The Grumpy Owl

Tags: baseball, baseball boogie, dodgers

Are there monkeys in shoes? I don’t know. There are bogeymen, laying eggs in spectra.

WEAR PROTECTIVE GOGGLES!

Do you sneeze in sunlight?  You’ve caught one in the eye.  Your face is trying to reject the egg as it sneaks through your pupil and into your brain.  In there, it rewrites your neurology.  If you hold that sneeze in, you’ll find yourself wearing a crumpled hat, lurking in shadows, shouting BOO.  Your earlobes will hang down to your knees.  Your knees will be halfway down your shins.  Your shins will still lead to your shoes.

No eyewash will help.

The union will contact you shortly.

Tags: france, hip hop, mario, nintendo, undercover, world hip hop championships 2009

Tags: Alexyss K. Tylor, dick and nuts, dicks, educated skeletons, pussies, quivering

Naming colours makes about as much sense as numbering orgasms.

Just a short bedtime story I wrote a few nights ago.

Click To Play

pic nicked from here

Once upon a time, below a blue sky in a yellow land, a monster named Albert lived on a green hill.   Everything in the land was yellow.  The trees were yellow, the ground was yellow and the buildings were yellow.  The teeth, the eyes and the hair: yellow, yellow and blonde.  Everything except for the hill Albert called home was yellow.  His hill was green.

The other monsters, the ones who did not live on the green hill, grew jealous of its strange colour.  “It’s not right,” they said, “that Albert should live on that green hill while we all live in yellow.”

They formed a committee and elected a representative to go speak to Albert.  Their representative was the famous vampire Count Dracula who ran on a platform of reasoned debate and won a landslide over the even more famous vampire Count Chocula.  But, in the spirit of bipartisanship, Count Dracula appointed Count Chocula as his assistant in charge of breakfast foods.

And the monsters sent these two to go speak to Albert about his green hill.

“It’s not right,” they said, after they had sat and enjoyed some blood tea with Albert -cheap blood tea, one must add– “That you have this green hill and all the other monsters here have to live in yellow.”

“I had not thought of it that way,” said Albert.  “I assumed that you all liked yellow.  Seeing how you live in so much of it.  You know, keeping a hill green is not an easy job.  Not in this climate.”

“We do like yellow,” replied Count Dracula.  “But we also like green.”

“In that case,” said Albert, “tell the other monsters that they may come up on my hill whenever they please.  And let no one say that Albert hoarded all the green for himself.”   Then he roared.  Albert couldn’t help it.  He was a monster after all.  But he was polite enough to excuse himself after.

The two counts returned and convened a meeting where they passed the news along to the members of the committee.  After some lively debate and a controversy involving a spiked punch bowl, the monsters decided to go to the hill the very next day.  And go they did.

There were many monsters and, with all of them upon it, Albert’s hill no longer seemed quite so big.  It was rather crowded indeed.  Monsters jostled and bothered each other.  They bumped and banged.  They clanged and they thumped.   Sharp tooth bit soft skin, hard horn tore tender flesh and razor claws cut shins and thighs and feet.

Pretty soon they had spilt enough blood to cover Albert’s hill in it.  Now it was no longer green but bright red instead.  Albert tried to wash the blood away with his hose but, with all the monsters there, rioting and clamouring, the water couldn’t even touch the ground.  He decided to speak to the count.

“Count Dracula,” he said, “All the blood from the bumps and scrapes of a crowded monster party has turned my hill red.  It’s not green any more.  Could you perhaps get everyone to leave for a day while I wash it?”

“You mean,” said the count, “That your hill is soaked in blood?”

“Yes,” said Albert, now shouting over the monsters who had stumbled between them.  “Completely covered in blood!”

“I see,” said the count.  He whispered to the other count and they quickly dropped out of sight.

Albert wondered what they were doing.  He tried not worry.  Surely the vampires would see that he was being fair and get everyone off the hill long enough for him to clean it.  That should only take a day or two and then everyone could enjoy it again.  But then he heard a strange noise and saw the monsters all acting crazy.  They were all getting down on their hands and knees, roaring with savage delight.

Albert grabbed a nearby werewolf and asked him:  “What’s going on?”

“Haven’t ya heard?” said the werewolf.  “This hill is covered in blood!  Monster blood!  The very best blood of all!”  And then the werewolf howled.  Unlike Albert, he was not polite enough to excuse himself.

Albert tried to stop them, first with reasoned debate and then with claws, but the monsters chased him right off his hill and put a restraining order against him.  From a distance of 150 metres he watched the fat  monsters laying around with full bellies and red mouths.  They had eaten all the grass.  And all that was left was yellow sand.

