Twitter is dumb.

Twitter is for writing in 140 characters, and is meant as a blog replacement. It has since found itself as a blog replacement. This isn’t all bad, but I think I’ve finally found a use for it myself.

It’s a place where I can:

1. Comment on what others have twat
2. Tell everyone (including brick walls) what I’m doing
3. Hair-brained napkin-outlines for future blog posts

I think that last one is more useful to me personally than anything else I can conjure up. Granted, I’ve only been twittering for a short time now, but if ever I’m stumped for what to write about, I can just dive into my twit queue and see how I should elaborate on what I’ve twat.

It shall be a public white-board for all to see and none to edit. It will be like a blog post preview if you’re a follower.

There are a couple things in the queue right now that are brief due to the 140 character limit, not because that’s all there is to say, so hopefully this will work out.

Cheap laughs. They’re called cheap because they can be gotten for very little effort. Cheap comes with a notoriously bad connotation because you think of a miserly old man sitting in the dark counting his precious pennies and clipping coupons. Why can’t it be something more positive like, oh I don’t know, economical laughs?

An economically effecient way to get more laughs out of joke, good or bad, is to introduce articles and plurals. Bonus points are earned if there’s a referential synonym in the form of a pun or social norm, but that’s a bit advanced for today’s lesson.

Let’s take something simple: Underwear. You could take the intuitive approach and simply use slang or slurs like tighty-whiteys, or skivvies, or simply BVDs. That last one technically doesn’t count anymore as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom are the big players underwear making game anymore. You could go that route, but before I divert, they’re already taking advantage of one of the rules: plurals. The rule they break though is being negative. I don’t care if you call me a hippie, but would you rather be wearing something called underwear or tighty-whiteys? Good comedy isn’t supposed to make someone feel bad, it’s supposed to make everyone laugh including the target.

So plurals enhance, but “Underwears” isn’t grammatically correct in any context, and in some cases can help, but since there is a correct equivalent we choose “underpants” instead. Instantly, “Underwear” has gotten funnier, and it’s not going to make anyone feel bad either. The next step is easy. Add an article and you get “the underpants!”

Now, I’ve gone around my elbow to get to my asshole on this one, but the formula is simple: Plurals and articles. If no equivalent plural is found, then just add an ’s’ and run with it! Even unfunny things can be made funny and if the plural changes the spelling too much, stick with the more ridiculous one. If the plural isn’t sticking, stand by the article addition.

• “I went outside to the orchard to pick the fruits.”
• “Coffee is good with the cremes.”
• “The birds are attacking me with the beaks!”

That last example shows the value of replacing the proper identifier with an improper one, namely from “their” to “the.”

I’ve just sucked all the fun out of comedy. You’re welcomes.

Some people just cannot speak. This is different than not being able to read, and realize illiteracy makes me sad. Not the same thing here. Not being able to infuriates me. People call in, and sometimes I really have to bend my brain into a weird shape to understand what people are saying. Accents can be difficult, especially native English speakers from other countries. South Africa is cool to listen to, but an Outbacker from Australia (is that the right term? I’m not Australian, but I am talking about someone from the desert, definitely not Sydney.*) is a bit weird.

The most common speech problem I’ve encountered is the “Swallowed R” or, more whimsically, “Wubble-yoos.” I don’t know if “Swallowed R” is the technical term for it, but this is my lay-term. Here are some examples of what I mean:

• R is pronounced “ARRR” not “ahwll”
• One, two, thwee, foall, five, six, seven.
• The quick bwoeln fawkes jumped ovahl the lazy dalg

That last one may not be fair or nice, but that’s an extreme case of Wubble-yoos. I’ll be cool here though, sometimes speech impediments can’t be helped and I don’t hold it against people with this issue – that’s not the kind of asshole I am. What does bother me is people being lazy about their elocution and enunciation.

Please, please, please (I can’t stress this enough it seems!) open your mouth and use your tongue and teeth to form your words, people! Just because you’re okay sounding like a four-year-old (I’m sorry, “foall-yeahl-ahld”), and those around you are used to it, doesn’t mean it’s acceptable outside your bubble.

Take a damn English course and get it right! Make it your second language, and if you still can’t swing it, make it your third language too. Language is important, and, while I understand the natural evolution of a language is to reduce muscle-movement complexity (look at Chinese), don’t push towards that harder! If everyone pronounced things how they felt, nobody would know what the hell anyone was saying!

*As I was writing the word Sydney above, a call came in and it was an American calling me via VOIP from Australia! How’s that for a coincidence? I asked him what the proper term was for someone from the Outback, and he said that one would say they were “from the bush.” neat!

Not really, but I needed a title for this article. Ame and I were talking recently and Lord Byron came up. I know very little about literature, let alone English Literature. I likes my grammar the ways I likes it, but when it gets into famous people, I stumble hard. Hell, even Shakespeare and Poe are out of reach for me. I do like The Raven though.

