The Sporadic Curmudgeon

One would suppose that being paid to cobble together a database of humor for a “joke of the day” widget would be kind of fun; a lark, if you will.

You would be horribly, horribly wrong.

I spent five hours reading hundreds of jokes today, flagging them for their offensiveness quotient (measured in stroms, of course) so that my company doesn’t get sued/boycotted. After a while, I noticed something disturbing: Jokes really aren’t very funny. They’re supposed to be. But they aren’t. Especially jokes that begin with “And then there’s the one where…”

The closest they got to funny was this: “How do you know if a leper sends you a Valentine? The tongue’s in the envelope.” Ba-dum-bum. The rest cause cricket noises. Ba-da-boom. Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

By the time my shift was over I was so demoralized I sat in the car for fifteen minutes wondering if it was worth the trouble driving all the way over to Target just to purchase a hose so I could run it between the exhaust pipe and the passenger compartment. Nah. Just went home.

And that’s when I remembered that I’d bookmarked Hillman’s Hyperlinked and Searchable Chambers’ Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character, originally published in 1869. A few minutes spent perusing this Victorian marvel, and I felt myself wonderfully restored and chipper of outlook. Huzzah!

You may notice by the timestamp on the last post that I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night, especially when you consider that I have the 7AM shift at work this week. I mention this in mitigation of what is to follow.

I went home to eat lunch, and then lay down to idly surf the web until it was time to return to work. Big mistake. I started nodding off, and suddenly found myself dreaming that I was listening to a song on the radio called I Need More Ice-Cream Bars In My Pants. This horrified me so much I woke up, and just barely made it back to work on time.

What kind of sick creepy crap do I have rattling around inside my head? Jeez. I think the most disturbing thing about the song is the word “more.” One of my buddies at work, Brian S., used to be in a metal band. He says he wants to record it. I don’t know. I think I’m suffering from sleep deprivation.

Freudian interpretations of this dream will be dealt with harshly.

Alas, how far the noble Hellenic ideal of service to Truth has fallen. A group of Greek lawyers is threatening to sue Oliver Stone for depicting famous sociopath Alexander The Great as a bisexual.

Admittedly, the fact of Alexander’s bisexuality has only recently come to light… if your definition of “recently” is “sometime in the last TWO THOUSAND YEARS.” No serious historian without a nationalistic axe to grind doubts that Alexander had lovers of both sexes. If anything, Stone’s movie tones little Alex’s proclivities down a bit; one gets the distinct impression that he would go for just about anything with two legs and a viable orifice.

The lawyers claim that there are no references to Alexander’s switch-hitting in the ancient sources, and thus it is a modern invention.

This is horseshit.

Not only was male homosexuality considered normal in ancient society, in many military societies it was actually encouraged for sound strategic reasons. The Spartans, for example, were famous for pairing lovers up on the battlefield so they would be fighting for their loved ones’ lives. Not exactly a bunch of pushovers either, those Spartans.

As for the specific charge as regards Alexander, I know of at least two ancient sources making reference: Quintus Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Alexandri Magni (unfortunately I could not find an online English translation), and Plutarch’s Lives.

But don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself. In the Lives, Plutarch relates the following regarding a eunuch boy named Bagoas that Alexander took from the king of Persia, Darius:

As soon as he came to the royal palace of Gedrosia, he again refreshed and feasted his army; and one day after he had drunk pretty hard, it is said, he went to see a prize of dancing contended for, in which his favorite Bagoas, having gained the victory, crossed the theater in his dancing habit, and sat down close by him, which so pleased the Macedonians, that they made loud acclamations for him to kiss Bagoas, and never stopped clapping their hands and shouting till Alexander put his arms round him and kissed him.

Let’s see… “his favorite,” a dance contest, drunken hugging and kissing… They don’t call it “greek style” for nothing.

Look, I know this upsets some modern Greek homophobes (from the Greek for “fear of the same”), but the plain truth of the matter is that the noble heroes of ancient Hellas did what guys have always done, namely screwing whatever was available. There was one fundamental difference from today, though: they didn’t bother to lie about it afterwards.

There have been, are, and always will be homosexuals. Society continues on regardless. If that bothers you so much, maybe you should think about why that is. I’m not suggesting that all homophobes are closet homosexuals, mind you. Personally, I detest intolerant bigots and ridicule them at every opportunity, but that doesn’t mean I have dark fantasies about being one. I just think that a bit of introspection would probably be a good idea. As a prelude to getting a fucking life.

