famous as a reminder of those early years of Geocities and going into AOLchat rooms acting like a complete fool.

Internet 2001 is a topsy turvy world where a search for porn seems a bit surreal. Sure you don't get the contrast you would if you popped in some 70's porn and got an afro in your face, but there's a bit of innocence to 2001 porn. Back then, 1 girl and 1 cup was the standard. It's clear that we have been desensitized to the point where we can't get off unless something strange and abnormal happens. I weep for the future generations and what they need in order to get their rocks off.

And considering this is what wikipedia was back then, I just have to question how we ever wrote any book reports as a kid. And how could we go about and not make note that it was 7 years ago that Chinese Democracy came out. Oh wait.. that never happened. Then again there's a lot of things that didn't. Duke Nukem forever still gets an eerily similar result in the search. All of which have it pointing as vaporware.

With all this retrospect into the past it's hard not to linger on those yesteryears. Moments past, roads traveled and then looked back on. Situations and choices made. All that jazz that could crush a person if they aren't careful. There's many times in my life where I'm sure I would be a different person if I chose a different path. Often I went down the one less traveled, other times I went down the one everyone seemed to go on.

We shouldn't question ourselves or our choices. The passion that drove us to those choices should be something we respect and admire. It defines you as an individual. As that unique snow flake that you constantly were told you are as a child. To feel contempt or regret for ones motivations should be the thing that people should feel guilt over.



I then run into this article, which just strengthens my thoughts.

Woman celebrates 105th birthday, pure and simple

AS A child growing up in New Zealand, Clara Meadmore had a hunch she would never have sex. Today, as she celebrates her 105th birthday in a nursing home in Cornwall, that belief has been proved right as she makes headlines as the world's oldest virgin.

Daily exercise, moderate drinking and not smoking have all been championed for people living long lives, but Miss Meadmore is adamant her secret is abstaining from sex. "I imagine there is a lot of hassle involved, and I have always been busy doing other things," she said. "I've never had a boyfriend. I've never been bothered about relationships."

Having emigrated to New Zealand with her family when she was 12, Miss Meadmore abstained from sex because it was frowned on unless people were married. She has never owned a television, and says she has filled her time with reading, gardening, cooking and listening to the radio.

I'm left wondering.. Why? Why would you deny yourself life. Why would you not attempt to try everything in life. Yeah, sure you lived a long life. But ask yourself if you've lived a full life. Not to mention that this goes against the whole point of Darwinism. It's not a lack of sex that has kept her living to a ripe old age, it's her genes. Those very same genes that have not been past on to anyone that contain the building blocks for a long life span. Way to be greedy there, old lady.

In looking at my life and the mistakes I've made and the choices I've made, I'm glad. I'm excited that I learned from them and I'm beyond thrilled that I survived this long. I'm constantly learning, always expanding. Much like google, at one point the search results were few and as you can tell from google 2001, vastly different than google in 2008.

Enjoy the here and now. Learn to make the best out of those mistakes you make and learn something from them. It's all part of a life experience that teaches you to be the person you are today. Start living because you already started dying. Best enjoy every minute of every day you have offered to you.

Turning Trick or Treating

With Halloween two weeks away it's time to bust out the ideas on what to go as. Maybe it's because I'm old, but I remember the days when you could go out in a costume that had the face whoever you were trying to be on your chest as well as a cheap plastic mask of them. It was simple. It was basic. It got you candy.

What little girl doesn't want to go as Bjork?

I'm not exactly sure when Halloween changed, but it did. I remember when Halloween was for kids. You know, you went trick or treating around the area ringing as many doorbells as you could and score as much booty as you could and that was enough. You would compare what you got, pick out the apples with razor blades and mars bars with straight pins in them. You remember, that sort of risk that made the candy sweeter.


All I can say is my life is pretty plain...

Then what happened, and as best as I can guess it, it was around the time they started using Elvira to promote Coors light- asking you to go grab a six pack of coors for Halloween- that it crossed the threshold of being a holiday for children to a holiday for adults, and more importantly, it opened the flood gates to making it acceptable for women to wear virtually nothing to parties. It's that one night a year when any gal can go out in their night wear and not be judged by their fellow female as a slut/whore/whatever and also attract the attention of guys with the ease of wearing what one would normally only wear to bed.

Now, I'm not opposed to this. As a red blooded male I would be crazy to say that I mind eye candy. Though, this video should give you an idea of what seems to be the limit of what women can wear these days.


Now, I'm no prude, but Frog may be going beyond the line of good taste. I mean, we have to have some standards when it comes to costumes! Sarcasm aside, this created something over time. It made it a point for adults to just dress up in cloths like this for Halloween.


Since children have always looked up to old figure s in their life, have them be their parents, their single aunt, brittney spears or big bird, it means that the range of Halloween costumes have changed over the years for children.



