Stuck with Huey

I wasn't sure what I was going to post this morning, but as sometimes happens when you're a blogger of my stature (I'm 6'2"), the answer came to me in a dream.

Those of you who have been following this blog for some time know that the true motivation behind this blog is not, in fact, to bring people together through the gift of laughter nor even to stroke my massive ego, but rather to spread the word regarding the genius that is Huey Lewis. As a prophet of the mighty Huey, I am occasionally visited by dreams which are used by the Hip but Square One to impart guidance to those of you who are not as far along in your Walk along the Thin Line.

I have spoken before of my first prophetic dream of Huey, in which I was a Moses-like figure who led his people to the promised land only to be refused entry himself:

In this dream I was at the mall, waiting for Huey Lewis to arrive. Evidently I had won tickets to a Huey Lewis and the News concert, and part of the prize was getting to meet Huey himself. I stood there in the mall, wondering when Huey would arrive. I was not wondering if Huey would arrive, because Huey always follows through on his commitments. That's the kind of stand-up guy he is. Not like that f---ing flake Godot.

Sure enough, he showed up right on time. He definitely isn't as spry as he was back in the 80s, but he looked trim and neat in a casual button-down shirt and jeans. I shook his hand and introduced him to my son, Climber, who had appeared next to me, as people sometimes do in my dreams. "This man's name is Huey," I told Climber. "Just like Huey, Dewey and Louie."

If Huey took offense at that, he didn't show it, although he seemed to be more interested in getting something to eat. We stopped in at one of those nice family restaurants in the mall, like R.J. Blannigan's or whatever. Huey spoke briefly with the manager, securing a nice, out-of-the way booth for himself and his sizable entourage. I said entourage, you pervs. Anyway, his entourage was so large that by the time everyone sat down, there was no room for me. I think Climber got in, but I had to sit at another table.

I don't hold it against Huey -- a man has to put his entourage first. I knew that was how it had to be. And that's where the dream ended.

This dream, as you know, was the first in an escalating series of events that culminated in the Huey-pocalypse (also sometimes known as Huey-geddon), in which the forces of infectious light rock vanquished the forces of evil once and for all. It was, to put it mildly, an exciting time to be alive.

But now I have been visited by another Huey-related dream, indicating that my work in spreading the News is not yet finished. Listen:

I was at a Huey Lewis concert with my college friend X, who I specifically recall disliked Huey Lewis when we were in college. Evidently X had come around, proving that no one is beyond the Power of Love. It was a relatively small concert; the venue was a small rectangular theater split by a single center aisle (an arrangement that I realized, after waking, was reminiscent of a church). There were maybe 300 people there. Before the concert started, Huey emerged from the back and matter-of-factly informed the crowd that he would be getting some drinks after the show and that anyone who was up for it was welcome to join him. The crowd accepted this news with aplomb, although being comprised mostly of people in their forties with children and other responsibilities, not many of them seemed likely to take Huey up on his offer. This made me sad. X turned to me and said that he thought we should meet Huey after the show. I was already feeling a bit tired, but I thought, "Who am I to risk the budding faith of a new Huey devotee?" I said, "Ok, but we'll need to hit Starbucks first."

The show began, with Huey performing a number of deeper cuts from Picture This and Fore! A screen over Huey's head displayed a slightly blown up version of Huey's head, which wasn't really necessary, since he was only about 50 feet away from the back of the theater. Next to Huey's magnified real-time head on the screen was an image of Huey's head from 20+ years earlier, singing the same song. The two Huey heads looked remarkably similar, considering the passage of time, but I noticed a few oddities about the 1980s Huey head. First, it was wearing eye shadow. Second, it appeared to be slurring the words, relying on the crowd to fill in the gaps. Is 1980s Huey stoned? I wondered to myself.

After Huey finished up "Jacob's Ladder," the strains of Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" began to play over the speakers. At first I was appalled. Was Huey performing a cover of the shittiest Bob Seger song ever? But then it became apparent that the theater was undergoing some sort of fire drill. They were playing Bob Seger to facilitate the process of getting everyone outside as quickly as possible. Genius.

I wandered outside with the rest of the crowd, noticing that several members of my high school class were in attendance. I was going to crack a Bob Seger joke, saying "This was only a test. In the event of a real Bob Seger performance, you would have been unable to leave the theater." (Because even in my dreams, I spend a lot of time devising lame jokes to make people like me.) Unfortunately I never had a chance to crack my joke, because a sort of impromptu high school reunion had occurred. I'm not sure if all these guys (sadly, none of the girls I knew in high school showed up, possibly because I didn't know any girls in high school) had all come to the Huey Lewis concert to surprise me, knowing that I would be there, of if they were surprised to see me. The dream sort of faded out after that, and once again I didn't actually get to talk to Huey.

