Archive for the ‘nostalgia is a dirty word’ Category

It isn’t easy coming up with top quality blog posts full of wit and deep insight. It also isn’t easy to do what I do, which is crap out a post full of dick jokes and pointless rants. Sooner or later you run into writers block, life just doesn’t always provide the necessary stimulus needed for a 1500 word tangent about politics or movies. They say you should write about what you know but short of reviewing hardcore pornography I am running low on ideas that interest me.

Still, it is a big old internet out there and surely it has some good ideas I can steal…I mean borrow…I mean liberate for the betterment of all mankind. I found a site that claims to have 100 nifty blog ideas. Let’s try a few out, shall we?

Write about your favourite colour – Hmmm, seems a bit bland. Still, let’s power through and see if anything can be made of this. Most of my young life I have claimed that my favourite colour was red, which is a fine colour I suppose. At first it was just an arbitrary decision, someone asked what colour I liked in Kindergarten so they could quantify my sad little ass to make themselves a chart of some kind. I chose red for precisely no reason whatsoever because even as a kid I realized it was sort of a silly question that had no bearing on my life. I was young and stupid and my brain hadn’t fully cooked yet so my preferences were sort of dependent on the last thing I had seen or what my brothers thought were cool.

Eventually I did form a preference because all children eventually come into their own but I still stuck to red when asked. In all honesty my favourite colour is purple but as a child in public school I was always afraid of saying that because I thought it made me “the gay”. Try not to judge me to harshly for my youthful idiocy, that is precisely the sort of stupidity that youth, peer pressure from equally stupid young people and the public school system tend to breed into small children.

I am into my thirties now and have long ago realized that other people can certainly piss off because I have no interest in the opinions of 90% of the burping, farting, fornicating rabble that calls itself humanity. I have since come to learn that purple is in fact associated with sexual frustration (it really is, feel free to Wikipedia that shit). Considering the last 20 odd years of masturbating to increasingly shameful pornography it really comes as no surprise that purple is my favourite.

Write about your favourite number – Ummm, no. The only answer I have is the same one anybody who has ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has, so screw it. There have to be better post ideas than this.

Write about something you can’t believe you used to like – Full House…seriously, why the hell did I sit down and watch that drivel. In fact, most of what was the oddly named T.G.I.F comedy line-up. We currently live in an era of some of the best televised entertainment ever so I guess hindsight has kicked in but still, why in the name of all that is good and great in this world was the adventures of the Winslow family and their nerdy neighbour Urkele every a thing?

It lasted 9 damn seasons!!! I am sure I watched more than my fair share of those 9 seasons but the only lasting impression the show made is that one of the daughter’s on the show went on to become a porn star. I imagine you have already closed this tab and are googling that while you look for a tissue. Damn, I should have put this one at the end.

Write about your most favourite body part – Someone on this blog idea site apparently wants me to talk about my penis. I don’t know why, I don’t know what sick,deviant pleasure they get out of loving descriptions of my skin flute but I am hardly going to validate this perversity without at least getting dinner first. Some place nice, with tablecloths and real napkins.

Write about the most disgusting thing you’ve ever experienced – Alright, if you have a weak stomach I suggest you skip on by. I once worked for a company that did demolition and one of our jobs was to strip out an old restaurant to the bare walls. There was a lot of disgusting things involved with that particular job but the very worst was the urinals. We had stripped the bathroom walls and such out so basically we had two urinals in the middle of a giant empty space that used to be the men’s room. Imagine two urinals hanging in empty space with a few buckets under them and some wires tying them upright to the selling so the stayed up straight, mostly just hanging off their own plumbing.

Problem being we needed the urinals gone so the plumbers could take apart the plumbing. The decision made was to smash the urinals off the plumbing by tossing a hammer at them and breaking them apart. Apparently smashing the porcelain also freed up the smell of fermented salty/ammonia leavings that had been sitting in the pipes since the place had closed. That is a smell that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. There is never enough showers to wash that shit off. After 3 minutes it became less a smell and more of a taste. Thanks for reminding me of that you stupid site.

