CHANGE JAR STATS
++ As of February 7, 2005,
the change jar was 41.3% full.
++ I last emptied the change jar
on August 11, 2004.
++ The change jar is projected
to be full on October 21, 2005.
[See change jar photo here]
I received an email from someone using the name "Scabbiest F. Asphyxiated," which turned out to be a porn spam. Attention spammers: I realize you guys use randomly generated names to dodge spam filters, but might I suggest you purge your word lists of words like "scabbiest" and "asphyxiated"? Even though the "BABE FACE GORGEROUS [sic] BRUNETTE HOTTIE" featured in your message is indeed attractive and flexible (as well as hungry, apparently), words that call to mind images of crusty, bleeding sores and death by suffocation just kill the mood.
A bonus Folly in Marketing was in the body of the email, a collection of Aphorisms for Dummies that I suppose was designed to foil spam filters:
We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway. The mark of a true MBA is that he is often wrong but seldom in doubt.
The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond and sometimes better.
Location, location, location.
A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.Honor is unstable and seldom the same for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.
Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.
Now that I think about it, maybe this email represents a Triumph in Marketing instead of a folly -- it successfully circumvented Yahoo's spam filter and got me to open it, if only for purposes of ridicule.
I found a pamphlet in the lunch room at my job advertising the services of Jordan Dechtman, metro Denver's self-proclaimed retirement planning specialist. Go see his website here -- it has most of the same photos as the pamphlet, and as a bonus you can enjoy a snappy Flash montage of frisky retirees fishing and playing the saxophone and not mopping the floor at McDonald's.
I learned a lot about Jordan Dechtman by reading his pamphlet. For instance, he has what must be the squarest jaw in the six-county area, and probably the entire Front Range. If I were Jordan Dechtman, I'd forget financial planning and take a carnival job pounding iron spikes into cinder blocks with my jaw.
"When [Jordan Dechtman] lost his father at 18," the pamphlet informs us, "he quickly realized the importance of proper financial planning." Does it strike anyone else as sick and wrong to flog a parent's death to gain financial planning clients? This just creeps me out. It's like George Costanza using a picture of his dead fiancée to hit on supermodels.
Click "Meet Jordan Dechtman" to see a photo of Jordan Dechtman in golf shorts and snazzy golf shoes, lining up a putt and, from the look on his face, working out a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. The caption states that "when time allows, Jordan tees it up." Well, so what? Am I hiring a financial planner or a golf coach? I don't care if Jordan Dechtman throws rocks at puppies in his spare time, as long as he gets me a 15% annual return. On the other hand, he does have awfully nice legs for a man his age.
Also on the "Meet Jordan Dechtman" page is a photo of Jordan Dechtman with his wife Kathy, twin boys Sam and Adam, daughter Alana, and dog Buddy. This photo caught my attention for five reasons: (1) it looks like it belongs in a political campaign pamphlet, (2) Alana wears her hair in cornrows, (3) Buddy was almost certainly rented for the occasion, (4) the Dechtman family, by my estimate, ranks no lower than sixth among the world's denim-consuming nations, and (5) Kathy, while not a BABE FACE GORGEROUS BRUNETTE HOTTIE, has a definite grab-a-handful-of-my-soccer-mom-hairdo-and-fuck-me-in-the-back-seat-of-the-Land-Rover appeal.
I bought a box of Archer Farms grilled salmon fillets. The box said it contained five fillets, but when I got home I found that it contained six fillets. I looked at the box more closely and saw that it promised to contain "approximately 5 fillets." (See photo here.) I'm not going to complain about receiving a bonus salmon fillet, but isn't this a little dumb on the part of Archer Farms? Do they hire people who are so stupid and unskilled that they can't count to five?
"Well, Kilgore," you are saying, "salmon fillets come in different sizes, so maybe they put five small fillets in the box and had to add a sixth to make the promised weight."
Yeah, maybe, except that each of these fillets was exactly the same size and shape -- they're not "fillets" so much as "rectangular fish nuggets." So why not put exactly five fillets in each box instead of approximately five? It's like saying a Honda Accord comes with "approximately four wheels" or a Big Mac comes with "approximately two beef patties."
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
WHO LIVES IN 504
Dear Red-Haired Girl Who Lives In 504,
When I went to Office Depot tonight, I never dreamed you would be the one to ring up my order. But when I went to the counter with my 4-pack of Avery Marks-A-Lot permanent markers in assorted colors, there you were! At first I wasn't certain it was you, but when you turned around to stare blankly past my right ear and mumble, "Is that all for you tonight?" I was sure. With those sparkling green eyes and that curly mass of flaming hair piled atop your head, who else could it be?
