Archive for the ‘Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy’ Category

Points to Ponder – Bringing Obnoxious Reality into Works of Fiction

Posted: April 25, 2013 in Pop Culture, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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My father always had a nasty habit of pointing out the absurdity in movies and TV shows. Man could ruin an episode of Dukes of Hazzard or MacGyver before the first commercial. Apparently this sort of dick behaviour is herdatary, so I leave you with these Points to Ponder!

Batman – Why the hell did Bruce Wayne’s parents leave out the back of the theatre anyway?

Starting with the obvious question of why the hell Alfred wasn’t picking them up, we at least have to question why the two richest fucking people in the city popped out back into a dark alley in the middle of downtown with such a bad reputation that it is literally fucking called CRIME ALLEY?

What was the plan? They weren’t going to catch a cab in the middle of an alley, they didn’t park back there, Alfred was apparently at home organizing his sock drawer and not coming to get them. I don’t give a fuck how “down to earth” and “man of the people” you want to be, rich people are usually not so stupid as to wander the back streets of downtown in the dead of night in order to take public transit. It isn’t like they have public transit all the way out to THEIR MANSION ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN ANYWAY. Do you think there is a lot of call for the 10:30pm bus to Wayne Manor?!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK WERE THESE PEOPLE DOING?

“Hey Honey, lets wander this crime infested ghetto looking for a way home. Surely our vast wealth and fancy clothes will frighten off intruders.”

“Quick, he pulled a gun. Act condescending and aloof!”

Batman versus Superman – I have had this argument with two different friends. Who wins in a fight, Batman or Superman? Both times they have picked Batman and both times I have had to defend the Last Son of Krypton from their razor wit, despite the fact that his last movie was utter crap. Both levels of my argument are below.

Fictional Reality – The simplicity of the answer stems from the simplicity of the question. It isn’t “Who could prepare the most for a fight?” nor “How could Batman beat Superman?”, the question is “Who would win in a fight?”

So if we remove all the trappings and get down to brass tacks? If Batman spills Superman’s beer and they decided to step outside and settle it? Let’s face it, Batman then has to climb a near unclimbable mountain while all Superman has to really do is land one punch. Even with all the lack of finesse you would expect of a hillybilly farmboy, it is hard to imagine him not being able to connect with one solid punch, effectively decimating Batman’s resistance to the next punch and turning Bruce into a puddle of man-soup in no time. Among other things, Superman has a near limitless reserve of stamina. All he would really need to do is let Bruce tire himself out and go in for the haymaker.

When people talk about Batman winning they are creating scenarios of his planning and scheming or using tricks and kryptonite. They are talking about pre-meditaition, which there is no guarantee of. Maybe he keeps his kryponite with him at all times just in case but that isn’t a reliable assumption. Which brings us to the next point.

Plain Old Reality – The winner is whoever the hell the writer decides will win. Considering it is an underdog story then odds are Batman will win as he is the one who would have to work the hardest. He is the David to Superman’s Goliath. The reality of it all is pointless because whatever the writer needs it to be for the story to work is how that fight will end. In a fair fight, Batman is a man trying to defeat a god from on high. That is why it will never be written as a fair fight.

Despite it being a much more interesting story for Batman to win, Superman is much more a creature OF story than Batman is. Superman’s power fluctuates depending on who is writing him and what needs they have at the time. One minute he can move planets out of position, the next he has been dialed back to the point where he is a fair opponent to Batman. Batman, despite being a rich dude dressed up in fetish gear fighting street crime, is still more anchored in reality than Superman.

In short, Batman would probably win because he is more popular and it would make for better fiction. Superman probably should win but who the hell would want to read that?

The Matrix – So at one point they mention that the machines liquify the dead to feed them intravenously to the living. Is that the only source of food for these people? Assuming a standard life cycle and the current population of earth is it conceivable to feed the entire living population off of the dead on a daily basis? If not, what the hell else are they feeding them considering there is no sun to support vegetation (or farm animals on the surface)? I assume they are also recycling waste products (so how many times has that steak you’ve been eating been eaten before?) but it would still lose nutritional value each time it was passed on.