Discuss something you fear – Heart attack, clogged arteries, diabetes, birds, aliens coming down to probe me in unpleasant places, demonic possession, nuclear war, serial killers, the new Star Wars movies being really bad, asteroids colliding with the earth…

Just write about your daily travel from your home to workplace – It is a hour and a half bus ride, why would anyone in their right mind be interested in hearing about it? I have to do it every day and even I couldn’t give a shit.

Share an unconventional way of doing something – Instead of peeling a banana from the stem where it hangs from the bunch, grab it at the little tip at the other end and squeeze it together gently (I imagine whoever wanted me to describe my penis is probably throughly satisfied now). Should pop apart much easier than cracking it off at the stem.

What would people think if they went through your garbage? – They would probably wonder what the hell all these are.

sprue
You are intrigued now, aren’t you?

Your opinion on the latest world news – We have a new Pope. This hasn’t altered my life in any way, shape or form.

Describe your childhood in sounds and smells – This is the sort of nonsense that gives blogs a bad name. This is where you wax all nostalgic about the smell of fresh baked bread and newly mown grass as the reader rolls their eyes and wonders why they have to put up with this. They were only humouring you in the first place because it seemed like the polite thing to do. They were worried you might ask them questions about it the next time you met. Wow, two whole paragraphs about the sound of an ice cream truck on a summer’s day?! Well, to hell with polite then.

Dispel a myth – It is Rancid Monkey with the “Y” taken off of the end to be hip and cool. It is not, nor will it ever be, Rancid Monk with a silent and pointless “E” tacked on.

Your life in six words – Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck…sushi.

If you could be anywhere in the world right at this moment, where would you be? –  I would be in Anna Kendrick’s underpants, the implication there being that I would like to be having intimate relations with her, not that I want to be running around in her frilly lace panties and staring at myself in a mirror or something. Clearly that would be insane…haha, haha…*sigh*.

Write an article describing the focus and purpose of the blog itself – The original purpose was to impress women with my sparkling wit and personality so they would throw their moistened underwear at me as I passed. Not particularly successful so far.

Think of the unknown – I think this suggestion is broken…

Write about something that you’ve noticed that makes you like a person – Boobs? Is the answer boobs? I feel like the answer should be boobs. You know how they interview people on the street from time to time and they ask “What do you notice first about a women?” and there is a few seconds gap before the guy being asked says “Her eyes”? That is because he is trying to think of something besides boobs. Don’t look at me like that, if you didn’t want the truth you should never have come here.

Write about a new trend that you hate – I really don’t know who decided that leaving the sales sticker on the brim of a ball cap was the height of fashion but they are an idiot. It isn’t hip, it isn’t fashionable, it doesn’t make you an individual and certainly doesn’t constitute a style. I can’t imagine what type of women would be impressed by your stickered hat but I imagine they would be as equally impressed if you had “got their nose” or did that trick where you make a pencil look like it is all rubbery.

All it does is make you look like a wanker. It is literally a proud little badge you wear upon your head advertising to the world that you are the sort of irritating little pecker that thinks this sort of nonsensical shit is what makes a person cool. I know that probably sounds to you kiddies like I am too old to know what cool is but I can assure you that neither of us knows what cool is cause I am too old to give a fuck what cool is and you are running around with a FUCKING STICKER ON YOUR HAT.

People who are cool don’t worry about what is cool. They don’t follow trends, they set them. People with “swag” don’t use the word “swag” because it makes them sound like an insufferable ass. Sadly, none of the stickered masses will get that until well into middle age. I hope their parents are taking lots of embarrassing photos.

Write about what you did today
6 am – Woke up
6:05 am – Had bowel movement
6:10 am – Started cooking breakfast
6:20 am – Watched episode of Dr. Who, ate breakfast
7:20 am – Started this stupid blog post

Well…that wasn’t really riveting.

What you like and dislike about your boss – Sure, why don’t I just take a shotgun to my foot as well? Or maybe I can stick my genitals in this bear trap? This is almost as bad as Cosmo Magazine giving out sex advice.

Write about the life lessons you learned in high school or college – People suck. Not all of them, not all the time and there are certainly varying degrees of suck but in general terms, people suck. Also, I am naturally pessimistic.

Write a blog about writing blogs – One of the most thankless hobbies I have ever had. I don’t get any money for this so my only reward is page views and the satisfaction of hearing from people that they had a laugh at something I wrote. It is rare to get any comments and almost as rare to get re-tweeted or a Facebook share. Tried posting on Reddit but with no success. Every once in a while I will end up in a conversation with someone and low and behold they have been a fan of my blog for ages, something I wouldn’t have known or even have guessed at until they mention it in passing.

