My Inner Fat Woman

I have a terrible secret, one which has caused me mental anguish and many sleepless nights.  I feel now is about a good a time as ever to divulge this secret to society (or my 2.5 readers) at large.  My inner fat kid is named Bertha.  That’s right; my inner fat child is actually an inner fat woman.  So how did we get here?

In 8^th grade and the summer leading to 9^th grade, my parents owned a bakery that carried my sister’s namesake.  Unfortunately, this bakery wasn’t that successful which meant my parents still had to keep their full time jobs and I as the oldest child had to help out.  I was the youngest baker in my hometown – true story – a dubious distinction not known for its glamorous coolness.  As it was, I GREW into my roll as a baker physically and mentally.  I became a fat 13 year old with a job which holds slightly more cache with the females then being the kid with a boil on his face but not by much.  Gradually the bakery closed and I returned to my normally scheduled program of TV, video games, and the occasional basketball game.  I grew from a fat kid into a fat teenager and pre adult.  But that’s the thing, once you grow up a fat kid, it stays with you.  You’ll always have an inner fat kid that needs to be indulged.  This was fine by me.  I just assumed my inner fat kid was a painfully shy chunky boy named Chico whose knees buckled anytime fried foods were present.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to question my own logic.  Sure fried foods would give my inner fat kid a tremendous boner but then I’d see something like chocolate truffles which would make me joyously apoplectic.  What was going on here?  Then it happened.  One night looking for anything on TV to keep my interest I stumbled onto a food competition show dedicated to desserts.  And I was in full rapture for nearly 4 hours - mouth watering, knees aching, heart palpitating.  I even developed that slim line of sweat above my brow like when you see someone so attractive your body temperature sky rockets – a lustful sweat.  That’s when I faced my own truth.  My inner fat kid had grown up into an inner fat woman.

The Karaoke Rules

The Karaoke Rules

I love me some good karaoke.  What better way to whittle down an evening then with some friends, drinks, and good tunes.  There’s always the possibility you’ll be reacquainted with an old song you loved but have forgotten about or partake in some audience wide singing.  Unfortunately there are the select few mongoloids who don’t respect the karaoke god.  Presented here are some rules to help you sort through the karaoke world and not be an asshole.

1)      Never pick a song that is over 5 minutes in length

Listen, I understand your enthusiasm for the format and maybe one of your favorite songs is “Stairway to Heaven”.  But please think about the audience.  We don’t want to listen to you warble your way through 5 minutes – its goddamn agony.  After 4 minutes we are just praying you'll get a heart attack and keel over so we can get on with our evening.  Stop being an asshole and hogging up the time.  Some of us want to sing our songs before closing time.

2)      Don’t pick a slow song

Karaoke is supposed to be a fun time.  Enjoying time with friends, drinking various things you’ll regret in the morning, eating gross bar food during and after the drinking and telling anyone within hearing distance how AWESOME the food is, possibly flirting with the OK-looking stranger because he/she sang a song you liked, etc.  We don’t want to be bummed out.  Please for the love of god don’t sing that Enya song.  It's great that it reminds you of a lost love or a dead relative.  We don’t want to see you cry, unless it’s because we are insulting you, which is fun.  Even still, cry at home listening to your depressing shit while drinking some wine.  It's the only respectable thing to do.

3)      It’s not open mic night

I’m sure your friends think you are the second coming of George Carlin.  I’m sure your insights and wit burn bright like a comedy Sun which us lowly beings can’t look at directly.  Fantastic, but stop talking into the microphone cunt nose.  Sing your song and be done with it.

4)      Pick a song you know reasonably well

Call me cantankerous or unreasonable, but nothing is as gratingly annoying as when someone picks a song and proceeds to rape the joy out of it.  Why would you pick a song you have never heard before?  Do you enjoy standing in front of a large group of strangers mumbling you’re way through a strange song?  This disease is usually seen when people decide to indulge their inner rap fantasy by choosing a rap or reggae song.  It always ends with 2 or more people on stage in a muddled mess screaming out random words from the song.