I wish I could interpret this prophetic vision for you; sadly, I am only a vessel for the New Drug. Perhaps you can offer an interpretation in the comments.

I won't be doing a caption contest this week, on account of the big holiday. The good news is that I'm finished with my novel, Mercury Falls! Well, at least I think I'm finished. The length ended up not being a problem; it's now 81,000 words long. I've sent it out to four people whose opinions I trust, including frequent commenter Glacial Spain (whom I also know from high school), Joel of Crummy Church Signs, Jocelyn of O Mighty Crisis and John Sellers of Angry John Sellers, author of Perfect from Now On (whom I know from our overlapping tours in the 'Nam, which neither of us likes to talk about, since we were only 3 years old and not ready for all the shit that went down over there).

Anyway, we'll see what my focus group thinks about the book; I may have some rewriting to do. After that, the book will hopefully be something I can interest a publisher in.

Have a swell weekend and a great holiday (for those of you in the States)!

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Waiting for Huey | Would You Buy this Novel? Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Lords of Light!

As you know, I'm a highly educated man with a vast depth and breadth of knowledge at my disposal. One might expect such an erudite individual to pursue greatness within the halls of academia, but I have elected instead to rub elbows with the Common Man so that I can better understand the Human Condition, as I believe this to be better preparation for writing the Great American Novel and taking on other Appropriately Capitalized Endeavors.

For the most part I tolerate the vulgarities of the hoi polloi, but occasionally I am pained to realize that not all of my acquaintances have had the cultural advantages I have enjoyed. For instance, over lunch with coworkers recently I made a reference to what I assumed was a shared element of our cultural heritage, only to discover that my associates were unfamiliar with one of the basic mythological frameworks that underlies the Western civilization.

"How is it possible," I gasped incredulously, "that you've never heard of Thundarr the Barbarian?"

It would have been understandable if my coworkers were in their twenties. Or fifties. But they are both in their late thirties, which means that they would have been around the age of ten when the animated adventures of Thundarr and his compatriots Ariel the sorceress and Ookla the Mok premiered on ABC in 1980. It is virtually inconceivable that a ten year old American boy would not have known about Thundarr the Barbarian in the early 80s.

Those of you who were born after 1980 or so are going to need this explained to you. You see, in the early 1980s, there was no cable or satellite TV. There were no DVDs or videotapes. There were no iPods or video game systems. All we had to entertain ourselves on Saturday morning were Lite-Brites, Colorforms and four television channels, at least three of which were, at any given time, playing unwatchable crap. The most unwatchable of the unwatchable crap came in the form of semi-animated superheroes, space monsters and talking animals from the Hanna-Barbera school of programming. Naturally, that's what all of us ten-year-olds were watching.

Thundarr the Barbarian was, to a ten year old boy stuck in between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, pretty much the best imaginable show. In the words of the show's intro:

The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man's civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn...
A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil.
He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!

This is awesome because, first of all, 1994! Holy crap, that's already super far in the future. And then, out of nowhere, a runaway planet? That shit could really happen. And then we skip forward two thousand years. That's enough time for pretty much anything to happen. We're talking werewolves, mutants, sorcery... basically all the most awesome stuff ever.

We didn't mind that Thundarr's "sunsword" looked an awful lot like a light saber, or that the massive, fur-covered Ookla bore a striking resemblance to another sub-lingual sci-fi sidekick with a heart of gold. To the contrary, the more something was like Star Wars, the better.

Granted, the dialog (Thundarr was known for such puzzling exclamations as "Lords of Light!" and "Demon Dogs!") made George Lucas seem like a master of interpersonal subtleties, and the animation quality ranked somewhere between "Speed Racer" and a biology filmstrip, but to us it was just awesome.

So thoroughly was I inculcated in the awesomeness of Thundarr the Barbarian that even now, a quarter century after Ookla the Mok took his last ride on his mighty Equort steed into the sunset, I find myself making frequent references to the post-apocalyptic trio's adventures -- which is how the whole business with my coworkers started. "It's just like in Thundarr the Barbarian," I'll say, expecting heads to nod in complicit understanding, but receiving only blank looks of incomprehension.

"It's like what?"

"Thundarr the Barbarian. You know, after the runaway planet wipes out human civilization and the moon gets cut in half."

"Who the hell is Thunder the Barbarian?"

"Not 'thunder.' Thundarr, with two r's. You know, he used to run around with Ariel the sorceress and his friend Ookla the Mok, who could only speak in anguished growls."

