Set the nest egg on fire

I still don't have a job. I'm running out of money. I'm going back to New Orleans for a week. While there, I hope to give a nice, large portion of my remaining life savings a Viking funeral and an Irish wake. See you at the soup kitchen.

Little girls dislike rough men in dirty clothes and beards

I love some of the answers given by theater managers in the early part of the last century to the questions, "Are the children ever frightened by cartoons or during serials? If so, by what type of incident?"
My other favorite, besides the one I used for the title of this post: "Only in cases of extreme knife incidents."

Spam of the kings

I think by now we've all been inundated with so much bizarre spam (for example, "sluts suck cock through slice of pizza") that we've become jaded. However, a spam I received recently broke through my defenses. I have no idea what it's trying to sell me, but I'm buying. The spam is from Thicken Q. Fervently and the subject line is "Bonjour Sir Joshkrauter, 60% discount on cheapest CIA." Nice.

I'm not so angry today

Yep.


Listening to: Roky Erickson

Message to everyone I like: Please have as many kids as possible so we can thoroughly outnumber these idiots

These people probably aren't going to the Deuce Bigalow sequel. Nevertheless, they are also morons. I feel like crying. Instead, I will have another Schlitz and stick my dick in the hole that the farmer forbid. The first two were so great, the third one has to be gangbusters. Creationism 4 Life! I love dinosaurs! Whooooo!

Fuck you

The Dukes of Hazzard is Number One at the box office, grossing more than $30 million in one weekend.

All week, I have been bombarded with ads for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. According to imdb.com, 174 people worked on this film. Huge amounts of money were spent making this film and paying these 174 people. In addition, the movie is rated R, so anyone purchasing a ticket is at least 17 years old. Think about that while watching the TV ads. It's mindblowing.

If you pay to see either of these two movies, you are hurting our country. Fuck you.

Usually, I can laugh about the awfulness of a horrible movie, but for some reason, the fact that a sequel to Deuce Bigalow exists, and that probably lots of people will go see it, depresses the hell out of me.

The information suppliers

Even though I currently have no pot to piss in, I am very, very glad I did not make use of my journalism degree and become a journalist. I would have been a terrible journalist. For one thing, I'm not interested in the daily dispersal of facts. I don't think immediate facts are a bridge to the truth. I think you can get a lot closer to the truth from immediate lies, jokes, and art than you can from isolated facts. A really good sandwich (or a really bad one) can give me more truth than a network newscast or New York Times article. Historical facts, while just as meaningless if presented out of context, can at least provide some understanding of current political and social situations by giving us the chain of events, the contexts, the known reasons how and maybe why things are happening the way they are, both in this country and everywhere else, but our current television and newspaper journalists have no interest in historical facts. Most of us in this country know fuck-all about foreign policy, politics, and history. I include myself in this condemnation. I am an idiot in this subject. While I am partially responsible for my own ignorance, the mainstream United States media does a horrible job of keeping its citizens informed. All we get is a vague, muddled "what" without any "how" or "why." The past is creepily ignored at all costs. What happened yesterday might as well have never happened at all. Immediacy slays understanding. No context is supplied. No cause is explained. Nothing exists but effect. Stories that are irrelevant to the populace at large but push emotional buttons siphon coverage from important stories. Natalee Holloway's disappearance, Michael Jackson's trial, Russian submariners. These stories are unimportant as news. They mean a lot to the handful of people directly affected, but for the rest of us, they function at the same level as a sentimental Hollywood tearjerker. Our newspapers are woefully inadequate, but at least we can skip the most egregious articles and advertisements. Television news is an abomination. We get the day's murders, assaults, and car accidents (again, irrelevant as "news"), a brief, shallow dip into local politics, an even briefer, shallower dip into national and world events, a bunch of weather, some sports highlights, and whatever animal baby was born in a zoo that day. It's appalling. Telling us about a car bomb in Iraq or a shooting in Israel tells us nothing about those countries or their conflicts. We're being read a random page from a different novel every day and it means nothing. Business and advertising values have irreversibly corrupted our news outlets. Our local Fox outlet doesn't even hide its taintedness. Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which also owns 20th Century Fox film studios. Each day on the local news, there is a behind-the-scenes "story" about some new 20th Century Fox movie. Shameless. Once a news outlet presents advertising as news, it can never be trusted again. This is a basic tenet of journalism school. It is unethical in journalism to let the advertising infect the reporting. Why do television news stations get away with this daily? My rant so far is not very original or topical. This is obvious, old, artless stuff. I am beating a dead horse. What's the solution? We probably all need to be more vigilant about seeking out information instead of letting it come to us, and there are many good and great journalists and depth and investigative reporters writing for good and great magazines, but why are newspapers and television news broadcasts so awful and what can we do about it?

H.W. Ross founded The New Yorker magazine. He was worried about advertising infecting news and editorial content back in 1926. This is from a letter to publisher Raoul Fleischmann that year:
"I think it essential that all members of the advertising staff be tactfully but firmly taught that they are in no way to have direct contact with the members of the editorial staff or with me...
...Unless stern measures are taken my present efforts to keep the editorial department independent, uninfluenced, honest and - more important than all - slightly aloof, will be more or less defeated..."

Reading: Agee On Film by James Agee

Collage #4

"Self-Portrait w/ Flying Dutchman"

Wha?

It was not clear why he licked the wounds.

Fun with Google and Yahoo image search revisited

Perhaps you remember this post. Let's try a new batch of words and see what pops up first on these two titans of engine searching.

First up, Google image search:

outrageous

teens

Bill Cosby

hoagie

nutrageous

extravaganza

bearded

bonehead play

robotic squirrel

goddamn

Now, Yahoo image search:

outrageous

teens

Bill Cosby

hoagie

nutrageous

extravaganza

bearded

bonehead play (same photo as Google)

robotic squirrel

goddamn

Jeb Bush has too much forehead and the other jerk has too much neck

Look at them. Just look at them.

I hate the summer

It's time to admit it. The romance and nostalgia are dead. Every year I look forward to the summer, but it's time to wise the fuck up. Summertime blows. It's hot as shit, bugs are everywhere, my car is an inferno and its air-conditioning is competent at best, the heat makes me nauseous and lazy, I drink too much beer, and I sweat a lot. I'm not in school anymore. What charm can the summer hold for a man whose schedule is the same year-round? It's time for summer to get its ass smacked off the top of the seasonal chart. I like the fall. I like the spring. I hated winter in the Midwest, but in Texas, the winter is pretty damn swank. Somehow, summer retained a sexy reputation in my mind. Summer's been coasting on its grade-school charm for too long. It is the worst season. FUCK YOU SUMMER! YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE! I'll be smiling it up when October comes along and pimp-slaps this oppressive heat-funk back into the hell from which it spewed forth.

This post is only the beginning. Can-Smashing Robot will now have an all-weather format. Nothing is more interesting than weather. What's it like outside? That's the most interesting question that's ever been asked.