You probably don't know who I am. I'm Kilgore Trout, from 509. I'm the guy you never notice when you're out on the balcony in your halter top, squatting on the ground and smoking cigarettes while you talk on your cordless phone. Sometimes it's hard to notice me, because I'm ogling you through the peephole in my door. But other times I physically exit my apartment to go running or whatever, and still you keep inhaling known carcinogens and chattering away as if the Secretary of State was on the other end. I always think you might turn and smile and say, "What, running again?" but you never do. I guess I could take the initiative and say, "What, smoking again?" but that would require my testicles to be composed of an alloy of copper and zinc, instead of Styrofoam like they actually are.
I had considered, during the awkward silence while you changed the paper tape in the receipt printer, mentioning that I recognized you as the red-haired girl who lives in 504. But I was pretty sure that would lead to this conversation:
ME: Hey, don't you live on [our street]? Five-oh-four, right?
YOU (totally freaked out): Yeah...
ME: I live there too! In 509!
YOU: Oh, okay. Did you just move in?
ME: Well, in June.
YOU: Oh. I guess I just haven't noticed you.
ME: Yeah, I guess not.
[continued awkward silence as paper tape loads]
YOU: Okay, eighty cents is your change, and thanks for giving me the creeps. Don't be surprised to see a moving van in the parking lot later in the week.
ME: No problem. It's nice to have established that we have nothing in common beyond the close proximity of our living spaces.
It's probably not my place to say this, but you would do well to quit smearing garish eyeshadow all over your upper eyelids. You're quite pretty, and the makeup distracts from your piercing green eyes. Also, it looks slutty. Not that there's anything wrong with looking slutty -- and there's definitely nothing wrong with being slutty -- but making your eyelids visible from space is pushing things a bit. I will say, though, that the tight, too-short Office Depot shirt works for you. Ditto the tattoo in the small of your back. And don't ever let anyone talk you into getting implants. There's one guy in 509 who thinks your breasts are perfect just the way God gave them to you.
I know I'm pushing it here, but have you ever asked your doctor about Accutane®? It's difficult to tell you have a problem, what with all those cute freckles, but when somebody looks at you very closely -- and I was! -- it's hard not to notice. Sure, side effects of Accutane® can include birth defects or miscarriage, depression and suicidal behavior, permanent loss of sight, tinnitus or permanent hearing loss, stunted bone growth, serious muscle damage, hives, convulsions, rectal bleeding, slurred speech, and much, much more; but beauty, like freedom, isn't free.
I've been thinking about it a lot the last few hours, red-haired girl who lives in 504, and I'm pretty sure you're never going to have sex with me, in spite of my excellent references and my queen-sized bed located fifty feet from your front door. You don't seem the type to allow yourself to be seduced by the nebbishy charms of a guy ten years your senior who rules at Trivial Pursuit and for whom a Rubik's Cube is not an ironic Christmas gift. Also, I've noticed that 100% of the men who enter and leave your apartment are members of a race distinct from mine. I think it's great that your vagina is running a strong affirmative action program, but where does that leave me? Jerking off to grainy freeze-frames of Princess Leia being held captive by Jabba the Hutt, that's where.
Maybe it's for the best. We wouldn't have anything to talk about after four or five hours of sweaty coitus and noisy orgasms, and I'd have to feign sleep and lock the door behind you when you went outside to smoke. Then it would be all weird the next time I left to go running and you were talking on the phone. So I guess we should leave things the way they are.
"Yeah! A story!" echoed Kevin around a mouthful of his third s'more. He waved his sticky hands in the air. "Make it a scary one!"
Grampa grunted and threw another stick on the fire. "Your mother doesn't like it when I tell you scary stories," he said. "And I don't want to get in trouble. Why, she'd tan my hide."
Billy and Kevin giggled at the idea of Grampa getting a spanking. "You can't get in trouble," said Kevin. "You're Grampa!"
"Well, all right," said Grampa. "Have I ever told you the story of Kilgore Trout?"
"Uh uh," said Billy. "Is he a monster?"
"No," said Grampa. "Kilgore Trout was -- is -- a man. A long, long time ago, he lived in Denver, not too far from where you two and your mom and dad live now. In the daytime, he worked at an unsatisfying job where he had move pieces of paper around and wasn't allowed to surf the Internet. At night, he alternated between reading self-help books and sitting in the bathtub with the lights off, rocking back and forth and listening to Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album on repeat. And at night he cried himself to sleep."
"I thought crying was for girls," said Kevin.
"Well, it is," said Grampa, "but Kilgore Trout was very sensitive. Also, he was a major pussy. Anyway, one day Kilgore Trout stopped coming to work. He stopped calling his friends. He stopped spending entire Saturdays at SuperTarget, walking up and down the aisles and eye-groping the pretty girls doing their grocery shopping, but never working up the courage to say so much as 'You like Cheerios? I like Cheerios!' So all of Kilgore Trout's friends -- well, both of them -- got very worried and let themselves in to his apartment. And there they found..."