Now one would normally question the tastefulness of these. I mean, the last one is actually called Major Flirt. Are they teaching kids these days to be more free with their sexuality? What parents are allowing their kids to go out like this? Have the moral standards been allowed to sway that bad? WILL ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

This is not a new thing. I remember when I was in grade school some girl was dressed up as Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Bare midsection, shell shaped bikini top, glittery green pants in the shape of fins. I remember it so well because it was my first experience were I disliked a girl, but wanted to be near her anyway...

It was a confusing day for 9 year old me.


Enjoy your 9 year old world, little chicken
dressed timmy, reality will soon hit.

On the flip side, I don't know, maybe I'm just really conservative about clothing or something, but most of these Halloween costumes just look like children parading around in what would be fetish outfits on adults, and that bothers me. But what disturbs me most about these kids is their faces.

their soulless doll faces.

there's nothing in there, they are already dead inside, crushed by the weight of their parent's dreams of becoming a model through their children.


I mean, really. What was that last one even suppose to be? Is the market for little girls who can't decide between pirate, cheerleader, frankenstein and gorilla that this costume needs to be manufactured for them all? I don't really understand why young girls of this age WANT to look sexy... Guys at that age are usually still 'Ew Girls' are they not? In fact, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write a script called "Night of the Cooties," in which the girls start dressing up in sexy costumes in an attempt to infect all boykind with their deadly diseases. Oh yes... there WILL be germs!

To be fair, little girls aren't seeing it in a sexual light at all. They simply want to imitate those older than them, and since Halloween is basically an excuse for adult women to dress in "sexy [insert occupation here]" costumes, it's not that surprising.

I envy his happiness.

Most of those outfits are cutesy or girly, not really sexy. The ones that are kind of weird like the fetishy looking generic goth girl may have elements that an adult would perceive as sexual, but to the little girl are just going to be weird or different or new. One of the fun things kids and adults alike do on Halloween, and at all costume parties, is wear things they wouldn't normally wear under any circumstance. Conservative, shy girls dress slutty. Goofy guys dress like Charlie Chaplin. Extroverted, creepy guys dress like slutty girls. And kids are less inhibited about dress-up playtime than adults are. Some girls will want to be a scary ghost or an ugly witch. Some girls will want to be a ballerina. Some girls will want to be the girl from Evanescence. Also some of these costumes are intended for 11-18 year old girls who can and will try to look sexy no matter what their parents want.

My biggest complaint is that the options for women when it comes to Halloween is a lot wider than it is for males. They get the Disney princesses and we get health cereal, a phallic joke and an ass balloon.



But let me tell you, this kid is all man!


I do have to give credit to the modern day kid though. Have it be them trying to look more Adult like for a day or just having fun with a sterotype image, it allows them to explore that sort of image they look at, and most of all, it shows us how kids view the world around them since this one day dress up is a visual representation of what the world looks like to them. How they see others and how they see those they look up to or want to mimic.

Only fitting that it's on Halloween that we find out how they view grown ups on this day. Mainly because their image of us is rather scary...

Change We Can Believe In

Change We Can Believe In



Put your hand in your pockets and feel around. What's in there? More than likely loose change. Chances are you've carried those pennies in there for a while. Too lazy to make exact change when buying and sitting in your cup holders, ash trays or in those stupid leave a penny/pick a penny place holders. Well, they've decided in the interest of spicing up pennies, they're going to make them pretty.

Next year, the penny will be getting not just one new look but four of them, the first changes to the 1-cent coin in 50 years. The U.S. Mint unveiled the new designs during a ceremony Monday at the Lincoln Memorial. The coin changes are part of the government's commemoration next year of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

Lincoln's profile will reman on one side of the coin but the Lincoln Memorial will be replaced on the other side by the new images, with a different one being introduced every three months...

The change in your pocket that you currently don't care about is going to be prettier. If you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years, they've been doing this with quarters. Putting a single image that represents a state on them. Only quarters aren't useless. You can get a newspaper with them, you can go to the arcade (if it's not one of those faggot ones that takes tokens only), you can flip it to make choices. It's an endless wonder what you can do with them. Pennies are only good to stuff socks with when you're hoping to knock someone out in a fight.

They are so worthless that people throw them away rather than go through the effort of merely carrying them in their pockets. They cost more to make than they are worth and is irresponsible for us to use copper on something we keep around to simply through in fountains in an effort to make a wish. But the biggest problem faced with ever even thinking about ridding ourselves of this waste of metal is the zinc providers.

The nation's sole supplier of zinc "penny blanks," Jarden Zinc Products, is lobbying the federal government to protect its interests.

The subsidiary of Rye, N.Y.-based Jarden Corp., paid Baker & Daniels LLP $180,000 in 2006 to fight legislation that would have allowed retailers to round off cash transactions to the nearest nickel, effectively creating a penniless society.
...
Jarden's lobbyist in Washington, Mark Weller of the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, said House staffers recently assured him the latest bills won't open the door to another effort to rid the penny. "We're satisfied, but we need to stay on top of that," Weller said.