So what are they feeding the pod people and where does the goop on the Nebakanezer come from? At the end of the day it would be infinitely easier to eradicate all human life and then adapt to any of a vast variety of other energy sources (or find a way to set up solar panel farms above the cloud bank) than it is to maintain the bizarre Matrix illusion as well as feed an maintain the bodies tied in to it.

– Where do babies come from in the Matrix? Obviously people don’t actually touch genitals so there appears to be only 2 options.

1) Man spunk is transported to a pod lady who gets pregnant.

2) Man spunk and lady egg transported to separate pod

Either way, do the machines wait for a couple to get it on in the Matrix before matching their sperm and egg or does it just assign a random pod baby to a couple after they have copulated and it has grown to a point where it has a conciousness?

In many ways this explains the fundamentalist views of contraception and abortion though.

No condoms or birth control should be available, no abortions of unwanted pregnancies should be allowed, no interest in the health or welfare of kids after they are born. Makes sense if you look at it from the view point of a programmed response from the Matrix to ensure a steady supply of fresh power sources…more sense than anything they come up with on Fox News.

Lord Of The Ring – What the fuck half assed plan was the Fellowship of the Ring supposed to be? A small group of people take a magic invisibility ring THAT THEY SHOULD NEVER WEAR into the enemy stronghold to walk it through the gathering armies of Sauron in order to throw it in Mount Doom. That was a stupid fucking plan BEFORE the Hobbits took off by themselves, AFTER it is 99.9% likely to end in two dead Hobbits and the ring back in Sauron’s possession. There is no logical reason it should have worked nor that ANYONE should have thought it would work.

-Why the fuck does Boromir think the ring is the answer to all his problems in Gondor? I know the ring is using it’s power to give him a wicked stiffy for it but he never really explains at any time how using the ring to make exactly 1 person invisible is going to win him the war against the orcs in Gondor. Galadriel or Gandalf could probably wield awesome power with the ring but there is no indication it does anything but make non-magic types like the Hobbits and Isildur invisible (while painting a big supernatural target on them). One invisible dude is not turning the tide of an entire war.

Star Wars – So you are taken from your family at an incredibly young age and then indoctrinated with the idea that strong emotions are bad and will lead to “the dark side”. So you are supposed to be noble, righteous, faithful and charitable despite the fact you are supposed to have no strong emotions or emotional attachment to people, places or things. Perhaps a psychologist can enlighten us, but it sounds like they are attempting to instill psychopathic behaviour to me.

You seem to give up all worldly possessions in order to avoid physical attachment except you get to build your own kick-ass laser sword which you then get to keep and which they drill into you that it is an all important life-saving tool. I would give up my worldly possessions for a kick-ass laser sword so this just seems counter productive to me.

You are also a one in a million genetic anomaly with a blood borne virus of some sort that allows you to manipulate the force but you aren’t allowed to have relationships, sex or kids. So instead of the excellent odds of your special mutation being passed on through 2 Jedi parents or even the decent odds of 1 Jedi parent, the entire system is based on the one in a million freak accident of nature being able to continue your mutated evolution.

Maybe they kept their numbers artificially low to not make the Senate feel that they were a threat, but you are talking a scant handful of people to defend the ENTIRE Republic. Remember that pretty much all of them fit in that stadium in Attack of the Clones. That would be around 1 cop for every major city maybe. The Republic seems to have no standing army until the clones show up. They should be working on breeding Jedi to at least an acceptable standard for protection of the galaxy but they really aren’t even doing that. Meanwhile, the Senate might feel they are a threat but they are also relying solely on the Jedi to defend the entire Republic.

– What the fuck does Shmi Skywalker do for a living? She is a slave but she never seems to do any work for Watto. She also never seems to leave the house. The house isn’t Watto’s, he would have noticed the kid building the podracer in the back fucking yard. So she and her son are slaves but they have their own house and she never seems to do any work of any kind that would benefit Watto personally or financially.

