save it for your blog howard!

mad libs in Panama

There was a (type of person) PRIEST named (name) FATHER HUNT who lived with (name) LORENZO who always (verb) JUMPED on the (furniture) OTTOMAN but FATHER HUNT didn't care because (she/he) HE was on (his/her) HIS way to (place) THE HOT SPRINGS to eat (food) TOMATOE PASTE all day long. He spent (number) 495 days just (verb) POSTURING with his (name for friends) AMIGOS by the (body of water) BATH TUB. He learned to (sport) SHOT-PUT and (hit on) FERLAXED his instructor named (name) BONIGUA. His shot-put instructor, Bonigua had the (size) GRANDE-est (body part) CANKLES and it made him (perspire) STANK right through his (clothing) CUMBERBUND. During (meal) SHABBAT he finally mustered up the guts to (communicate) TELEPATHY with (adj) STANKY Bonigua. Too bad (person) NASTY BOI MRS. JACKSON was already (verb) WALLOWING with Bonigua. (expletive) SHART! what is Father Hunt to do? Should he (verb) SHART all the way home or stay and (verb) FERLAX with (adj) STANK Bonigua? In the end, (person) NANCY PELOSKI came to his rescue. She (verb) WAFFLED the (expletive) JFC out of him until he was a (level) MASTER at (skill) SPELLER.

wtf???

And now this!

Are We Sure???

We still want to do this?

After this

this
this

and this?

Is Life Worse Living?

If you're my friend, you likely know two very important things about me. 1.) I love sandwiches and b.) I hate movies. Haaaaate them. Like, cannot stand them. Regarding movies, I am of the idea that once you've seen a handful of movies from each genre, throughout the years they pretty much never ever change and with each viewing become more and more painfully predictable. Seriously...same characters, plots, subplots, cliched verbiage regenerated time and time again that in my estimation hardly ever evoke prolific deliberation or reflection afterwards.

Also, mostly it's just that I don't have the patience or lets be honest - the attention span - to sit still and actually focus on 2 full hours of the above mentioned nonsense.

Having said all of that...I found myself with little to do last night, and after just learning about how to scam the BigRedBox at Giant out of a free movie (promo code DVDONME) - I decided to give cinema another chance. Now, seeing as how I haven't seen a movie in about 3 years I got to the BigRedBox and had NO idea what any of these new releases were all about. Luckily I recalled a conversation I had a while back with an uncle of mine who writes a column for Salon.com called Beyond The Multiplex about the movie "Milk." Sticking with the friend theme, once again, if you know me, you know that I am only capable of paying attention - i.e. bored.com - or giving a shit, about the things that I'm interested in. So long story short - voila - one promocode later and I was on my way home to watch me some Sean Penn.

Now, I must admit the movie was pretty good and I can't say that I didn't zone out a time or two, but I will say this...I woke up this morning still thinking about a line and a theme that was repeated throughout the whole movie. At the beginning and at the very end Harvey Milk kept saying something along the lines of...

"I'm 40 years old and I haven't done a thing I'm proud of."

That's a pretty serious pronouncement. And it got me thinking. I'm 24 and have I done a thing I'm proud of?

Right away there are plenty, and I mean plenty of things that I have done that I'm not so proud of that pop into my head. But one of the things that I can unequivocally say that I am proud of is the book that I spent over a year helping with called Womenomics. Now, blah blah...you all know the deal with Womenomics...but I can't help but tie that the quote from Harvey Milk and a central theme throughout Womenomics about re-defining success for yourself into some bigger idea.

Think about it...

After This I'm Swearing Off Women[omics].

So I've been on a hiatus of sorts...doing the whole "book tour" thing...and I promise I along with my fellow colleagues, Jocelyn and Peter, will be back to blogging very soon, but for now a shameless plug...or several...

Now if you haven't already rushed out and purchased one or more copies of - that's right, The NYTimes Bestseller - Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules For Success (keep scrolling - almost there - just past Elisabeth Hasselbeck's "The G-Free Diet" - down to #10 - you got it), I suggest you do so...they make great great Father's Day gifts and just for the sake of simplicity and Amazon ratings you should buy your copies here.

Also, while you brought it up - the lovely ladies of Womenomics - Claire Shipman and Katty Kay are big time bloggers - I know, I know - while writing their own rules for success, redefining success and scheduling more flex-time work-time for their said successes they also have found the time to blog. Both here and here. Also, I mean, lets face it, these ladies are tech gurus of sorts - they twitter like mad...follow them if you dare...ClaireShipman and KattyKayBBC (not to be confused with KattyKay - the science writer...who most assuredly did not write her own rules for success.) Now I bet you're thinking...man, not only do these ladies spend their days blogging, tweeting, mothering, careering, negotiating, flexing...I bet there's no way they could possible find time in their already packed day for other social mediums is there? Yeah, you'd be wrong my friend. These doyennes are also facebookers. That would be correct. I can't get them off of it. Both of them. I've had to block facebook on several occasions just to get the ladies to focus and blog more.