Now bored with the hill they began to shuffle off.  Some thanked Albert for his hospitality but most just ignored him.  Albert looked at his hill.  The green grass was all gone.  Now it looked more like a yellow lump.

After a few days of looking and feeling sad, he felt a tap on his shoulder.  It was Count Dracula.  “Hi there old chum,” said the Count, “Terribly sorry about what happened to your hill.”

“Well you should be.”

“And I am but I have some good news.”

“Did you find some grass seeds so I can replant my hill?”

“Even better than that.”

“Did you find a new green hill for me?  One with a moat and barbed wire?”

The Count laughed.  “No.  But here’s what we did find: Turns out that some greedy monster in the next county is hoarding a bright blue water hole.   We’re forming a committee to gain access to it.  And I’m running for chair.  As you  know, I get results.  Can I count on your vote?”

Albert thought about his days in the hard yellow sunlight looking at his little yellow lump of a hill.  He was hot and tired.  He wanted nothing more than to feel some bright blue water on his face.   “You know what,” said Albert.  “I could really go for a swim about now.”  He shook the count’s hand.  “When do we get in?”

pic nicked from here

In the first chapter of my imaginary book, How to Hack Like a High School Illiterate: Earning High Marks from Morons While Destroying Prose, I advise the reader to start every essay with a dictionary definition.  Not only does it add needless verbosity, it also shows that you either had no idea what the word meant when you started writing or you think the person reading the essay doesn’t know the meaning of the thing they are reading about.

But definitions are wonderful. According to the dictionary defining something is to  fix or state the exact meaning of a thing.  Words can defined, people can be defined and boundaries can be defined eg. “Don’t put your thumb in there and, if you do, keep it out of my mouth after.“  Even the word definition can be defined!

(Chapter Two: The Explanation Point Makes the Redundant Exciting!”)

As wonderful as definitions are, they remind me of apologies.  For while an apology might be an expression of regret it is also, according to the dictionary, a formal justification or defence.  It might be easy to imagine that one would be defending themselves because they’re wrong but that’s just because we’re suspicious bastards.  One could be defending themselves because their accuser is wrong.  Or perhaps they’re just paranoid and are feeling defensive.

A word’s definition is its apology!

Without these apologies, what are these words?  Just senseless yammerings or scrawled doodles.   They’re not really anything at all!  They’re just noise!!!

When words are attached to the wrong definitions they’re lies.  The dictionary tells us that lies are something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.  So if you use the wrong word to describe a certain definition, you’re lying!  And you better be careful about that.  Because, if you get caught, you might have to apologize.

And no one wants to do that.  Doing what you want is enough work.  Explaining why you did it should be someone else’s job.

YouTube – Tickle Monsters Are Robots!!!!! via Way of the West

This epic sci-fi rock opera springs from the mind of Alexander Abel, age five.

When earth is invaded by people-drinking aliens armed with devastating tickle lasers, humanity’s very future hangs in the balance. Will the super heroes prevail? Who will be left standing when the tickle war is over? One thing is certain– THEM ARE COMING.

The Striking Viking Story Pirates (www.storypirates.org) adapt and perform stories written by kids as a way of celebrating the words and ideas of young people.

Director: Jeff Tomsic.
Music: Eli Bolin.

For more info: http://www.storypirates.org/

It’d true, you know.  Tickle Monsters are robots.

There is one thing that you will not see in Star Trek, Terminator or any of the summer blockbusters; One thing that is perfectly natural, usually harmless and a subject of great interest to most people on the planet.  That one thing is not shit (you will see a lot of that this summer) it’s something that stinks much less and is completely unrelated to any chimpanzee taboo.

It’s a hard-on.

A simple erect penis.

Hollywood, indeed our whole culture, is terrified of the erect cock.  They will show tig ol’ bake fitties, they might show you a bit of bush and it’s even possible that you’ll glimpse a flaccid penis.  But you will not see an erect cock.

That remains taboo.

(more…)

There is an oft repeated sentiment in Homer:  That the next generation is always weaker than the former.  That if you keep going back in time, you will find men who could move boulders with their bare hands; men who were heroes, possessing the strength and apprehension of Gods.  But Homer operates on the level of pure perception.  That is, he is uninterrupted by reality.

People just think that they were better when they were younger.  They ascribe attributes to themselves that they never actually had.  Our giant fathers appear as supermen.  Our creaking bodies mythologize the easy muscles of youth.  We remember triumphing over such a big world and forget how small we were.  And, the older we get, the more outrageous our claims become.

