Superheros

I grew up watching superheros do this and that on TV, but never really gave them a lot of thought beyond their sheer humanity saving entertainment value.  Until now.  This morning, I was laying in bed, looking at the various super hero pictures on my pajamas. I don't think any of them make sense.  For instance:

Superman

Lets just say something bad was going to happen to this planet, so I made a rocket and went to a planet that had people that look just like me, only it had a red sun.  Because of this red sun, I can now fly, I have x-ray vision, and I can deflect bullets and my strength is off the charts.  I know, already a huge stretch.  But lets just say it happened.  Why, then, is my only weakness a rock from the planet that I came from?  Seriously, my weakness is dirt clods?  Really?  I used to play with dirt clods back on my home world, but now that is the only thing that can kill me.  Huh.

Also, I would have all those rad super powers because of the sun, right?  Why does this guy look like he works out every waking moment he isn't fighting crime.  He has his powers because of the sun, not because of his Gold's Gym membership.  The sun makes him strong.  I don't get why he looks like a walking/flying human tank.  He should look a lot more like a graphic designer, or a software engineer.


The Green Lantern

Why does the Green Lantern looks like he could bench press a car when really all he ever did was tell his ring to make some crazy thing to stop criminals.  Seriously, I never saw the Green Lantern use his ring to make giant weights that he would lift.  I would wear that faggy ring for those abs.  My word.  I would like to eat some scrambled eggs off abs like that.  This guy has no body fat, yet he doesn't even do anything physically.  He just dreams up crazy business that the ring then makes. How does that get you those shoulders?  It doesn't.

And why the mask?  Did he have a normal life beyond being the Green Lantern?  Isn't that a full time gig?  If I had that ring, and I wasn't busy using it to fight crime, I would use it to make a comfy house with a giant bed and a huge TV.  Why do you need money when you have that ring?  And if you don't need money then why do you hide your identity?  It makes no sense...

Plus, if you're a superhero and you can do what you want, why the tights?  Who wants to wear a full body leotard?  No one I know.  Even if I had a body like that, I would still rather my crime fighting get up be some cargo shorts, vans and a tank for the summer and something like Cobain would have worn for the winter.  At least Green Lantern didn't have a cape.


The Flash

That running super fast can even make you a super hero is pretty much stupid to begin with...  But I will go along with it for laughs and pretend that running super fast is a legit super power... Common sense = suspended.  So, sure, he runs really fast and that totally helps with fighting crime.  Do you see this guys lats?!?!  Do you see them?  Look at his lats.  Just look at them.  Did you look?  I said look at them.  What runner has lats like this?!  This is not the way people that run really fast look.  The best part of this picture is that his legs aren't even in it, which should be his best part.  His quads should look like tree trunks to keep his knees in order.  His chest should NOT look like that.  All that upper body weight would make it so he could run really fast, but only in a straight line.  And why is he so tall?!  That high center of gravity would make high speed direction changes impossible.


                                                                                                                          Carl Lewis

I bet Carl would laugh his ass off because The Flash is white.  Tons of super fast guys are white.  Makes perfect sense that The Flash is bone white.  Carl here won lots of gold metals because he is fast.  One of the fastest humans that ever lived.  Look at his lats.  Look at them!!  Would you look at his lats?!  Oh, you say you can't see them?  Yeah, me neither.  That's because to be one of the fastest humans on the planet, giant lats just aren't necessary.  In fact, I would guess they would work against you.  Carl seemed to think so, that's why he doesn't have any.  You know there could never be a super hero like The Flash.  If there was one, he would be black, and black men have more fashion sense than to wear red tights.  Black Flash with look like shaft, and he wouldn't run at all because he would be too busy being cool.

Aquaman

This is just sad.  Talking to fish and hanging out underwater is a super power now?  At least this guy looks more like Micheal Phelps. Fins on his calves though, and no webbed feet?  Srsly, what crime takes place underwater?  Who ever heard of an underwater mugging?  Do submarines get jacked?  I don't think that they do.  This guys greatest contribution to the hall of justice would likely be finding car keys and bags of weed lost by surfers while surfing.  "Great job, Aquaman.  That is a huge bag of lost car keys, change and refer.  We need to go stop some crimes on land, watch the base, we should be back in a couple of hours!"