"What was it, Grampa?" said Billy, his eyes wide. "Did he overdose on smack?"
"Hell, no," said Grampa. "Where would a paper pusher like Kilgore Trout get enough money for the kind of high-grade shit you need to kill yourself? No, what they found was all of Kilgore Trout's stuff exactly where it had always been. Running shoes by the door. Run Lola Run poster hung inexpertly on the wall. Astroglide in the bedside table, top drawer. But no Kilgore Trout. He had vanished, like Alex Winter's career."
"Where'd he go, Grampa?" asked Billy.
"Well, nobody knows for sure," said Grampa. "Some say he went to the Canadian Rockies. Others think he hid in the Amazon rain forest. And some think he fled to the steppes of Siberia. But one thing is for sure -- nobody saw Kilgore Trout for seven years."
"I'm seven, Grampa," said Kevin, holding up seven fingers.
"That's right, my boy," said Grampa, chuckling and ruffling his grandson's hair. "Kilgore Trout disappeared for as long as you've been alive! But he came back. Seven years to the day after he left, Kilgore Trout reappeared in downtown Denver. And he was a fright! He hadn't cut his hair or shaved his face or bathed the entire time he was gone. Those who were at the corner of Blake and 16th Street that day say his eyes were wild -- the eyes of a man who had fought grizzly bears to a draw and chased down antelope and killed them with his teeth and bare hands. His hair was matted and dirty, and his beard hung down to his waist and was filled with fleas and maggots. He wore crude clothing stitched together from animal hides. He was so filthy that not even the homeless people panhandling on 16th Street Mall wanted to go near him, and a crowd gathered to stare, although they kept their distance because he smelled so bad. And then Kilgore Trout spoke."
"What'd he say, Grampa?" said Kevin, tugging at his grandfather's sleeve.
"He said, 'Free mayonnaise,'" said Grampa.
"Free mayonnaise?" said Kevin.
"He was gone for seven years and all he brought back was mayonnaise?" said Billy.
"Well, that's what the people in the crowd thought," said Grampa. "But Kilgore Trout kept repeating himself, saying 'Free mayonnaise. Free mayonnaise. Free mayonnaise,' over and over again, and they could see that as dirty as Kilgore Trout was, the jar of mayonnaise he was holding out was pure and clean and white. There was a young man in the crowd who was eating a turkey club sandwich, and on a dare from his friends, he stepped out and said, 'Sure, I'll take some free mayonnaise.' And he put a little on his sandwich and took a bite."
"Did he die, Grampa?" asked Billy. "Mommy says we're not supposed to take anything from strangers, even if they offer us beer and pornography."
"Your mommy wants you to grow up to be a mincing little wuss, I guess," said Grampa. "No, he didn't die. He ate the bite of sandwich with the mayonnaise on it, and then, without saying a word, he put more on his sandwich and ate it. Then he grabbed the jar from Kilgore Trout and started smearing huge globs of mayonnaise on that turkey club, and he gobbled it down as if he hadn't eaten in a week. And when he finished he licked his fingers and said, 'That's the best motherfucking mayonnaise I ever ate.'"
"I don't like mayonnaise," said Kevin, wrinkling his nose. "It tastes like smegma."
"You don't understand," said Grampa. "This was the creamiest, freshest, most delicious mayonnaise anyone had ever tasted, and it turned the condiment industry upside down. Within months, U.S. mayonnaise consumption went up 3,000%, and almost all of that was KT Mayonnaise, even though it cost three times as much. People didn't just put it on sandwiches and in egg salad -- they ate it plain, sometimes right out of the jar. Ice cream trucks sold KT Mayonnaisicles. Food experts identified no fewer than seventeen distinct levels of flavor in KT Mayonnaise, and doctors found that if you smeared the stuff in the right places, you could cure diseases from lung cancer to erectile dysfunction to social anxiety disorder. And a popular sitcom was built around a black midget saying 'That's tasty like KT Mayonnaise!'"
"But Grampa," said Billy, "if KT Mayonnaise was so good, how come they don't make it anymore?"
"I thought you might ask that," said Grampa. "Let me tell you about Lizzie Hellman."
"You mean like Hellman's Mayonnaise, Grampa?" asked Billy.
"That's right, Billy," said Grampa. "Lizzie Hellman was the great-granddaughter of Richard Hellman, who sold the first ready-made mayonnaise at his New York delicatessen in 1905. Before Kilgore Trout, Hellman's Mayonnaise was the best-selling mayonnaise in the country, but not long after KT Mayonnaise hit the shelves, the only people still eating Hellman's were faggots and fairies."