But no amount of prodding would rekindle my coworkers' memories. It was as if they had never experienced the apocalyptic runaway planet of 1994 and its ruinous wake. Lacking this shared touchstone, I feel unmoored, like a missionary in a far off land, a stranger in a strange land.

"Who the hell are you people?" I gasped, stumbling backwards in the Google cafeteria. It was impossible -- inconceivable! -- that these people did not know of the indomitable Thundarr and friends. It was as if they had never heard of the Rubix Cube, backmasking or New Coke. Clearly I had been surrounded by impostors, people who pretended to share my cultural heritage in order to manipulate me for their own diabolical ends. Perhaps they were renegade replicants fabricated by the Tyrell Corporation or alien reptiles wearing latex masks, hoping to steal my water and feast on my fattened corpse.

"Get back!" I screamed. Whatever they were up to, I wasn't going to let them get away with it.

My coworkers regarded me with concern. "Diesel, what are you..."

"Inyuk-chuk!" I yelled, looking to the sky, my fists clenched at my sides.

"Diesel, what are you doing?"

"It's the Apache Indian word for 'big man,'" I said. "Hello? Didn't you guys ever watch The Superfriends? In a minute I'm gonna be like three hundred feet tall."

"Why don't you sit down and finish your frozen yogurt," one of them said.

"Whatever," I sighed, and sat to finish my yogurt in silence. Sometimes people are just baffling.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: The Hair Was Created By Man. It Evolved. It Rebelled. | Reality Bites Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Congrats, Taunt Guy!

Doug at Taunt Vortex wins this time around. Doug, you may display the coveted In Your Face award.




Brad came in second with:

"You can flex all you want, Jason. This picture is still gayer than nine picnics."

And y not i placed once again, with:

Frank: The NEW first rule of Fight Club is never, EVER wear those pink pants to Fight Club again.

For the record, my shorts aren't actually pink. I had to change the hue of my pic to match the background, which pinkified my shorts a bit, making this picture even gayer than I had perhaps intended.

Sadly, however, that really is my physique. At least it was a few months back, before I started working out again. Presumably I now look at least marginally better than that.

Sorry I haven't been around much. Got so busy this week I never got around to posting anything on Wednesday. The good news is that I'm very close to being done with Mercury Falls.

See you on Monday!

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Vote!

y not i said...

Frank: The NEW first rule of Fight Club is never, EVER wear those pink pants to Fight Club again.


Avitable said...

Distracted by the glare from Diesel's pasty-white body, Jason Statham slipped in a patch of oil and knocked himself out.


HeyJoe said...

Diesel attempts to hypnotize Frank with his "dancing hula girl" tattoo.


Brad said...

"You can flex all you want, Jason. This picture is still gayer than nine picnics."


Doug at Taunt Vortex said...

At the bus factory, Diesel becomes acutely aware that singing "The Wheels on the Bus" nonstop for seven hours was annoying to the other employees.


scott a said...

Don't make get straight-to-video on your ass!


Glacial Spain said...

Diesel: Oh, I thought this was my scene with Bai Ling.
Jason: Yeah, WTF? I thought this was MY scene with Bai Ling.


johnny virgil said...

Diesel: "Dude. Drinking the milk directly out of the carton isn't that big of a deal. Seriously."


Bunk Strutts said...

"Wait! I recobanize you! Renaissance Faire 1983! We were the Centaur, remember?!"


BRWombat said...

Diesel begins to think that he might need TWO chair massages this week.

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Today's Music is Driving Me Crazy

Okay, this has got to stop. Right now I'm listening, for lack of any better options, to a song by Maroon Five called "Goodnight Goodnight." If every other mediocre falsetto-plagued Maroon Five song is any indication, I'll be hearing this song several hundred thousand times over the next few weeks.

The song contains these haunting lyrics:

I’m sorry, I did not mean to hurt my little girl
It's beyond me, I cannot carry the weight of the heavy world
So goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, hope that things work out all right, yeah
Whoa

Pop song lyics are supposed to be stupid, but holy crap already. "It's beyond me, I cannot carry the weight of the heavy world"? That's a mixed metaphor combined with a cliche and topped off with pointless redundancy. And in case the title of the song didn't clue you in, you're in for a lot of repetition of the phrase "goodnight goodnight" with this song. The phrase pops up twelve times, for a total of twenty-four goodnights.

And that's restrained compared to John Mayer's latest effort, ironically entitled "Say What You Need to Say." Mayer, in his typically earnest, breathy style, croons, "Say what you need to say" a whopping thirty-six times in this song. Is he trying to be funny? Or is he just trying to see how annoying he can be and still get 13 year old girls to swoon over him?