I would love to see a fight between Wolverine and Aquaman.  Wolverine would make Aquaman look like an overweight 5 year old.

facebook is ruining our brains.

Back in the really olden days when I was growing up, so like 1974, I used to always hear how TV was rotting my brains.  We watched too much TV and we weren't learning how to think.  Plus it was wrecking my eye site because I was always "way too close to the TV screen!"  I, personally, always seem to be running the risk of turning into a potato.  And somehow, prolly due to TV and its influence, we grew up to be slackers.

My brother and I had the routine dialed in.  We took turns, prolly around 1979, twisting the antenna to get better reception on the 4 or 5 channels we got.  It was a feat of team work and communication.  We pulled the signal down outta the airwaves in order to watch shows.  I think the signals came from other huge antenna, I don't think there were any satellites yet.  At least none for getting TV signals.  My brother and I dreamed of a day when we could have watch sized TVs.  Especially my brother, he had a thing for  wrist wear as a kid.  I mainly wanted something I could watch in bed while I was supposed to be going to sleep because I have never been one to fall asleep like normal people, even as a kid.  TV was kinda magic back then.  Crappy reception, no such thing as a VCR, or DVR.  You watched something when it was on, or you heard about it from people that saw it and wished you had remembered.

Things have changed.  Most HOAs don't allow tall antenna, and I am pretty sure signal is broadcast all digital now anyways.  So twisting the antenna is a thing of the past.  The very distant past.  I notice we still yell at kids to move back from the TV, and then we scoot back in to our desks to press our faces against computer screens,  If I would have known back then that I would spend my days and nights sitting in a desk chair sitting arms length from a computer monitor, which is hardly different from a tv screen, I would have laughed when my parents yelled at me to move.  But they were spankers, so I would have got spanked way more too.

It is odd, having watched the internet progress.  In the early 90s I was reading that one day we would watch TV over the web.  I scoffed.  WAY too much bandwidth, never happen I would think and prolly say to those around me.  Never happen, that is dumb.  Well today I am back to not having an antenna, my computer is hooked to my TV and I watch things from Hulu and Netflix.  George Jetson stuff.  Same with watching Netflix on my iphone under the covers at night.  I could watch it on the laptop, but that doesn't feel so futuristic as the iphone does.  Both about a foot from my eyeballs I should add.  Both still trying to rot my brain I am sure.

I realize that facebook is not TV.  But, it is todays brain rotting culprit.  These days everything is boiled down to the smallest amount it can be.  Dialogue isn't between TV characters, it is between us, but boiled down to tiny exchanges.  I used to get an idea, and build it up and write it in my blog.  I would try and turn one stupid idea into an entire blog entry to entertain whoever happened to be stopping by.  Anymore, I get a dumb idea, and I try to boil it down to a facebook status update.  I generally hope my status is somehow entertaining to those who read it.

Blah blah blah, I should say some stuff about not fully developing ideas anymore, and tie that all into some crap about status updates and twitter only allowing so few words and how they are not really status updates like "damn I broke my foot" but more just stupid shit we all think of, and say something witty about how kids are growing up today being taught to truncate their conversations with each other instead of giving them thought and making them all complete or whatever, but I wanna go check my facebook feed and see if anyone has posted anything awesome.

Encroachment.

Back in the olden days, people used horses to get around.  I am not an animal lover really.  Don't get me wrong, I don't hate horses and use my nights plotting ways to get back at horses for all of their terrible deeds.  And they must commit terrible deeds if I hate them.  But I don't, so they probably don't either.  I just don't care for animals.  They usually smell like they live outside, even the ones that don't.  They get fur all over me, or slobber.  I don't mind baby animals.  Baby animals, like baby people, can do pretty gross stuff and still be cute.  I have picked up a sleeping baby and the baby was drenched in sweat.  I thought, 'how cute, this baby is so sweaty.'  I see some dude on a bus that's super sweaty, the last thing I am going to think is that he's cute.  I am going to think he's disgusting and should get off the bus.  However, disgusting bus guy is way off course because I was talking about the olden days and riding grody horses everywhere.