I don’t want to whine on about this, nor am I looking to hit the big time or sell ad space, I just want to feel that this all has a point. All I ask is if you have the time and like what I am doing here please pass it on so I don’t feel like it is a waste of my time. There are buttons at the bottom of every post that allow you to share on several forms of social media as well as the option to subscribe to post updates by email if you check all the nonsense on the left side of the page.

A goal in your life – Promise you won’t laugh? Someday I want to be a New York Times best-selling author. You’re laughing aren’t you? I hate you so much right now.

Rancid Monke

If you had told me fifteen years ago that I would ever use the internet for anything besides the viewing of pornographic images I would have called you a damn filthy liar. Fifteen years ago was when I started my first computer programming course in high school. We made a ascii image of a horse out of random keyboard characters and then programmed 4 of them to race across the screen using a random number generator. I believe it looked something like this:

-(*)^>
………….-(*)^>
………………………..-(*)^>
….-(*)^>

It was a simple time, we were simple folk…simple and easily amused.

The only other thing we did in the class that I can even remotely remember was made our own webpage. It was a simple affair, white background, black text, blue links, tables still had borders around them instead of being set to zero. My page was all about the Predator because I had just started collecting Predator graphic novels under the mistaken impression they were good (a handful were decent, most were utter crap.) Anyway, I got to scrounge the internet for pictures to slap on to my page. This was literally my first interaction with the world wide web. You kids might not believe what I am about to tell you but I swear it is true.

1) Before Google there was actually several different internet search engines. It wasn’t just Google and then Bing if you were too lazy to switch your search bar over. I remember liking Lycos because it had a cool sci-fi looking logo . I was also fond of HotBot because I could never find shit on Lycos. Never liked Yahoo! and still don’t.

2) There was a time when you could perform an internet search and it wouldn’t come back with a link to hardcore porn in it somewhere. I mean, you could still find porn, but you would have to use pretty specific porn friendly words…like “porn” or “hot porn” or my favorite “pornicopia (the porn of plenty)”. In modern times, every word ever has been used as sexual innuendo at some point. Wiggle your eyebrows suggestively while talking and suddenly you are a master seducer. Honest though, I swear to you kiddies there was a time when looking up “Cleveland Steamers” wasn’t so much of a harrowing experience.

Of course I couldn’t look up porn in the middle of a computer class without getting into trouble. Even if I threw caution to the wind and my pants to the floor, the rapid hand movements under the desk would be slightly suspicious. It would be 3 more years and a useless college certificate before I finally managed to convince my father that a lack of a computer and internet at home was all that was stopping me from taking the graphic design world by storm. My memory after that is just a blur of filthy images but I am pretty sure I was convinced that this would never get old, this would be all I would ever need to entertain myself for the rest of my pointless existence.

I think in the end it was the porn tubes that killed the dream for me. When you can literally type any filthy act in to a search bar at the top of a site and be rewarded with a selection of videos organized by either date uploaded or length of clip (perverts choice) then the thrill of hunting and downloading porn is sort of gone.

So it was that in 2007 I decided to create a Facebook account and see what the hell else was going on with the rest of the internet. Short answer: not a whole fucking lot.

Facebook

The Concept – Keep in touch with your friends no matter where in the world they are. Share photos, stories and interesting articles with your nearest and dearest. It’s like hosting a wacky dinner party and all your friends are invited…but the food is all just photographed.

The Reality – Of the over 100 “friends” I have on Facebook there is only about three or four I interact with on a regular basis and two of those people I have never met in real life. One of them was a friend of a friend who had some interesting current events posts and her opinions on them (which meant I didn’t have to bother watching the news any more) and the other accidentally friended me in what I can only assume was a drunken stupor. Most of the rest of my time on Facebook is spent scanning my newsfeed for interesting stuff to read or statuses I can make witty replies to.