The all time champion of excruciatingly relentless repetition, in my view, is American Idol star and apparent one-hit-wonder Bo Bice, who manages to squeeze into an already supremely shitty song called "The Real Thing," a stunning FORTY repetitions of the phrase "tell me." A sampling:

Tell me what we got, tell me it's a lot tell me it's the real thing
Tell me not to change and always be the same, tell me that's a good thing
It's a good thing
Tell me not to lie, tell me not to wait
Tell me that you want the same things as me
Tell me that it's fate driving me insane
Tell me it's the real thing

I'm pretty sure pop songs weren't always this bad. I remember my mom complaining about the repetitiveness of Police lyrics when I forced her to listen to them during a long car trip to Florida, but I can't find a single song of theirs where a phrase was repeated more than twenty times -- and usually their repetition was in the background, or the tail end of a song, such as where repeated chorus of "Sending out an S.O.S." that finishes out the song "Message in a Bottle."

The worst offender being heavily played on the radio right now is a song called "Believe," by the sometimes listenable mope-rock band Staind. The crux of the song is overwrought crooning of the phrase "Believe in me," and the song is filled out with meaningless and embarrassing cliches.

Believe in me
I know you've waited for so long
Believe in me
Sometimes the weak become the strong
Believe in me
This life's not always what it seems
Believe in me
Cause I was made for chasing dreams

Hang on there buddy. What do you want me to do again? Your lyrical complexity is baffling. And speaking of Staind, what is up with all the touchy-feely mope metal out there these days? Whatever happened to the swaggering bravado of a Billy Squier or Sammy Hagar? The Staind song starts right in with:

I sit alone and watch the clock
Trying to collect my thoughts
All I think about is you

And so I cry myself to sleep
And hope the devil I don't meet
In the dreams that I live through

Are you freaking kidding with this crap? You're crying yourself to sleep? I hope you run into Ted Nugent on the subway some day. He'll give you something to cry about.

The worst is the metal ballads that try to sound deep by borrowing terms from pop psychology. The word of the moment is closure. Take this line from Hinder's "Better Than Me":

The bed I'm lying in is getting colder
Wish I never would've said it's over
And I can't pretend... I won't think about you when I'm older
Cause we never really had our closure
This can't be the end

Or this one, from Daughtry:

And I never thought I'd doubt you,
I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.
I'm slowly getting closure.
I guess it's really over.
I'm finally getting better.

For crying out loud, other than the fact that Daughtry is feeling a little better about the breakup, it's the same freaking song.

The band Chevelle even has a song called "Closure," which features these impressively banal lyrics:

Closure has come to me myself,
You will never belong to me.
Closure has come to me myself,
You will never belong to me.

Yeah. Seriously.

Three Doors Down is always good for self-absorbed generic earnestness. In their latest offering, a song called "Let Me Be Myself," they whine:

Lately i'm so tired of waiting for you
To say that it's ok, but tell me
Please, would you one time
Just let me be myself
So i can shine with my own light
Let me be myself
Would you let me be myself

Hey, Three Doors Down? It's really none of my business, but I really think you guys should return the algebra textbook in which you found these lyrics scrawled to the fourteen year old girl who owns it.

Enough with this crap already. If you guys can't write meaningful, original, genuine lyrics about real human emotions, then at least write garbage with conviction. Take these lyrics, from Def Leppard's Rock of Ages:

Rise up, gather round
Rock this palace to the ground
Burn it up let's go for broke
Watch the night go up in smoke
Rock on! (rock on!)
Drive me crazier, no serenade
No fire brigade, just pyromania, c'mon
What do you want? What do you want?
I want rock 'n' roll, yes I do
Long live rock 'n' roll

Now that's the shit. Take a look at anything by AC/DC, early Van Halen or ZZ Top for inspiration, if you're still having trouble.

Oh, and John Mayer: If you ever decide to cover another Tom Petty song, watch your back.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: James Blunt's Songwriting Journal | The Rhythm of Love | Nobody Does it Better Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Caption Contest: The Transporter

Once again the spate of upcoming movies is disappointing me. The most promising one on the horizon (at least for the purposes of a caption contest) is Transporter 3. I couldn't find much in the way of photos for that one, but here's one of me and Jason Statham (Frank Martin) in the original Transporter.



You know the rules. Submit your captions in the comments. The best ones will duke it out mano a mano in a poll on Tuesday. Good luck and have a swell weekend.

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Ask Diesel About Language Stuff #2

Recently I started a new feature on this site with the creative and inspiring name "Ask Diesel About Language Stuff."