Some fan-fiction has postulated that she is a prostitute and Watto is her pimp but like I said, she never leaves the house, she never dresses up and you never see a parade of men hanging around her bedroom.

– So Han Solo dumps his illegal cargo before being boarded…but why the fuck did he bother? Dumping cargo into the inky black nothingness of space is really not a subtle manoeuvre. Unless he dumps it into a planet’s atmosphere so it burns up, all it will do is sit there like a space turd until someone notices it.

Rancid Monke

Blog Writers Block (and the insanity that ensues)

Posted: March 17, 2013 in my tubby self, my undergarments, nostalgia is a dirty word, Rant, Uncategorized, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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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

Movie Trailer Madness

Posted: March 5, 2013 in Apple (the computers not the fruit), Modern Warfare 3, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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I bought an Apple TV a few months ago, mostly so I could rent movies off of iTunes and play them in glorious 1080P on my computer monitor (I spent an entire 8 hours taking Apple product sales courses at work recently, some nights I still wake up screaming about the virtues of the new Lightning connector).

Having exhausted my credit card and re-watched my meagre collection of purchased items for the fourth time I decided to spend Saturday night checking out the movie trailers. This really illustrated two useful things to me.

#1 I need to find a girlfriend…or at the very least I need to stalk Anna Kendrick all the harder.

#2 Filmed entertainment in the modern era is pretty godawful.

Let’s have a look at a few of the gems I managed to dig up.

3G – You really need to watch this trailer. I wouldn’t wish a viewing of the movie on anyone but I think the trailer is something that needs to be experienced to be believed. At first it seems like some sort of disaster horror movie, then there is a completely out of place minute or two that seems straight out of a particularly pornish foreign soap opera before just going bat shit insane and making what I assume was the protagonist from the first two thirds of the trailer run around looking evil in heavy mascara.

I fucking dare you to watch it and try to make any sort of sense out of it. Check out the poster too, it is just as schizophrenic as the entire thing looks like it should be for a romantic comedy except the evil eyed chick hiding in the logo. I don’t think this movie has decided what it wants to be when it grows up.

By the way, 3G refers to the 3G cell service most of our smart phones use. It is as generic and confusing as calling your movie HDMI or George Foreman Grill.

World War Z – I actually read the World War Z novel so it is pretty clear to me that this movie really shares nothing with it’s literary fore bearer other than a name and “ARGHH! Zombies!”

Being from the modern era of zombie movie, the rotting corpses of the recently risen are all olympic sprinters barely hindered by rigour mortis, missing limbs, spotty motor function or even common sense. They also seem to have gained a sort of disturbing hive mind as several scenes in the trailer seem to depict the zombies coordinating to climb on or over their undead brethren to achieve goals. They display more teamwork as corpses than most companies can get out of live employees no matter the bonus pay structure.

Silver Circle – I have seen better animation in a PS2 game and the entire plot seems to be based on a group of armed rebels trying to return us all to the silver standard by casting coins. If any of that turns your crank than you are probably the exact target audience for Silver Circle…that isn’t something to be proud of.

The Frankenstein Theory – A found footage horror movie. This time instead of witches or trolls or Justin Bieber they picked Frankenstein’s monster…I imagine because that was where the dart managed to hit the board during the cocaine fuelled pitch meeting.

Found footage style movies are insanely predictable so expect 45 minutes of pointless build up with them filming every minor annoyance on the journey (Oh no, the car broke down. Let’s film 20 excruciating minutes of repairing it and call that plot development). Follow that up with some shaking footage of running that will probably make you want to heave and that green night vision crap that makes everything look like Oregon Trail on an Apple 2 before topping it off with some completely out of place CGI of the actual scary shit. Then the camera will fall over sideways and slowly fade to black as the last member of the film crew dies excruciatingly.

The Collection – Serial killer in a mask plans elaborate traps to kill people? Why does that sound familiar…Ahh, from the writers of Saw 4,5,6 and 7. Well I am glad to see they are stretching themselves artistically. I would try to explain the plot that I was able to gather from the trailer but I have pretty much hit all the key points already. For bonus points they decided to make the last scene of the trailer that old faithful cliche of “Oh my God, the killer has snuck up right behind you, why won’t you turn around you big dumbass!!!”