When it comes down to it, the newsfeed is just sort of the natural evolution of the mass e-mail. Back in the day the big thing to have was your own e-mail address (I now have four and at least three of them are for junk mail). The problem is a personal e-mail address, as opposed to a business address, is really not all that exciting most of the time. When I first got mine I used to check it  hourly under the misguided impression that I was always mere moments away from receiving some earth shattering correspondence from a friend or relative or an ex-classmate who wanted to admit to a huge crush on me and would I like to meet them somewhere for coffee followed by casual sex and cuddling (seems overly optimistic in hindsight). After several months of a whole lot of fuck all happening I started to do what every one with an e-mail address eventually did, I sent amusing shit I found on the internet to my friends. When I got something in return I would forward it on to the next hapless victim so we could all see “this amusing shit I found on the internet”. That to me is the entire concept behind the facebook newsfeed. Take all the pointless shit you used to e-mail back and forth to your friends and stick it in one place that all your friends can see. Of course, it still relies on you having friends who want to put up with that type of shit. Luckily, the internet solved that problem too.

Reddit

The Concept: A place for people to find like minded individuals and share the best the internet has to offer.

The Reality: This is it, this is the internet showing other parts of the internet some of the cool shit it found on the internet. This is where the mass e-mails and the Facebook feed evolved past the need for friends. Now you just throw stuff out there for the amusement of random strangers and hope they like it enough to vote it a little higher up the page so your ego can be thoroughly stroked.

Twitter

The Concept: Kind of like Facebook, only not?

The Reality: The only upside I have found to Twitter is that you can cyber stalk celebrities with an ease never before known. All you need to do is find your favorite celebrity and follow them, they don’t have to do anything from their end. Then your Twitter feed can become “a list of my future crimes and evidence of there pre-meditation.” Compare this with the unfortunate downsides of Twitter.

1) Reading the uncensored stream of thought of your favorite celebrity isn’t really all it is cracked up to be. Either they are as maddeningly mundane as you are and tweet about which airport they are currently bored in or show they are currently parked in front of OR they are no where near as savvy or witty without a talented writer putting words in their mouth and they tweet about their current kill to death ratio in the latest Call of Duty game as if it has significant meaning in life (it means you have too much time on your hands).

2) 140 characters limit on posts?! What the holy hell? I have had more verbose fortune cookies than that. So say goodbye to communicating complex ideas. Try to think of what newspaper headline would capture your intent the best. “Dr. visit leads to surprise gov’t colon inspection, story on page 6.” There is an amazing amount of third party support sites designed around allowing you to tweet over your character limit or add photos and videos. Maybe they should hire these people at Twitter and MAKE THE DAMN SITE BETTER.

Comment Sections

The Concept: Take the awesome abilities of interaction that makes the internet so unique and add it to every news article, comedy site, video or blog. Share  your opinions instantly on whatever you read or watch.

The Reality: Well the first three comments are bound to be “F1rst!!!1!” (one winner and two sad little runner’s up). Odds are that the commenter didn’t bother wasting time actually reading the article or watching the video and it isn’t likely they ever will. They came to stake a claim on the top of the comment section and then crept off into the night. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why they bothered, then I created the Rancid Monke Therom of Internet Users. You see, it is my belief that internet users are at any given time either Bored, Horny, or Stupid. Obviously there is a lot of potential for overlap but I am far too lazy to create the necessary Venn diagram. Obviously “F1rst!!!1!” commenters are smack dab in the middle of the Bored and Stupid section. The Bored part is obvious and the Stupid part is also pretty self explanatory because there has to be at least a literal million more entertaining things that these people could be doing but instead they choose to waste time reminding people where exactly the top of the comment section is. These people are to intellectual discourse what a plate of fecal matter is to fine dining. Clearly they aren’t Horny though or they would find a porn site to troll.

The rest of the comment section will be filled with people questioning the article or video writers intelligence, sanity, sexual preferences and/or  potential promiscuity of their maternal procreator in regards to the commenter on the previous evening. There will be a sprinkling of supportive comments and some commenters will treat the English language like it did something deviant and needs to be punished (no one will ever really decipher what they were trying to say nor what they have against vowels and punctuation). In the middle of it all will be one guy trying to sell pills to make your genitals the talk of your local PTA meetings or prayer group (The entrepreneurial spirit…it is what makes this country great).

Forums

The Concept: Get together with others from around the world to discuss books or movies, swap tech support tips, share news about video games. Whatever your hobby or interest, there is a forum for you out there somewhere.