The goal of this feature is to impart to you some insignificant fraction of my vast knowledge of grammar, punctuation and usage. Lest you think that I'm just another self-appointed language expert pushing a bunch of arbitrary and impossible-to-remember rules on you, though, I give you the twofold Diesel Language Pledge:

First, I promise never to consult any style guides, writing manuals, dictionaries or thesauri when researching these columns. All of the guidelines provided here will be some combination of stuff I remember from 7th grade English class, personal opinion and baseless conjecture. There are two reasons for this:

1. I don't like looking stuff up.
2. I figure that if I can remember the name of Danger Mouse's sidekick (Penfold) but I can't recall what a gerund is, then what hope do mere mortals such as you have? To be useful, a a set of rules has to be manageable enough for an ordinary person to actually remember them.
   

Second, I promise not to ever cite a rule that doesn't have a clear, practical purpose. I'm convinced that one of the reasons that many people give up trying to write correctly is that there are so many pedantic asswipes out there ready to pounce on them for breaking some obscure, pointless grammatical rule. There is such an overabundance of rules in the English language that Shakespeare couldn't even follow them all, and Mark Twain didn't even try.

As a gesture of good faith, I offer you two grammatical/usage rules that you may freely ignore:

Stupid Rule Number One: It is wrong to wantonly split infinitives.

Most people don't even know what a split infinitive is -- a somewhat surprising fact given the incessant carping of self-appointed Committee for Ensuring the Intactness of Infinitives. An infinitive, as you may remember from Spanish class, is the non-conjugated form of a verb. It's the verb as it exists in the wild, before it gets domesticated by a subject. In most languages, the infinitive form of a verb is a single word. English, however, is such a crazy bastardized language that early linguists gave up trying to standardize infinitives. Their solution was to toss the word "to" in front of the verb and say, "There, it's an infinitive. Now let's get some lunch."

For example, the Spanish word ir is translated as "to go." We use two words; they use one. Our way is a little less efficient, but the neat thing about it is that it gives you more flexibility in using the infinitive. We can shove all kinds of modifiers in between "to" and "go" if we feel like it. Perhaps the most famous example of a split infinitive is Star Trek's "to boldly go where no man/one has gone before."

The problem is that certain language purists never got the many memorandi alerting them to the fact that we're not speaking Latin any more. They keep insisting that "to" and "go" have to be married forever as if they were a single word, despite the undeniable fact that they have clearly grown apart. These people would claim that the Enterprise's mission was "to go boldly," which we can all agree sounds retarded.

The logic of the rule is almost impossible to follow, but I think the situation is analogous to the way that many couples try to "save their marriage" for the sake of the children. Everybody can see that "to" and "go" are sleeping in separate beds, but we're all supposed to pretend that nothing has changed. "Don't go shoving other words between them," the linguistic moralist chides. "They might still get back together."

Listen, it's been like a thousand years, ok? There isn't going to be any reconciliation. I mean, it sucks that the family is going to have to celebrate two separate Christmases, but denial isn't helping anybody. It's time to finally let go.

The really stupid thing about this rule is that there are all kinds of other examples of parts of speech that are one word in Latin and two words in English, and nobody bats an eye at shoe-horning other words in between them. Take the famous Latin phrase veni, vidi, vici, which means "I came, I saw, I conquered." Nobody would complain if you said "I first came, I eventually saw, and I finally conquered," even though that kind of fractured conjugation is impossible in Latin. So why complain about split infinitives?

There's no basis for outlawing split infinitives on either the grounds of clarity or on those of aesthetics. Now if you want to talk about a language that fractures parts of speech in ways that should be illegal, take a look at German. As Twain famously remarked:

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German.

Stupid Rule Number Two: A preposition is not something you can end a sentence with.

I don't know what the history or logic of this rule is. I guess people just feel bad for the lowly preposition, dangling out there at the end of a clause like some sort of vestigial limb. It's not a bad guideline; generally there is a better slot in which to stick a preposition, but making this an absolute rule is the sort of nonsense with which I will not up put.

The fact is, there are some cases where the puffed-up pomp of the properly placed preposition proves preposterous. "Open tear the package, on slide the prophylactic, and in shove it!" she exclaimed in a fit of passion. Unless Yoda-speak turns you on, I'd recommend letting your prepositions dangle during such intimate moments.

This is another area where self-conscious over-correction has disastrous results. Most people know that it's "proper" to use phrases such as "in which" or "with whom," but they tend not to know what to do with them exactly. So they hedge their bets by writing horrific things like "I went to the theater with a boy on whom I had long had a crush on." The best example of this sort of over-correction is the line from the Paul McCartney song "Live and Let Die," which I insist is:

In this ever-changing world in which we're livin'

but most people hear as:

In this ever-changing world in which we live in

I have to believe that a genius like Paul McCartney wouldn't write something like the latter, and you can't convince me otherwise. Although I have no trouble believing that Axl Rose sings the corrupted version.