5)      Keep a reasonable distance between your mouth and microphone

I’m not a germaphobe.  I’ve been known to extend the “five second rule” to how ever long time period suits me.  Even still, I don’t feel like grabbing a microphone with your disgusting drool all over it.  Don’t eat the microphone my friend, its deadly.  Just remember, like the line in that song, it’s electric.

6)      Thank the karaoke person

      Don’t be an asshole.  Thank the person for putting on your song and going through the gulag of your performance.

The Greatest Song Ever

Now I don’t consider myself by any means necessary to be an authority on music.  However, for the purposes of my blog, I will consider myself a goddamn master at sonically pleasing sounds.  I will attempt to explain why the Jackson 5’s “I want You Back” is the greatest song in the history of humanity, inclusive of Neanderthals.  To do this, I will use a performance of the song by the band on Dick Clark’s “American Band Stand” in 1970.  Without further ado:

0:00-0:15 It’s odd watching this performance now especially that the 12 yr old Michael Jackson is worm food while Dick Clark is reanimated yearly from his cryogenically frozen grave to host a new year’s show.  What odds would Vegas have given in 1970 for “Michael Jackson will die before Dick Clark”?

0:16-0:34 God bless Jermaine Jackson for the opening bass notes of this song.  It’s instantly recognizable and has a direct injection into your dance bone.  Go ahead, try not to start dancing to the beat, I dare you.

Now would be as good as time as ever to discuss the psychological damage endured by the non-Michael Jackson members of the band.  Let’s say you are Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon.  You’ve started a small group which is middling and unheralded.  All of a sudden your younger brother starts singing and moving and people realize he’s the most talented family member.  So now you find yourself having to ride the coattails of the youngest member of the group and hoping you don’t piss him off because he is your meal ticket.  So what do you do?  You can’t be a big brother picking on your little brother and putting him in headlocks.  All of a sudden groupies want the youngest member and are wondering why a bunch of weird old dudes can’t be successful on their own.  How would you feel?  Would you buy 50 cats, start hoarding trash and drinking milk on hot days?  I probably would.

0:34-0:44 There he is! Little Michael!  He’s not even saying words and yet you’ve immediately forgotten there are other members of the band.  He’s 12 years old and a superstar which begs the serious question:  If he owned a time machine and was alive, would old Michael go back and molest his younger self?

0:44-1:06 Now it can be argued by smarter people then myself that this song is silly.  There’s a twelve year old singing to a jilted lover asking her to give him a second chance.  What the hell could he have done to break someone’s heart?  Did he steal her fruit roll ups?  Did he not give her a promise ring-pop?

1:06-1:31 I will give the non-Michael members some serious dap for this portion of the video.  They are all dancing in unison even though some of them are playing instruments.  They deserve a reserved golf clap.

1:55 Michael whips out what would later be one of his best moves – the arms out, head nodding exaggerately, half spin move.  I’m not afraid to say 12 year old Michael is a better dancer then I’ll ever be.  At least I’m not dead I guess.

1:55-2:13 Sorry about that, I took a quick break to dance along to the song.  I mean how can you NOT dance along?  It’s so dance catchy.  I almost want to break up with someone just so I can sing them this song while dancing.  It would be worth the trouble.

2:21-2:23 Michael let’s loose the “All I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED” with such emotional force that it makes you wonder if he was already suffering from psychosis.  No one needs someone else THAT badly, especially at 12 years old.

2:23-3:10 We finish the song with a musical breakdown and Michael killing a bunch of “OH!”s like a seasoned pro.

Great song.  Great performance.  Now I DARE you not to replay the song and get it stuck in your head for the rest of the day

Today in Stupid Emails

An unfortunate consequence of my job is that I'm often tasked with writing business requirements for hapless business users whose pretty little world isn't pretty enough.  Basically, someone at a client will have a need for something new or an upgrade to whatever shitty system they rely on.  I'll need to sit down with this someone and write up what they need in excruciating detail.  After this is done, I think have to get this someone to approve my write up so it can go to a different set of people who will examine the document and make a decision as to how feasible the changes are.  Point is, there is a lot of run around and wasted time and face to face meetings with the particular cretins usually found in backrooms of financial institutions.  On the bright side, the particular brand of stupidity and irrationally that surrounds me is captured via email.  So welcome to a new feature presented to you by the demented individuals at my client: stupid emails of the day.