Anyway, I mentioned my favorite Lord Byron quote:

“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.”

It’s cool, right? Ame told me that Lord Byron wrote his stuff as a sort of “Punk’d!” to the masses who take literature seriously, sort of like a, “Hah! I’m writing this crap, and you think it’s gold! Punk’d!” I tend to take what Ame says about literature as gospel; like I said before, it’s her bread ‘n butter and it was her major in college. So, those who know what Byron’s motivations were, can feel superior just as he to all the mouth-breathers of the world. I know I’m not, but I still can’t but help feel judged by a dead man. I like Bryon, dammit!

Why can’t something, even if intended as tripe, be good?

One interpretation of mine is Bryon was a narcissist and, to him, everything Byron was amazing. Byron was also smart, so he declared to at least one colleague what he was “really” doing, which was making crap for the masses to enjoy. Byron did his Byron thing, and people loved him. He sneered at their ignorance and smiled at his brilliance in manipulating the fools.

Or… Byron was insecure, but still a good wordsmith. He Byron’d it up and just said it was bad. When you set your expectations low and succeed, what a nice surprise!

Or! As a spin on the first hypothesis, he was aware of this possible interpretation and manipulated the world as one of the first, if not the first, post-modern poets. A meta-poet.

At the very least, two things: Byron is smart and dead (joke’s on him!); and it still doesn’t answer my question: If something meant to be bad is good, is it still good?

I say yes. Why attribute malevolence or benevolence to anything created? Why does it need that attribute? Would you hate a beautiful work of art if it were later discovered to be created by a pus-covered mud-man? Of course not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the creator. So what if Byron crafted his works to laugh at us? They still evoke emotions and it only makes him a gigantic asshole, no matter how brilliant or narcissistic.

Beholder, Grade 11 Beaurecrat: “Please don’t tell my supervisor I was sleeping!”

As a general rule, I don’t really care for lyrics in the music I listen to. I want to focus on the sound and feeling of the instruments and get caught up in the flow. Too often, lyrics get in the way for whatever reason and it really docks my appreciation of the song. It’s probably related to the odd habit I have of playing back in my head what I hear with delayed by a few milliseconds. As I write this, this is probably the root of a bigger auditory processing problem.

The plus side to this though, if I can’t understand the person singing or the language they’re singing in, then it detracts much, much less. If I can manage to get some Italian opera or J-Rock, I can just sit back and enjoy. Some languages “sing” better than others, and others are horrid. My favorite language to listen to when it is sung is Russian. Chinese is the worst language though, spoken or sung. Gross.

But I digress… far too much and often! I have a high threshold for lyrics, both in singing quality and how poetic it is to me. Both are subjective, so fuck you. The reason this whole rant comes to being is the Eagles’ song Hotel California. So very many people hate this song. I wish I could get in their heads and ask what it is about it that makes them hate it, but we’re on the Internet! Why ask when you can wildly speculate!

The lyrics. They are quite vague and most of the phrases have at least two surface meanings. It can be frustrating on a number of levels. One could be put off by the fact that the song makes no sense, or it’s a dream, or it’s a flying space hotel, or it’s actually Hell, or that we were all just punk’d like Lord Byron punk’d us all by making something that seemed insightful, when really he was just fucking with us.

The main riff. You know the one. You’ve heard Hotel Californiaa few times in your day. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” someone once said and countless others have quoted him on it. If you don’t love it, you’ll hate it. It’s repetitive

Me, I like both the lyrics and the riff. The riff is really cool and simple, and I personally like trying to dissect the words as it plays as well as liking the whole punk’d angle. I just use Hotel California because it really is a divisive song. most other songs are complete shit though. The lyrics are poorly written or don’t make grammatical sense. I have a pretty good tolerance for that offense because I can’ go around as a pot calling all those kettles black.

Off the top of my head is The Red Hot Chilipeppers’ By the Way:

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there… waiting for

Waiting for what motherfucker!? Just finish your damn sentence. It’s worse that it appears in music because an unfinished phrase just grates on a person.

All this negativity though, let’s end positively, my favorite tracks are heavy on drums and guitars with tons of rhythm and adrenaline. There are always exceptions, but a first question, kind of a personal commentary on “yeah, but can you dance to it?” is “yeah, but can you frag to it?” Anything I can frag to, I can activity() to. Insert any verb in there, and I can do it to fraggin’ music. Death and Speed Metal come so close, but they have lyrics. The potential for failure is there.

What I think it boils down to is I just don’t get that excited for poetry. Ame’s gonna hate me for this, but I think it’s boring. Anyone can do it, but so very few can do it well. I think that’s the point here though – anyone can write lyrics for a song, but not all of them can be great. So why take the gamble and fuck up an otherwise decent track if your skills suck? Oh right, that’s the record labels. When was the last time a song was released without words? They happen, but very rarely, and it’s almost always something from Carlos Santana. You can’t frag to his stuff, but it’s always a lot of fun.