The Reality: The important thing to remember is that forums are where intelligent discourse goes to die…then have it’s corpse urinated on.

Need a little tech advice for your laptop? “ha…should have bought a Mac.”
Excited about the latest release for PlayStation 3? “PS3 Sux…XBOX 4 Life.”
Having problems with your iPod? “You are such a mindless sheep…you should have bought a Zune like the rest of us.” (Yes, this was an actual post I saw and Yes, forum users are apparently irony impaired.)

Good luck trying to have an intelligent conversation about any topic on a forum when every third reply is someone suggesting they are just leaving for or coming back from a sexual rendezvous with your mother (must be some latent oedipal thing…I don’t really get it.)

Online Shopping

The Concept: Buy anything you want and have it delivered right to your door (including boner pills). Why bother leaving your home to waste time at a mall ever again?

The Reality: I actually really like the idea of online shopping. I hate malls, crowds, people invading my personal space, and those asshole kiosk workers trying to flag me down so I can buy their pointless shit (I do not need a remote controlled helicopter…not today, not ever). If I could skip all that and have everything sent to me then why the hell wouldn’t I? Not just books and movies, I would buy small appliances and flatware and towels and pens and fleshlights, whatever the hell I needed. Unfortunately there are three major problems I have with online shopping:

1) Shipping Costs – The price of not getting off my lazy ass is that I will have to pay for someone to send it out of their warehouse and have a courier of some kind drop it off. That shit ain’t cheap. I have spent 2 years as a shipper/receiver so I know how quickly the costs can add up. Heading over borders? That will cost extra. Live out in a remote area? That will cost extra. Want to insure the package in case the courier decides to drop it off a cliff never to be seen again? That will cost extra.

Some places will ship for free assuming you spend over a certain price cap. The problem is I never have enough on the first try to get free shipping. I always have to dig in to the website and find that extra book to add to my order. The idea of online shopping was supposed to be that I could get what I want delivered right to my door without hassle. Instead I get what I want, plus some extra crap that seemed okay and padded the bill out nicely.

2) The Waiting – The other problem of online shopping is waiting for delivery. This doesn’t seem like such a big deal until you realize how many companies manufacture their products in overseas factories. I once tracked a friend’s iPad order from China to Alaska to Kentucky to Concord, Ontario to the Depot in Edmonton. Who wants to wait that long when I can spend 20 minutes on a bus and have one in my hand before I leave the store? Unless the item is out of stock or I want one but am not eager to get it in my hot, greasy hands right away. How often is that the case?

3) No One At Home – Here is probably the biggest obstacle I have to online shopping. Every time I have ever ordered online I have had to put much time and thought into where to have the item delivered so that someone will actually be able to sign for it. Odds are most couriers will require a signature and odds are they will show up when you are at work and leave a “we will come back at an even less convenient time” card. Couriers are off work at the same time as the rest of us (for the most part) making it near impossible to schedule around your work day. Do you dare have it shipped to your work and hope it doesn’t get lost in the mail room shuffle or stolen by your light fingered co-workers? Can you send it to a friend’s house or work and trust them to sign for it? How many times will they try to deliver before you have to come down to the piss poorly located depot and get it? Unless you are a stay-at-home parent or unemployed your shit is never going to be “delivered right to your door”…at least not on the first try.

Blogs

The Concept: Be the writer you always wanted to be, only with no editing or paycheck.

The Reality: I have been doing this blog for over a year and written over 86 posts. I still have no fucking idea what you people want to read about. Mostly I just try to amuse myself between the days of drudgery at my various dead end jobs and the nights of pointless self pleasuring in the bathroom of the local food court. God do I ever need an editor and a sense of shame.

Rancid Monke

You know how I know I am getting old? Whenever I walk into a food court now I know that there isn’t a single place I can go eat that won’t cause later violent bowel distress. Even the more healthy options are guaranteed to take the short and distressing trip through my colon like a fat kid on a greased water slide.

None of it even tastes very good any more. I sit down to a burger and fries and all I really notice is how bland it is under the mountain of sauces. I could pour myself a big cup of mustard and ketchup and pretty much achieve the same flavour experience. I think that is why most of those places are so liberal with the onion use. Nothing like violently assaulting your taste buds with raw onion to make you ignore the flavour of grade F beef.