"Aren't faggots and fairies the same thing, Grampa?" said Kevin.
"Good catch, son!" said Grampa. "I meant to say 'faggots and commies.' Anyway, every day that people ate KT Mayonnaise, Lizzie Hellman was losing millions. So one night, she sneaked into the Kilgore Trout's factory, hoping to learn why KT Mayonnaise was so tasty. Now, this was no ordinary factory. Kilgore Trout had built it in the desolate wastelands of eastern Colorado, and it was protected by electrical fences and war elephants and Imperial Stormtroopers and a moat filled with killer manatees. Nobody ever went in, and nobody ever came out. Kilgore Trout lived there, and no one ever saw him, even though he was worth billions of dollars by then, and could have had any large-nosed, small-breasted woman he wanted. He was the Howard Hughes of mayonnaise."
"Which is correct, Grampa?" asked Kevin. "Is it 'sneaked' or 'snuck'?"
"Both are correct, actually," said Grampa. "Nobody knows how Lizzie Hellman got past the mayonnaise factory's elaborate external security, but once she got inside, she found that the factory, which appeared to be only one story high, went twenty stories deep underground. Lizzie Hellman had to fight past dozens of armed guards and genetically enhanced attack animals, killing them with weapons she found in the stairwells and using randomly scattered medical kits to heal her wounds. At the end of each level, she had to fight a larger, tougher boss guard before she could move down to the next floor. And when she reached the deepest part of the factory, she defeated Kilgore Trout himself, who had had his arms replaced with plasma cannons and rocket launchers mounted on his hips."
"Did she kill him, Grampa?" said Billy.
"No, Billy," said Grampa. "She was about to, but Kilgore Trout threw down a smoke grenade and escaped in a great glass flying elevator. And then Lizzie Hellman learned the awful secret behind KT Mayonnaise."
"What was it, Grampa?" cried Billy and Kevin in unison, clutching each other.
"It was people," said Grampa. "KT Mayonnaise was made of people."
For a few moments all was silent save the crackling of the campfire.
"Grampa?" said Billy, "If Kilgore Trout escaped, where did he go?"
"Well," said Grampa, smiling, "they found the elevator a month later, crash-landed in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. But they never caught Kilgore Trout. And they never found his body."
"But we're in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness," said Kevin. "That's Mt. Harvard over there." He pointed.
"You're right, Kevin," said Grampa softly. "And some say he still haunts these woods, looking for little boys to make into mayonnaise."
Movies in which the main character's [mother/brother/girlfriend/best friend] gets bitten by a [vampire/zombie/werewolf/fundamentalist Christian], causing him or her to [adopt a Romanian accent/start shouting "BRAAAAINS"/mistake your leg for a Milk Bone/distribute Chick tracts], and the main character agonizes over whether or not to [stock up on garlic and holy water/aim for the head/run a Google search for "silver bullet"/purchase a gift copy of anything by Bertrand Russell] and destroy the freshly minted monster. I last saw this tired device in the otherwise decent flick Shaun of the Dead.
You all need to know that if you're ever chilling with Kilgore Trout, and you start metamorphosing into any species of hellspawn, you are toast. I'm not saying that I'd enjoy pounding a wooden stake into your chest, (although I probably would, unless you owed me money). I'm just saying that it's an easy decision.
Magazine articles that incorporate bad puns into their titles. Sports journalism seems especially rife with this sort of thing: a recent issue of Runner's World has articles titled "Iron Maiden" (about an 8-time female Ironman finisher), and "Walking the Walk" (about walking marathons). MLB.com's announcement of Vladimir Guerrero's American League MVP win was titled "Most Vlad-uable." And ESPN.com right now has an article about the Buffalo Bills headlined "Reason to Bill-ieve." Enough already, guys.
When I make a great catch and nobody notices. I was at The Wizard's Chest last weekend, looking at books on a shelf above my head. I put a book back -- not very well, apparently, because a moment later it fell. Startled, I grabbed it out of the air with one hand, only to see a half-dozen more books tumble from their perches. By reflex, I caught them all in a stack on top of the first book. It was like the Warner Bros. cartoons where Sylvester catches stacks of china cups in each hand, with one foot, on his nose, with the tip of his tail, etc. It was an amazing athletic feat that deserved an entire segment on "SportsCenter." I turned around, expecting to see men jealously admiring my preternatural eye-hand coordination while throngs of women with prominent noses and small breasts held out their phone numbers. Instead, I saw a group of oblivious teenage boys playing Magic: The Gathering. You know if I had dropped them all, I would have turned around to see the laughing, pointing members of the local chapter of Single Attractive Women Who Don't Like Children And Crave Sex With Skinny Guys.