Rarely do I get the bug to work on a piece to its completion. It’s hard to say completion though because I pick every last nit to the end and it’s never good enough. “I should have done it this way,” or “I should have left that out,” or “this spot doesn’t look quite right.” I could work on one piece halfway to doomsday and not be done with it.

It’s funny though, I’m laughing at myself a bit for what I can’t get right. When you’re first starting out, anatomy is just a word. Caution to the wind! Arms look like this, I’m sure of it! The sure sign of an amateur is when they say, “But I just can’t seem to get the boobs right.” Then, you realize that hands aren’t something to be put behind objects just so you don’t have to draw them. Sometimes I still say, “Fuck it! The still living corpse of Liefieldbe damned, I’m obscuring these hands (Which almost rhymes – I’m surprisingly proud of that).” Somewhere in all this there’s an anime/manga phase (all of us did it), and I’ll admit it, no matter the shame: I had an offshoot of Furry in my history.

Anymore, I get caught up in small rendering problems. I’m not a trained artist, but I think I know what “rendering” means. Other balance problems bug me, or bad anatomy “uglies.” I need to look at the piece I’m working on again and fix the problems with it as best I can with as much elegance as possible and mark it as done. It’s on par with the other work I have on my wall and I may decide to print it as well.

Ultimately, I’d like to set up shop here and sell prints or do commissions and be like Brandon Bird. I’ve mentioned him at least once before – I wouldn’t say I idolize him though. More like… statuettize.

Indiana: Give me the whip.
Satipo: Throw me the idol. No time to argue. Throw me idol, I’ll throw you the whip.
Indiana: [throws the idol] Give me the whip.
Satipo: Adiós, señor.

Yes, my Xbox 360 caught the horrible plague that is the Red Ring of Death. I thought I had gotten away scot freeafter owning it for almost two years, but I think it was just denial. There were a handful of problems with the device from the get-go like disc read problems when the console was vertical for some games, horizontal for others. One day, Bioshock would not boot for some unknown reason. So really, yes, denial.

You may spot a couple new links on the Links to Other Places category. I feel confident linking to the Freakonomics blog without ever having been there. One day I had quite a lot of time to kill at a Half Price Books and read a chapter or two of the book. It was quite good, and I still want a copy. The other one, God Plays Dice, I stumbled upon in my adventures on the Internet.  It’s not on my rotation proper, but I go there whenever all my other avenues have dried up and I’ve got nothing to read. A glowing endorsement I know, but I’m almost always pleased when I go there. He tends to focus on math and physics, which is cool, but he sometimes gets a little too excited about numbers.

Then there’s Joel on Software. An amazingly excellent post got my attention one day, and it similarly went in my pile of things to look at when things are slow. He doesn’t post often, but when he does, it’s likely to be pretty good.

I likes me some roast beef sandwiches from Arby’s, but my last visit there irked me a little bit. You know how they have that promotional deal where you can buy 5 items for a low, affordable, price? You might remember it didn’t always used to be like that. For a long time, it was only a limited time offer, and then only at individual stores. Asking if the “5 for 5 deal” was in effect awaited an answer with bated breath. The sweet part of the deal though was you could get 5 Beef and Cheddars, big F’n roast beef sandwiches, for $5.00.

Then there was a change. Instead of Beef and Cheddars, they became Arby’s Melts. Just as delicious as before, but smaller. At $5 for 5 sandwiches it was still a hell of a deal, and still only at participating locations. Then they changed it again. The deal was now “5 for $5.95.” I understand that time passes, the dollar inflates, so really… a good deal.

Then there were two changes, pretty recently, and for the better I believe. First you could choose from 7 other items to mix and match your way to “5 for $5.95.” Second, the deal was in full force at all Arby’s locations all the time. A glorious moment. No longer did I have to ask if the deal was in effect. I could safely assume I could get tons of beef, and even curly fries included, without asking.

Then there was a change. This was my most recent trip to Arby’s, and this one snuck in under the radar just as the others had, but took me by surprise. I pulled up to the window to pay and the total was more than I expected! $6.95. We’re now in a dangerous territory friends. If this trend continues, and I’m almost certain it will, the 5 Arby’s Melts (to be accurate 3 sandwiches, a drink, and curly fries) will cost me $7.95 and no longer be worth my money compared to any other combo item on the menu.

There are a small number of words that I just hate. It’s not that I hate the ideas behind these words, which I guess is the most important part of the word. What they represent is another matter entirely. Before I even get to my point, take an interesting word like ‘nigger’ (this is where I get burned at the stake, or crucified, or rocks thrown at me). Regardless of how it is used and what it means, it is a fine English word. It fits into English almost to a ‘T.’ It is iambic, and has a duplicated middle consonant that defines its pronunciation very well. I’m serious here, though. I feel I have to choose a word with an objectionable idea behind it to illustrate what I’m talking about.