God, I love the weather here. For the last two nights snow’s been falling on the mountains that surround the city. It’s about 15°F below the average temperature for this time of year (global climate change, anyone?), and the weather has been uncharacteristically cold and rainy.

I got this shot with my Dakota camera on my lunch break; I’ll try to get some others to put up in a gallery today.

I know I wanted something other than Republicans to worry about for a while, but this is serious. A group of Swedish poets have aimed a big antenna at the sky and broadcast a live poetry reading into outer space. The transmission was aimed at the star Vega, a mere 25 light years away.

Isn’t this the sort of thing that should be discussed at length among the leaders of the world, with respected scientists evaluating outcomes and weighing the cultural implications of every sentence? Nope, a bunch of probably-drunk touchy-feely Swedes got together at an observatory and unilaterally sent their pretentious cocktail-napkin scribbles outwards at the speed of light.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re a race of Vegan Sauroids that have achieved an almost unimaginable level of scientific and cultural development due to a principled devotion to logic. You know that an intelligent species orbits that yellow star over there, but other than some tantalizing fragments, the radio signals have been too diffuse to provide any clues as to its nature. Since the first barely-detectable electromagnetic waves had arrived two generations ago, you have been constructing a fleet of exploratory spacecraft. You are anxious to meet your new neighbors and exchange knowledge and insight.

And then a strong, clear signal comes through, so intense that it could only have been deliberately focused. It continues for a fairly lengthy period, and then sinks back into the indeciperable hisses and whispers of interstellar space.

Suddenly, there is no more important goal in the universe than the translation of this message from the stars. Your most accomplished scholars struggle and dash themselves against the problem, hundreds of subtle and eloquent minds converging on the great task. Gradually at first, but with increasing confidence and speed, meaning is teased from the waveforms, until one day it is done. You can finally know the thoughts of the alien beings from across the void.

You scream.

A foul blast of brutally incongrous inanities floods your consciousness. You are polluted and bruised. Agonized, in shock and disbelief, thousands die and millions are driven mad. How could it have happened? you ask. How could you have been so wrong?

The signal from the yellow star was not a message. It was a weapon. A weapon that had been aimed.

It is fortunate that the ships are almost complete. Refitting them to hold the Stellar Plasma Inducers will be trivial. It will be a suicide mission, but you are untroubled. You are doing the logical, the right thing. The vile pestilence must be utterly obliterated.

Pain specialist and Traitor To His Gender Dr. Stuart Meloy has discovered the ‘Orgasmatron’, a device that does to women what it sounds like it does at the press of a button. With recent advances in cloning and genetic manipulation techniques, this invention brings us much, much closer to the day when the Fairer Sex decides they don’t need men anymore.

We might as well face it: once an affordable backrub machine is put on the market, this concludes our broadcasting day. Unless, of course, there’s a sudden rise in the number of ichthycyclists.

The original Orgasmatron was a perverse and sadistic torture device depicted in the frightening-for-all-the-wrong-reasons Astrotrash* classic Barbarella. I have seen the film six or seven times since its release in 1968, and I’m still not completely sure if I like it or not. I enjoyed the Sixties, and while provoking a definite sense of nostalgia, Barbarella also stands as a stark reminder of just how damned tacky the decade could be.

* Coined by my wife, Elizabeth Bryant, and one of the many reasons I love her so much.

Well, that’s enough politics for a while. Back to the real reason people come to this site: ridiculous news stories about misbehaving erogenous zones. Today’s offering: a 57 year-old Tennessee man has been charged with sexual battery for spanking two female employees for “making mistakes” and taking a photo of one of the women’s fundament as she reached for a bottle on a shelf. The sales manager at the ice company’s headquarters seems puzzled, saying “he’s a very Christian person.”

All I can say is, hoo boy. You’re very lucky I’m in a good mood tonight, thus avoiding an endlessly pedantic history lesson about sexual sadism and the Church. Now I bet you’re in a good mood, too.

Speaking of undeserved ass-whippings, I finally saw Van Helsing last night. I’d read that it was pretty bad, but the trailers had looked fine so I’d assumed it was your basic popcorn movie that the critics had been too hard on.

I could not have been more wrong if I’d suddenly developed a craving for sardine Jello™.