When I was a kid this food was like the golden standard. It was the mark of a delicious meal that it came with moist towelettes and individual satchels of ketchup. Now my golden standard is any home cooked meal I didn’t have to make myself. If I get to put 0 effort in and get to have a decent meal out the other end then I have had a successful day. I can cook, don’t get me wrong, but nothing tastes as amazing as something that was made while I got to sit on my ass contemplating my navel lint. 

Seriously though, who are all the people who won’t eat leftovers? What the hell is their problem? Like somehow the perfectly acceptable meal from last night has somehow become inedible in the span of a night in the fridge? Maybe you need to CLEAN THE DAMN FRIDGE THEN! You people irk the shit out of me, that is all I am saying.
Rancid Monke

1) School supply lists are a suckers game – Every year from grade 1 to grade 12 my parents spent hard earned money to buy me a box of page reinforcements for school. Every year I found the flattened box of them at the bottom of a locker when I cleaned up on the last day of school. Every year I used up the whole damn thing sticking it to my face or the faces of other people.

The only reason to buy pencil crayons after elementary school was to colour in the borders of one map as an assignment for Social Studies class. Any Social teacher worth a damn had a box of pencil crayon stubs at hand just for this waste of an assignment anyway.

Everyone needs a miniature ruler to carry around all year for that one week of measurements in elementary math class. If your child doesn’t have access to a protractor at all times they will never make it in the real world. I always had binder dividers but since I never used page reinforcements they fell out halfway through the year. Somehow I managed to graduate, but I imagine it was a close thing.

Speaking of graduation.

2) Your entire life up to grade 12 can be summed up in 2 pieces of paper, your diploma and your grade transcripts from your last year. Unless you were the top of the class, all the rest of the time, energy, effort and anxiety you had every day before that is as meaningful to your future academics or career as the bowel movement you had this morning. No one cares about the experiences you had, only the marks you came out of it with. A little humbling to think 12 years of your life could be replaced by a 30 second montage in the movie that is your life. On the plus side, I am sure some perky 80’s theme would be playing.

3) Watching TV will not get you anywhere in life – I wasted hours a day on TV that I could have spent studying, reading, drawing, masturbating, or learning the accordion. Any one of those would have had a more significant impact on my current life than such brilliant shows as Perfect Strangers, Family Matters, Full House, ALF and the whole TGIF line up. Why, for the love of all that is holy, did I ever need to see the daily tribulations of Danny Tanner and his idiot children? I am depressed by my apparent lack of good taste more than anything else. I want someone to give me those hours back damn it, the only thing standing between me and a mountain of horny single women is my lack of accordion skills.

4) Most of your mortal enemies aren’t sitting at home worrying about you – The boss that fired you, the boss that drove you to quit, the women who rejected you, the people who stabbed you in the back. You probably didn’t make enough of an impact on them for it to even register that you hate them. It is sort of like writing angry letters to the editor. Be as pissed as you want, no one ever reads that page anyway.

5) Politics is another suckers game – It takes massive amounts of time and energy to become well versed in the political landscape in my country, province or city. It is way easier to go with my gut instincts or my general party alignment or even just vote for the incumbent. In the end it is surprising how little it effects my life who is actually running the show. My taxes are still high, the services I get for them are still lacking, my government still takes the opportunity to screw me over when it can. I can’t help but feel knowing all the ins and outs, knowledge of all the major players and their stance on the issues would only lead to frustration over how little everyone else really cared.

6) The toys you get from a fast food place are as cheap and disposable as the food – When I was a kid we never got McDonalds. My Dad had spent too many years eating this junk as my grandmother had this weird need to buy it in bulk whenever there was a sale. She would would tootle on over and buy a couple bags worth then freeze them. I cannot for the life of me imagine how gross reheated McDonalds was, but thinking about it now makes me pretty queasy.

Long story short, McDonalds always had the best toy lines to tie in with whatever the summer blockbuster was and I was always pissed about missing out. I was too young to know any better. Now I watch my nephews get excited by the same crap for the same reasons. Sorry kids, but in the scheme of life, your bobblehead Green Lantern is not worth my eating mechanically separated proto meat. You’ll only break it in a week anyway.

Rancid Monke