I was on Facebook, minding my own business, when I saw that someone had posted a link to my buddy Dan’s wall, which I thought to be amusing.
It seems that the Japanese, being from Japan, had managed to one-up the Snuggie by creating a footie sleeping bag. With this, kids at slumber parties can just pass out anywhere and be golden, and Jake and Lenny would not have almost been mauled to death by that bear at camp that one time, a funny story I should tell you sometime.
That’s not why I’m writing this.
No, because I saw something bewildering on the side of the page. I clicked it, somehow forgetting my last fifteen years of Internet experience, telling me that something should not be clicked. Apparently they a make vagina-scented perfume now.
You should be revolted. I however, could not be revolted. I, being an engineer, instead immediately asked: “Whose cooterstink are they bottling?” and “By what process does one extract and refine human cooterstink?”
This persistent analytic worldview is a blessing, and as shown, a curse sometimes.
Yesterday, in a stunning blow to freedom and justice, gay marriage has been re-illegalized in Maine. This anti-civil rights campaign was received large amounts of funding from a number of notorious hate groups, such as Focus on the Family and the Catholic Church, in another example of the Religious Right being neither.
Sure we read in Leviticus 18:22 (and Leviticus 20:13) that “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” but that doesn’t say anything about girl-on-girl. And why would it? Yahweh is said to be male, and therefore, by definition, is a big fan of lesbian porn.
Leviticus 11:12 tells us to avoid Maine lobster, and Leviticus 19:27 bans shaving and haircuts, but we ignore those. Why? It all comes from a little thing theologians like to call “exegesis.”
Exegesis is the process of sticking one’s hand up God’s ass, in order to make him talk. Since the Bible is the compiled mythology of wandering Bronze-age goat headers, it cannot be made applicable to modern day without creative interpretation. Say I wanted to convince people of something, like that I had the power to fight off a pack of crazed unicorns (Pslams 22:21), or to go about rationalizing the destruction of an entire race of people, like those fucking Hittites two doors down from me (Exodus 34:11-14). Well, the Bible is a pretty thick book with a large number of whacky statements, so I just need to leaf through it and cherry-pick out some lines, and then pepper them in to my next hate speech/homily to make my personal agenda sound like it’s God’s agenda, much like how I’m about to do.
See, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus explicitly states that homosexuals should be able to legally marry in the State of Maine.
No, seriously. I just leafed through the one of those little green Gideon’s Bibles which tend to pile up in my office, and I saw it there plain as day:
Sure, your bible may be a different edition, and that line may have a different wording, or not be presented in my large, effeminate, cursive script, but it’s just as true as anything else the Bible has to say. God divinely inspired the hand of [this] man to write [in] the Bible. So although it was written by [this] human[‘s] hands, it is is none the less the inerrant word of God. This is true, and I know it’s true… for the Bible tells me so.
James Bond is simply better than you. Period. Thus, to emulate him is to be great.
Jenny was so delectably shy that she would vapor lock whenever I came to call on her. We sat on the sofa, I was grinning, and she was trembling, and fidgeting. Typically you just wait a shy girl out, and she’ll open up on her own, but the nuns really did a number on this chick, and Jenny was tough nut to crack. The last two weeks was an epic exercise in patience; we knew we liked each other, and at this rate it was only a matter of time before one of us was driven batshit insane from our situation.
Clearly, this called for the high-test Sean Connery-grade awesome.
“We need a change of scenery, c’mon, let’s go to the Circle,” I told her.
“Well, I don’t know what to say…”
“You should say: ‘Yes,’” I unhesitatingly replied.
“Well, okay…” said Jenny, with a grin. It was the contented grin of a girl desperately trying to keep us both from drowning in her vaginal moisture. At that moment, I had won.
Once there, Daryl poured me a Labatt’s, and Jenny and I found a table. Then, I took her hand, looked her straight in the eyes, and gave Oscar-quality monologue telling her how I felt about her, and the world, which resulted in me becoming the captain of her heart.
I was able to make a quiet and awkward evening into the beginning of the happiest relationship I’d ever been in, all thanks to the fact I have, at my command, a complete and encyclopedic knowledge of every James Bond movie. In this case, it was Terence Young’s 1962 classic Dr. No. Based off of the sixth novel, Dr. No was the first of the United Artists/EON era films, and the first time Sean Connery portrayed 007.
However, this can, and has, backfired, since you will also assimilate every other line in every one of these movies, and use them as responses as well.
We were on one of our Tuesday dates, walking back to our cars from Uptown when we stopped by the sundial to see the glorious panorama of the South Quad, highlighted by MacCracken Hall.
“Wow! What a view!” said Jenny.
“To a kill!” I unhesitatingly reply.
“What?” said Jenny. “That doesn’t even make sense! …is that from something?”
