Feature #120:

I've started a new job. Indeed, it's true, someone was willing to hire me, and it wasn't to clean toilets. I have marketable skills. I don't need to print out more resumes. People give me money to do things. It's a miracle.

I'm now a small-town reporter. I left a correspondent position at a pretty sizable paper to take this full-time job at a tiny paper, and i'm pretty comfortable about the decision. It's not as glamourous-feeling, but hey, you've got to pay your dues. Well, maybe not you. You could just luck out. But i do.

So, i'm over at the Gardner News in Gardner, Massachusetts. It's a pretty nice place, very relaxed, and they make a point of not over-working their reporters, which is really quite nice. The only things that aren't nice are the commute (45 minutes each way) and the homeless guy i talked to my first day there. See, i thought it would make a neat story to profile some kind of 'bus culture' -- or, well, people who have met each other by taking the bus every day, and have formed friendships that only exist on the bus. Sounds decent. My editor thought it was a good idea, so hey. Why not.

I headed out to the nearest bus stop, and like on cue, the bus came and took everyone except one person away. So, when the bus left, i walked up to the man and said, "Are you waiting for the bus?"

He kind of shook his head -- not in any responsive way. More like he was at sea in the middle of a whirlpool. He wore a green flannel shirt, was unshaven, and had a soft pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. And by soft, i don't mean the kind of packs that come soft. It was a hard pack that looked like someone ran over it with a hum-v.

But, that's ok. Was he taking the bus?

"Get the fuckatta here."

Is that a yes? A no? What is that? I had about one second to think of a response, and then he decided i wasn't getting out of there quick enough.

"GET THE FUCKATTA HERE!! FUCK YOU!! GO FUCKYASELF!"

As calmly as someone can walk after being violently screamed at, i got the fuckatta there. I see him every day now, but am sure to stay the fuckatta his way.

I still do think it would make a good story, though.

Anyway, short feature coming your way. The new job hasn't given me the kind of ample free time i had while freelancing from home (i wonder why...), so the time for a new feature just sort of snuck up on me. This one's a bit interactive -- write in with your experience from either, and maybe we'll get a little forum of love going. Or, well, love is optional, depending on if that's your thang.

1. Seeing things on the floor
2. Seeing things in the future

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With blurred eyes, have you ever looked at something non-descript and seen an image? I don't mean this in a hallucination sort of way. We're pattern-makers by design. That's how we survive. We see that the wolly mammoth has the ability to stomp on our mother-in-law, and so we stay away. Pattern makers. Survival. Thumbs up to survival.

Without the wolly mammoth around, though, we still make patterns. Me, i make patterns when my contacts are out. Before i got them, i thought the world was full of blurred surfaces -- the carpet, the trees, the road. I was amazed that the world hosted enough detail for individual leaves or, by some extremely elaborate miracle, grains of sand. Now, when my contacts are out, my eyes try to find the small things in the big picture, and my brain ends up making animals.

Yeah. Animals. I see little dogs or horses or, well, animals. I don't think you need more examples of animals.

Again, this isn't the sort of thing i need to be sent away for. It's just a little pattern, like seeing things in clouds. Why am i defending myself? I don't need to defend myself. See? There i go again.

Anyway, the point is that the other day, i was staring at the carpet in my room when i woke up (because, really, who just opens their eyes and gets out of bed? there is manditory stare-blankly-at-something time in the morning, and i usually choose the carpet). My pants, which were a crumpled mess (note: not actually a mess in the pants, though), displayed to me the image of a little retro-looking girl. I decided, for the first time in the history of my mini-visions, to draw it on the computer. And so, i did:

I'm not all too sure why i felt compelled to share that, but now that i have, does anyone else experience this? And, for that matter, has anyone else decided to draw their vision on the computer? E-mail me if so.

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2. This is a public service announcement. If there's anyone out there with a mental condition and a lot of free time spent at comic book stores, you may want to contact our friend Rob here. This is an e-mail i (and, i'm assuming, a gaggle of other innocent bystanders) got. I'm not entertaining any thoughts about this guy, although you have to admit -- it would be great if what he was saying is real. Of course, that then means that, in the age of time-travel, the human race still hasn't gotten over SPAM e-mails... which is really quite a shame. Anyway, here's the e-mail:

Subj: chris
Date: 8/27/2002 6:02:59 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: rob71@juno.com
To: knullkupf@aol.com, knulp2@aol.com, knulph1620@aol.com, knulprek@aol.com, knulrich@aol.com, knuls@aol.com, knulton@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Hello,

If you are a Time Traveler from Dimension D1263GT10, year 2008 or Dimension D2044GT5, year 2432 and or in possession of the Dimensional Warp Generator wrist watch, the Carbon Copy Replica model #52 4350 series or similar technology I need your help! My entire life and health has been messed with by evil beings! I simply need the safest method of transferring my

consciousness or returning to my younger self with my current mind/memory. I need an advanced time traveler to work with who can help me, I'd would prefer someone with access to teleportation as well as a variety different types of time travel. I will also need temporal displacement. This is not a joke! I am serious! Please send a separate email to me at: Robbyyy1@aol.com if you can help! Thanks

2em6yTnZWmppdzn5KeWpGdk=

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by

(rob71@juno.com) on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 17:04:09

If anyone actually decides to e-mail Rob, please drop me a line to tell us all how it goes.

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Feature #121:

1.

Due to the size of this file, this is a one-week-only offer. Remember my little episode on television that i wrote about a month or so ago? Well, now's your chance to...

SEE Jason grasp for words, desperately striving for some sense of cohesion!
WONDER if the anchor was thinking, "Get this kid off the air before our viewers start losing brain cells"!
MARVEL at Jason's hair, which plastered itself to his forehead in a way unlike it has ever done before!

That's right. You get to watch me flounder on cable television. Here it is. Enjoy it... and remember, it ain't easy to stare into the living rooms of New England. Have mercy on me.

(oops... you're out of luck, because that one-week offer has since expired. but, if you're desperate to see this thing, and i don't know why you would be, then e-mail me and i'll send you the file)

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2. It's time for me to convert, buy a chastity belt, and then meet a priest in the confession booth, because otherwise i'm surely going to hell. Not only did i drag a friend of mine into laughing at cultural differences... no, we were laughing at cultural differences in an obituary.

I scan the obits every day, mainly because i think it would be amusing to find someone with the same name as one of my friends. But, i also read them because i think it adds some humanity to the news. Often, i'll see an obit about some young kid who died, and then when i see the news story about the kid, i feel like i know him a bit better, and can recognize the loss and not just the news story. Are these irreconcilably different reasons for turning to the obits page? I suppose so, but that isn't stopping me.

Last week, i read this obit from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette:

Bur Bur, 50

WORCESTER -- Bur Bur, 50, of 25 Woodland St., died Saturday, Aug. 31, in UMass Memorial Medical Center -- Memorial Campus after an illness.

She leaves her husband, Gyung Gyung; two sons, Gyan Gyan and Agyon Agyon, both of Worcester; two daughters, Buch Buch and Bing Bing, both of Worcester; her mother, Ngi Ngi of Vietnam; three brothers, Buk Buk, Bet Bet and But But, all of Vietnam; three sisters, Bok Bok, Bik Bik and Ber Ber, all of Vietnam; nieces and nephews. She was born in Vietnam, daughter of Byunh Byunh, and had lived here for two years.

The funeral will be held Monday, Sept. 2, from... (these details aren't necessary)

When i read it to myself, i chuckled. Then, with two friends at the kitchen table, i read it aloud, and it took one friend and myself to about Bet Bet to start laughing -- guiltily, shamefully, perhaps a bit repressed, but by Bik Bik it had all come out. When i finished, we looked at our other friend, whose expression hadn't changed since the whole fiasco started. Then she said: "This is what got us into the war."

I wiped a tear from my eye, and nodded.

"And this is why they won," she added. I agreed again.

And so, i'm outing myself here. I have, in one single, thoughtless swoop, ridiculed both a culture and the death of a woman. I am, to be sure, terrible.

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3. Remember the crazy time-travel guy from the last feature? (check feature #120) Well, two readers took it upon themselves to do a little investigation into whether the guy was just a sci-fi SPAMmer, or seriously delusional. After what transpired, i think we have an answer. The following are the e-mails i received from these two, in the order they appeared.

Letter one, from Caleb:

Hey, i saw your feature about the time traveling guy named rob, and IMed him one day. He was on away, however, but today he IMed me back. I dont have all of the conversation, but here's what i do have, from pieces that i showed to another friend through an IM:

Robbyyy1: hi

CIP1025: hello fellow time traveler

Robbyyy1: hi, do you have the dwg?

Robbyyy1: i need your help if so

CIP1025: yes, i have a carbon copy replica, modem 523451, im hoping it's similar enough to the 524350 that you mentioned

Robbyyy1: is it good at restoreing memory?

CIP1025: yes

CIP1025: good enough

Robbyyy1: good, how much might you want for it?

CIP1025: hm..

CIP1025: i'd like to make a trade, if you have anything usefull that you wouldn't mind getting rid of

CIP1025: weaponry, in specific

Robbyyy1: i am afraid i dont have any weapons, but i am open for other suggestions

At this point i asked for a cloaking device, but he said he had none, he only had normal mundane items, no futuristic stuff. He then related to me his life story.. about how he was such a genius as a child, but then his dad began dating this evil woman, who was part of some evil race (the ranns or something), and she fed him evil microscoping mind impairing devices, so now his potential is ruined and he's suffering from some strange illness. He's healing naturally, but he wanted this device so he could go back to his young self, and use his knowledge of the future to prevent the mind impairing stuff from happening. Basically, he would say he had a dream from god, giving him knowledge of the future. Over the next couple of weeks he would make minor predictions which would come true, so his family would trust his psychic abilities. Then, whenever it was necessary, he would make a prediction in order to prevent himself from digesting the mind controling stuff (I guess something like "God says if i eat this, I'll be sick").

Anyhow, I said i felt sorry for him, and we ended up agreeing on him paying $60 for me to send the device on FedEx overnight express. He said he'd call fedex tomorrow for them to pick it up from my house (i left my address, but no apartment number, just in case). It'll be interesting to see what happens :-)

Oh, and my friend whom i showed the convo talked to him as well, saying she was related to me. She should be sending you her conversation.