I think I like the whole buck board set up.  If I am driving, then I have someone with me "riding shotgun".  It isn't like riding shotgun today where we have crazy rules that revolve around who gets to sit in the front seat with the driver.  I am talking about siting next to the driver with a gun.  A real shotgun, where people get put down if things get outta hand.  And by put down, I mean shot, not laughed at for being dressed funny or having a small penis.

Today we drive around in cars, all closed up with windows and air conditioning.  No shotguns, most likely.  Big cars mostly, with lots of power.  I think if we reintroduced shotguns to this mess, it might not even help that much.  People seem to think that their cars are a moving fortress of righteousness.

I could go on forever about the crazy things I see people do on the road, but right now I have a particular thing in mind.  But besides that, I wanna talk about the yield sign.

The first yield sign was invented by a cop in Tulsa Oklahoma and installed in 1950.  That means we have all had roughly 60 years to get the concept of yielding.  Before that, people mostly only yielded in sword fights.  They would scream out, "I yield!" as a sign of surrender so that they didn't get stabbed to death by a sword.  This of course in the really olden days prior to 1950 when the only law was pretty much live by your wit, your grit and something else that rhythms with both wit and grit.  Either way, those that lived beyond the age of 13 were rare due to the lack of medicine, law, civility and the abundance of swords and shotguns.

If we lived back then, we would think of now as the shiny future full of wonders and marvels the likes of which we could only dream.  Wonders like the interwebz, GTA3, pizza, medicine, ice-cream and the iphone.  But we are not in our barbaric past dreaming of those things, we are in the shiny future where they exist. Probably we don't have flying cars yet because no one has learned, in the last 60 years, how to obey a yield sign.  To yield, as anyone who has avoided death in a sword fight can tell you, means literally to give or render as fitting, rightfully owed, or required...to give up possession of on claim or demand.  So a yield sign means you give any claim to the lane you want into until there is no one else using it.  Then you may advance in a forwardly direction with your automobile into said lane.  You would then have the right-of-way being that no one is coming.  If there is a car coming at you in the lane you are waiting to get into then you  DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT-OF-WAY (21803(a) Yield signs, yield until reasonably safe.) You yield it until oncoming traffic is all gone.  Then you can go.  That's what yielding means.

Many times my good friend, who I will call "Bill," and I see drivers abusing yield signs on our way back from fetching lunch.  Not the sign itself, but more specifically, flouting the need to yield that the sign represents. "Bill" gets righteously indignant as cars inch into a lane when they clearly do not have the right-of-way.  As "Bill" points out, this is encroaching.  After careful discussion and consideration, we determined the need for a new sign.  I give you: THE ENCROACHING SIGN!

I am not sure yet where this sign would go.  It might give the people already in the lane a warning that their rights are about to be encroached upon.  It might go right where a yield sign would have gone to let people know they are free to enter the lane in a douchebag manner (which is also a good name for a douchey rich guys house).  I think I am for replacing yield signs with encroach signs since most everyone driving is already entering onto the rights of others through the means of either gradual steps or in some cases, attempted stealth.

There you go.  Now you're free to encroach where you really don't belong.  I hope you're happy.

Unlimited...

Any show that says it is brought to you with "limited commercial interruptions" should turn into an object so I can throw it across the room into the wall and then punch it in the face.  Of course it is, as are all shows.  If a show had unlimited commercial interruptions, then it would never, ever end.  It's like telling you, "the following program is presented to you with an ending."   It bugs me when I am told things that can't possibly be any other way, but I am told these things like they are somehow an amazing benefit to me.  A show with an ending isn't really an amazing benefit to me.  It's normal.  A show without an ending would just be weird, and no one would like it and no one would watch it, hence no one would watch the unlimited commercials either.  Limited commercial interruption is an amazing benefit to the people bringing me the show and the limited commercial interruption.  40 minutes of mediocre entertainment somehow shoved into an hour is the norm.  The unlimited commercial interruption guy should really be ashamed of himself.  How does he even face his mother?  His family would be proud if he bought a sword and used it on himself at sunrise on the beach.  There is no other honorable way for him.