In any case, if the lyrics really were the latter, they'd be a perfect example of the kind of mangled Franken-English that is far more offensive than the occasional dangling preposition. So here's my rule: When dealing with prepositions, do what feels natural, not what seems proper.

Finally, one more point regarding the "proper" use of prepositions: Occasionally one of the linguistic gestapo will chide someone for saying something like "I'm going to jump in the shower a minute." "Don't you mean," say the preposition police, "that you're going to jump into the shower? Or are you really going to get into the shower and then just jump up and down?"

Yes, we understand that technically "jump into" is correct. But look, is there any confusion about what the phrase "jump in the shower" means? You do understand that either way there's no literal jumping, right? It's a freaking figure of speech. And let me ask you this, oh vaunted guardian of prepositions, when you run into a phone booth to change into Preposition Man, do you put your magical Preposition Suit on, or do you put it onto? When you put your head up your ass, do you shove it in or shove it into? Ah, logical consistency, the bane of language purists everywhere.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and, more importantly, I hope I have convinced you that I'm not just another pedantic language purist, because that will make it much easier for me to continue to bitch about misplaced apostrophes.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Ask Diesel About Language Stuff | The Unbearable Dumbness of Being Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

I Can No Longer Hold My Head High

Not for more than a few hours at a time, anyway. What the hell is up with that? If I sit at my desk or in my car for more than a couple hours, my neck starts to hurt. The tension starts between my shoulder blades, works its way up through my neck, and isn’t satisfied until it has brought about a full-fledged tension headache.

I used to be able to sit for hours at a time without any trouble. I can’t figure out what has changed. My head can’t have gotten that much heavier since I was in my twenties, and I can’t think of any reason for my neck to have atrophied significantly. I think I use my neck about the same amount as I always have, and for pretty much the same stuff. It’s not like I’ve recently started carrying giant clay jars of water from the well on my head three times a day or something.

It’s fortunate for me that I work at Google, where one can get a fifteen minute chair massage for five bucks. Five bucks! You can’t get a decent taco salad for five bucks any more, but at Google it’s enough to get a 4’9” Filipina to dig her elbows into your trapezeuses until you howl in pain. Now that’s a deal.

A few days ago I was so screwed up that endured the Filipina’s manipulations for fifteen minutes only to turn around and go through it again three hours later. I get at least one chair massage a week, and sometimes I get two. Occasionally the tension is the result of some clearly identifiable source of stress at work – for example, yesterday there was a Jimmy Buffet concert at Google – but usually it’s just the stress of holding my big head up. I was actually on my way to a massage room on the other side of the campus yesterday when the parrotheads started showing up. There were security guards out directing traffic and everything, prompting me to utter one of those phrases that you only hear at a place like the Google headquarters: “So help me, if Jimmy Buffet makes me late for my massage….”

Lately I’ve been thinking about creative ways to relieve the tension in my neckal* area. I remember when I was a kid, one of my aunts had a sort of apparatus that you strapped to your head that was connected by a rope to a pulley that you would suspend from the top of a door. At the other end of the rope was a plastic bag that you would fill with water to provide a counterweight. I imagine it didn’t have to be water; urine probably would have worked too, but water raises fewer questions.

So I started looking for something like that online, assuming that neckal science had advanced somewhat over the past 20 years, or at the very least hadn’t receded so much that you could no longer legally hang yourself from a doorway. Sure enough, I found just what I was looking for. You can even get it on eBay. For about $30 more you can get a version that dispenses with the water bag, presumably in case you are a desert-dwelling neck-pain sufferer.**

And then there’s this item, which looks suspiciously like those neck rings that African women are made to wear so that they see whether their children are provoking the hyenas in the distant scrublands surrounding the village. “I see you, Kuboto! Put down that stick!” And young Kuboto quietly curses his mother and her freakishly long neck.

In any case, it seems like this device, in addition to possibly weakening my neck muscles to the point where I might choke on my on tongue, would merely transfer the tension from my neck to my shoulders and upper back. And my neck and upper back, which are used to being able to transfer their tension up through the neck to my temples, will have no choice but to shift the pain somewhere else, perhaps my elbows or Croatia.

So my thinking is to get one of those water bag thingies, but maybe use a five pound weight instead of a water bag, because having a bag of water suspended over my head gives me flashbacks to the ‘Nam. I’ll install a hook above my office chair (at home, not at work, where I would have a hard time explaining this odd change in décor), so that I can work at my desk all day without having to worry about keeping me head upright. Because frankly I have enough to worry about.

Like getting “Margaritaville” out of my head.