Letter two, from Crimmy:

Caleb and I kinda did a follow up on your thing with the email from the guy who thinks that he's a time traveler and needed that watch. Caleb approached him first (I'm sure he's sending you the conversation) and then I talked to the guy a little later, posing as Caleb's little sister and offering to sell the watch as well.

Have Fun.

-Crimmy-

damnsexyguava: Hey, my brother mentioned that he's talking to you about selling our wrist watch. Well it's mine just as much as his and I can beat his price garunteed.

Robbyyy1: hi, great how much please

damnsexyguava: Well, make me an offer.

Robbyyy1: well the 4350a usally go between $3-$4,000, will you take $2000?

damnsexyguava: Hmmm, well this is a 4351, and I don't know where you've been price matching but I have a feeling you're ripping me off. Do you have anything of interest to trade?

Robbyyy1: I am honestly not ripping you off, my situation is grave, if you can meet me in person i will be glad to tripple my offer

damnsexyguava: I'm not big on meeting in person..I don't like people knowing who I am, excluding my brother of course.

Robbyyy1: I understand, can we talk on the phone please?

damnsexyguava: You know what? Just to spite my brother I'll give you the damn thing.

damnsexyguava: It's not as if I want it

Robbyyy1: well thnaks for your genuous offer, but you brother has already said he will help me, and I do not want to be selfish

damnsexyguava: It's not Selfish, let a little sister get ahead of a game against her brother..

damnsexyguava: You'd be doing me a personal favour.

Robbyyy1: well then, wehn fedex arives, have it sent to me, I will send you back payment. I am not going to take both of your qtches depite how bad I need them without paying one of yous

damnsexyguava: oh no no darling, it's the same watch

Robbyyy1: oh ok, well then, I only need one, then right? Thanks though

Letter three, from Caleb:

wow.. things have taken an interesting turn.. I just got back home and I had an email waiting for me from the time traveler:

Hello,

I just got off the phone with airborne. They will be there tomorrow between 4:00-7:00.

I have gone ahead and made sure they will provide the packaging for you. When you fill out the airborne label simply mark the red box Express. Also the option bill to receiver.

and my address it will be coming to which is:

Robby Godino
(there was a real address here, but i'm not going to risk printing it)
Burlington, MA 01801

Thanks

I think he's seriously delusional. The address could be fake, but it looks real enough.. man Im not sure what to do if a fed ex guy shows up. I guess I'll just give them a box with a little watch in it or something. We'll see..

Letter four, from Caleb:

Well, either the guy is legitimately delusional, or a real life time traveler, because fed ex came today. My brother had answered the door, and came into my room saying "Do we have an express air mail pick up for fedex?". I said no, because i didnt feel like explaining why i had given out my address to my older brother, and well.. i wasnt sure what to send, as i of course dont actually have the device he's looking for. I feel pretty bad, actually.. hope the guy doesnt have to pay for fed ex since i didnt send anything

And that's where our story ends, as of this update. If there's any further events, i'll be sure to post them next update. Thank you to these two for taking the time to be confused -- and especially Caleb, who went above and beyond the call of duty by actually giving out an address. Well done.

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Feature #122:

They say that no good deed goes unpunished, and they're right. I went to see my friends' band play their first show, and they were the first on a bill of 6 local bands. A slew of us went, and our heroes of rock (Bastille, they're called) didn't disappoint. Then, everyone wanted to leave.

In my past experience playing shows, I've always felt pretty bad when crowds come for one band and then take off. It's much worse when you're the band-in-waiting, and you get to watch the audience dramatically shrink right before you go on stage. But, i've also felt lousy when a crowd for my band takes off and leaves the next band hanging. So, with that in mind, of perhaps 15-20 people, five of us decided to stick around and watch the next band.

I've been to hardcore shows before, and i'm not a particularly sheltered person. I don't really like hardcore, but it's not a foreign entity, either. To me, hardcore is one of those things i need to be prepared for, like when a doctor says, "Ok, this might sting for a minute." I need that. I need some forewarning.

Bastille isn't hardcore, and the kids that got up on stage after them didn't look hardcore. They were wearing regular ol' t-shirts, and they looked like quiet, Nintendo-playing suburban high school kids. I expected some kind of Weezer rip-off, or maybe even something a little lighter and poppier -- especially now that Weezer sucks (i can't wait for the e-mail about that comment). And then they started playing. I wish i had some warning.

As i watched them, i thought about loony fundamentalist conservative mothers, who once droned on and on about rock music being the devil's music. If they had come to see this band, they would have dropped to their knees and prayed right there on the floor. They may have even begged for mercy, not from God, but from the lead singer.

Let's just talk about the lead singer. He was wearing a white polo shirt with two red stripes, and he looked like the kind of kid that might enjoy a round of golf or getting a little worked up at the bowling alley. But, little did i know that he probably eats babies. He had short, droopy brown hair that was spawning a mullet, but it was happening out of indifference rather than, say, a love of hockey or pick-up trucks.

When that music started going, his face grew a mask of hatred, as if someone had just covered his mother with porkchops and threw her into a shark pool. And when he screamed -- not sang, but screamed, in screeching falsetto -- his eyes bugged like Large Marge in Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure and his bright white teeth jumped out from behind the microphone like a "Beware of lunatic" warning sign. If you were to come across a dead mangled body, its face a twisted mess of bone and blood, and then as you stared in horror, its eyes suddenly popped open, intensely focusing on you as if to drag you into its pain and misery -- well, that's pretty much what he did the whole show. Every hardcore band i've seen had some kind of larger dude, who would stream into a microphone in some kind of profiled pose, or perhaps just down at the floor. But this kid. Oh, this kid just stared at people. He didn't scream to the music -- no, he just screamed AT people. From the floor, from the middle of the crowd, sometimes on his knees, he stared at people. I think he stared at me, although i was standing in the back.

I will have nightmares about this kid.

And now, the feature:

1. Win a CD contest
2. Dear Abby: you suck
3. Funny headlines

1. It's time to unload another Buddy System Indeed CD, via a relatively pointless contest!

Here's the deal: E-mail me a bad joke. That's it. Before the next update, I'll choose a bad joke, based on the overall badness/goodness ratio of it. It's got to be bad... but, not completely void of meaning. Here, i'll give you examples:

BAD BAD JOKE: What do you get when you mix a toaster oven and a pair of wool socks? A woolster!

GOOD BAD JOKE: This large biker dude is sitting in a bar, surrounded by large biker dude friends. They're having a few beers, being a bit rowdy, and then a little drunk man walks through the doors and swaggers over to the bikers. He looks the large biker dude in the face, and he says, "I just fucked your grandmother!"

The other biker dudes look at each other, and then stand up to give this drunk man a beating. But the large dude tells his friends to sit back down, so they do.

Then the little drunk man says, "And you know what? She LOVED it!"

At this, the other biker dudes jump up again, but the large dude remains unmoved, and tells them to sit back down. They all look at each other in confusion, and sit back down.

Then the little drunk man says, "And I can't wait to do it again!"

Again, the biker dudes jump up, but the large dude holds them back. Then he looks at the little man and says, "Go home grandpa, you're drunk."

So, that's the deal. E-mail me, and i'll post them all next week. Winner gets a CD. Good luck.

(that second joke was courtesy of my friend berto, who told it a lot better than i just wrote it)

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2. So, i wrote to Dear Abby -- but, only to tell Dear Abby what I have always thought: that, in a nutshell, she sucks. In fact, they both suck. That's right. For some reason, Dear Abby is written by two women, one of which isn't named Abby. Her name is Jeanne -- which, scrambled up and without the "nn" can be "Ajee," which somewhat rhymes with Abby. I wonder if this woman feels slighted. Does Jeanne, this unnamed whipping-girl of advice, ever write in under the assumed name "LOST IN A SHADOW" or "MY PARENTS GAVE ME A PERFECTLY FINE NAME AND IT ISN'T ABBY, YOU HEARTLESS BITCH"? I suppose the second one might forfeit the anonymous intentions. But what the hell. She's Jeanne. Loud and proud, Jeanne.

Anyway, the reason i wrote Dear Abby is not because of Jeanne. She made her own bed, and she can lay in it. I wrote because of this bit of advice, which ran on Saturday, September 14:

DEAR ABBY: I have a serious problem. My father is unreasonably strict. I am 16, and he won't let me do hardly anything. He will not let me go places unless there is parental supervision at all times. To make matters worse, yesterday when I was dropped off at a girlfriend's house, he made my mother go to the door to meet her parents! They weren't home, so I was not allowed to stay. I had to get back in the car and my parents drove me home. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.

My father is the king of the household and whatever he says goes. He's impossible. Help. -- TEEN HELD CAPTIVE IN MASSACHUSETTS

DEAR CAPTIVE: You are cursed with parents who love you. Every teenager should have the advantages you have.

P.S. Be assured, you will appreciate your father's "strict" attitude when you are older and become a parent.

This bothered me considerably, as i hope it bothers you. Somehow, Jeanne and Abby have been cooped up in their little pretty room of flowers and ignorance that they completely lost touch with an entire generation of readers. I suppose this isn't much of a surprise. I mean, look at these two:

Especially with the way their two black blouses meld together, this picture looks like something that could have run as a 1935 obituary under the headline, "Siamese twin sisters always kept smiling, died." But, since they somehow survived the test of time and the Great Depression, not to mention when the Romans killed Jesus, they're running free, giving crappy advice to people who were born around the same time they last ate something that didn't have a French pronounciation. So, I wrote them to set the record straight.

And here's the record: it is irresponsible parenting to keep your children under the thumb. Children need to experiment and learn, because if they don't do it in high school, they'll just do it in college. But, the longer it takes them to feel freedom, the hungrier they'll be for it. Just take a look around America, and you'll see what happens when you restrict people from doing something completely common and understandable: limit drinking until people are 21, and what do they do on their 21st birthday? They get so hammered that they're puking until they're 22.

Some teenagers do the same thing -- they overdose on freedom once they're away from parents. I've watched so many folks in college burst from under their parents' gaze and just go bonkers. They party hardier, they drink heavier, they hook up more and they smoke as if cancer couldn't come fast enough. Nothing against people having a good time, but if someone doesn't know how to act responsibly, this can get dangerous quick. Freshman year, a girl i knew who came from a strict family went to a party and woke up in her room with her pants off. I'd like to hear what Dear Abby has to say about that.