Yet, having said that, I think this next generation is soft.

(more…)

I’ve long had the feeling that most of our propaganda is done in reverse. If a video is telling you not to do something, it’s often saying do it. Do it now and do it often.

This anti-porn flick from 1965, “Perversion for Profit” by a group called “Citizens for Decent Literature” confirms my suspicion.

They keep showing nudes while telling people not to buy these mags. You couldn’t advertise porn any better than that. You probably couldn’t advertise porn at all. Unless you said – “Don’t buy porn, you commie!” Then you could show all the tits you want.

I just wonder how many people bought the whole package. You know, went out, purchased a girlie mag then joined the communist party. Just who are these “Citizens for Decent Literature”? Godless, smut-reading, sodomites and commies. That’s who.

Hey look at this. I was cleaning out my nest and I found some old Ice Cube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU8H9_YBM3A&rel=1]

The above song is one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite albums of all time: “Death Certificate.” Until the other day, I hadn’t listened to it in about ten years. Brings back some memories. Not good ones, really, but memories all the same. Mainly of dumb shit.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJM22XG5hc&rel=1]

I really miss Ice Cube. I know he’s still around but he’s just not the same Ice Cube. There’s a whole generation out there that has never known a world where he wasn’t in movies; a generation that thinks Fiddy and his songs about lollipops and candy-shops are gangsta. No wonder hip-hop is dead. These days it wins Oscars.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLNPYwthRKQ&rel=1]

I remember a simpler time, when this shit was unapologetically vulgar, evil and (dare I say it?) funky. It was also smart without stopping every two seconds to tell you that it’s smart, which is what the bulk of so-called conscious hip-hip does. It was also bawdy; funny and serious at the same time. But, if you didn’t take it seriously, you never got the joke. Black or white, it was about us. Now it’s all about them.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astFJUjy8G4&rel=1]

In a good mood? I have the cure. The story of the Beslan siege as told by the children who survived it. It’s a great documentary.

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Pedants hate the term “very unique” and spend quite a bit of time protesting it. I can’t blame them. They are right. Words mean what they mean. Unique means one of a kind. Although my sympathies lie with the pedants, I’m now willing to bend on this term. It is perfectly acceptable to ascribe degrees to uniqueness. The reason is simple: Everything is unique and/or nothing is.

Unique is dead.

I grew up in a primitive time. Sure, we had a vast communication network that spanned the globe but it was the telephone. And long distance calls were expensive. You only called people you already knew. You never just sat around dialing numbers at random or performing google searches.

At a time like that, before the internet, it was very easy to believe in the superstition of uniqueness. Cut off from the insane ramblings of the vast bulk of mankind, anyone could believe that they were a special little snowflake. Many of us did. We were taught to believe that.

But it was a lie. Now that we have the interwebs, we know that whatever weird shit we’re into, someone else is into the exact same thing, in the exact same way, and they’ve already formed a club. None of us are as unique as we were led to believe. We may be different from something but we are the same as something else. It all depends on how you look at it and what you’re being compared to.

And this is just about human personalities. I’m not even going to get into bits of information endlessly replicated, not going to discuss the copies and frauds made of any object you care to mention, the peak of mass production and the stuttering return of the handcrafted. I’m just saying that unique is a lot rarer than it used to be.

But don’t worry. It was never that important.

Well, cute cat, I’m not really being mean at all. I think that being unique, at some point, became more important than being good. And that was a troubling weight on all of our backs. We all wanted to be different. We’d even like garbage that no one else, in their right mind, could possibly like, just to be different. How else can you explain indie-rock?

We’re now free of that because we have six billion people on this planet and a lot of them have webpages. We know we’re not unique. We’re not different at all. Those people across the planet are into the same things we are. Maybe even more so.

Umm, yes rape cat. That was another problem. If we suffered, by let’s say by being a cat who was raped, we thought we were alone in this too. Uniqueness, you see is a double edged sword. Quite often our suffering is added to by the feeling of facing it alone.

But now we can be sure that, no matter how miserable we may be, there are others out there who share our misery. Maybe they’re even more miserable than us! Isn’t that a great thought, Rape Cat? A whole world full of incomprehensible suffering.

That’s right helmet cat! Now you’ve got it.

You can still wear your handsome helmet and not worry about being different. You can wear it just because you like it. There’s cats in helmets all over the internet. So if you want to do that, you just go right ahead. You’re now part of a tribe that knows no geography, probably has a proud history of some kind or another, and is looking forward to a bright, shining future. You might not be unique but you’re still pretty unique.

You have a degree of uniqueness. Just not the whole thing. That’s not so bad is it?