Oh, the film looks good, all right. The effects and cinematography are beautiful, and the werewolves are magnificent. The performances are mostly decent. But the script… oh dear merciful God above, the script…

About a third of the way through, clichés and coincidences start piling up like snowdrifts. Teeth-gnashingly bad lines alternate with somewhat questionable science facts. For example, did you know that a lunar cycle is only four days long?

Neither my wife or I saw much of the last half of the movie because our eyes kept involuntarily rolling toward the ceiling, a sad state since the visuals are the least incompetent aspect of the sorry thing. But by all means go ahead and rent Van Helsing and see for yourself. You could probably have some fun building a drinking game around it, anyway.

Well, it appears I may have been a bit too hasty when I accused the entire South of being a bunch of brain-dead saps. Three statisticians at the University of Michigan have produced a series of election result maps that put things into better perspective. There are still far too many hateful troglodytes lurching through the verdant Dixie countryside, but nowhere near as many as implied by the winner-take-all maps used by the media.

By adjusting the size of states and counties to reflect their population instead of their real estate and using shades of purple to indicate the actual percentages of votes cast, a less misleading picture emerges. Dotted throughout the South are fields of blue and purplish-blue, including well-defined strings of them along IH65 and 55. In fact, the places where Bush absolutely carried the day are some of the least populated spots in the country. I am also pleased to note that my own hometown of San Antonio, Texas is gratifyingly azure-tinged.

These maps seem to indicate that Bush only holds full dominance in areas so empty that the effects of his draconian policies aren’t very visible. If the misery and pain of this administration’s vicious onslaught against minorities and the poor are shoved into your face every day, you don’t tend to have such a high opinion of Our Fearless Leader.

So I’m sorry to have tarred everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line with the same ugly brush. I sincerely apologize. I didn’t know; I fell for the same bullshit we all did.

Sorry about that last post. A real optimistic viewpoint, eh? What can I say, I’m horrifically depressed.

Here’s something that might bring a smile to your face: Fanatical Apathy: Concession Speech. Thanks to John for the link.

As I write this, my daughter is sitting next to me putting together a jigsaw puzzle while watching a Ren & Stimpy DVD for the ten-thousandth time. I look at her playing, and I am filled with a sadness and fear that is close to unbearable because I know the kind of world she’s going to grow up in. A world of nervous glances and watching your tongue, of stomping on the little guy, of shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never.

I’ve tried to fight the good fight over the years, and I’d like to think I’ve done some good here and there. Lots of us have. But now, what can I possibly do? I’m an ordinary guy. There’s not a damned thing in the world I can do to stop the tidal wave of meanness and hatred that’s headed toward us. I know enough history to see what’s happening; I imagine most historians are soiling their pants right now. We’ve shown signs of a civilization in decay for some time now, and the election last week was the tipping point.

You see, we’re too late. We had thought that exposing the lies and motives of the neocons would result in their rejection by the American people. We believed that if people merely saw them for what they were then the traditional American sense of fair play and decency would send them packing.

And it didn’t.

A few years ago, before the media sold us out, it may have worked. But now the fascists know they don’t have to hide anymore. They are free to operate in the open, and we already know there is no limit to how low they will stoop. You think things are pretty bad after four years of Bush? Just you wait. This election has unleashed hell.

But they cheated, you say. They intimidated minorities, they trashed registrations, they rigged voting machines. All true. But the plain fact of the matter is that if the regular Joes and Janes out there really believed in the good old American virtues, then the Republicans could have cheated as much as they wanted and it still wouldn’t have been enough to keep them in power. We lost a long time before this election, we lost in the pulpits and board rooms instead of the voting booth. We are up against a coalition of monstrous corporations and religious fanatics doing all in their power to literally bring about Armageddon in the Middle East. Add the white Southern asshole vote and you’ve got a majority.

The country that I was raised in is gone, probably never to return. I loved that country. I wanted my daughter to grow up there. But that just isn’t going to happen. In all probability she’s going to grow up in a fascist theocracy.

And here’s my personal dilemma. We don’t have the money to move to Canada. Will I be able to hold my tongue? Will I be able to live with myself if I don’t? Can I just blend in and be a “good German” so I don’t put my family at risk? Will it really be as bad as I’m afraid it will? I just don’t fucking know what to do, and I don’t know anyone else that does either. I hope to whatever God there is that I’m completely wrong about everything.

I have to go now. I’m going to hug my daughter, before it gets dark.