Anyway, the point here is that a responsible parent lets their children learn about the world while there's still a supportive home to fall back on. These lessons aren't the kind that parents can teach. There's precious little that "Just say no" and heart-to-heart discussions after episodes of Dawsons Creek can yield. These are lessons that kids need to learn on their own -- and TEEN HELD CAPTIVE IN MASSACHUSETTS's father and Dear Abby somehow never learned that lesson. That, as far as i'm concerned, leaves a (for no good reason) well-respected columnist with a dangerous lack of judgement, and a father who is setting his child up for some pretty rough years.

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3. This came in an e-mail from my dad, under the heading of something like "comments from sportscasters they'd probably like to take back." Given that this is an e-mail forward, there's really no way to ever prove that these comments were made, but i'm willing to bet a few of them were. When a sportscaster is on television, day after day, talking for hours about relatively identical encounters by testosterone-laden men, i'm sure some gems must slip out of their mouths every so often. So here they are:

1. Weightlifting commentator at the Olympic Snatch and Jerk Event: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing."

2. Ted Walsh - Horse Racing Commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother."

3. Grand Prix Race Announcer: "The lead car is absolutely, truly unique, except for the one behind it which is exactly identical to the one in front of the similar one in back."

4. Greg Norman, Pro Golfer: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."

5. Ringside Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries and even some deaths in boxing - but none of them really that serious."

6. Baseball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."

7. Basketball analyst: "He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces."

8. At a trophy ceremony BBC TV Boat Race 1988: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the Cambridge president is hugging the cox of the Oxford crew."

9. Metro Radio, College Football: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field."

10. US Open TV Commentator: "One of the reasons Arnie Palmer is playing so well is that, before each final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them, oh my God, what have I just said?"

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Feature #123:

Today we got a call at the paper from someone who was upset that their classified ad looking for some kind of child care had acidentally changed her qualification of "nutritious meals" to "notorious meals." I don't know why the call ever made it up to the newsroom, but i'm glad it did. I laughed a lot.

Anyway, i don't think there's all that much exciting to report, except that i'm going to be an extra in Kevin Smith's new movie, Jersey Girl. I am extremely excited, but i'm also going to have to squeeze 10 hours' worth of driving into a day and a half, and i'm not looking forward to that at all. But it'll be all worth it, i'm sure.

Ok, it's time to get on to the feature. This is about the laziest feature i've done in a while, seeing that it's all stuff that was just sent to me, but that's ok. I've got some good stuff in the works for the future, so stay tuned.

1. Jokes from the contest
2. Comic from the ketchup
3. Follow-up from the feature
4. Memo from the paper

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1. The jokes are in, the votes have been cast, and I am declaring "Alex from PA" (you get credited as you sign your e-mail, folks) as the winner of a brand-spankin'-new Buddy System Indeed CD. By the way, if anyone out there really wants one of these but keeps striking out with the contests, e-mail me and we'll make some kind of deal.

So, here are the jokes. I picked Alex from PA's because it was the one i least saw coming. The joke itself isn't actually a good bad joke. It's just a bad joke. Bad bad. But, Alex's story makes it good, i think, in a sort of anti-christ of "kids say the darndest things" kind of way. Here they are. Enjoy.

Alex from PA:
ok there is a story about this joke... i worked at a day camp this summer which involved being with the little kids on the bus... well one fine day this 7 year old, we'll call him dan, dan was telling his 8 year old friend (josh) jokes... that were like "why did the chicken cross the road..."etc. so dan is cracking up and decides to have a go at this joke telling business....and what i am about to say is a direct quote from this 7 year old "josh, wanna hear a joke?!" josh answers "yeh" "Women's rights" screams out dan. it was quite an experience hearing that come out of a 7 year old's mouth... needless to say i was bith startled and amused. well hope you find this funny and send me a buddy system indeed cd.-alex from PA

Eric:
1. How do pirates pay for their corn?
A buckanear (buck an ear)

2. How do pirates get around?
They drive in their carrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Matt:
Now when I first heard this joke I thought it was hilarious but then again I heard it when I was like 11 and besides the coolest kid in all elementary school told it and if you didn't laugh you would be ostricized from all your classmates, God bless the good ol deays eh? Anyways here it is. This guy had grown up in the city his entire life and was tired of it so he sold all his posessions and bought a farm. Well once he got there he realized he need animals so he went to this guy who sold farm animals and said I need a donkey. Well the guy said ok but around here we call em asses so the guy said ok give me an ass. So then he said also I need a chicken. So the man siad ok but around here we call em pullits. So the man siad ok give me a pullit. And finallyhe said I need a rooster. So the man said ok but around here we call em cocks. So the man said ok give me one cock. So the man took the chicken and rooster and held them under his arms and had the donkey on a leash. Well the donkey got startled and ran away and the man started to chase it. He finally saw a person walking down the road and went up to him and said excuse me sir I have to go grab my ass would you hold my cock and pullit? Thank you I'll be here all week folks.

Amanda:
What do you call a snail on a ship?
A snailor.

Jamie:
What do you do with a dog with no legs?
Take it for a drag.

Deano:
Here's a bad joke! A man walks into a bar, then when he comes out he's so drunk that he runs into a pole!!! Hahahahaha! Well, maybe it would be funnier if I told you the story behind it. Back in high school I had a shirt that had a picture of a man hitting  his head on a bar and a caption that read "A man walks into a bar..." Classic comedy. Anyway, a great group of guys known as "the hicks" just didn't get my shirt at all, so one day in the lunch line they were questioning it. After a few of my explanations, they were still quite perplexed. Then one of them got the great idea of what it should have said to be much funnier. "It would make more sense if it said 'A man walks into a bar, then when he comes out he's so drunk that he runs into a pole!'" Then they burst out laughing at their well thought out joke as my friend and I stood there in silent disbelief. We still get a chuckle out of it whenever we think of that. Good times.

Sherri:
This pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel shoved in his pants. The bartended looks at him quizzically and says "Hey mister, do you know you have a steering wheel in your pants?", and the pirate looks at the bartender and says.... "Arrrrrrgh, it's drivin' me nuts."

The old guy that was sitting across the street from the parking lot where i work, who told me this joke "to tell the boys in the office":
Q: Why do men go deer hunting?
A: To get away from their two-legged dears.

From a British psychology professor with a lot of time on his hands (reported by the Associated Press, not an actual submission to the page):
In a year-long experiment called LaughLab, a British psychology professor asked thousands of people around the world to rate the humor value of a list of jokes; they could also add their own favorites.

In December, Richard Wiseman and his associates announced the front-runner, a hoary old gag involving fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. But in the final tally of some 2 million votes for 40,000 jokes, announced Thursday, a new joke emerged as a round-the-world rib-tickler:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: 'My friend is dead! What can I do?' The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: 'Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.'

There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: 'OK, now what?"'

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2. Perhaps a month ago, i was eating a veggiedog, and some ketchup dripped down onto my shirt. I thought, as many others before me have thought, "damnit!" Then i looked down at the damage, and there was none -- i was wearing a bright red shirt.

So, what is one to do? Write Keith Knight of the K Chronicles, of course. He's got an occasional series called "Life's little victories," in which this kind of stuff gets top billing. I e-mailed him my tale, and got no actual response -- until last wednesday's K Chronicles came out: here. Check it out. Pretty neat, eh?

I was, needless to say, overjoyed. From work, i wrote Keith the following:

Hey Keith,

Unless we have some kind of bizarre psychic connection, I'm the one that sent you the little victory about the ketchup and red shirt. I just wanted to say thanks! I got to work this morning, checked your comic, and threw my hands up in victory. When i tried to explain the situation to my co-workers, and prefaced it with my eating a veggie dog (hence the ketsup), the only response was: "Eeew, a veggie dog?"

But what do they know.

Thanks again!

Jason Feifer

and Keith wrote back:

jason..

you are welcome, sir.

cheers!

keef

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3. As a follow-up to the stupid sports comments that were posted in last week's feature, my friend berto sent me the following proud snippet of Super Bowl history:

In the late 80's, the Washington Redskins had a quarterback named Doug Williams, who was black. Williams helped to lead the 'skins into Super Bowl XXII, and an intrepid reporter asked him:

"How long have you been a black quarterback?"

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4. I have a friend working in the Washington bureau of a large newspaper (whose name i'm not listing because i don't want to get anyone in trouble -- not that i think posting a memo will get anyone in trouble, or that anyone from the paper will ever see this page, but just in case), and she got an amusing memo last week. As far as i know, nothing came of it, but i was tickled by the idea of a crazy guy demanding to speak and going by one name.

I actually had a slightly (but not really) similar situation, although not dangerous and there was no memo. I considered writing a story about it for the page, but then decided it wasn't worth the stress of walking around town wondering if the guy read my page. So, if you're curious about my crazy day at work, drop me an e-mail.

Ok, on to the memo.

Colleagues:

A security issue has arisen for the Media Center and I'm asking all of you to be alert because of it.

[Reporter's name here] has been receiving menacing calls from a man who identifies himself as Kaufman and is demanding to meet with [reporter] on issues regarding Iraq. The man has said he'll come to bureau on Friday, Sept. 27, despite [reporter]'s request that he stay away.

I've spoken with Security and am arranging for a security guard to be posted outside the bureau on Friday. Still, there are a few obvious things we should keep in mind:

Don't let anyone you don't know into the bureau.

Don't prop open ANY of the doors to the bureau, even for a quick trip to the restroom.

If you see anyone unusual in the hallways, please alert the security guard or me.

This caller may not show up but we want to take all necessary precautions.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks.
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Feature #124:

I was at a bar sunday night, just playing a game of pool with some friends. Then these two local guys came up and started initiating us in pool-talk, although i wasn't too sure if they were really interested in pool or just too drunk to be interested in anything else. I felt like a midget in a bird costume, with these intoxicated poolsharks performing some kind of pool mating dance, and me not only unable to reciprocate, but completely unable to even comprehend what they were trying to accomplish.

So, they stand around, trying to engage us in pool conversation while simultaneously trying to hit on the girls that were with us. They complimented shots, they gave advice, they told us how great they were. When i sunk a rather insignificant ball on a pretty easy shot, the guy pointed at the table and screamed, as if he were punched in the stomach at the same time that his team just won the Superbowl. I screamed back, more out of an opportunity to covertly express my irritation, but i assumed it would look like i was playing along.

Then, there was a third scream. A scream from somewhere across the bar, and it quickly got closer. Then, it stopped.