In today’s installment, we’ll review a particular incident involving my pseudo-boss at the firm.  I wrote up a document and got it reviewed a week ago and then forwarded the approval from the business user as a way to close out the assignment.  So imagine my surprise when I see the following message in my inbox:

What the hell is this person talking about?  I responded in kind alerting Pseudo Boss that I had in fact sent the approval of this particular document a week ago.  Now, a normal coherent individual with limited head trauma would confer from this response that a meeting had been had with the user which led to an approval of the document.  But alas, humanity stupid knows no bounds which leads to a reply:

*Holds head in hands* What am I supposed to do with this?  I replied nicely even though its quite clear that Pseudo Boss is convinced I don't know the meaning of “ETA” even though they are very clearly using it incorrectly.  I replied nicely because that's what I'm supposed to do.  I reiterated by stance on the matter and prayed to baby Jesus that it would end there.  Had I any stones or not liked receiving a bi-weekly check, I might have replied as follows:

"Dear Future Darwinism Victim,

I feel it is time to address the various issues which protrude from your email like a foul porcupine.  You see, in my occupation we are drilled never to assume things.  We are told to find truth by asking questions and make sure we have the facts and only the facts.  As a caveat however, we are also trusted to use our reading comprehension and logic to arrive at certain answers.  From your emails, I can only conclude, using my reading comprehension and logic, that you are missing both skills as well as a chromosome somewhere.  So please let me restate – I sent you the approval last week AFTER the review – because you see, that’s how these things usually work.  Humanity, in all it’s wonders, has this wonder thing where things happen in sequence sometimes like say a rainbow after a rainfall (you liked that didn’t you, you little shitface?).

Further, I feel the need to comment on your erroneous usage of the term “ETA.”  As you know, it means “estimated time of arrival.”  However, as you may not know, it is only really applicable to things which are real, meaning things which have mass.  Now I don’t mean to over saturate your wee chromosome missing brain with too many big concepts suffice it to say that “reviews” don’t have mass because they are ideas and not physical things.  So you see when you ask me for an “ETA” on a review, my only recourse of action is to wonder whether you ate paint chips as a kid (I assume you did).  As a rule of thumb, next time just ask when the due date is for something.

Worst Regards,

Me"

Disney Princess Total Dirtiness Quotient - Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty

 Cinderella

Viewing Cinderella’s tale now, I can clearly see it was some evil ploy by overbearing fathers to make sure girls abided by curfew and didn’t stay out that late.  Thanks assholes, for ruining many potential hook ups for me and my brethren.  Nonetheless, she stands here for judgment and here’s how it shakes out:

Employment: 3

Habitats of Friends: 1

Physical Activity: 2

Co-Habitants: 1

Mate: 1

Total TD: 8

Case for Dirtiness: Once again we are presented with a young lady who is basically a slave (seeing the pattern here?  Maybe Disney suffered from Slave-owner guilt…).  Fortunately, Cinderella is only a slave to her step family.  She lives a pretty comfortable life in a cottage and unlike Snow White, her family isn’t a bunch of roughneck miners.  And other then her making googly eyes at her mouse friend turned horse, there’s nothing to be alarmed about. 

Case Against Dirtiness: She cleaned and was subservient to her family but again, they weren’t that dirty to begin with.  They were just cunts, clean cunts but cunts nonetheless.  And while she was friends with the animals like birds and mice, it must be noted that these animals lived in her cottage so they weren’t feral.  And she did end up (probably) banging out a prince so there’s that.

Verdict:  Really, Cinderella is too vanilla to be considered an impact TD quotient player, but nothing like our next contestant.

Sleepy Beauty

Sleeping Beauty aka Aurora is the first actual princess.  There’s no fucking around here, she was born straight up after King Stefan plundered his Queen’s goodies.  Even better, her parents were freaks as evidenced that while she’s an infant, they are already renting out space in her vagajay for Prince Philip.