A federal disclosure form filed Tuesday shows that Jarden spent up to $10,000 in the first half of 2007 on lobbying expenses.

Fuck them. This is capitalism at its finest. If you can't find a better use for zinc, then you should go out of business. And yes, before you ask I do remember that Simpsons 1950's educational video "A World Without Zinc". I don't care. If they can't survive in the free market they deserve to go under.

I know what I'm asking. To get rid of the penny would mean that all the prices will be rounded up. So all you morons out there that round down that $4.99 and say it's only $4 instead of $5 will not be happy. What ever will become of the .99 cent menu? I'm sure people will survive by seeing that items cost a buck instead. How about we simply round. You know those nickel things we use? It's no problem to round to the next 5 or 0. Simple as that.


A penny I don't mind.

While we're on the subject, let me prove Sarah Palin's point in which I'm from a big city and not a "pro-American." Presidents shouldn't be on money either, worshiping long-dead plutocrats is creepy. Why is andrew jackson's face on money? He doesn't deserve to be printed on toilet paper let alone official american legal tender. He's a racist who ignored the rulings of the supreme court and brought about the trail of tears.

Sure he had a lead ball stuck in his chest all his adult life. But fuck that. If that's all it takes to get your face on money then there's a whole lot of rappers out there that need to be on money. Where's my 50 cent image plastered on two quarters so it makes a profile shot when put together?


Another Penny I don't mind

Also, what's up with America flipping the bird to blind people. Well, I guess that's not that bad since they're blind and they can't see. But what the fuck. We make all of our notes the same size. After the 'beties kicks in, I want to still be able to use money without having some stupid folding corner system.



I'm sure I sound like Andy Rooney and I should be getting some sleep between my episode of Matlock, but shit, even he complained about this.

Like just about everyone else, I save my change. At night, I empty my pockets and then I hang my pants by closing the dresser drawer on the cuffs. In the morning, I take a few quarters, but I dump the rest of the change in coffee cans.

I just came from the bank, and I feel great. These cans are all empty now.

There is nothing more annoying than going to the checkout counter in a store and getting four pennies change from a dollar for something that costs 96 cents.

The U.S. Mint ought to stop making pennies. Last year, they made almost 7 billion of them. For what? You can’t buy anything with a penny, and they’re a pain in the pocket.

This week, I took cans filled with change to the Commerce Bank in New York. Commerce was the only bank I found that has a machine that converts change into real money free.

Some companies charge almost nine cents for every dollar of change you convert to paper. Seems like a rip-off.

The change-counting machine was cuter than necessary: "You win. Press button to make your selection."

It did the job in a hurry, though. And it took me about 10 minutes to feed in the seven cans of change.

There were a few glitches: one metal washer in a batch. When I finished, the machine spit back a handful of coins, too. It turns out it doesn’t like French francs, English pence or Euros.

The machine then gives you a receipt. I had six silver dollars, just one 50-cent piece, 171 quarters, 1,745 dimes, 1,010 nickels, and 3,594 pennies. It came to $310.19.

I took that receipt to the cashier and she gave me the cash with four pennies change. Anyway, it was the best money I’ve made all year -- and no deductions. Now, if the Mint would just stop making those useless damn pennies. I’d only need about two of these cans for change.


By Andy Rooney © MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

So join me in my attempt to stomp out the penny.

Lowering Your Standards

Lowering Your Standards



Do you know that Nintendo seal of approval doesn't grow on trees. They don't just hand those out like candy on Halloween to every 3rd party developer dressed as a ghost or a WWII FPS. There's some sort of system involved with how Nintendo decides what exactly deserves that gold stick. Here's the criteria.


NES ERA
-Must be high quality, qith no show-stopping bugs.
-Players die enough to make the cost of the game equal to the amount they would have spent beating it t the arcade
-If anything is wrong with the gmae, it would begin to work when blown on.


GAME BOY ERA
-Graphics must be black and gray, not because the system has a limited color palette (in fact it is capable of producing all 16 colors that can be seen by the human eye) but because we really like black and gray.


SNES ERA
-Utilizes one of the following: The SUPER FX chip, Mode 7, The red blood to white sweat processor, or the space we set aside for the word "SUPER" before the name of your game.



VIRTUAL BOY ERA
-See game boy, replace "black and gray" with "black and red"
-Users must go blind or at least start bleeding from their eyes within 20 minutes of playing the game


NINTENDO 64 ERA
-Takes advantage of our unique controller by making players mash the analog stick until it breaks (Should take two full rotations)


GAME CUBE ERA
-Game can not come out in the same month that another Gamecube game was released


NINTENDO DS
-Must use the touch screen in an arbitrary and uncreative way to accomplish things that could be done with the directional pad and buttons.


WII ERA
-Manufactured on a disc that's roughly the same size as the hole on the front of the console.

Keep those standards up, Nintendo, you beautiful bastard. Pretty soon you'll be able to pay a couple of bucks for a dozen gold seal of approvals down on 1st and Broadway.