Dark Skies – The trailer starts with a mother talking to her son on the phone, telling him to come home. Apparently he tells his mother he is playing Modern Warfare and can’t come home right now, she rolls her eyes and looks to her husband for support to which he quips “That is what save buttons are for pal.”

The kid is clearly playing a multiplayer game so either they want the father to look clueless or the writer is just an oblivious dickhead, either way I have lost all sympathy for both of these characters and I think they deserve whatever the ominous music is foreshadowing throughout the scene. Honestly, any movie that reminds me of having to do tech support for my luddite parents in the first 5 minutes deserves to end the careers of all the people involved.

The highlight of the trailer is of course watching Keri Russell violently bash her head repeatedly into a patio window which seems an apt metaphor for her ridiculous attempts to have a relevant career. The trailer ends with the killer/ominous threat sneaking up behind her while she stares off in the wrong direction. Sounds like I could make a trailer watching drinking game out of that, although my liver might not survive it.

Jack the Giant Slayer – The only reason this peaked my interest is because it is oddly foreshadowed in the comic series Fables. Jack of the Fables goes to Hollywood and finances 3 huge major motion pictures in order to gain the sort of fame that allows him to become immortal according to the story logic of the series. I certainly hope I wasn’t the only Fables fan slightly creeped out when I saw this trailer.

The Last Exorcism Part 2 – I didn’t bother to watch the trailer, I was just struck by stupidity of making a sequel to a film called The Last Exorcism. Doesn’t that make the title of the first movie just blatant false advertising? Someone in Hollywood needs a good punch in the head for this.

Fast and the Furious 6 – There is going to be a sixth film in the Fast and the Furious franchise. I blame you for that, dear reader, because I have never once seen one of these movies. Not even a censored version on a late night cable channel.

Until next time, good people of the internet.

Rancid Monke

Now For A Very Special Episode – 100 Posts and 2 Years Later

Posted: February 7, 2013 in my tubby self, Rant, Video Games, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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What can I do to mark this special occasion? 100th post and my second anniversary on WordPress. Currently sitting at 2400 views. Don’t get me wrong, I imagine there are bloggers out there who could pull those kind of numbers in an afternoon but it has also gone beyond my friends humouring me as well. Some poor bastard in Chile once landed on my page after a Google search and the top views after the US and Canada are Russia. Apparently my sparkling wit is crossing language barriers, what the fuck did you manage to do this week?

Well if television has taught me anything it has certainly taught me that it is time for a clip show. Ah clip shows, the great blue balling of televised entertainment. In tonight’s episode I will be dragging in some of my best quips from Facebook, Twitter and various washroom stalls. I provide them with as little context as is humanly possible, so they can be enjoyed as nature intended.

Interwebz

– So…if ever my Google searches become public then I will have a hard time explaining today’s activities. I also need to delete a few pictures before handing anyone my phone again.

– My ex-boss’s dog is now showing up as a “friend I may know”. Nice work Zuckerberg.

– Facebook is like German porn. No one is having fun until someone gets pissed on.

Television

– I may have to stop watching Justified for a few days. My internal monologue now has a Kentucky accent.

– Why do they even need ads for tampons and pads anymore? Have you ladies not formed some sort of brand loyalty by now? Are you really watching TV in hopes of gaining some fresh perspective on it between shows?

– I have regrets. There are parts of my past that I would like to forget, questions about my behaviour that I can never fully answer. Like why the fuck did I ever watch Full House?

Babysitting

– Teaching my nephew all about survival of the fittest. Specifically, I am teaching him he can survive for a few minutes while I go whiz.

– This is why you don’t want me to babysit your kids.
redrum

Dinner

– That wiener wasn’t very tasty at all, that was a substandard wiener as far as I am concerned. I like my wieners to explode with flavour, dammit!

– Time for a breakfast of regrets followed by a lunch of shame. Sensible dinner though.

– “All the flavours of Tuscany in our new Tuscan chicken sandwich.” – apparently the flavour of Tuscany is raw onion. 