Suddenly, an extremely drunk man turns the corner, stumbles into me, gives me a bear hug, and screams. It was like beer night at the zoo, and i accidentally excited the bears. The first guy that screamed managed to peel his lump of a friend off of me, told me, "don't mind this asshole here," and encouraged me to continue playing.

So, we did. I don't think there's a moral here, but i needed an intro, and this seemed good enough. If i thought long enough, i suppose i could come up with something about not sinking to someone's level, or only play pool in public when there are enough pool tables to go around. But, no. Those are useless morals, and nothing i'd care to impose.

Instead, i'll just impose a feature.

1. Me and Britney
2. The Hi and Lois experiment

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1. That girl from American Idol is selling records like hotcakes, and I'm surprised the record industry has so willingly and shamelessly given up the game. They're not even pretending that talent and hard work is directly or indirectly proportional to popularity and success. Nope, the public knows what it wants, and that's for somebody to decide what's good and what's bad. "You just go ahead and do your little thing, music industry" the public says. "But, just please be sure to tell us who we're supposed to appreciate these days."

And the recording industry says, ok. Then they make lots of money.

But it's not like American Idol started this bastardization of music. The show was just the most frank about it. But as far as i'm concerned, if you don't write your own material, you don't belong in the music industry. For that matter, if your career is based off of performing pre-written songs, you simply aren't worthwhile -- not to listen to, not to talk about, not to respect. It's just too easy to be Britney Spears. All you have to do is toss your morals out the window for some cash, and we've seen everyone from Enron execs to members of Congress do it.

With that as a rather bitter segway, i decided to cover a Britney Spears song. I don't have a multi-million dollar studio or big boobs, but i do have a bass guitar and a curiousity about if a Britney song could actually be turned into something worthwhile. That may be for someone else to decide, but at the very least, here's the song:

Oops... I did it again! (dot mp3)
written by some sad schlub and originally performed by Britney Spears
now performed by me, in one minute's time, and with minimal oh baby babys.

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1. Mort Walker is a legendary comic artist, although depending on who you talk to, his position in history is attributed differently. King Features, which syndicated many of Mort's strips -- including Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois -- says, "Walker has been recognized not only for the wide and enduring popularity of his work but also for his stylistic innovations and his leadership in the comics field. His use of high-contrast, deceptively simple imagery and compact gags became the standard for a generation of cartoonists and endures today."

I say, Mort Walker is the luckiest man alive, because he has managed to make a career our of two jokes: a lazy guy in the Army will always try to be lazy, and kids in an innocent suburban home say the darndest things. The blunt, cold truth here is that these comics are not, and have never been, very funny. To his credit, they both still come out, and people still read them, and he still finds ways to squeeze every last drop of content out of desperately tired situations.

At some point, he handed Hi and Lois over to his two sons and an artist, and it has been going strong ever since. Yet, since its inception in 1954, nothing has actually happened. The characters have hardly aged, they kids continue to say the darndest things, and the strip passed quietly under the eyes of readers from a whopping and completely baffling 1,100 papers.

This bothers me, because there are so many well-conceived, thoughtful, culturally relevant comic strips out there. The innocence and suburban mildness of Hi and Lois, and the Korean War in which Beetle Bailey takes place, simply do not exist anymore. Look at the Boondocks, or Non-Sequitor. These are wonderfully poignant comic strips, and in a time when the media has a responsibility to challenge culture, they do it with wit and charm. All that Mort Walker's comics capture is an implied refusal to catch up with the times. They are dull and insignificant, and I think they should go.

I wondered what someone like Greg Walker, one of Mort's sons who now writes Hi and Lois, thinks about all of this. Does he take this strip seriously? Is he really stuck in the days of old, when Johnny had Jane home by nine p.m., and only women took care of the kids because that's just what women do? Or, is he working on this strip because it's a formula that makes him money, and he's not about to have a hamburger when the cow's still making milk? (was that an awful analogy or what?)

The only way to find out, really, was to perform some kind of experiment, and see how he responds. So, in the name of science, that's what i did. I like to call this...

Five days' worth of Hi and Lois cartoons,
which were put through a pseudo-intellectual
analysis and then e-mailed to Greg Walker,
one of the strip's writers
(by Jason Feifer)

DAY ONE:

8/02/02
Mr. Walker,

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Snoring standard leaves Trixie jaded"

Today, Trixie is scolded for making noise while her father sleeps, and then questions why her heavily snoring father is not kept to the same standards. She asks quite poignantly, "Why doesn't daddy have to keep quiet while daddy's sleeping?" Indeed, Trixie, why DOESN'T he?

Trixie has hit upon the complex issues of double standards, which is a surprisingly complex concept for a baby to grasp. However, since Trixie has been a baby since 1954, it seems reasonable to afford her a more advanced level of thinking than her body permits.

Trixie is clearly the glue in these two panels. Each parent, Hi and Lois, appears separately, although their bond of marriage has aligned their moral standards into a sort of auto-defense system. This leaves Trixie out of the loop, completely abandoned by her perceived reality and unable to grasp what is clearly a circular argument that existed long before Lois's womb belched this curious child out. This is a sad day for Trixie, and perhaps one she will reflect upon when she is bagging groceries next to a boy that's making twice her salary.

I have one minor complaint about today's strip, and it is a slight blip in artistic consistency. In the first panel, Lois's right hand had miraculously spawned another finger, thrusting her into the cold world of excess body parts, now in contrast to her well-conceived, three-finger-per-hand family. As someone who has 10 fingers in total, I cannot sympathize with Lois, but I tried not to stare.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY TWO:

8/3/02
Mr. Walker,

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Circular, soapy residue."

Today, Dot is scolded for not draining the tub after her bath, but in fact has only left an overflow of bubbles, which has been misinterpreted by Lois.

I must admit, I am perplexed by the physics of this strip, and I must assume the inconsistency was done intentionally. The bathtub in the second panel is literally bursting with bubbles, yet Dot has claimed that she drained the tub. It is unfortunate that there is not a third panel, in which Lois might say, "Dot, by simple laws of physics, there is no way that many bubbles are existing within our family's bathtub. The sheer weight of the bubbles on top would destroy the ones on the bottom, and since I see no soapy implosion, I must call you a liar."

And then Dot could say something clever like, "At least I'm not a dirty liar," which would be a subtle and insightful observation that she had just taken a bath. Or, you could construct some other punchline, as your profession is apt to do.

If Dot is indeed lying, which men like Mr. Isaac Newton has proven she is, then I am curious as to why. Is this your subtle declaration that children are not able to admit their mistakes, and therefore that stubbornness -- thus, divorce, a lack of friends, and/or advancement in the legal profession -- are all predictable from youth? It is an interesting theory, Mr. Walker, and one I hope you continue to explore.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

AND THEN, GREG WRITES BACK!:

Unfortunately, you neglect to take into consideration the plethora of toys and bath items that Dot normally employs during her ablutions. To wit, 3 boats, 1 soap dish, 2 washcloths, a bar of soap, 1 plastic frog, 2 dolls, a set of 4 fish, a ball and 1 large rubber ducky. Once the water is removed, these items still form a solid foundation to support the bubbles. Yet, Dot's ability to debate this issue clearly indicates a potential to be successful in the legal profession as you suggest.

DAY THREE:

8/4/02
Mr. Walker,

Thank you for your comments. I am embarrassed that I had not considered Dot's playthings. Physics suddenly seems so pathetic in the face of a child's imagination.

Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Chip is humored."

In today's strip, Chip says he is creating a comic strip for his generation, which is one that includes many curse words, represented as a string of symbols. Lois looks at the comic, and says, "That's funny!"

I'm sure you'll note the double-entendre in my title -- that Lois is both humoring Chip and acting humored by Chip's "comic." The true irony of the incident, however, is that Chip's comic is nothing more than a blank piece of paper, which we clearly see as drawn in the first panel. Chip does appear to fully believe he has drawn a comic, and I must wonder if you are crafting him as delusional, or perhaps revealing an undiscovered disability. I wonder if you would have gotten in trouble with the vision-impaired population if Lois had said, for instance, "That's funny... you're clearly blind!" Then again, I wonder if the vision-impaired community reads comics. This is something to ponder at a later time.

Just one other note: It's good to see that Lois has changed. I assume that Hi and Lois depicts the day-to-day life, and not necessarily the hour-by-hour life, of the family. To see her wearing the same thing the past two days made me wonder about her wardrobe, or if the family was perhaps on a tight laundry-and-new-clothing budget. It's good to see personal hygiene is still one of Lois's focuses.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY FOUR:

8/7/02
Mr. Walker,

I apologize for not providing you with commentary over the weekend, which I trust you have by now accepted as an Orwellian guiding light, of sorts. ("Big Brother" was always too familial). Good strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Revelation in a bottle."

In today's strip, Lois expresses her disapproval of what she calls "Miracle Drugs," while looking at a bottle of Sneezex. The ad claims that it is 100% effective against allergies, but Lois has another interpretation: "They DISclaim more than they claim!"

When Lois says this, a very peculiar thing happens. She does not just proclaim her distrust, but literally thrusts it -- and the bottle, as well -- into Hi's face. In response, Hi looks rather guilty. Not shocked, not elated, not bothered or confused or amused or, really, anything besides guilty. His eyes roll up, his mouth is turned down, and he looks like he just sat on a birthday cake. Why is he guilty, I must wonder?

My assumption has two roads, and the first is the more reasonable. The couple is in a store called "Dollar Drugs," and I think we all have been suffering from high drug costs lately. Over-the-counter drugs are a fortune, leaving the general population with a decision between sneezing and going bankrupt. And forget about prescription drugs. If you're not paying out the buttocks for irritable bowel syndrome medication, you're wondering why your co-worker is always in the bathroom. Hi is trying to cut a few corners by going to Dollar Drugs, and clearly Lois is perturbed by his stinginess. Is Mr. Moneybags and Mr. Honeybags intrinsically linked?

The other option, of course, is that Hi is secretly working in the discount pharmaceutical industry, where he writes legal disclaimers. What irony that would be, but clearly too simple. I expect from the strip more complex -- and, to boot, receive more complex -- messages than that.

I look forward to tomorrow's strip.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

DAY FIVE:

8/8/02
Mr. Walker,

Confusing strip today. For reference sake, I'll call this one, "Lois creates coffee and confusion."