This nagging question: Where did Luke Skywalker learn to fly the X-Wing fighter? One day he's toiling on a moisture farm on Tatooine, and the next he's battling Imperial TIE fighters and aiming proton torpedoes at the Death Star's small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The equivalent would be a Nebraska farm boy driving a John Deere tractor all his life and then, with no training, casually climbing into an F/A-18 Super Hornet and dogfighting MiGs over the Indian Ocean.
George Lucas must have sensed this lapse, because before Luke boards his ship, he has an officer walk up and say, "You sure you can handle this ship?" prompting a childhood friend and fellow Rebel pilot to say, "Sir, Luke is the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories." The officer smiles and says, "You'll do all right," which is strange, given that he's just been told, approximately, that Luke is the best crop-duster in all of Scotts Bluff County.
Luke would have been a natural pilot, of course, because the Force was strong with him. But how did he convince the Rebel commanders to let him take a precious starfighter into battle?
REBEL COMMANDERS: Let's get this straight. You have no combat experience and no formal flight training, but you want to fly a sophisticated X-Wing fighter into battle against a military space station powerful enough to vaporize a planet?
LUKE: I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they're not much bigger than two meters! And check out this midi-chlorian count!
When I woke up this morning, here's what I knew about the guy who works in payroll:
He's in his mid-twenties and married.
He served in the Marine Corps, where he taught weapons training and marksmanship.
He drives a red Corvette, which he bought with money earned from teaching Coloradoans to shoot guns. He parks the red Corvette at the back of the parking lot, under a tree, so the sun won't shine on it too much.
The red Corvette displays a "BUSH-CHENEY '04" bumper sticker.
He loves Jesus. A lot. He thinks you ought to love Jesus too.
That's all I really ever wanted to know about Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy. I don't talk to him much at work, partly because I'm unfriendly and hostile, but mostly because he's a gun-totin', Bush-votin' Jesus freak, and I didn't think we'd have much in common.
"Come now, Kilgore," you are saying. "Aren't you making a hasty and unfair judgment, based on a few political and religious differences, about someone who might turn out to be a totally decent person if you got to know him a little better?"
Well, ha ha ha all over you. I did get to know Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy a little better today, and I can tell you that not only do we have nothing in common, but I'm not even sure we're members of the same species.
I didn't get to know Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy a little better on purpose. It happened at my company's holiday luncheon, an annual affair where we all climb onto buses and ride to Cinzzetti's, a faux-Italian buffet joint that would look exactly like a rustic Italian villa, if rustic Italian villas were located on I-25 next to a Home Depot and had disturbing replicas of the Mona Lisa painted on their exteriors. Anyway, I sat across from Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy. Usually he keeps pretty quiet, but something in the bruschetta must have put him in a sharing mood.
"I told my wife that if she ever weighs more than I do, she's going to have to move out," was among the insights he offered.
An uncomfortable tension settled on our table, made up mostly of women. "Didn't your wife just have a baby?" somebody asked.
"Oh yeah," he said, "and she's looking pretty good now. As soon as she got home from the hospital, I told her, 'Okay, it's time to lose that weight.'"
I stared at my grilled zucchini. What to say? Little did I know that Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy had better stories to tell on the bus ride home, where I made the tactical mistake of sitting in front of him. I then made the even worse mistake of asking him where he met his wife.
"When I moved to Denver, I started going to this church," he said, "and the pastor's daughter was beautiful. I mean, she was gorgeous. But I couldn't go out with her because her father asked me if I was a virgin, and I said, 'No sir, I'm not,' and he said, 'There's no way you're getting near my daughter.'"
"You know," I said, "if anyone ever asks if you're a virgin, the correct answer is probably 'Yes.'"
"Well, anyway," he said, "I met another girl at the church and settled for her. That was a mistake. But in my religion, you're together until... well, somebody has to die."
"Uh huh," I said. Something about the way he said "somebody has to die" chilled me, as if Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy was thinking about having a accident-on-purpose with his hunting rifle pointed at his wife.
"But she's stable," he continued, "and she submits to her husband, and she does what I tell her."
"Mmm," I said. What else to say?
Turbo-Christian Payroll Guy looked toward the back of the bus and turned back to me, his eyes wide. "In the back, with the dark hair," he whispered, "who is that?"
"I don't know her name," I said, "I think she's a contractor. She works back in engineering. She's pretty good-looking, huh?"
"Yeah, she's a hottie!" he said with enthusiasm, and looked back again. I resisted the temptation to quote Matthew 5:28, where Jesus said, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
There's are some things you just don't get into on the bus ride back from Cinzzetti's.