“All the flavours of the Southwest in our Turkey chipotle sandwich.” – apparently the flavour of the Southwest is also raw onion.

– We are sitting around having turkey dinner and both my nephews come back over from the kiddie table to stand beside their father’s seat with their plates held out in front of them, waiting patiently for the chance to ask for help getting seconds.

I gazed at them, I gazed over at my brother and in my best British accent I said “Please sir, can they have some more?”

Maybe you had to be there…

Exercise

– So I go to a job interview in the river valley and I am climbing back up one of those horrible long wooden staircases to get back to the top of the hill to catch the LRT. I look behind me and there is an attractive young women following me up in her jogging attire. I am near the top so there is NO chance I can even pretend that I am not a wheezing, sweaty mess by the time she catches up…fucking great.

So she gets up next to me and I say “Wow (pant,pant) guess I am really out of shape (wheeze).”

She says “Well, stairs are always hard for everyone.”

I look over at her and she isn’t breathing heavily or sweating or even working hard. 

BEGONE HARLOT, YOU HAVE MADE THIS STAIRCASE A HOUSE OF LIES!!!!!

Politics

– If you think your stockpile of assault rifles and canned goods are the only thing keeping you safe from the government coming to get you, then you clearly don’t know what a Predator Drone is.

Warhammer

– Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne…and I call Big Spoon.

There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods…and their unending hunger for cuddling.

–  I love the Imperial Fists (mostly because it reminds me of fisting and I have the maturity level of a 13 year old) but why did they think canary yellow armour would strike fear into the hearts of their enemies?

– If I ever become a millionaire I am going to build all of the Warhammer 40K flyer kits and have a team of scientists test them for aerodynamics and feasibility. That is the sort of thing us rich folk can waste our time with.

Love

love is

Miscellaneous

– Some days I just don’t feel all that mentally sharp. Thankfully nature gave me a penis to do most of my thinking with. I am currently using it to do my typing as well.

– LOL?!! NONE OF YOU ARE LAUGHING OUT LOUD, STOP THE LIES YOU BASTARDS!

– I want to start a band called Misfiring Neurons, every set will have the lead singer flailing his hands about or staring off into space like he is trying to remember the words to the song. Meanwhile the band will do instrumental versions of classic hits.

– I am starting my own gang, that is how bad ass I am. We will smuggle porn to the pornless masses and hang out at our clubhouse eating sandwiches our moms make for us. Probably tuna fish and pickle.

– I need a sugar momma to buy me some acrylic paints. Also some mints to get the taste of rich old lady out of my mouth.

– Much like Tupperware I must be burped to maintain freshness.

– Hopefully they are doing fine at work without me, But not to fine…don’t want them figuring out how non-essential I really am. (as true today as when it was written)

– There is just some shit you can’t Photoshop your way out of.

– I had an epiphany…but I cleaned up after.

– The weekend is almost here and it is time for my favorite things. Staying up late, sleeping in, reading a good book, watching a good movie, cooking bacon in the nude, applying ointment to my third degree burns…

– Soft rock with less talk? Why that sounds like witchcraft, sir and I shall not abide it in my home.

Video Games

– So I sneak up on a guy in Dishonored and strangle him unconscious while he is pissing on a bush. Just one problem…why did he STOP pissing when I strangled him?

My Pity Party (man, even I feel bad for me now)

– I would like to invite you all to my Pity Party. 

Cocktails will be at 5 (although they will probably be sub-standard). I couldn’t get a band or DJ so the entertainment will instead be dramatic readings of some essays titled “My terrible inadequacies as a lover” and “Why my parents never loved me”. Dinner will be store-brand mac and cheese with past pull-date hot dogs cut up in it…because that is all I deserve. There is only enough for about four people though, so the rest of you will just have to wonder why you weren’t special enough to get any.