“Yeah a movie,”
“…was it a Bond movie again?” she said with a grin, knowing I have been trapped. (We had already watched Dr. No together at this point.)
I had major plans for July 11. We’re set that Saturday aside for celebrating my birthday, and I had a full schedule of fun planned. I was going to a karate seminar at August’s new dojo, go to a cookout, watch UFC 100, and get the fuck drunk. I was only able to do three of those.
About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.
I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.
In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip, Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.
Seoi otoshi is a good move to have. Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and you opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on, the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.
Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.
I laid face down on the mat motionless.
“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm, it would’ve hurt.
Babies won’t mind if you abort them, so go right ahead. Sure, they might haunt you, but since when was that a bad thing? I mean, they owe you.
Don’t look at me like that. Don’t shoot the messenger. No, seriously, don’t shoot me — I don’t think this way. These are the thoughts of Doreen Virtue, a “fourth-generation metaphysician and clairvoyant spiritual healer, with B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in counseling psychology,” a faculty member of the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, and an advisory member of the Depossession Institute.
In addition to multiple TV appearances, Doreen Virtue has written a number of articles in popular publications, and penned forty-eight books and cartomantic aids with a lowball combined sales estimate of 500,000 copies. Among these, is The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, which is one of the seminal texts in Indigo studies. As I will demonstrate later, there is a shadiness to many of these claims.
The nefarious Dr. Virtue channels the power of the Dread Dormammu to cast "Magic Missile," dealing 1d6+1 points of force damage.
Stevie* was the one that introduced me to the machinations nefarious Dr. Virtue, as she bought her books, attend her workshops, and became one of her evil henchmen. It’s all she would talk about, and she became more and more detached from reality with each phone call. For every problem, Doreen sold a product, and Stevie was sold on its central theme, that if you bought enough of them that you’d gain a couple of extra senses or mental powers “like the X-Men.”
I thought that these chinsy Hay House books, like Doreen’s were silly nonsense enjoyed by harmless hippies. After seeing what they had done to my friend, did I see their true, malevolent nature — that it is indeed, a monstrous institution, like some sort of low-budget Scientology.
I knew what I had to do.
I began to look into this Dr. Virtue, and it became eerily captivating. Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson were to watch Tetsuo: The Iron Man, through a kaleidoscope. This accurately describes how Doreen must view the world. That’s when I landed upon this gem:
Several years ago, a woman named Melissa became pregnant by a man she adored and loved. However, the man wasn’t interested in a relationship or a baby. Melissa didn’t tell her young son, Liam, that she was pregnant. However, one day Liam drew a picture and handed it to his mother, explaining that it was a portrait of his little brother (Melissa only had one child at the time).
Ultimately, Melissa made the difficult choice to terminate the pregnancy, without telling Liam. About a week later, Liam said that his little brother told him, “I decided not to come yet, but I’m okay, and I love you.” The little brother said that he was taking care of Melissa like a guardian angel until he was ready to be born as a child. When that time came, both the little brother and Liam would take care of their mother.
–Doreen Virtue; excerpted from The Crystal Children, pg. 49.
I figured that was a good place to start as any. From the notes that I’ve taken from the couple of her books that I’ve stumbled across, I believe that I can generate six months worth of posts.
Rest assured, gentle reader, my story with Stevie has a happy ending. I, and later, her boyfriend kept poking at her, asking more questions than she could find adequate answers for. Then, by the grace of Carl Sagan, through the noble works of the Amazing Randi and his Foundation, she was freed from oppressive yoke of crystals, trinkets, and doublethink. Having repented her ways, Stevie enrolled in a Ph.D. program in biomathematics, where she furthers mankind through her studies of plant interactions.
For this, I am fortunate. I realize that this situation only turned out well because she was surrounded by people who had the tools and the talent to deal with the situation.
I’m a scientist. It’s my job to ask questions and solve problems. But not everyone has had the training I’ve had. Some young lad somewhere may be in the same situation I was, and would seem powerless to stop it. He is not powerless, for I will aid him.
In a world where blind obedience was made the highest ideal… and questioning is reprehensible… justice will have a new name!
I, Ryan Coons, as part of my Crusade of Justice, and acting as the Purveyor of Truth, vow to stop the machinations of the nefarious Dr. Virtue!
One day back in undergrad, I was peacefully watching Adult Swim in the dorm lounge, working on some electronics homework, when Stevie entered and declared me to be one of the Indigo Children.
I closed my book, to give my undivided attention to stopping the rape of reason that was to follow.
I’ll go into details later, but she’d read in a book that there were these people, “the Indigo Children,” who were “rebellious, purposeful, highly intelligent; creative, intuitive, frustrated with authorities and bureaucracy; and psychically powerful” people with “big “wise” eyes.”