Employment: 1

Habitats of Friends: 1

Physical Activity: 1

Co-Habitants: 1

Mate: 1

Total TD: 5

Case for Dirtiness: There is almost no case to be made for Aurora as she really doesn’t do much of anything.  She’s born then we see her as a 16 yr old pricking her finger then she falls into a deep sleep and then is saved.  It could be argued that Aurora is incidental to the story as Prince Philip is the real driver.  Aurora is just the vessel by which the story needs to be told.  The only inherent dirtiness is that Aurora’s spell is broken when she’s 16 at which point we can only assume she and the prince went to some hidden quarters behind a shed to have awkward teenager sex. 

Case Against Dirtiness: Most. Boring. Princess. EVER.  This girl didn’t do much of anything. Her stats are depressingly undirty.

Verdict:  Blah.

Tomorrow we'll tackle the holy trifecta: a fishy Ariel, beastiality connoisseur Belle, and the first minority Jasmine.

Determining the Disney Princess Total Dirtiness Quotient - Part 1

A mouse lives here...

Nostalgia distorts our memories of a past time.  It allows us to look past the unseemly parts (like say racism, sexism, idiotism) and be content with “those-were-the-days” boners.  Fortunately, mathematics and statistics help us make sense of past and present times without the nostalgia hang over.  We can use our minds (as well as our trusty TI-89 calculators) to calculate accurate and ruthlessly efficient numbers that give us a good base for comparing things.  No longer do I have to listen to some strung out hippie tell me the 60’s were really the best decade and how I missed out.  I can instead define criteria for measurement and apply weighted factors to determine if this is indeed the case.  But really, I’d be wasting my time because this isn’t inherently important to me.  So what is?  Glad you asked really.  I’m determined once and for all, to dig deep and find out which Disney princess was the dirtiest. Using sabermetrics developed by MIT engineers as well as common sense, I will present the case for dirtiness and against dirtiness for each princess in the Disney canon in order of when their movies came out.  The factors I will include in my analysis are:

Employment: What was the princess doing during the day?  Was she cleaning or being an actual “princess”?

Habitats of Friends: We all know each princess is friendly with animals but I’m more interested in where these animals originate from.  Are they forest creatures or lagoon creatures?  Are they from the jungle or are they domesticated?

Physical Activity:  Was the princess running around for a large portion of the movie or stationary?*  

This factor will also include a climate variable as moving about in hot weather obviously causes an increase in dirtiness.

Co-Habitants: Who did the princess live with for the majority of the movie?

Mate:  Who did the princess end up with?  Was it a prince or a pauper type?

Each factor will be graded from 1-5 with 5 being the dirtiest possible unachievement.  The final grade for each factor will be summed to get a Total Dirtiness (TD) quotient which is infallible and scientific.

Without further ado, let’s study our first contestant.

Snow White

Ah Snow White, the original, the pater familias of the Disney princess.  Her story, modeled after an old German fairy tale, exploded onto the national consciousness in the 30’s and signaled the beginning of women setting far too high standards of love and men.  Here is how her stats checked out:

Employment: 4

Habitats of Friends: 3

Physical Activity: 2

Co-Habitants: 4

Mate: 1

Total TD: 14

Case for Dirtiness: The case for her dirtiness stems from the fact that she lives in the woods…with dwarfs…who were also mine workers.  As anyone can attest, dwarfs have a unique odor which tickles the olfactory nerves much like old people stench, but shorter.  In addition, she served as an indentured servant for these dwarfs, cleaning their soot, messy house and doing whatever else was needed.  Who can really say with any measure of certitude that the princess didn’t get down with handies and hummers in appreciation for the dwarfs’ hospitality?  Animals were also a fan of hers, running around and being all friendly.  Was this because she smelled like an animal and they weren’t afraid?