Party games will include “Mock the genitalia” and “Guess how successful my siblings are”…and possibly Twister if there is a demand for it. The entire party will be held in one corner of the kitchen while a better party filled with more interesting people will simultaneously be happening in the next room. We will no doubt be wrapping up early so we can all get home to feed our multitude of cats and read a book before falling asleep alone and unsatisfied. No need to R.S.V.P. as I already know you wouldn’t come anyway.

Goals

– People tell me to follow my dreams, do what I am passionate about. How do you explain to people that you never wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a writer? I wanted to be a Jedi Knight. I wanted to be Batman. The best I can shoot for in the real world is a decent career, nice house, wife, kids, maybe a dog. I am not mad I can’t be Batman, nobody else gets to be Batman either, I just don’t view those other things as the consolation prize. Your reality sucks and I am happy to substitute it with a few Neil Gaiman books and some good video games. 

I know it is hard to explain but I am pretty sure the thousands of people preparing for a zombie apocalypse that is never coming or have sex in furry costumes are aware of what I am trying to say.

Rancid Monke

The Obesity Conundrum

Posted: October 25, 2012 in doctors, gym, my tubby self, weight loss, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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So my last post – The Fat Tax and YOU!, was about a proposal by a group of doctors in Ontario to raise taxes on unhealthy food and lower taxes on healthy food. I went over in some detail why I think the proposal is not just a bad idea but also probably not particularly feasible (among the reasons being that as far as I know, food isn’t actually taxed on a federal level to begin with).

Obviously I could leave it at that and consider myself done, many is the time that people offer criticisms but not any ideas or alternatives. However as I stated in the last post this is an issue close to my heart (most specifically in the clogged arteries surrounding my heart). Plus my last post got some decent views (and I am nothing if not an attention whore). With that is mind I started piecing together this post with the hope of finding out what the barriers are to healthy eating. I really want to explore better alternatives to a Fat Tax as I think the tax is less about combating obesity and more about profiting from it.

One of the things they harped on about at my last job was that 90% of fixing a problem is determining what the problem is. They weren’t well known for practicing what they preached, as the preferred method of problem solving there was to ignore it and hope the problem went away. Regardless of their less than stellar implementation of the strategy it was still true, you can’t solve a problem unless you know what that problem is.

Obstacles to a Healthy Life Style

1) Cooking – I have met many people who just plain can’t cook. That becomes problematic considering the alternatives are usually fast food or processed stick-it-in-the-microwave type meals. Most of that stuff is terrible for you, heavily processed, heavily salted, light on nutrients and they treat vegetables with more disdain than I have for humanity…and I have an official looking document from my career counsellor that says I REALLY hate humanity.

Anything that is actually healthy usually tastes like cardboard, or it is more expensive, or there is much less of it so it just isn’t really filling. So the question becomes; are we better off teaching people to cook their own healthy food OR demanding better alternatives in our processed or fast foods?

2) Time – People just don’t have time to cook a good meal anymore, I know it’s true because all the TV commercials tell me so. All the bagged, boxed and frozen dinner commercials have preyed on the “fact” that the working classes don’t have time to prepare a meal from scratch for so long that even if it wasn’t true people have long since bought in. Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that not having enough time to cook good meals IS an issue. That said, I think there is also the problem of people PERCEIVING they don’t have enough time to cook a good meal. You flip on the Food Channel and every dish is a culinary masterpiece, you go to Pinterest and every photo is of an edible work of art that someone slaved over  for hours. Well of course no one has time for that shit. What don’t you see in those cooking shows? The army of people doing the chopping and measuring for one…five hungry people waiting around the table impatiently for another. As for the people on Pinterest I haven’t completely ruled out the theory that they are all fucking nuts.

So now that people are already short on time due to long hours and all the extra curricular activities they may have to  get their kids to, they are also feeling guilt over the fact that whatever they prepare won’t be “good” enough because it didn’t take half an hour to prepare and require pulling out the lemon zester. I know many people who judge serving processed prepared foods as “bad parenting”. Is it any wonder people are frustrated? All they want to do is feed their kids or themselves but unless they do it right then someone somewhere will be judging them…even if it is the nagging little asshole in the back of their head that commercials and food magazines built.