How she was supposed to play Bruce Willis' wife in The Sixth Sense, until that bitch Olivia Williams spread her legs for M. Night Shyamalan.
The close
"Let's go to my place and commit an act of biological terrorism."
===>
"Let's go to my place and pretend that you're Olivia Williams and I'm M. Night Shyamalan."
Pillow talk
Would nickname my testicles "Uday" and "Qusay."
<===
She never wanted to be an actress. She always dreamed of becoming a meteorologist, but her father -- a Shakespearean thespian -- pushed her to succeed where he had fallen short. When she asked to go to science camp, her father gave her Method acting lessons and a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. Once, during one of his drunken rages, he took away her hygrometer and her windchill chart and forced her to burn them in the backyard while reciting Kate's lines from The Taming of the Shrew. He died in 1997, wasted away by cirrhosis of the liver. He never told her he was proud of her. She watches the Weather Channel sometimes, and she cries. She cries for what she lost, and for what might have been.
Non sequitur
"Your brain's... got the... shell on it."
<===
"Kris Kross will make ya -- jump! Jump!"
Kinky secret
Ask her "Who's your daddy?" and find out.
<===
Likes to recite Kate's lines from The Taming of the Shrew while being penetrated from behind.
Sometimes I dream about quitting my job, selling my car, blowing off my credit card debts, and buying a one-way ticket to China, where I would join a martial arts monastery. It doesn't matter which one. As long as it had an old but well-maintained building with a tiled roof and a garden for contemplating, I would find my home there.
At first the monks would not accept me. They would poke and prod me and call me mean things in Mandarin, like "shit-sucking soft American" and "round-eyed pussy." They would ridicule my puny muscles and pelt me with vegetable peels. They would order me to go away, to go back to my SUV and my PlayStation and my Run Lola Run poster, because no American has ever lasted more than two weeks at this monastery. But I would absorb the abuse with dignity and humility, repeating again and again the only Mandarin words I know: "Please, I want to be a student here."
At last, they would relent and allow me to come inside. But they would not allow me to train. I would have to carry water and wash floors and serve the others their meals. They would make me eat scraps and leftovers, standing up in the kitchen, and I would sleep in the basement on a packed dirt floor. The students would trip me as I passed. They would jeer and point. They would knock the water bucket out of my hands. I would bear their insults in silence, and the monks would grudgingly admire my stoicism. And I would watch the students drill and spar as I scrubbed the floor of the training room.
At sunrise one morning, a monk would look out his window to see me practicing forms in the garden. At first he would be furious that I wasn't drawing water for the students' breakfast, but then he would notice the rough grace and dexterity I showed in executing the most difficult of movements. "The American is determined," the monk would say the other monks, "think what he could learn if he was training properly instead of scrubbing floors!" And that day I would become a student at the monastery.
I would learn quickly. The other students, impressed by my iron will and my growing expertise, would come to accept me. But one of them would continue to torment me -- Chen Li, the best and toughest student at the monastery. He would recognize my burgeoning skills as a threat to his dominance, and we would become bitter rivals. Li would hatch a series of nefarious plots to destroy me, but I would foil them all at the last moment, and in doing so would win even greater admiration from the students and monks.
There would be a girl. A peasant girl from a nearby farm, a beautiful girl with delicate features and a slight figure, and she would come to the monastery once a week to sell vegetables to the monks. Her visits would be a splash of color among the grim days of unrelenting training, and the briefest glimpse of her face or even the back of her neck would etch itself in our memories for days. I would make up some pretense to talk to her. She would laugh at my halting Mandarin, but when she left she would press a ripe Fuji apple into my hand. With the passing weeks, we would find ourselves chancing upon each other more and more often -- never for more than a few minutes, but like a dash of hot pepper sauce, those few minutes would flavor our lives for the next week.
All the students would be jealous, but none more so than Chen Li, who would want the girl for his own. He would challenge me to meet him -- alone -- by the old stone wall at midnight to settle our differences forever. I would refuse. Then Chen Li would declare that if I denied him satisfaction, he would kill the girl, and her little dog, too. Enraged, I would spit on the ground at his feet and whisper, "I'll be there."
The fight, intense and brutal, would rage for hours, with Chen Li and I exchanging spectacular flurries of blows atop the old stone wall while silhouetted against the full moon. Both of us would suffer terrible injuries, but our shared hatred would spur us through the pain. Finally, with both of us teetering on the edge of exhaustion, I would force Li to his knees. Li would close his eyes, preparing for the killing blow, and for a moment I would see myself crushing his windpipe with a chop to his neck. Instead, I would help him to his feet.
"The next time we fight," I would say, "we fight as brothers."
