mean girls

Man, North Korea really is like China's embarassing friend from grade school, isn't it? North Korea shows up at the lunch table, does something off-putting and/or insane, and we all steal side glances over in China's direction, muttering "What are you gonna do about this? You guys used to be, like, best friends, right? Take care of it." And China sits there for a moment wondering if doing something about it will make him more or less popular with the cool kids; is it a welcome favor or a tacit admission of guilt by association? It's like an After-School Special, only with intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of football games.

instant messages, the lazy man's blog post

mikaydee: I love this line in a recipe I just requested from my mom: "For more flavor, throw in a couple of ham hocks."
mikaydee: Not salt or pepper, but HAM HOCKS.
mikaydee: Just toss 'em in there.
MS: ha
MS: it's salt+
MS: NaCl!!!
MS: (!!!=ham)
mikaydee: If !!!=ham, then what=bacon?
MS: F'nNaCl

on emergent folkways

Think before you speak,

if for no other reason than that you might be speaking to a popular internet personality who will then post your message to his millions of readers, such that the top search hits for your hypocritically effeminate gamer handle will be all about how it's,...well,...hypocritically effeminate.

Shame: the last and greatest motivator.*


*If I were ever to write a self-help book, this would be the title. Or maybe it could be the foreword to RM's forthcoming self-help manifesto "You're Not a Dick."

on tactical support

Stray thoughts on questionable choices in questionable films:

(1) Streetfighter: Legend of Chun Li
- Why would you punch someone and then shoot him? Why would you shoot an arrow at a kidnappee before sending in the ninjas to nab him? Why would you send your ninjas into a building and then blow it up with a bazooka? How does someone with the tactical skill of a baby duckling become an enforcer for a big-time crime boss?

(2) X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- If you had a single weapon that you believed could possibly kill your otherwise invincible enemy, why would you not give that weapon to any of the people you sent to kill him, including the guy whose superpower is preternatural skill with that very type of weapon?
- How does Deadpool bend his arms while those two-foot-long katanas are retracted?

(3) Couples Retreat
- Okay, so this movie isn't out yet, but the trailer looks extremely meh*. I also find it kind of creepy that Kristen Bell and Jason Bateman play a married couple, because I think of Kristen Bell as a teenager on Veronica Mars, and I think of Jason Bateman during the same period as the father of a teenager on Arrested Development, so all I can think of while watching them together is "Dude, Sheriff Enrico Colantoni is gonna shoot you in the face if he sees you with Veronica."


*Oxymoron?

a psalm to mnemosyne

Evidence that I have some sort of degenerative neurological disorder continues to mount; this is me trying to tell someone which exit to take from the freeway to the airport:

"It's named after that guy, the industrialist, with the planes, and they made that movie about him, with that guy who was also in THE DEPARTED."

Let's examine this, shall we?

(1) I couldn't remember the name of an exit that I have taken upwards of twenty times.
(2) I couldn't remember the name of Howard Hughes, one of the richest people in history.
(3) I couldn't remember the name of Leonardo DiCaprio, a veritable fixture of my adolescence.
(4) I couldn't come up with a more Leonardo-DiCaprio-specific movie than THE DEPARTED, a film with a gaggle of hugely famous actors in it.

in which our heroine packs up the discourse and ships it to abu dhabi

I recently fell under the spell of Friday Night Lights, A.K.A. the best show on television, to the point that I borrowed the non-fiction book that inspired the show from the library. Apparently someone was working on a very weird term paper about this book, because whoever had it last has used bright orange post-its to flag every page with the word "ni--er" on it, in some strange, quantitative analysis of the text. There's even a little note on one as to whether "ni--ertown" qualifies. Note to the unseen scholar: it does.

whereas brevity is the soul of both wit and lingerie

I got a six-word story on the front page of the site, yay!

Here's another one from AB.

Wit and pithiness abound!