*This is the scientific term for “the area of the body including the neck and nearby body parts.”
**A demographic overwhelmingly supported McCain in the presidential election.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Are You the Responsible Parent | Failure to Appear Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

(Not a) Caption Contest

Yeah, so, um... no caption contest today. My computer is in the shop, and I don't have Paint Shop Pro installed on this piece of crap. Sorry about that. I'll update the contest standings this week. And of course I'll be back here on Monday with a splendid new post.

Have a swell weekend.

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

The Plot Lengthens

Hey folks,

So I know I haven't been responding to comments or commenting on your blogs or blogging on your comments or clogging your bomments lately, but once again I've gotten super-busy.

My goal was to get the Humor-Blogs.com changes done and finish up some tasks around the house by the end of October, so that I could finally get back to the stuffy I really enjoy doing, such as writing. Most of you know that I've been working on a novel off and on basically since the inception of this blog over two years ago. Well, I haven't had the time to touch it since June, and a few days ago I made the mistake of diving back into it.

The good news is that coming to the novel fresh after several months, I am actually very pleased with what I have so far. I mean, I'm obviously biased, but I really believe that it's turning into a damn fine novel. It's something that I would enjoy reading, and would probably recommend to my friends, even if I hadn't written it. I read parts of it and think, "Damn, this guy is clever. Where does he come up with this stuff?" Of course, I also flex my pectorals at my reflection when I get out of the shower, so there you go.

The bad news is that I've been doing a little research and it turns out that most novels are over 200 pages long. I mean, holy crap, right? I'm pretty verbose and the longest paper I wrote in college was like 16 pages. 200 is way more than 16. Almost 200 more. 16 pages is basically the margin of error for a novel. Anyway, I thought I was pretty much done, but even after working on it all weekend I still only have 58,000 words, and I used a fair number of them twice. A lot of editors evidently won't even look at a novel with less than 70,000 words. Well, they would probably look at it, but only to say, "I think we need to stretch out the middle a bit. Maybe add a bank robbery subplot. We'd have to change the title, of course. I'm thinking, "The Old Man, the Bank Robbery and the Sea."

So I thought I was going to just do a little tweaking, but it turns out that I have to add a bank robbery or two. I really want to get this thing done, so I'll probably be spending most of my spare time on it for a few weeks. It's National Novel Writing Month anyway, right? Perfect time to wrap this damn thing up.

The upshot is, I might not be around a whole lot for a few more weeks. But the good news (in addition to the other good news which I provided earlier, about how my novel kicks ass) is that I took a bunch of meth last week and wrote like 6 awesome blog posts, so at least I'll have some decent posts for you.

Anyway, be assured that I read all of your comments and I appreciate the visits, links and smileys, even if I don't have time to acknowledge all of them. And be assured that my silence means that I'm pouring all of my wit and energy into Mercury Falls. Which is going to kick some serious ass. When I finally finish it. And get it published.

By the way, if this is the first you're hearing of this novel, you can read more about it here.

Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Election Recap

In which I answer your most pressing questions about the election (other than "Why is democracy such a pain in the ass?")...

Q. Barack Obama took over twice as many electoral votes as McCain. Isn't this a disaster for the Republicans?

A. No. A disaster for the Republicans would be a Republican president who over-commits the military, fails to reform the tax code or Social Security, create a massive new health care entitlement program and spends taxpayers' money in a way that makes the most fiscally irresponsible liberal look like a penny pincher.

Q. When I look at the map of red states versus blue states, it looks like McCain won over half the country. How could he have lost so badly?

A. Obama won the states that have people in them.

Q. In California, it looks like the proposition to ban gay marriage is going to pass. Does this mean that my marriage is safe?

A. No. Your marriage is still pretty gay.

Q. I'm a Republican, and my party has just gone down in flames. Why aren't any of my Republican friends talking about moving to Canada?

A. Because you'd have to be a complete tool to threaten to move to another country because you're upset about the political situation here. Also, you've already moved your company's headquarters to Bermuda to avoid paying corporate taxes in the U.S., so you're pretty much set.

Q. I'm a white man, and even though I prefer Obama's policies, I voted for McCain because he's white. Does that make me a racist?

A. What kind of a stupid question is that? Of course that means you're a racist. That's the very definition of racism, you ignorant, bigoted scumbag.

Q. I'm a black man, and even though I prefer McCain's policies, I voted for Obama because he's black. Does that make me racist?

A. No. Also, you're most likely a figment of my imagination.

Q. Doesn't the fact that a black man was able to be elected president prove that affirmative action policies are not necessary?