You probably want to know what would happen with the girl. How should I know? It hasn't happened yet.
CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS SCRIPT PURCHASED FROM INTERNET TERM PAPER SITE
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The script for the Tim Allen-Jamie Lee Curtis movie Christmas with the Kranks, originally believed to have been written by Harry Potter director Chris Columbus, was in reality purchased from Non-Plagiarized-Termpapers.com for $9.95 a page, sources revealed Tuesday.
"Usually I write midterm papers on Hamlet or The Canterbury Tales, eight to ten pages, stuff like that," said Joe Williamson, the actual screenwriter. "You know, for college kids too lazy or drunk to write their own shit. One day I get an order to write a 100-minute comedy about Christmas, which is a little unusual, but what the hell, it's something different, right? Imagine my surprise when I saw the trailer with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis speaking my lines."
Williamson, a graduate student in English and a teaching assistant at Ohio State University, said he wrote the screenplay "in about three days."
"I've gotten pretty good at knocking out the material, so I just pounded that sucker out," said Williamson. "I knew it was crap when I sent it off, but I figured it was good enough to get some film student a B in his Intro to Screenwriting class. I never imagined it would gross $44 million its first two weeks."
"I mean, the scene where Luther [Krank] gets Botox injections and slobbers his food all over the place?" added Williamson. "I didn't think it was funny when I wrote it, and I was stoned off my ass."
Williamson said his decision to "come out of the closet" was prompted by anger over his paltry share of the movie's proceeds.
"They can pay Tim Allen $10 million, but I get eight dollars a page?" said Williamson. "I don't think so. These guys are making millions off my work, and I'm not getting jack. Chris Columbus can have the credit if he wants. I just want to get paid."
Non-Plagiarized-Termpapers.com issued a press release stating, "It is the policy of Non-Plagiarized-Termpapers.com to provide reference material only, not finished works to be handed in to professors or studio executives. By plagiarizing Mr. Williamson's screenplay, Mr. Columbus has broken the trust we placed in him to write his own screenplay using his own words and thoughts. We are saddened and disappointed by Mr. Columbus' actions and we regret to announce that he will no longer be permitted to purchase screenplays from our writers."
Neither Chris Columbus nor Sony Pictures returned phone calls for this article.
POWER: The ability to leave your body and move around as a loose consciousness. You would be able to move through solid objects and see and hear, but you would be unable to physically affect anything or communicate with anyone. You could use this power to become the ultimate spy and to observe attractive people taking showers. Would that be wrong? I mean, nobody's getting hurt, no unauthorized photographs are getting posted on the Internet, and nobody would ever have to know. You wouldn't even be able to masturbate while you watched! Let me know if you think the shower thing is wrong. If I ever get this power, I'm going to watch hot girls taking showers no matter what, but I need to know if I should feel guilty while I'm doing it.
VULNERABILITY: Your body would be helpless while you were away, so you would have to trust someone to protect it -- even feed and hydrate it in the case of long absences. What if your body died while you were out of it? Would your consciousness die too, or would you be doomed to an disembodied eternity of looking but not touching?
PROPOSED ALIASES: "Specter" or "Ghost."
POWER:The ability to injure or kill people with your voice. A person with this power would open his mouth to talk, but instead of speaking words, he would emit an awful nails-on-chalkboard noise. Anyone who heard the sound would experience excruciating pain starting in the ears and penetrating into the head. Prolonged exposure would cause massive and fatal brain hemorrhages. A person killed by this superhero would be easily identifiable by blood erupting from the ears and an autopsy would reveal a liquefied brain.
VULNERABILITY: This power is involuntary and indiscriminate. Your voice would be deadly to everyone withing hearing range, even to yourself. When using your power, you would have to plug your ears and somehow get all the good guys in the area to do the same without tipping off the bad guys. Due to his inability to communicate through speech, this superhero comes with angst baked right in. I envision him as bitter and unlikeable -- maybe not a good guy at all.
PROPOSED ALIASES: "Sonic," "Shredder," or "Siren" (for a woman). Too bad "Screech" is already taken.
POWER: The ability to distract enemies by disgorging gushers of creamy, delicious cheese spread. The cheese spread would come from your wrists, like Spider-Man shooting webs. After making a pile of cheese spread, you would give your enemies some Ritz crackers (you would have to buy these and carry them around, unless you teamed up with a superhero capable of spontaneously generating Ritz crackers) and dispatch them at your leisure.
VULNERABILITY: Ineffective against vegan supervillains.
PROPOSED ALIASES: "Mr. Cheese" or "The Creamy Avenger."
POWER: The ability to see two seconds into the future. This sounds worthless, but think about it -- you could foil an ambush, evade your opponent's attacks in combat, and clean up at the blackjack tables. Think of all the times you've wished you had thought two seconds ahead!