3) Bad Habits – This is a huge one for most obese people. You start learning bad habits and they can become damn near impossible to break. As a single guy on my own, one of the habits I have is to not bother making dinner and just eating a bag of chips instead…I really wish I was kidding. What starts off as lazy can quickly become habit and the only solution for breaking a habit is completely retraining yourself. That is a hell of a lot of time and effort.

4) Confusion – Science is finding new information about foods and health all the time. Some foods have gone from good to bad and back again. Sugar substitutes like Aspartame and Splenda were supposed to be a great alternative but now you get articles about all the horrible side effects they are supposed to bring with them. Suddenly you are weighing diabetes versus alzheimer’s and trying to separate credible sources from conspiracy blogs. Add to that the “scientists” that are hired by various special interest groups that will render any finding you like for some hookers and blow. So now I am standing in an aisle trying to remember if it was butter or margarine that was supposed to be better for you (I am pretty sure it is neither but I also stopped caring). Our only option is to keep abreast of all the new findings, follow the blogs, read the ingredients on all the products…fuck it, I don’t even feel like finishing the sentence let alone putting the work in.

I suppose I could just let one of my  health nut friends do all the work and then just follow their advice. Problem being that most health nuts are…well…nuts. Talking to a health nut feels like talking to a conspiracy theorist about JFK and 9/11. They start mixing morality advice in with their health advice, and the health advice isn’t regular health advice, it is tofu/wheatgrass advice. If they have the time and interest to scour the internet for health news they aren’t going to flub it at the last minute and tell you which brand of aerosol cheese is the least lethal. Unfortunately, that will be what I ask about because that is what I want to know.

5) Snow – This is may not be an issue where you live but I live in Edmonton, Alberta. Snow can start as early as October and stays till it is damn good and ready to leave…April if you are lucky. Some of that time won’t be terrible but there are stretches around January where they start warning you not to go outside with any exposed flesh for fear of frost bite. This means all the fun summer activities I could be persuaded to get off my ass and do are packed up and waiting for 6 to 8 months. I have a hard enough time finding things I can do in bright sunshine and green grass, among my bad habits was a lack of interest in sports and the like. Now I need to find a completely different set of activities that I can do:

– in at least a foot of snow
– in the dark (I have had some jobs where I haven’t seen the sun all winter)
– in the city (I can’t head to a ski hill every day)
– doesn’t actually involve skiing or skating (because I fucking hate both of them)

All of which won’t matter for at least two months when the only reason anyone goes outside is to start the car and let it warm up enough to be drive-able.

6) Support – Not many people have any idea how to support obese people trying to lose weight. Considering most obese people don’t know what they need or want for support that isn’t surprising. I had a personal trainer who constantly wanted to weigh me so he could cheer on my weight loss but despite the fact I was looking and feeling better in some cases I was actually gaining weight. Nothing makes you feel better than finding out all your hard work has gained you two pounds. I never wanted nor cared about weigh-ins but this guy made it seem like it was essential for my weight loss. It wasn’t long after that I started to notice that the support from gym staff seemed as fake and plastic as their smiles. As soon as I didn’t progress to the ball crushingly expensive next level of personal training I was left to my own devices and barely acknowledged, but maybe that was just my shitty choice of gym. By the way, gym patrons themselves are actually pretty supportive of the obese folks looking to lose weight. All but the most dickish were just glad to see you out there trying, which did not fit the perception I had built up of them before I went.

Compare that to the internet, if you follow an obesity article online there will always be the few commenters suggesting that shaming fat people will bring them into line. Like somehow fat people aren’t already a bundle of shame and only this idiots razor sharp input will put them to right. I have had people talk about obesity on Facebook like their years of healthy eating, clean living and superior genetics has given them a keen insight into battling obesity…skinny people talking to me about “solving” obesity always sounds like fundamentalist talking about how gay marriage will effect their lives, they talk with that same fervour that suggests that I am clearly too fat to know what I am talking about or what is best for me. I don’t know much but I do know it is best to leave those people behind, if you aren’t here to help I am sure as hell not going to let you stick around to hinder me.

Rancid Monke