In today's strip, Lois is sitting down and drinking coffee with a friend, and the friend compliments Lois on the coffee. Lois says it is her "special blend," but then launches into a guilt-infused internal monologue: "...of six different nearly empty bags of coffee I found in the back of a cabinet!"

Lois says "a cabinet," which is surprisingly vague. Had she taken it out of her kitchen cabinet, I suppose, she would have thought, "my kitchen cabinet." Even "the cabinet" would have offered more direction, but "a cabinet" sounds like she found this cabinet in the middle of the street. Or the middle of the woods. Or, really, wherever a cabinet is least likely to be, Lois was somehow there.

Is Lois to be trusted, sneaking through the seedy underbelly of discarded cabinets, a veritable graveyard of forgotten furniture, looking for just the right amount of coffee bags? Is this the Lois we know and love? Judging by the second panel, in which her friend is virtually transfixed and perhaps drugged by the coffee, I must assume this is not that same Lois. In fact, are you even the same Mr. Walker from last week? Last week's Mr. Walker responded to me. Today's Mr. Walker does not, and I must confess, today's strip gives me the chills.

What is Lois up to? What is in that coffee? Why does she have dots for eyes when she's talking, but eggs for eyes when she's thinking? Today's strip makes me wonder what is left in the world that is still decent and good, if not Lois and untainted caffeine. Today's strip makes me want someone to hug, to tell me it will all be ok, to read to me a story I know very well.

I wonder when I can shake all this off, and when life can return to normal. Lois has become larger than life -- certainly, at least, larger than I.

All the best,
Jason Feifer

--------------------------

Sadly, that was all. I got one response from Greg, and it confirmed my worst fears: he really does believe in his comic strip. I suppose it's nice to take pride in your work, and i do commend him (and, if he ever reads this, thank him) for putting up with those unsolicited e-mails and responding, on that one fateful day, with good humor. But, i fear that Mort, Greg, and the rest of the gang have no idea that the rest of the world does not live in happy suburban homes, or that sometimes the guys in the army have to actually go out and murder people.

I suppose they could argue that those horrors do indeed exist, and their strips are an escape from life's harsher realities. They could say that life isn't all bad, and surely they'd be right.

But, if that's the case, then i must implore: please, at least try to make them funny.

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Feature #125:

Does anybody else think there's a goldmine in making shortbread in the shape of white men in suits, and selling them under the name "Cracker crackers"? Maybe it's just me.

I tried to write a mock lovesong between Marky Mark's character and the female ape he kissed in the new (and horrible) Planet of the Apes, but the idea tanked pretty quickly. I don't remember how it went now, but i'm pretty sure the chorus was:

You may have heard me sing about addiction
But i'm a lovelorn junkie
This planet is filled with gorrillas and apes,
But you're such a beautiful monkey

...anyway, if i ever get that off the ground, i'll be sure to burden you with the final product.

Anyway, on to the feature.

1. The extra experience
2. My dad sends me stuff

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1. A newspaper page is generally 120 inches. That is, stories are measured in inches, and that's how many inches' worth of stories that can be squeezed onto a page. Of course, since newspapers are also about advertising, 120 inches of copy never really makes it on a page, because half the damn thing is crammed full of useless advertising.

Anyway, the paper i write for has an entertainment page every week, and since there generally isn't a whole lot of in-house material for it, it's almost always filled with stories from the Associated Press. The day i got back from being an extra on Kevin Smith's new film was the day the entertainment page was being put together. They didn't have anything for it, and i suggested writing about my experience. They told me to go hog-wild, and i did... to the tune of 50 inches. Yes. 50 inches, nearly half a page. I wrote, i must say, a freakin' magnum opus about being an extra. I suppose it sums the experience up better than i could do so now, a week after it all went down. So, here it is... the neverending story of me, the extra (who will absolutely, positively not be in the movie).

The experience of being expendable: a true Hollywood story, in all its stagnant glory
By Jason Feifer

PAULSBORO, N.J. — We were a likely bunch, the background and I.

We were the perfect reflection of an average crowd, a smattering of races and body types, like a heap of pieces from different puzzles.

We each had our fantasies of being immortalized in celluloid, but were modest enough to settle for less: to be that person in the background, the one that nobody notices, but to be able to point and smile and make our friends say, “Oh yeah, that IS you!”

It was a slice of the proverbial Hollywood pie we were looking for, although we all knew it would be too small to even nibble on.

What was perhaps most stunning is that we, the excruciatingly ordinary crowd, were all hand-picked by casting agents. We were deliberately plucked from the masses by some mysterious formula, gathered together in the Paulsboro High School gymnasium, and given instructions to blend in.

We were, in every way, someone’s vision of diversity. Waiting for us on the other side of the school, however, was nearly everyone’s vision of beauty: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Liv Tyler, and more.

The movie we were prepared to become an immediately forgettable part of is Jersey Girl, the new project of writer/director Kevin Smith, who had made waves with prodding and irreverent comedies such as Clerks and Chasing Amy.

None of us were told what we were doing or how long it would take, so we waited patiently in the gym, eating the type of mass-produced breakfast many of us have not seen since our own days in high school.

Discouraged and hungry, I wandered away from the masses and found a table with comparatively gourmet food. As I buttered my bagel and tossed a waffle in the toaster, a well-dressed man trotted up to me.

“No, no, no, this is the cast and crew’s food,” he said while flipping his hand at me, as if trying to shoo away a fly. Then he pointed back to the table of slop, and told me that was “the extras’ food.”

Indeed, it looked like extra food — scraped-together leftovers that the cast and crew would not dare touch.

Working on a movie set clearly was not going to pass the time, so instead we made friends. The beauty of a premeditated crowd such as ours is that nobody was left without someone similar, although we reveled in our differences.

There are two types of people that apply to be extras — those who are interested to see the other side of movie-making magic, and those who desperately, pathetically, and very obviously want to be a major part of it.

Those people stuck out like the movie stars they are not. Sitting on the outskirts of us common folk, they sat upright and bright-eyed on the bleachers, just waiting to be discovered. They kept to themselves, too conscious of their self-perceived beauty, and perhaps too stiff under the dried film of make-up and hair spray to sacrifice their pose.

But for the rest of us, who showed up this past Tuesday out of curiosity or a crazy devotion to a member of the cast, the day was an exercise in killing time with random people.

Near me, there was Meredith, a medical student who was chasing a dream as an actor before her doctoral interests took over; James, a urban 20-something who works odd jobs and dreams of publishing a book of poetry; Stacey, a recent college graduate and actor in New York City; and Sue, a former private investigator who now spends her time tracking down shooting locations for HBO’s The Sopranos.

We exchanged jokes and biographies. Meredith, who was the only one to have been an extra before, told us that extras are generally instructed to continue mouthing the words “peas and carrots,” because it looks like a realistic conversation.

We all tried it. Peas and carrots!!! Our faces searched for visual meaning, overcompensating for the loss of emotion that comes from silent gibberish. Peas and carrots???

Then, finally, something happened. A production assistant picked up a microphone and told us that we should expect to be there for at least — at LEAST — 12 hours. Most people turned to each other and mouthed something, and it probably was not “peas and carrots."

Then we all had to get our “wardrobes” — that is, the clothes on our back — approved. We all stood in a line, at the front of which was two women who looked us up and down and said either, “That’s fine” or “Do you have anything else to wear?”

Everything they say about the “Hollywood hurry-up-and-wait” is true. When we were finally ushered into an auditorium, we sat and waited while the actors’ stand-ins idly chatted on stage. Smith sometimes wandered on stage to talk to crew members, and to give us our collective motivation — clap, don’t clap, be stunned, be not stunned, and so on.

Occasionally, our wait was interrupted by bursts of action, during which actors performed short, unexplained scenes from a movie we knew little about. Then, the actors would disappear, the stand-ins would come back, and the cryptic cycle of movie magic continued to turn.

At one point, Smith introduced the actors, and it was immediately clear who the crowd was there for. Most actors were greeted with a warm round of applause, Ben Affleck received a cheer like the crowd’s team just won a big game, and when Jennifer Lopez came out, it was like everyone won the Superbowl.

Lopez, like all the rest, smiled and waved, and then walked off-stage. The actors would sometimes joke with the crowd between scenes, and we were all thrilled by it. Liv Tyler even apologized for the wig she was wearing, as if to say, “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more beautiful for you.”

Just being on the set felt like a privilege, though. There were wires and cameras everywhere, and the crew was usually happy to answer our questions about the industry.

Photographs and autographs were strictly prohibited. It hardly mattered, because the only cast member we ever got close to was a little girl, who often ran around the auditorium when she got bored of being on stage.

Some of my new friends from the gym and I were placed in the back of the auditorium, where the glow from glaring stage lights barely reached. At best, we knew we were shadows for a scene that could end up on the cutting room floor, and so our desires shifted.

We may have come to compete for camera space, but now we were competing for laughs.

Nobody would hear or see us, not behind the camera or in the actual movie, so we let loose. When we instructed to clap, we slapped our hands wildly, letting out whoops and irrelevant, ridiculous cheers. We tossed a water bottle in the air, staged little fights, and completely enjoyed being forgotten within a sea of people who were meant to be forgettable.

Around dinnertime, though, we were losing steam. The gym, which once contained neatly-aligned tables and a bustling crowd, now looked like a early morning hurricane shelter. People slumped over chairs and slowly gnawed on the set’s bounty of cheap snacks. Even the moviestar-hopefuls had grown tired, and their once-pristine looks had slowly faded.

At 6:30, we were all milling about in the gym, and the production assistant told us that our next scene had to be postponed an hour. They needed to film something with a child actor whose time on set would soon legally expire.

The crew seriously discouraged us from leaving, and the small group of people I met may not have thought to if we were closer to the cameras. But by then, the appeal of being a speck on the big screen had waned, reality had set in, and all we had left was each other.

We were tired, the group was getting quiet, and so we left.

It is difficult to be disappointed with an experience in which the express purpose is to be neglected, and so we were quite pleased. Watching a movie being filmed is like watching 100 people stutter, and I imagine it gets boring while taking an active role in it. Being in the background is like, well, being in the background.

The people who came with dreams of instant fame should have known better, we said.

In our little group, we made our own spotlight. It may not get us on the silver screen, but it was surely more flattering than the ones in front of the camera.

