New Punctuation

Is has come to my attention, through the writing of these snipplets, that I have a dire need for a new form of punctuation, as do, indeed, many of the great authors and thinkers of this or any era (Joyce comes to mind) who use a writing style marked by run-on sentences, stream of consciousness, and the like, and that this new form of punctuation is the comscalmation point, that takes what the comma does for the period and does it in turn for the exclamation point, thereby inserting force and oomph into the middle of a run-on sentence, without breaking the stylistic choice of, well, not ending sentences.

Economic Stimulus Plan

First of all, I did not receive an economic stimulus check last year, because I did not make enough money, or did not pay my taxes on enough of the money that I did make, and that is a fucking bummer.

The decision to give us all economic stimulus checks was not inherently flawed, the idea just needs to be tweaked, slightly.

Let me answer that statement with a question: Why, on Christmas or birthdays or, for Henry, Chanukah, do we receive gift cards instead of cash? Because a gift card ensures that we will spend the money on a gift, a frivolous item of luxury, instead of on crap like rent and gas.

So in a similar manner, why would the government think we would behave any different on Economic-Stimulux-mas? If citizens get cold hard cash, they’re just going to hoard it like greedy children, without writing a thank-you note. But if you give them (and here is my proposal) Economic Stimulus Gift Cards, then we can be absolutely assured that they are spent in the care-free, consumerist way that drives us on to economic paradise.

And, like in real gift cards, the impact of Economic Stimulus Gift Cards would be immediately seen, as the government would already have purchased them from vendors such as Best Buy and Aveda, and the money would already be spent!

In fact, if we wanted to go a step further, we could do away with getting any kind of monetary equivalent back at all, and instead just have some sort of G-Santa program, where a taxpayer writes a wish list to the IRS’s North Pole office (for a new car, a puppy, a big screen television), and based on how good you’ve been at paying your taxes, not breaking laws, etc. the government’s Reindeer in black Escalades bring you a gift on Tax-mas!

Unless you’ve been bad, then you get coal, or jailtime, depending on the offense.

Photobooth Beta Testing

Critical T9 Errors

Them: hey how is that party
You: its pretty dull
Dull instead of full means they miss out on a good time!

Them: hey is that pie finished i need it now
You: its cooking
Cooking instead of cooling means a serious dessert-time miscommunication!

Them: thanks for being there for me, everyone needs a good friend like u
You: i hate you
Hate instead of have ruins a friendship forever!

Inside UFO 54-40

When I was in third grade, there was this book, a choose-your-own adventure book. It was called Inside UFO 54-40, and it was about you and your friend, and how you get kidnapped by aliens who are looking for this utopian planet, Ultima. Now, of course, you get sidetracked, and killed, and destroy the earth, and any other number of endings, but any idiot third grader could clearly see that the ending you wanted, the ending you had to keep re-reading to get to, was to find the damn planet.

Swear to God, I must’ve read that book a hundred fucking times trying to find that planet. The characters keep alluding to the fact that you can’t get there by looking for it, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I did that thing where whenever you have to make a choice, I use one of my fingers as a bookmark, so that when I’m eaten by an alien at the end of my current story tangent, I can jump back in time to when I made the crucial error in judgement. It gets complicated the more fingers you use.

Well by golly I never found the planet – not that way anyways. I finally got so fed up that I just forgot about the choosing and just went through page by page trying to find the ending I wanted, the ending I knew had to be in there somewhere. And sure enough, there it was, page 101. Ultima. Utopia. Two pages of artwork, too. Okay, I thought, it exists. So then I flipped through the pages again, trying to find the choice that would point me there, tell me to turn to page 101.

Nope. Not in there. Fuck it, I thought. Someone probably ripped the page out or something. Put the book back on the shelf of my third grade classroom and didn’t think about it for over a decade.

Then on the internet yesterday, I came across a discussion about choose-your-own books. They said that one in particular, Inside UFO 54-40, was peculiar in the fact that it had an unreachable ending. It is impossible to get to Ultima, and it never was possible, other than by “cheating”.