VULNERABILITY: Two seconds isn't much, man. You'd have to think fast to make good use of this power.
Imagine my joy and surprise recently when I arrived home to find that bruce at This is Class Warfare had chosen not to lay up for himself treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, by sending me a copy of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. Thank you, bruce! I will ask Jesus to make your eternity in Hell slightly less torturous in consideration for your generosity.
Yes, it's that bad. It's worse than that, actually. It is the worst movie I've ever seen. Well, kind of. There are worse movies made every year, the kind with names like Zombies Invade Akron 4 that get cranked out in three days and shown on cable at 2:00 a.m. But Gigli is the worst major motion picture I've ever seen that was produced on a decent budget ($54 million, in this case) and made by people who ought to know better.
That's not a snap judgement. After watching Gigli on Thanksgiving evening, G-Dog and I debated its lack of merit versus Wild Wild West, previously the worst movie either one of us had seen. G-Dog reasoned that Gigli was the worse movie because while both movies had hot chicks, Salma Hayek is hotter than Jennifer Lopez and less annoying to boot. Also, Gigli had no answer for Wild Wild West's big mechanical steam-powered fire-belching spider. I wasn't so sure, but after a night's sleep I agreed that Gigli's special blend of idiot dialogue and total lack of believability had found a new low in my personal film viewing history.
At no point while watching Gigli will you believe that you are watching a male gangster and a lesbian gangster collaborating on a kidnapping and falling in love. You will believe that you are watching two pretty but not-so-talented actors fumble through an awful script that asks the viewer to buy into one impossible situation after another. For example, the movie begins with Larry (Ben Affleck) kidnapping Brian, the retarded younger brother of a federal prosecutor. After luring Brian out of his group home, Larry drives him to his apartment, where Brian sleeps on the couch and gets three square meals a day. I'm not a gangster, and I don't know any gangsters, but I'm pretty sure kidnapping victims are more likely to get gagged and bound and dumped in the basement of an abandoned warehouse than they are to hang around a tastefully appointed apartment, roaming free and watching television. Pretty soon Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) shows up. We're supposed to think she's intelligent and spiritually centered because she reads Eastern philosophy, and we're supposed to admire her confidence and nonviolent conflict resolution skills in contrast to the macho, blustering Larry. We don't, though, because really she's just irritating and smug. And somehow, Jennifer Lopez is even less convincing a gangster than Ben Affleck. What's next? A crime thriller starring Wilford Brimley and Judi Dench as deranged serial killers?
After a while, Larry and Ricki get orders to cut off Brian's thumb and mail it to his brother. Now, I'm not endorsing the act of hacking off thumbs, but if you're in the gangland kidnapping business, I think it's part of the job description. It's the gangster version of TPS reports. But neither Larry nor Ricki can bring themselves to do it, because Brian's not an icky retard who drools and has grand mal seizures on the toilet -- he's a charming movie retard who does silly Sir Mix-A-Lot impressions. Anyway, Larry and Ricki wuss out by sneaking into a morgue and cutting a thumb off a corpse, establishing themselves as the Least Authentic Movie Gangsters Ever.
Gigli contains a lot of bad dialogue, but the worst comes during an excruciating debate between Larry and Ricki about the relative merits of the penis and the vagina. Ricki delivers a turgid monologue defending the sexual utility of the vagina while wearing a tight, skimpy outfit and executing a series of yoga poses. The scene is supposed to be tensely erotic, but it's about as sexy as masturbating with sand. What a stupid debate, anyway. Either you like dick or you like puss (or both), and no amount of rational wordplay going to change your preference. You may as well try to use rhetoric and argument to convince someone they like rocky road ice cream better than cookies 'n' cream.
I hope I'm not spoiling the surprise when I tell you that Larry and Ricki have sex, an act that Ricki kicks off by saying, "Turkey time," and "Gobble gobble," and demanding that Larry give her "some of that hetero-lingus." This happens after Ricki's lesbian lover drops by Larry's place, throws a jealous tantrum, and slashes her wrists with a carving knife. I hate to play the PC card, but for all its surface tolerance of homosexuality, Gigli has a hard "lesbians are crazy bitches who really want cock" edge. Can we all take a vote and agree that Ben Affleck should stop making lesbo-conversion movies? (See also Chasing Amy.) When do we get to see the movie where Ben Affleck gets converted to a bottom boy by the wily charms of a San Francisco male nurse?
There's lots more badness in Gigli worth busting on, like the wince-inducing cameos by Christopher Walken and Al Pacino, or Ricki and Larry's mom sharing rug-munching stories, or Brian spitting "Baby Got Back." But it's my bedtime.
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