A. It proves that affirmative action is not necessary for intelligent, articulate, motivated black people like Barack Obama. However, it remains essential for stupid, inarticulate, unmotivated black people.

Q. Well that's fine for black people, but I'm a stupid, inarticulate and unmotivated white person. When do I get a break?

Things will get easier for you when you move out of the White House in January.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: The Unbearable Dumbness of Being | World's Worst Dictator | Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech

My fellow Americans,

Thank you for electing me to be your president. No really, thanks. Way to break your 220 year streak of electing old white guys. Super-impressive.

Anyway, great to be here. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than being the president of the greatest nation in the world. Oh wait, yes I can: It would be cool if you didn't hand me a national debt of ten trillion dollars and the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression. Also, maybe one of your last six or seven white guy administrations could have done something about the health care situation, the bankrupt Social Security program or all those shitty old levies. And how many unwinnable wars are we fighting right now? I count three, but I've been a little out of it lately with all the last minute campaigning. Still at three. Excellent.

That was some campaign, wasn't it? A real nail biter. I'm joking, of course. I won like 54 states. I think they were actually making up new states there toward the end, I was winning so badly. That was a good move, guys, pulling out of Michigan early. You know where else you should have pulled out of? North A-freaking-merica. I mean, what the hell? Were you even trying? And this business with Miss Alaska. That was a joke, right?

Sorry, I don't mean to sound bitter. I'm glad I won. It's great for America, to have a black guy as President, even if... no, forget it. It's just great. That's all.

Look, I just want you to know that I'm on to you, okay? Wreck the country and then put a black guy in charge. Ha ha, very funny. Well, the joke's on you, because I'm stacking the Supreme Court with my homies, the first chance I get. Don't get too cocky about the time you shoved a brother in front of the train unless you want the Tyrell Jackson court slapping your lily ass with ten trillion dollars of reparations.

Yeah, so I campaigned on the theme of change. Unfortunately change is all we've got in the damn treasury, thanks to you bunch of I.O.U-issuing motherf---ers. So I'm going to start small, with the things that I have some control over.

First, I'm enacting a new affirmative action policy where anyone who has any power over my personal safefty has to be at least as black as I am. Tiger Woods need not apply, a'ight? The Secret Service will now be known as the Obama Posse. A well-regulated militia being necessary to keep my ass from getting gank'd, all Posse members will carry MAC-10s and will be empowered to cap the ass of anyone who doesn't give me my props, ya feel me? Anyone not running with my Posse can still carry a gun as long as they's at least fi'ty miles away from me or dead. You scapegoatin' bitches are going to have to hang with me for the full four.

Ok, so I gotta get working on my urban bailout plan. I'm going to give a Cadillac to anyone living in the inner city who doesn't have a criminal record or gold grillz. Figure it'll cost around a five hundred billion. But that's a'ight, because it'll trickle down to Wall Street eventually or some shit. If this ship's going down, it's going down, yo. If you think we're in trouble now, you just wait four years.

Peace out.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: A Vote for Me is a Vote for not the Other Guy | Physician, Go F--- Thyself | Throwing My Vote Away (on a Smaller Vagina) Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com

Best of the Mattress Police

Here are some posts that my readers seemed to particularly like. If you enjoy a post, please help spread the word by clicking the Digg, Stumble, or Smiley widgets at the bottom of the post. You can also subscribe to this blog to make sure you don't miss any new posts. Thanks!

Blogger of Light(R)
Now with trace amounts of Thomas Kinkade's semen.

This is not a compendia of erratum.
Most people can't write for shit.

Can You Dig It?
A letter to the 19 year old kid whom I paid $8 an hour to dig trenches.

Human Inertia
My third worst boss ever.

Denial is One of the Symptoms
In which I vent about some of the idiotic emails I get.

Throwing My Vote Away (on a Smaller Vagina)
Don't throw your vote away on candidates who promise cheap gas, independence from foreign oil, and larger penises. Throw it away on candidates who promise cheap gas, independence from foreign oil, and smaller vaginas.

Sock Drawer
Ruminations on Wrinkle Releaser(TM) and why I wouldn't be a very good cancer patient.

This Post Was Not Tested on Animals
If my shampoo wasn't tested on animals, doesn't that mean it's being tested on me?

Due to the Threat of Lawsuits, the Diesel Wellness Center No Longer Offers Wand Cleaning
A pictorial essay on the weirdness that is Google. And me. And Mr. Bleach.

Sock Drawer
Where do suicidal people in movies learn how to tie such great knots?

Don't Make Me Angry
The ups and downs of being the Hulk.

Book 'Em!
Why the alarm always goes off when I walk into Barnes & Noble.

Too Much To Bear
It's the Build-a-Bear Apocalypse!