Now that we’ve defined what I’m not talking about here, let’s move to the meat of things, eh? Words that I hate. The words themselves. These words don’t follow the rules, and flaunt their genitalia in my face. Fuck you, words.

• Goodly

This little bastard comes along and reminds us of the whole “good, better, best” routine in grade-school and shits on it. Why not use the word “good?” Hell, restructure the sentence so as to use “well” in there so you can sound like a regular English speaker instead of sounding like a prick by saying “goodly.”

• Monies

Conceptually, all I have to say is “what.” No question mark; just an incredulous “what.” This one is simple, people. Now, I understand if you take an envelope of money from Jack, and another envelope of money from Jill, you technically have everyone’s “monies,” but I don’t buy it. It’s all just “money.”

• Onomatopoeia

Stop it. Just… stop it.

• Any word with an “ough” in it

I was clued into this one fairly recently by a coworker of mine, Rich. Think about all the words you know with “ough” in it. Here’s a horrible example to illustrate the frustrating nature of this little shit:

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

Now do you share my hatred? I think you do. If you don’t quite understand, say it out loud. I’m not English, so I don’t have the foggiest idea of a way to pronounce “hiccoughed.” I know what a “hiccup” is, which is what this word means. My spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. I’ll attempt to phonetically translate here:

A ruff-coated, doe-faced, thottful plowman strode thru the streets of scarbor-row; after falling into a sluff, he coffed and hic… fuck.

I think I got close. What do you think?

I think that’s all I’ll rant about for now. I’ll get angry again in the future, I’m sure. I always do. Until next time, same Bat-channel, some random time.

First things first: Definition of meme. I only put this here ’cause it’s a relatively new word to English, so I’ll be generous and educate those who don’t know.

I’ve got some memes that, well, let’s be honest here… I guess they’re more inside jokes in the vein of “You had to be there.” I’m just blogging about it and waving my dick in your face while I talk about how awesome I am at brandishing my genitals. But what else is blogging about or for, I ask? What, indeed?

But I digress far, far too much. Here’s the list and some explanations. Enjoy it or die in a lightning fire made of cars.

• Cocket Snatch
  Bam! Cocket Snatch! It sounds dirty, doesn’t it? Really, it’s just a derivative of a brainstorming session to title a game modification for Unreal Tournament 200X. We were taking an original, licensed game, Rocket Jockey (a totally killer game, by the way), taking the core gameplay, and making it our own. We couldn’t name our game Rocket Jockey of course, so we came up with a list of titles. Rocket Grab was one of them, but that just seemed gay. Enter: Cocket Snatch. It’s like Rocket Snatch, but this one is intensely funnier. Ever since this brainstorming session, Cocket Snatch is on the list almost every time for sake of tradition.
• Dollar Cakes
  When I was but a lad wandering through the nudity of the Internet, I saw a word. I couldn’t pronounce the word. I knew I didn’t like what I saw alongside the word. It was a label. But I didn’t know if pronouncing it “Buck Cake” was correct. I later learned it was Bukkake, but I just tucked this nugget away for later.Coworker Steve and I were talking, and as conversations go, teenage masturbation is a roundhouse subject. You can always follow the train of thought and logic back to it. I decided to dig up my “Buck Cake” story for him, and he remembered thinking the same thing too! Over the course of the week, we would mutter “buck cake” to one another, and burst into laughter. It eventually evolved into cakes costing one dollar (a buck). Hence, “Dollar Cakes.”
• Baggadix
  Once again, this one has to do with coworker Steve. He was being especially pissy, for who knows what reason. I kept telling him to eat things like “bags of hell” and “dicks.” It continued until I told him to “Eat a bag of dicks.” Apparently the possibilities here were endless. “Eat 10 bags of 20 dicks” was just one of the phrases uttered. Eventually I grew weary and simply said “bag o’ dicks.” It’s not a huge mental leap from here to get to Baggadix. It sounds like a breakfast cereal though, like Trix, so it stuck.
• Liquid Bees
  You know, sometimes I don’t even know. Just – liquid fucking bees, okay?
• Lemonade from the ass well!
  Kyle Naziaxier (hehe, another inside joke), Allison, and I were driving someplace. Kyle had a habit of lingering the ’s’ of “as well,” making it sound like he was saying “ass well.” I, being the goofball that I am, had to do something with it, so in a strange voice, I crooned,”Ass well? You can drink lemonade from the ass well!”

So there you have it. A strange look into why I say what I say. There’ll probably be another entry similar to this sometime in the near future as I recall more weird shit I say.