I don’t see how my eyes are “wise” though; all they do is record the light reflected from objects and give cool squinty-action hero stares to scare off popped-collars at bars, while WD40-ing women’s nether-regions.
Stevie argued that since I met all criterion for being an Indigo, I had to be one. I explained to her that I had no psychic superpowers, and that I was “…just a man and his will to survive.”
Her eyes lit up.
“See? You’re rebelling against the labels that people give you! That’s such an Indigo thing!”
She was spared my wrath only because she was a friend, and I wanted to commit egregious acts of carnality upon her person.
I was no stranger to this argument. As a youth I was enthralled by NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, and tales of UFO’s, Area 51, and the like. The conspiracy theorists were notorious for creating logic traps. They would use loaded statements as the basis for an argument, so that the outcome would be what they wanted to hear, guaranteed. For the sake of argument, let us ask if the US government has covered up the fact it’s hiding a crashed UFO in Area 51. If the government admits there is a UFO, then we know it exists. If the government denies the UFO, then they acknowledge the cover up, and the fact the UFO exits. This argument is and was the core of UFO documentaries, and is a textbook logical fallacy.
This is bifurcation, commonly known as the black-and-white fallacy, the either/or fallacy, or the false dilemma fallacy. Assume that we are given three things, p, q, and r. We must choose between p, or q. Now if p is also r, and q is also r, we would then select r regardless of our choice of p or q. I have illustrated this point in Table 1. This is all a fancy-pants way of saying that “I want you to be something, therefore, you are.”
Stephen Colbert would later go on to make this a running gag that he used on damn near everyone. The use of loaded questions is a tried-and-true method for generating responses which, though meaningless, can appear convincing as long as the audience doesn’t think about what is being said.
I explained to her why she was wrong, even drawing the truth table, but this was only further proof by her reasoning. Undaunted, Stevie referred me to a website, which I read. I knew she was too good to be true.
I knew what had to be done.
I, for one, am constantly sickened by hucksters and their feel-good bullshit, demanding all of your time, money, and only receive doublethink in return. Besides, I was Christian at the time, so I already chock-full of doublethink. I couldn’t possibly take on any more.
That is why, I, Ryan Coons, as part of my never-ending crusade of justice, and as part of my required duties as the Purveyor of Truth, will expose, torment, and mock the people behind the Indigo Cult. I just want them to feel bad about themselves, and make their world a darker, bleaker, place, until they collectively acknowledge that they have done this to me, and make amends. I am fully aware that this will not happen. This is similar to the Planck problem, that:
“An important scientific innovation rarely makes it ways by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.” — Max Planck, from The Philosophy of Physics (1936).
Though I cannot cure Indigoism, I can hopefully contain it and prevent it from spreading. Those currently infected with this thinking will eventually die off naturally, and their hopes and dreams will go with them.
Yesterday marked the passing of actor David Carradine, who was partially responsible for the mainstream popularity of the martial arts today through his popular TV show Kung Fu, and his unpopular TV show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Carradine also enjoyed a film career, which is highlighted with the title role in Tarintino’s Kill Bill, but should be better remembered for the huge amount of senseless fun movies like Lone Wolf McQuade and Death Race 2000.
He was found dead in his hotel room, an apparent suicide. Then today, more details were released. Carradine was great; he doesn’t deserve the news article describing his passing to start out with the phrase: “…whose body was found in a hotel closet in the Thai capital with a rope tied to his neck, wrist and genitals.” That hurts, but unfortunately, the truth does that.
I could comment on this, but Joe, August, and Luc would likely slit my throat if I did, so I’m going to let George do it for me, because A) he’s better at it, and B) he’s already dead, and thus immune to bodily harm.
Do you know who’s the happiest guy in Hell right now? That dude from INXS, because now people will stop making fun of him.
A 750 pound woman died in Indy last week, of terminal fatness. Since there is no specific procedure for bloated hambeast carcass disposal in Indiana, the cops and the coroner were forced to play it by ear.
The authorities dragged her lifeless body, still attached to its mattress, across the courtyard of the apartment building to the road. However, since the coroner van was designed to transport humans, the lady wouldn’t fit.
So, the cops called the auto wrecking yard, and they sent over one of them flatbed tow-trucks to load the 0.38 tons of moldering, and likely unwashed flesh onto.
The cops then tossed an old carpet over her unsightly visage to keep the birds from picking at it. Her boyfriend and thirteen year-old son were watching this as it was going on. They, and some other people in the area, apparently have a problem with this procedure.
He called me the other day, and told me to get the movie JCVD from Netflix. He went off for about three minutes about how great of a movie it was. In August’s defense, JCVD really is a good movie, and you really ought to check it out. It’s a well-written, well-executed movie, and easily the best thing that Van Damme has put out since Universal Soldier. However, this isn’t a blog about the movie. I can’t do that — that’s Joe’s job. This is a blog about August’s reaction to the movie, which led me to conclude that August has no penis.