Case Against Dirtiness: Sure she lived with the dwarfs and cleaned and all, but wouldn’t the cleanliness of her work extend to herself as well?  It might be a stretch but I’d like to believe that she would take care of herself much like she took care of the shitty cottage where the 7 dwarfs lived.  She wasn’t running around for any part of the movie really and seemed not to exert too much energy.  Plus it wasn’t like she was living in some hot arid place therefore one is only left to assume that her sweating was kept in check. Further, her animal friends were forest dwelling creatures which we all know are much cleaner then jungle or swamp creatures.  In addition, she did manage to attract a prince who kissed her while she was presumed dead, even with knowledge that she probably had some kicking morning breath and might be a corpse – no small feat.

Verdict:  Based on the presented facts and calculated TD quotient, Snow White runs in the middle of the pact.  A TD of 14 suggests Mister Disney might have been cognizant of not storming out of the gate with an outright clean or dirty princess.  He must be commended for his long view of the matter.

Tomorrow: cleaning after step sisters with Cinderella and forgetting to set an alarm with Sleep Beauty.

The Monty Python Presidency

Breaking one of my general rules, let’s discuss politics briefly.  I recently saw presidential hopeful Michelle “My Husband isn’t Gay but Certainly Likes Anal Play” Bachmann state that were she to win the presidency, she would return the country to $2 per gallon of gas.  I’d like to thank her for ticking my ridiculous bone with this statement and allow me to discuss a presidential race that is shaping up as a lost Monty Python sketch.  We have a seemingly endless cadre of ridiculous Republican nominees on one side.  From the swaggering Texas governor who decided going for leisurely runs while carrying a firearm wasn’t enough to satisfy the stir crazies in his constituency so instead decided to embrace radical evangelism by decrying evolution (which makes sense since Texans as we know, have yet to evolve) to Bachmann’s amazing ability of saying nothing consequential while being factually wrong on everything and never losing credibility with her believers to Stepford husband Mitt Romney who’s so boring, stiff and borderline creepy that I wonder if he actually didn’t die some time ago and what we are witnessing is the first reanimation of a once cryogenically frozen Mormon.  I’m not even including the endless parade of sycophants and press whores circling the GOP like blood thirsty vultures such as Gingrich, Ron Paul, etc.

For the Democrats the picture is slightly brighter yet still obfuscated by a smearing of shit on the lens.  There’s Mr. President Obama, a nice guy really.  Unfortunately he’s acted during his short tenure as president like a 13 year old boy afraid his mom will bust in on him while he’s masturbating.  He’s been too tentative, meek too quick to satisfy as many people as possible.  Some will point out that this has been the result of bipartisanism on Capitol Hill in the form of kicking/screaming GOPers unwilling to yield anything to a black dude with big ears or the state of the country he inherited due to mistakes of those before him, but the fact remains that he’s been sort of a pussy.  Fine, I’ll concede that under his watch, Osama Bin Laden was finally killed.  But really, give me a solid economy and jobs report over a decrepit, dialysis-dependent jackal any day of the week.

And really those are our choices.  The greatest country in the world will rely on its citizenry to shift through the fetid toilet bowl and pick the prettiest turd in the bunch.  But what do we want?  Everyone wants to be heard and have their needs met.  Everyone wants a scapegoat to blame and pay for the “crimes” committed.  This fervent anger has alarmingly mutated into anti-intellectualism, which permeates from any political convention held in Middle America.  It’s dangerous to be educated and have ideas that don’t clearly fall in line into right and wrong.  Being educated and/or not holding the Bible as the guiding force in your life is viewed as Un-American, an affront to the very sensibilities of those leading the charge.  I don’t mean to attack those who view the Bible in such light but the question must be asked by someone:  What in the Bible points to effective leadership of Government? 

The question stands however: what do we want?  Personally, I’m tired of pie in the sky idealism.  A candidate coming out swinging with promises offends my intellect.  Stop with the bullshit already.  It might be cynical but it’s apparent that our country is too fractured for any one President to accomplish anything grand while in office.  Small victories will always be there but small amounts to shit when the country is on the verge of offering blow jobs in exchange for debt forgiveness.  I want a candidate to stand up on a podium and simply state that he/she will do their best to not fuck shit up worse then it already is.