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2. My dad forwards me all sorts of crap, although not nearly as much as he used to. After a few pleadings and perhaps a few jabs at him on this page, he has developed a pretty good filter for what's garbage and what's essentially funny garbage.

These two things, which he sent me this past week, are examples of the latter:

a) A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husnbad that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

b) A letter to Dear Abby.

Dear Abby:

I have been engaged for almost a year. I am to be married next month. My fiancee's mother is not only very attractive but really great and understanding. She is putting the entire wedding together and invited me to her place to go over the invitation list because it had grown a bit beyond what we had expected it to be.

When I got to her place we reviewed the list and trimmed it down to just under a hundred ... then she floored me. She said that in a month I would be a married man and that before that happened, she wanted to have sex with me. Then she just stood up and walked to her bedroom and on her way said that I knew where the front door was if I wanted to leave.

I stood there for about five minutes and finally decided that I knew exactly how to deal with this situation. I headed straight out the front door...

There, leaning against my car was her husband, my father-in-law to be. He was smiling. He explained that they just wanted to be sure I was a good kid and would be true to their little girl. I shook his hand and  he congratulated me on passing their little test. Abby, should I tell my fiancee' what her parents did, and that I thought their "little test" was asinine and insulting to my character?

Or should I keep the whole thing to myself including the fact that the reason I was walking out to my car was to get a condom?

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Feature #126

The feature is short. Here we go.

1. poop permit
2. protest mania

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2. My friend Alicia noticed this last week. This is about a mile from my apartment, in an empty lot next to a strip joint:

It begs the question: if there's no illegal dumping, is there legal dumping? Does one need a poop permit to answer nature's call? Just who is that port-a-potty for?

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3. A loyal reader who goes by the name 'spoon' reported back from the anti-war protest in Washington D.C. For those who couldn't be there, or wouldn't have gone anyway, here's the scoop:

the protest (i'm so mad!) started at around 10, i guess...the official rally time wasn't until 11, but there were scads of people before then. we parked in some place outside DC and caught the tube to foggy bottom (i have no idea)...probably around 200 of us from that one spot, and then at foggy bottom (giggle giggle) there were another 300 or so...it was really cool, just the beginning before we even got anywhere...all these people with signs and costumes and...yeah. so we all marched along the streets and blocked traffic and somehow found the way to the vietnam memorial. seriously - whether it was 100k or 200 - i don't know how we all fit...

anyway. there were only around 10 portapotties for all of us, which was bad bad bad. by some unlucky coincidence, the park bathrooms were all "closed for maintenance"...it was pretty crappy. still! it was a nice day - the ground was super muddy from a lot of rain, but it was better than rain in the day. i actually just washed the pants i wore that day (i'm a college student..) and the mud didn't come out. grr. anyway. i took a lot of pictures of the signs - i'll get them developed someday, although i still have undeveloped film from warped tour 2000, so who knows when.

some of the speakers were really difficult to hear, but most of the ones you could hear were very good. ben from ben and jerry's listed all the things we could do with the 200 billion dollars this war will cost, and al sharpton picked on bush ignoring..well, everything else (his speech was my favorite.find a recording of it - worth listening to). even though the speeches were mostly pretty good, they went on far too long, leaving everyone pretty pissed off and wanting to start marching already. a bunch of people started before the speeches were over, which in retrospect was a good idea anyway, since we had to wait a while to get the remaining people out.

i think we covered 26 whole blocks, and that wasn't even all the marchers, since some finished before the rest of us started. we marched for at least 3 hours, since we kept stopping. we finally passed a group of people doing a rought sketch of iraqi people carrying their dead (dummies), and crying over them...they took up the whole street. it was cool. but they slowed everyone down behind them, and you couldn't pass too easily. ah well. we finally circled the white house (i wish bush had been there. coward.) and got to the washington monument...we found a restaurant that had stayed open an extra 4 hours just for the marchers - very thoughtful of them. oh, and ughh! i ate the first hotdog i've had in about 6 years...icky icky. but..i guess...food is food is food. yurgh. so yup. we headed back to catch our bus for another 10 hour drive...yuck.yuck yuck.

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Feature #127:

Thanks to all who offered kind words for the Dirty Laundry issue. They're now printed and out on some stands, but i still have a bunch of distro to do. Ah, the work is never done.

Interesting little tid-bit: two weeks ago, i posted the plans for the anti-war march in Washington. One day after I posted that, the webpage got three hits from the military. Good ol' Big Brother. It's too bad they didn't leave a note.

This is one of those rare on-time updates, which i'm rather proud of. The feature isn't anything too gigantic, but there are two new comics in the 'i can't draw' section, and since that hasn't been updated in some time, i'm considering this a rousing success. Rousing!

Here we go. Enjoy.

1. E-mailing Shira
2. Litterbugs

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1. I have a fair amount of free time at work, which i spread pretty evenly throughout the day by checking my e-mail obsessively, on perhaps a minute-by-minute basis. This generally makes me feel pathetic, because I hardly get enough e-mail to warrant this kind of hawk-eye performance over aol.com, but i can't help it.

My friend Shira is sometimes very good at e-mailing, and sometimes she's quite bad. When she's good -- and, by "good," i mean responding within the day, although it could also mean responding within the week (ahem) -- I am happy, because it gives me an outlet to spew random bits of information to someone who returns with equally useless and rambling stories.

Unfortunately, i just realized that aol.com doesn't save old mail nearly as long as it does sent mail, and so all i'm stuck with is a few things i e-mailed her this week, and none of her responses. But, i wanted to post them as something of a streamline of life, despite the clearly self-indulgent nature of this gesture:

:::::Sometimes, when i'm listening to someone, i think to myself, "Wait, what am i doing? I'm looking at one eye. That must be weird. Are they thinking this is weird? Are they talking, and thinking, 'He's just looking at my right eye. Why's he doing that? Is there an eye-booger? Oh, I bet there's an eye-booger.'" Then, I try to shift to the other eye, then back and forth, and then I fear that they think i'm being shifty. So, i end up staring either at their nose or in-between their eyes. All this, in the end, just makes me completely miss what they're saying. This doesn't happen all too often, but since we were on the subject, I thought i'd share.

:::::By the way, did i tell you i ran for Attorney General? It was a very short campaign. I started it when I saw that the Attorney General was running unopposed, and ended when I wrote my name in the "Write-in" section. I thought, sure, this would be a fun job. I could probably go through law school before i need to report to the state house. But, sadly, i lost. It was hard-fought, and he just ran a better campaign than me, the votes were there, but we worked hard, didn't we, and although sometimes it was tough going, we stuck together, and now we need to throw our support behind him to make this state the best it can be, i love you all, you're the greatest, i couldn't have done it without you, you are America, look ma, i made it, i'm, o, k, thank you, goodnight!

:::::But i now must ask you this, since it shall determine my mode of transportation (my modus transportatios, if you will):

:::::I walked into the pizza place i normally have lunch at, and the guy working there said, "You want some free soup?"|
"No thanks."
"No!?"
"Well, what kind of soup is it?"
"What do you mean, what kind of soup is it?"
Then his daughter -- or, i think it's his daughter, or whoever it is that normally is there when i order -- jumps out of nowhere and says, "He's a vegetarian." Then she turned to me and said, "There's no meat in the soup."
So, i had some soup. The end.

:::::p.s. Let me admit that i just re-read my e-mail at laughed out loud at my own "modus transportatios" joke. I am so lame.

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This is a pretty oustanding story that came from Matt Wendahl, a new reader to the page. Your stories are always welcome, folks.

This happened to me about one and a half years ago, when I was still a freshman in High School. It was spring time, and we had an early dismissal at school. My mom was feeling rather generous and allowed me to skip school that day, since I didn’t have many important things going on at school. So, I got together with friends (Jason and Drew, who had equally generous parents) at one of their houses. Lunchtime soon comes around, and we are all rather hungry. We were all at Drew’s house, and a Pizza Hut restaurant was about a mile away, so we figured we’d just walk. Now, my buddy Drew lives kind of far out and the quickest way to the Pizza Hut is to use back roads that are surrounded by fields. So we walk there, nothing strange goes awry, except for the fact it was quite a long walk (probably more than a mile actually). So we go have our fun at Pizza Hut, pack our belly’s with fatty slices of grease, and leave to make our way back to Drew’s.

So, we are walking back down the deserted road to return to our starting point, when an old blue-grey van appears in the distance. It is heading in our direction, but we don’t pay too much heed to it. As it approaches, though, it begins to slow down. At this point we become mildly curious in this strange vehicle. Then, once it is about 30 feet away going about 15 mph, the sliding door on the side of the van slips open and a head pops out. By now we assume maybe they will ask for directions or make some other type of conversation, maybe offer us a lift? But, to our surprise, we were far, far from the truth.

Right as the mysterious van is within 5 feet of us, the head reaches back and flings a huge mess of papers at us and speeds away! This doesn’t really bother us, who cares about paper, right? But then, upon closer examination, we realize the papers are more than your average papers. They are, in fact, porno magazines! Baffled, we stand above the magazines for a minute, and then take a closer look. The magazines were old and crinkled, and looked like they were torn, crumpled, and ruffled with over-use. We also noticed they were wet… Not wanting much to do with wet porno magazines, we take one last look and continue our journey, laughing at what just had happened. Then the van returned, and we waved and gave our thanks. The van passed multiple times, covering the sides of the road with porn. We check some out, being your average teenage boys, and laugh over the whole thing.

Yet all along in the back of our minds is that one question that I’m sure is in the back of your mind too. Why would these hicks want to throw porn all over the side of a road? It’s not an often frequented road. And, people driving by would most likely not even regard it as porn, just regular old litter. As we ended the road, and glimpsed our last wet porno magazine, Jason catches view of the sign that the magazines are resting at the base of. The sign reads: Boy Scout Litter Control.

The sight of this sign made everything so clear. These guys littering the side of the road with porn thought it would be funny because the little Boy Scouts would show up to serve the community and have to pick up the porn! What would their club master say? Who knows what ever became of it. All I know is that it was one of the funniest/strangest things that ever happened to me, and I’ll always hold that experience close to my heart.

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Feature #128:

"Boo-hoo. I had it soooo haaard. It was so tough for me. Waa waa waa. I shouldered my load, now it's your turn. Accept me, won't you? Accept me, damnit! I'm a homophobe, but i had it soooo haaaard. I have no respect for women, but that's just because i had it soooo haaard. How can you hate me? How can you distrust me? I had it hard. It was hard for me. Tough. It was really tough. But i made it. I came out on the other side. Aren't you proud of me? Aren't you? Be proud of me, please? Be proud of me, damnit!"