When he was telling me about the movie, he told me “I cried. Tears were flowing down my face. It’s…ooogh…”
At this point I felt a terrible pain eating at me. My friend was in dire need of help, and I was hundreds of miles away.
“I only have one request Coons,” he tells me.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Watch it alone.”
“Okaaaaaaay…” I tell him with hesitation.
So I added it to my queue, and watched it. It made August cry. I invite the reader to take a bite of sherbet, like a pretentious rich person, to cleanse their pallet and swish that last sentence around in their mouths to savor its many flavors.
August cried during a Van Damme movie.
I haven’t cried since 1996, when Rob Liefeld was granted complete creative control of Captain America. I’ve had a lump in my throat a few times since then, like during my dad’s funeral, when I used to tell this one story you haven’t earned yet, and at the end of A.I. However, the next morning, I woke up, looked out the window and said “Space aliens? Really?” and never thought of that movie again.
Holy shit, August cried during a Van Damme movie. He has no penis. He must have a Lee Press-On Schlong that he bought at the Halloween store, which he affixes to his nether-region with spirit gum in order to service his wife.
I’m trying to assemble the events of the night in question in my head.
After having a good long cry, he must have went to the bathroom and meticulously lit three hundred candles, making the place look like some lame adult contemporary music video, and used $60 worth of scented soaps and oils to take a four hour-long bubble bath. In this time, he then consumed a bottle of red wine, and masturbated with the detachable shower head.
After his bath, August then put on flannel pajamas, sat in front of the mirror in his bedroom, and brushed what precious little remains of his natural, living, breathing hair one hundred times with a stiff-bristled brush. Then, August climbed under his 186,000 blankets and fell fast asleep.
This had to have been what happened.
Crying during a Van Damme movie! Fuck! This is a serious misstep — he must atone, and I can’t help him because I don’t know any Level 7 Clerics.
Believe it or not, I wasn’t always painfully awesome. It took hard work, determination, and a good balanced breakfast. A big part of being painfully awesome is to be bold enough to face improbable odds, and to be content with who you are to the point where you can degrade yourself for the amusement of others. That’s what I’m about to do. I have too. This is considered by many to be the funniest thing ever written.
I met Erica in the first week of college, when we were watching movies with my friend and neighbor Steve Balsomico. She became a member of the tight-knit group of movie buffs who assembled every Friday night to watch bizarre films in the Earp Hall lounge. She had that wonderful whacked-out Italian hair, you know, it looks kind of wavy and greasy, but it’s not either. She also had the most spectacular, exquisite ass that I had ever seen — and I’m not even attracted to asses — but there was something about that ass that beckoned me. It was a truly magical ass. We’d eat brunch together every weekend. After several months of this, I thought I would ask her out.
So after spending several days trying to amass the testicular fortitude, I finally call Erica. I get her answering machine, and left a message, unaware that they did a Seinfeld on this very subject. Erica was the first girl that I ever asked out, and I was nervous. I go with a simple:
“Hi, Erica? This is, uh…Ryan Coons, the Yellow Hat Guy, I was wondering if you could call me back at…”
Then it hit me –I’d never even given a girl my phone number before — and that’s what killed me. I had never given it out before, hell — I didn’t even know it! I called a girl, wanting to ask her out, and left a message, and I didn’t know my own home telephone number. I totally disintegrated:
“… call me back at…732-49…um…ah…um…oh…umahblahphenadadayeaaba (continues for twenty seconds, when the machine cut me off)…”
It was horrible. I dropped the phone and curled up into a fetal ball on the cold, cold tile — and somehow, when things could not possibly get worse, somehow they did. After five days go by, I hoped that she forgot about it or that her roommate deleted the message. From the many nights that have since followed, I have replayed this scenario over and over again in my mind, and I found that everything that could have possibly gone wrong did.
As I sheepishly approach her table for Saturday Brunch, she looked up from her sketchbook and told me: “I got your message.”
It gets worse. You see — I hate this story so much — Erica was actually in her room when I called. She was sleeping because she was groggy with the flu, and I woke her up. I didn’t wake her completely up though, just awake enough to hear me babble into her answering machine, and to make her think it was all a bizarre dream. Well, at least until she woke up and found the message. She just laughed and laughed, and told me to my face while cracking up.
I was mortified.
We were still good friends, but it wasn’t the same, the magic was gone. At the end of the semester, when I went to resell my psychology book, I saw her in line, trying to resell her psychology book. She told me that she was transferring to somewhere in Buffalo. There was an awkward goodbye, and I never saw her again.
