11.23.2009

The Fall of Californication

Did I change, or did Californication? I thought the first two seasons were pretty good. Hank Moody was a flawed, but likable character. His supporting cast was the same. Maybe they were running out of storylines, or maybe they lost a good writer. So to compensate, they decided to go from very sexual and funny to downright raunchy and annoying. I like a rimjob joke as much as the next guy. But it's a fine line between being clever and just plucking low-hanging fuck joke fruit. There's nothing really left to like about Hank or the writing.

Also, I find that watching Dexter in fast forward is better than actually having to listen to the writing or watch the acting. His sister on the show, Deb, is the worst. Weeds went downhill as well. And that new HBO show Bored to Death sort of stinks.

That's all.

This song ruined my weekend by never leaving my head.

11.05.2009

Another Quality Adult Purchase

Someone else realized that as an adult they're allowed to buy anything they want. We now have two sets of these at the office:



The Shocking Duel. This is a game that electrocutes you. Each level features shocks of increasing lengths. As you move up levels, the shocks get stronger and stronger until someone lets go. According to the box, "The first person to let go of the shock handles is the wimp!"

I played it. At first it feels sort of nice, like a little vibrating massage. At the final level, it feels like you're holding a hand full of stinging bees. I was pretty sure I wouldn't ever let go, but I had to. I think I can smell myself burning from the inside. I was the wimp.

One of the best things about being a grownup.

Is that you can buy whatever you want and no one can stop you. For some reason we were having a discussion about ants at work and I realized, I've always wanted an ant farm. I'm 31 years old, why have I never had an ant farm? Especially in this age, when you can buy just about anything online. Even an ant farm, complete with live ants.



It was about $35, including ants and shipping. But I basically doomed my colony by not ponying up the extra $8 for some sort of overnight delivery. Instead, my two test tubes full of ants sat suffocating in a box for about a week. When they arrived, there were only about 1/3 left alive. Morale of the remaining ants was pretty low. Then, to make things worse, I didn't try to filter out the dead ants. They all went into the farm with their brothers. Which led to an interesting discovery. As the ants were building their tunnels (they built some pretty nice tunnels), they also moved the dead ants to two little ant graveyards and buried them.

As of today, there are only two ants left, still working away, carrying sand around.

The good news is, new test tubes of ants are only a few clicks away.

9.23.2009

How can you not do this?

"Delonte West was carrying three loaded guns on a three-wheeled motorcycle when he was pulled over and arrested on Thursday night. He had a loaded 9mm Beretta in his waistband, a Ruger .357 strapped to his leg and a loaded shotgun in a guitar case on his back. While visions of Terminator and Raising Arizona are impossible to ignore, West is said to suffer from bipolar disorder and left the Cavs for several weeks last season for treatment for depression."

Playing with Lebron James, being a millionaire, and believing that your are Mel Gibson starring in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is probably about as awesome as you can feel. Until you see those flashing red and blue lights behind you. Bipolar disorder is not a joke. But I bet his reasoning for loading up like that and cruising around Maryland on his land jet-ski is wild. How hard must it have been to not have a gunfight? A shotgun in a guitar case? Amazing.

Chopsticks.



I couldn't have said it better myself.

9.22.2009

I found this on the street today.



It's awful, yet somehow still beautiful.

9.16.2009

Getting Back In It.

I don't blog anymore. Much of my creative spirit has been bled dry to the point where I just try to get through the day now. In an attempt to breathe some life back into myself, I'm starting a new feature entitled: I can't believe I had to send that in an e-mail. Here is installment one:

We presented the new penguin treatment this morning and here’s the deal, in the form of a numbered list:

1. We can use red and green hats, but not other colors. All bowties must be peppermint patties.
2. Child penguins can not be doing work (child penguin labor laws). So let’s use all adult penguins for pushing and pulling.
3. A child penguin should be sleeping on top of the box.
4. Put on hold, and probably kill any unique beginning. They're not interested in any new creative. We’ll just use the static sign.
5. They made us time out last year’s banner, which took 4-seconds, so they’re likely going to ask we keep this brief.
6. They’d like to make sure the penguins face front at some point, so we’re not just seeing side views.

Thank you.


I guess I'm going to try to focus more on personal work and less on real work, since the real work is so miserable at this point.

6.09.2009

DIET VS. REGULAR DR. PEPPER

It's no secret that I love Dr. Pepper. So today when someone suggested that Diet Dr. Pepper is the best remake of a regular, I was interested. He went on to claim that he didn't believe you'd be able to tell the difference between a half and half Diet-Regular mix, and the normal soda. Sure that a discerning Dr. Pepper enthusiast such as myself could do so, I took the challenge.

He left the room and brought back four paper cups. The deal was, he wouldn't tell me what was what, or how many mixes there were, or if there were some that were only diet, so I'd have to guess on my own. I went down the row and tasted them all. The problem was that at some point, I got that diet-flavor in my mouth, and it tainted the tastings. But I was still pretty sure I had it nailed.

From right to left, I guessed: regular, mix, mix, diet.

The right answers: mix, regular, diet, mix.

I got them all wrong. Turns out, when you pour Dr. Pepper and the diet version into paper cups, it fools my mouth.

5.28.2009

TWO QUESTIONS FROM BRANTLEY.

1. If future you came back and told present you, right now, that you had to quit your job and never work in the same industry again, and you couldn't ask any questions, would you do it? Even if there was a chance that it wasn't future you, but just a crazy person who looks like what you'll probably look like i the future?

2. If you could press a button and get a million dollars, but somewhere in the world a homeless man who is already in horrible living conditions would die, and no one would ever know, would you do it?

Think on that.





The answers:

1. I'd quit, because quitting is fun.
2. I probably would. But you'd never know about it.

5.27.2009

THIS HAPPENED.

Last night, I got a text from a number I don't recognize. This is the exchange that took place.



I had to stop myself from asking more. I imagine if you just did something that no one needs to know about, you probably would feel like a huge ass texting that to the wrong number. Awesome.

5.18.2009

It's all in the details.



Based on a conversation I had at work last week.

4.14.2009

GOOD.

I don't know if I ever posted this, but this is one of my favorite jokes.

4.08.2009

ERROR

We recently found a place near our office that has $.99 draft beer. Now, if you still live in Michigan or any other place aside from NYC, you might not find this amazing. But here, $.99 beers are unheard of. It makes you think that perhaps it will come in a very small glass, or that it will be root beer. To our delight, it was not. The bar serves normal Miller Light in a plastic cup. Now, of course, your fist instinct is that this is terrible beer. You might even liken it to drinking piss. Which is why I thought it was so funny to find looking out from the bar that someone had scrawled the word "pee" over the glass of beer.




It was only moments later that I realized that no one had written "pee" in marker on this, but it was actually what 99-cents looked like backwards. Unknowingly, this bar was telling patrons who were inside drinking that the $.99 beer was piss.




Almost the funniest thing I've ever noticed.

2.24.2009

XTRANORMAL

Recently, via a friend's gmail status, I found a website (xtranormal.com) that allows you to make short animated films by merely typing in a script and using some pretty simple director's tools. So until I get bored of it, I'm going to make little films instead of writing blogs here. Here are the first three.

Mercy:


Thickness:


Business Opportunity:

1.15.2009

THE BEST EMAIL TODAY.

This is an e-mail I got today regarding a script I wrote:

Subject: question

Body:

Is carnie a negative term?

Everyone loves the manifesto but that one word caused quite a stir.