That pretty much sums up all Eminem's stupid songs and his stupid movie. I am sick of him. Grow up, pal, or at least just suck it up.

Sorry. Just needed to express that.

Here we go!

1. A very lovely true story
2. Hu's on first
3. Be all you can hardly be
4. Heavy thinker

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1. On Nov 13, as i had shamelessly promoted, I played a little set at this thing called Wormtown Wednesdays. It's 10 bands, 15 minutes each (although, most bands went over), and the crowd is a drinkin' one and the bands are a rockin' kind. I signed up because some friends of mine are in a band and were going to play, and they are quite loud, but i figured, sure, what the hell, i'll go up there and do something ridiculious.

So, i did. I played under the name No Son Of Mine. When i got up on stage by myself, the guy who runs the thing looked at me and said, "You've got some big balls." When I started, some guy i couldn't see screamed, "Go back to Tammany!" I didn't quite know what that meant, so I just said, "Hey, are you up on stage? No. I'm up on stage."

Turns out that guy was extremely large and wearing a leather jacket. It's a good thing he wasn't an angry drunk.

I played some goofy guitar songs (two of which are from this page), which people seemed to just humor me with, and a friend of mine said most people were trying to decide if I was mildly retarted or not. I did a little Ladies Man impression banter between songs, essentially goofed around with bad jokes, but amazingly, I had everyone's attention. The place was quieter than I had ever seen it. I think the whole thing was just so bizarre that they couldn't turn away.. which was great. That's what I was going for.

Then i did that cover of "Oops... I did it again," which is when, according to my friends, the crowd actually got into it. The last song was something i wrote a few days before the show. It's a musical version of a true story from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend (no, really), which i posted on the site a while ago. I recorded it for your listening pleasure. It's about 3.5 minutes long:

A very lovely true story (dot mp3)

Anyway, people were laughing pretty steadily, which made me happy. I had big tough heavy metal dudes coming up all night and complimenting me. One asked if i would open up for them.

"You want to see that AGAIN?" I asked.
"Dude, that was hysterical... it was supposed to be funny, right?"
"Yeah, it was."
"Ok, good. I didn't want to insult you or anything."
"No, no. I figured, if I can't sing, I might as well be funny. 15 minutes of funny."

Then he told me a knock-knock joke.

It was a strange night.

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2. I love this. I want to memorize this, to spread it like flowers spread pollen. This is pure genius. I am jealous i didn't write it. Playwright Jim Sherman wrote this after Hu Jintao was named chief of the Communist Party in China. It is, of course...

HU'S ON FIRST
By James Sherman

(We take you now to the Oval Office.)

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?

Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.

George: Great. Lay it on me.

Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.

George: That's what I want to know.

Condi: That's what I'm telling you.

George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes.

George: I mean the fellow's name.

Condi: Hu.

George: The guy in China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The new leader of China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The Chinaman!

Condi: Hu is leading China.

George: Now whaddya' asking me for?

Condi: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.

George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?

Condi: That's the man's name.

George: That's who's name?

Condi: Yes.

George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East.

Condi: That's correct.

George: Then who is in China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir is in China?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Then who is?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.

Condi: Kofi?

George: No, thanks.

Condi: You want Kofi?

George: No.

Condi: You don't want Kofi.

George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi?

George: Milk! Will you please make the call?

Condi: And call who?

George: Who is the guy at the U.N?

Condi: Hu is the guy in China.

George: Will you stay out of China?!

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi.

George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.

(Condi picks up the phone.)

Condi: Rice, here.

George: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too. Maybe we should send some to the guy in China. And the Middle East. Can you get Chinese food in the Middle East?

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3. A long-time reader named Moni posted on her website that she was impressed by an army recruiter, and was considering enrolling. I wrote her and proposed that programs like the ROTC just encourages a system in which the poor go out and fight wars for the rich. I try to keep myself from flinging my opinion around, but after reading a string of news stories in which schools across the nation are giving into the government's bully tactic's of threatening to withhold funding unless they let army recruiters on campus, i'm just sick of it.

Turns out an army-related guy beat me to the punch. He wrote her a mammoth e-mail about the army and what it means to "be all you can be," and i loved it. Through her, he gave me permission to post this, so long as i withhold his name, which i'm gladly doing. Here it is.

I know you were rather impressed by what the Army recruiters had to say, but keep in mind that what these guy sare essentially doing is advertising, and they happen to be VERY good at what they do. They know talking abouty those laptops and 1.5 hour lunch breaks will get everyone's ears to perk up alright. They tailor that message to fit what high schoolers are interested in. But they're also asking you to buy a product which there is absolutely no returning, no going back from, and no matter how many good things they ay about it, there are a zillion others they're leaving out, almost to the point of lying by omission. That is why, strictly for the sake of you making an informed decision, to listen to a few things I have to say and then check out at least just one web site which will tell you what they're not. You seem like an intelligent person to me who owes it to hersle fot hear both sides. I'm willing to bet after the Army hype rally that noone stepped on the stage and said "...and now to give you ther other side fo the recuitment talk, here's mr. XXX from the War Resister's league". I'd love to see that at least once. Or how about standing up and asking why some active military families are paid so little that they (no kidding) have to go on welfare and food assistance programs? I would be that guy, but unfortunately I wasn't there to say that. But I am here and I am taking part of my evening to write this just so you know I care about the decision you make.

If you join the Army you are joining an organization in which you will be their property for not only the time of your enlistment but also a LOT longer afterwards. You are literally owned by them, you are not an employee, which makes you littl emore than a slave when it comes to how they have to treat you. They can tell you what bars ou can and cannot hang out at after hours or any place for that matter. I know because I used to work with an ex-leiutenant who made that list up for local air force base. It was basically decided by whether or not he felt they kissed his ass when he went in there. If they didn't then he;d exclude all military personelle from going in, ever. And unlike an assett they want to keep and make happy, you are expendable. They can replace you after you get killed rather easily. In fact they expect to.

The job of a soldier is an ugly one when you get down to it, which is to 1. Kill the enemy. 2. Destroy his property. And 3. Capture or occupy his land. Have no illusions about that. That is the sum total of everything we have a military for. You will kill when they tell you to and you will have no say about it. If you do not think you can look at and kill someone, then you had better not join, period. Once you pull that trigger there is no taking a bullet back, and the consequences of that tiny movement of your finger can haunt you for the rest of your life. Some armies have child soldiers. Can you kill an 11 year old child who doesn't even have pubes yet? They will move you around at will. They will put you out on multiple deployments in a row which may destroy your family life, if you can even have one to start with. They will put you in danger for the sake of some stuipid poilitical agenda if they feel like it. You will have to die if they tell you to.

Think they'll be sending you to college? Yeah right. Those GI college bills operate at a high profit, not a loss. Sure you'll get 100% of your college paid......if you qualify, that is, which of course ain't gonna be easy since they're not quite handing out college money like they want you to think they are. Only about 15% of those who apply for that money will get any aid at all, let alone 100%. And try going to classes, maintaining a full time job and being frequently deployed to one of the (coincidentally) oil-rich countries where the military seems to be spending so much of it's time lately. Bet they left that out, eh?

You'll get benefits like being able to go to a VA hospital for the rest of your life.....where the service is so shoddy the physicians don't even change gloves between examining patients. Anyone for an ob/gyn full pelvic exam? They say there are two chances for you to give your life as a soldier to your country: Once on the battlefield, the other at a VA hospital. And if you EVER, in any way, fail to exactly follow any kind of medical treatment program they put you on, no matter what it's for, you will be kicked out and denied those benefits for the rest of your life. I met a schizophrenic homeless ex-soldier in my hometown of Austin, Texas who was denied any further mental health care whatsoever from the VA because he showed up a day late once to get some medication from them. I can't believe they destroyed any chances this guy had for a normal life because he was one day late.

Ever heard of Agent Orange? The guys who were forced to work with that stuff and who have suffered as a result have still seen almost nothing in compensation. Gulf War Syndrome, people? That one they refuse to even acknowledge although the Center for Disease control and a few thousand soldiers would beg to differ. When they're done with you they're done with you, and they don't give a crap if you served your country well or not. Don't forget that if you're on active duty you'll also be injected with all kinds of vaccines which haven't been approved for human testing. Doesn't matter to them.

"But I want to serve my country!". Fighting wars these days is something that, for the last 15 years, has been left to Special Forces troops because they get the job done without having to have a lot of messy casualties that would make a war unpalatable to the American public. Warfare, aside from them, is auually an unmanned affar these days with bomb-dropping drones and precision strikes called in and launched on the enemy from thousands of miles away. I had a friend who was in the Navy who-and this is all he'd say about it-once killed about 100 people halfway across the world by way of pressing a button in a ship's weapon control room. Hmmm. The valiant picture of a soldier returning from battle is, thankfully, becoming a thing of the past. But it ain't gone comlpletely. Name me one war since WW II where the enemy posed a threat to the territory of the United States. You can't, which leaves me wondering why we've been involved in more than 200 armed conflicts ever since then, with enemies that posed no threat to the US at all. The Vietnamese could not have gotten one single soldier to U.S. soil since they had no navy to speak of, which makes me wonder just why we killed 20,000 of our people (not to mention theirs) fighting them. That wasn't to defend the U.S., we wren't even under attack, for christ's sake. If you want to serve your country you can do it in a million other ways which are more effective and meaningful. You can work for peace, you can be a teacher and tutor kids in poor neighborhoods at night, you can be a counselor, a doctor who works for free, an ambulance driver, you can be a writer.

Look, the military does offer something that can be decent for those who go in fully prepared to deal with the down side, they do. Some of us require an ordered sort of place to live where things need to get done a certain way. The military does offer a decent retirement package if you want to join up and serve your 20 years. Friends of mine in their forties are now saying they could have joined in high school and been out by now with some nice, cushy benefits under their belt plus a pension. It's not all bad, but you deserve to know more than what they are telling you. This is about informed consent. Do me a favor and have a thorough examination of this web site and read all it's links: http://www.rcnv.org/rcnv/co.htm#think .I just want to know you've read it is all.