Well clearly this has some hefty existential implications! Is the author stating that we, as third graders with dreams and hopes and futures, will never get to paradise? I don’t think so, because then why put it in there at all? I think he’s trying to encourage us, as third graders, to bend the rules, think uncommon thoughts and the like. He’s blowing our minds just a little bit.

So now, the obvious self-help question that comes out of all of this is as follows: What is my Ultima? In the choose-your-own adventure that is each and every one of our lives, there is no finger-bookmarking, no going back and deciding to study business instead of screwing around in film school, no taking a trip on the electric-super highway to freedom and being fed acid all the way down instead of high school graduation (that story is for another time). But Ultima is still out there, and I’m quite certain I haven’t passed page 101 yet. Somewhere in the book of my life there is a two page spread featuring me in my hover-mansion over Monte Carlo, with three supermodel wives spooning caviar and smoked salmon into my chiseled maw while I casually plan my trip to Rio, there’s just no way to get to it.

Bummer.

SEPTEMBER

Two Drink Minimum

A losing strategy is to buy a girl a drink, because then you’ve spent your hard earned money on her booze, and all it’s bought you is a scant minute or so of her night with which to impress her, adding that to the fact that you start at a distinct disadvantage because she already sees you as someone subservient to her grace, and not her equal, which doesn’t score you many points, unless the drink you bought was ridiculously expensive, in which case she might figure you’re some rich socialite, out for a night with the commoners, here to whisk her away into the fairytale-romance wet dream rom-com fantasy she’s always wanted, but then you have to don the clothes and spit the lingo to match, which you probably don’t, so it’s a high-risk low-reward scenario, and either way the girl will probably skirtle off after slurping down her Dirty Shirley and without leaving you her number (or her BBM).

A winning strategy is to get a girl to buy you a drink, because, in the search, you’ve talked with many girls, likely in several funny, gender-role-reversal conversations where you explain your strategy to her and joke at length while trying to convince her to order you a Lynchberg Lemonade or a Dewar’s rocks, and, in the finding of a willing participant, not only have you scored a drink, but you’ve found yourself a girl that’s genuinely interested in you – at least as interested in you as you are in any girl that you would have bought a drink for, logically.

A weird atmosphere

Walking around today, I got the distinct sense that there was something “up”.

On top of the increased crime and fighting that’s been going on, there is something else in the air. And now this haunta-virus bird flu APB has me very concerned, ambulances flying around campus left and right, emergency text messages to the whole student body… very fishy. Very up.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I suspect that it’s some type of brain-parasite zombie apocalypse scenario in the works, a mutant Toxoplasma that’s causing us to engage in dangerous behavior in order to further it’s own reproductive agenda. It works by making you more aggressive, so that you’re more likely to share bodily fluids with another potential host, either through sexual contact, or blood to blood in the case of fighting.

I, for one, am not attending the game today, because I suspect that it will devolve into a chaotic horrorshow, when one infected or infested individual vomits on the person in front of them, spreading the virulent disease like a wildfire to the hundred thousand adoring fans, causing a mass panic. The whole student body will be infected just in time for parents weekend, when the unwitting fathers and mothers will descend upon campus and play host as well, thereby spreading it to the entire country, and also to Hong Kong.

The next time you find yourself wanting to go to a party or give a high five or take a sip of someone’s Dewar’s rocks or make out with some rando slooter, ask yourself: is this me? Or is it my brain parasite?

Scarytown. Buy a gun.

For Dan, who went to the hospital last night

Palintology

SEASON ONE: Her battle to become mayor – and the resulting friendships and enemies made. Also, she learns to shoot a real gun, and from a helicopter. Then, before she knows what hit her, she’s suddenly catapulted to the office of governor. Young, attractive, and a no-funny-business woman in an all too often manly-man’s world, how will she deal with it, balancing family life and her duty to her state, let alone her country? Then, out of nowhere, she’s hand-plucked by the shadowy powers-that-be to be the god-fearing, make-up wearing face of the neocon regime change! All this while dealing with a son in Iraq, a daughter underage and pregnant out of wedlock, and poor baby Trig, diagnosed prenatally with down-syndrome.

A real four-quadrant hard-hitter with mass appeal. Sundays on FOX. Based on a true story.