The G2 pilot & moral dilemma

Maybe this isn't a moral dilemma.  What better lead in then to grab you with an awesome title, and then tell you maybe I am wrong.  Normally, morality is not a problem for me.  I have a pretty good idea where the boundaries are at for most things.  It's important to know where moral boundaries are, in my opinion.  That way, when you cross over them, you know if you need to create a diversion.  I have to rechalk my moral boundaries often.  I cross over them regularly, but I don't want to lose sight of them.  If you don't know when you crossed one, you don't know when to make something look like a complete accident, or like you didn't really know.

Given that, it seems like it would be difficult for me to wind up in any kind of moral dilemma.  Yet here I am.  My favorite pen to write with is a G2 Pilot.  That gives me an idea, I am adding that to the title.  I am also not rewriting the first paragraph.  This post is starting to feel shaky, but it won't when I am done.  At least, no more so than usual.  Anyways, yes, I still use pens.  I like to write on paper.  Partly because I like how it feels, all old fashiony and visceral.  Also, I like to draw pictures of trees on paper because of the irony, and because I am better than a tree.  Try and stop me tree!  That's what I thought, just sit there and get leaves on my car, just like every other day.

Recently my G2 Pilot pen ran out of ink.  This particular kind of pen is so awesome though, you can buy it ink refills and keep the same pen.  I am not so romantic or nostalgic that I want to keep that pen because of any special meaning or memory.  I am a man, and it's a pen, not a car or a rocket...it's just a pen.  I just don't like buying new stuff if I don't have to, unless it's somehow less expensive to buy new than to keep old... and here in lies my perceived moral dilemma.  A package of refills is 2 for 2 bucks.  I am not good at math, but that is a dollar a refill about.  At Costco, I can get a new package of Pilot G2s, 15 of them, for 12.89 or so.  That means the whole pen in that package is less than a dollar each.  But, I have to spend almost 13 bucks plus tax to get the cheaper pen.  If money weren't tight, this would be less of a dilemma, but money is tight...

Maybe until I save up the 14 or so dollars I will need to get all new pens, I will write with my tears.  Or maybe I will write with my red Pilot G2 until I save up enough money to get the big pack.  Or maybe I will....is that La Chuppacabra?!?!  What?  I didn't take your Pilot G2 when you looked at La Chuppacabra, that's crazy talk.  Can I borrow some chalk, I might have smudged a line, I will give the chalk right back, cheese...not like I am a thief or anything.  Good luck finding your pen, I gotta run.

How not to be a douche bag at the gym.

Listen up douchebags.  I have been thinking of writing an entry like this for awhile.  But it's a difficult subject to broach.  "Because you want to be sensitive and educational without being hurtful or offensive?" you might ask...  Not at all, that is not my concern in the least.  What makes this difficult are the many different methods there are to being a total dbag at the gym.  So many different ways, some completely obvious, some not as obvious.  Some point to minor character flaws, others point to the need for life changing events to occur, maybe even some type of intervention, some are even arguable.  Well, arguable by those qualified to argue them, not just by any lameman.

I finally concluded that a post like this isn't possible.  The one single post would take up pages and pages of blog space.  I would hate to use up the remaining amount of blog space on this one topic.  So I made another blog.  I would link it in this post, but I don't want to.  You should look in the links on the side for the "How not to be a total douchebag at the gym" link.  That is the link you want.

If you happy being a douchebag at the gym, or just in life, prolly don't read the new blog.  Prolly also keep your distance from me.  I am really allergic to total douchebags.  The allergy is a good thing really, it helps me spot them for sure.

tastless

Weird how often tasteless jokes are the very best jokes of all.