A guy I know from a local cafe had just re-upped as a Navy recruiter and was going back in shortly. He was joking about how "I'll say they'll be getting this if they join up..." (he held his arms out wide) "...when in reality you're going ot get this!" he said as he formed a zero with his fingers and laughed evilly. "And I know!" he finished up saying. The last reason I encourage you to say no is this: You're better than that.

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4. My dad forwarded this to me. It's kind of funny, although this piece from McSweeneys is similar and much funnier. But anyway.

HEAVY THINKING...

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with an NPR station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors...they didn't open. The library was closed!

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker and a loyal Republican.

I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch Fox News and The 700 Club; last night we played tapes of the week's Rush Limbaugh show.

Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

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Feature #129:

It was foggy last week, which reminded me of a wonderful childhood misconception I once had. I used to be amazed at how I had somehow managed to walk right into the spot where there was no fog. Clearly, there was fog all around me. I could see it. The rest of the world, as far as i could tell, was just saturated with the stuff. But there I was, and i could see just fine. I had found the eye of the foggy storm. What luck!

And then, the next time it was foggy... what luck!

And then the next time, well, wouldn't you believe it, what luck!

Anyway. you get the point.

Childhood misconceptions are wonderful. I used to also think Disney was spelled D-I-S-N-E-P. Really now. Look at the logo and tell me that doesn't look like Disnep. I probably believed that until high school. I figured, hey, it's someone's last name, so why not? If "Roy" can be pronounced "Wah," then by golly, Disnep can be pronounced Disney. A friend of mine told me she used to be confused by the weatherman when he would talk about the windshield index. What about the rest of the car? But hey, she was 10, and who's to question the weatherman?

Years later, she was stunned that this new thing called the "wind chill index" sounded so much like the previously-established windshield index. (well, ok, so i made that part up)

Anyway, that has nothing to do with this week's feature. None of it.

1. The old man's got some sex in him
2. Rock-n-roll ain't a Rolling Stone
3. Beeeeeee the ball

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1. Did anybody see the recent issue of People Magazine? I don't normally look at the thing, but I read from the Associated Press that a rather unlikely (or, surprisingly, likely) man was put in as a runner-up. Here's what I think about that:

The new face of American sex
By Jason Feifer

In happier times, the clean-cut ones had it made. With smug, glistening smiles and lanky limbs that were more lean than mean, the boys among us captured the hearts of the carefree. Women swooned over these untouchable figures, and then went on with their lives, free of worry or a world on the brink of implosion. But then came four airplanes, three buildings, two thousand lives lost. They said everything changed, and then they retracted it. Our lives were shaken, but we settled back down, and started looking again to the pretty faces.

But surely, things have changed. Our boys have become men, no longer just captured in celluloid and on the red carpet of glitzy events. Our heartthrobs are now hardened soldiers, the kind of guy that will thrust his fist into the chest of the enemy, and yank out a beating, throbbing heart.

The proof isn't just in the pudding -- it's in the People. Hollywood hunk Ben Affleck may have taken the crowning glory in People Magazine's recent "Sexiest Man Alive" drool-fest -- and for that, things indeed have not all changed -- but the sun also rose over the human face of American resolve. Stoically hurling hard-line facts at reporters, standing unmoved under a cloud of the terrifying unknown, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfelt is turning heads, and it's not just when he told Mike Gallagher, "I love our country and I love the men and women in uniform, and I like life."

Let's be clear about something. Donald Rumsfeld -- or, Rummy, as he's been affectionately dubbed -- was born during the Great Depression. He is a senior citizen, ripe for the AARP. When he went to the movies to enjoy Black Hawk Down, he could have been admitted at a discount price. Men his age need walkers. They fight wars against flatulism, not terrorism.

What is so sexy about him? It makes no sense. When he speaks of war, do women speak of cheekbones? When he said to reporters after the NATO summit in Prague, "We are now breathlessly awaiting the response from Iraq," were women just simply left breathless? When he stands erect at a news conference, do women wonder what else is?

Rummy is unmovable. He is our nation's strict father, the man who presides over the dinnertable and lets the commanding power of his eyes guide the mashed potatos. When he lets loose a threat, he does so with the greatest of ease, as if war is not only necessary, but natural. He is ready for anything. He has been prepared all his life. If he were a dancing man, he'd be systematically punching people in the mosh pit -- not shaking it with the ladies like Prince Albert, another one of People's unlikely picks.

After the terrorist attacks, America loved a hero. If a man was in uniform, rushing into a burning building or a sober press conference, we wanted to hold them high, to showcase the caliber of people our society has raised. With their rugged, soot-covered faces and tattered gear, these men were beloved, but not adored. They were heralded, but not hugged. But now that the dust has settled, perhaps they have become sexy -- but without sex appeal.

Not since John F. Kennedy have we seen a national hunk face down the barrel of war, and it is debatable if battle cries are less effective from a man more loved than hated. Nicolo Machiavelli, a veritable one-man thinktank of Renaissance-era war, would have argued the opposite. But in today's world, the shaken public servants of New York City have stepped away from this glamorized role, and Rummy is doing the same. He scolds the media for acknowledging his unintentional reputation, and shrugs it off when he must. "I'll put up with a lot, but not that," he said to reporters at a Pentagon briefing last year. For his efforts, the swooning just increases. Rummy has forgotten that modesty is attractive, and so he is trapped. The heat is on, but it's not coming from Iraq.

For the mental salvation of America's ordinary men, this is what we must hope for. Rummy is sexy because he is composed, but no woman is actually interested in seeing him with the jacket off. Rummy is half a man -- and that half, thanks to his position behind a podium, is from the waist up. To find Rummy among the droll of ordinary life would be a disorienting shock, like a child discovering that its first-grade teacher does not simply cease to exist after the school bell rings. In bed, Rummy should be fully dressed, limbs frozen in mid-gesture, as if he could be propped up out of bed and left in a standing position at any time. How could a woman cuddle up to that?

Men, we do not know this enemy. We knew the young ones, the Afflecks and their ilk. We knew what they were made of, and how we compared. But how do we match up with Rummy, a man who, droopy skin or not, could snap us in two? We have no podiums, no war to lead. If he is sexy, we are sexless. Rummy is married. He has three children. He is as sexy as a log. Right? Please, tell me I'm right.

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2. This is a post from Joanjett.com. It's a letter to Rolling Stone in reference to their recent "women in rock" issue, and is sadly wasn't published at all -- let alone on the front page, which is where it deserves to be. I think this really captures, in about as blunt and bitter a fashion as possible, the pathetic transformation that this completely useless magazine has undergone.

I tried to find some cleverly worded way to express my disgust with your "Women in Rock" issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are completely retarded.

By RS standards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy costume to be whipped up by expensive stylists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!

Your poor choice of cover girls and featured artists brings to mind the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the breast-baring models inside..but we all understand that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS--Which just might be offensive to women who are interested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.

Yes, Britney has a talented stylist and yes, somebody gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK. Maybe it's naive of me to expect any glimmer of rock'n'roll credibility OR respect for women from a magazine whose cover shot is regularly a naked underweight actress. The thing is , I AM a woman musician with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recognition that real women rockers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lavigne gets some studded accessories from Hot Topic so now she's "upholding the brazen tradition of teenage outrage"???!! Are you SERIOUS? And could someone please explain to me why people keep insisting on referring to PINK as rock? Wasn't she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she performed on the Aerosmith tribute show --big deal..she was on the Janet Jackson tribute show just before that--Whatever's trendy. WHO CARES. She's a Spice Girl reject...but I digress.

Jewel and Mandy friggin' Moore have full page features as Rock Icons...Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SENTENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.

Britney's Rock credentials? Well, she butchers the song "I Love Rock'n'Roll" on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies "Well, I've always loved Pat Benatar." And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.

Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can't seem to do anything without "featuring Jah Rule," has two pages.

What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Distillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine important light on groups like these--instead they are afterthoughts, and that valuable spotlight is wasted on the same overexposed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ROCK.

In your own letter from the editor you have the hypocritical balls to say "rock radio won't touch female artists, while the pop factory keeps churning out soundalike clones, and ambitious musicians with something to say find themselves left out in the cold."

The pages that follow those words are a blatant display that Rolling Stone magazine is happily working for the factory now too.

If the issue had been called "Women in Music"..or maybe "Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now"..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is something which is still meaningful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word "rock" in bold letters next to a picture of Britney Fucking Spears, and you're turning your whole publication into a joke...and an offensive joke at that.

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3. I am in the wrong profession. I shouldn't be writing. Clearly, I should be playing baseball.

Although, there was that time in high school during P.E., when I got excited that I actually hit the ball, and so i just tossed the bat behind me and booked it to first base. When I made it there, and placed my foot on the base like I was claiming France in the name of Feifer, I looked around to see all whom I defeated. That's about the time when I noticed a guy from my own team charging at me, with about as much fury as I've ever had anything charge at me with. Turns out that bat i tossed had whacked him in the leg, and he was rather pissed. If i were whacked with a bat, I'd probably want to make sure my leg was ok. Maybe he wanted to do that by seeing just how quickly he could rip my head off, like some kind of rabies-infected seventh inning stretch. Luckily, he was intercepted before he got to me, but I was called out nonetheless.

He had a baseball-sized welt on his leg for a week. Ironic, isn't it?

But that was then, and last week is now... or, well, close enough. There we are, doing our reporting thing in the newsroom, when i spot what appears to be a dangerous insect flying around. I wonder when it's going to run out of gas. Flying. Flying. Around the lights, it goes and checks out the clock, perhaps decides it has time before its appointment, flies around a bit more. By this time, we're all watching it. My editor is scared. The copyeditor says at least it's not a snake. I just want it to land. I'm getting tired watching it.

Then, it starts getting lower. It's a wasp? Lower. A bee? Lower. Maybe it's a combo. Lower. Away from the pipes, away from the lights, 10 feet, 9 feet, it's coming in for landing, 8 feet, my editor walks to the other side of the office, 7 feet, i stand up, 6 feet, this thing is like Icarus, and when it reaches 5'7, and starts coming right at my head, I grab a copy of today's paper, fold it, and swing.

My editor jumps. I stand poised, ready for round two. The large insect, however, is gone. Our photographer looks over his computer, clear on the other side of the room, and says, "You hit it into right field."

There it was. On the floor. 15 feet away. I am Babe Ruth. I am a slugger. I am in the wrong profession. Get me a jockstrap, or a bottle of Gatorade, or a big meaningless number on my back. Homerun, Feifer.

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