So if you're smart enough, and have the time - you should follow the tweets, facebook em, blog right alongside them...do whatever you gotta do to hop on the wave that is The Womenomics Revolution.

Now as you know by now, you can't possibly turn on the TV without seeing these 2 original Womenomicists. Here they are chatting with Charlie Rose - unlike what some may believe (it's really okay, because he's such an awesome person) no one was bored to tears. And if that wasn't enough to conform you, check out KK holding her own on the Colbert Report - just after being informed by his producer that "it's just like talking to a friendly drunk." The next morning, bright and early as it was, they made their way over to shoot it with Mika "oh stop it" Breziznsky and Joe Scarborough on what I guess is now called - Morning Joe - Brewed By Starbucks or something like that??? At some point in that week, Claire headed over to sit down with the ladies of The View. There's no doubt that the reason the book is only number ten on the NYT bestseller list, and didn't shoot directly to number one is because Claire didn't start some shit with Elisabeth like I suggested. If Whoopi can do it, Claire you got more than free reign. Then, come Sunday - Claire was on This Week giving props where props were due, and of course don't forget to check out Bill Maher this Friday the 19th where he is most certainly going to start some esss.

I mean clearly these ladies are far too famous for me to post all of their forays into fame, so I will leave you with the initial and most significant ones. They're all over the intertubes - regular contributors to some of your favorite(or as Katty spells it - favourite) weblogs - Miss Brown's own Daily Beast and they even have a conversation going in Madame Huffingtons new living section.

We're only in week two of the release, and if you really are interested in finding out more about womenomics in the news I suggest you check this out. iF not, your child is probably partaking in this.

Also, Football

Apparently there was a big soccer (football) game a few days ago.

Dear Americans, can we agree to stop talking about this like we understand it? I'm pretty sure the average seven year old ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD understands European League Whatever Soccer better than the most educated of us, so let's butt out, lest we sound foolish.

Dear Europeans, we will try and ruin stuff like this for you. Sorry about that. If you're good sports about it, we'll send you Lady GaGa, and take back Madonna.

Canon

As far as I have been able to discern, all fiction ever created exists in the same canon, and I'm not certain I can be convinced otherwise. Thus reading a book or watching a movie has, for me, added urgency. I paced while watching 1995's Clueless, knowing that a young Paul Rudd is only two years from incineration at the hands of Skynet - that was, until the old John Connor sent back the T-800 to save a young John Connor from the T-1000. Didn't turn out great in the long run, though.

It gets kind of confusing when you factor in the idea that somehow Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the more recent update Pride and Prejudice Zombies somehow have to exist contemporaneously, with plots that have implications on one another. Honestly, I find a concept as difficult as this much easier to wrap my head around then trying to keep track of the hundreds of thousands of independent timelines created by various writers throughout the centuries.

This renders tone completely irrelevant, and makes lots of works enjoyable on a whole different level. "Top Gun" is still pretty much "Top Gun," but now at least some of the fighter jocks at Miramar went to Annapolis with Pete "Dead Meat" Thompson and Lt. Topper Harley. I mean, just because they wouldn't let you-know-who into the Academy because he's Pete Mitchell's kid, doesn't mean that Tom Kazansky didn't have Jim "Washout" Pfaffenbach as his lab partner in plebe-killer chemistry. Hell, now that I think about it, they probably had Dr. Jack Ryan as their history teacher. Pretty rad when Samuel L. gave him that "Purple Target," I wonder if they still talk about that at reunions...

In other news, my girlfriend finally made me watch Gossip Girl, and I am happy to see that this Chuck Bass character is making it okay to be a dandy again.

Not to mention I am skeptical of all the hullabaloo over this ad campaign, as everyone I went to college with is fully aware that the most interesting man in the world is (by a wide, wide margin) the one-time chaplain of our alma mater. The Chaplain's exploits include (in no particular order):

-Swimming at the Berlin Olympics
-Traveling in a Zeppelin
-Getting arrested with Martin Luther King, Jr.
-While in the military, ditching his unit for a day and avoiding its mysterious fate
-Also while in the military, accidentally sinking a U.S. destroyer. ZOOPS

So, suck it Dos Equis.

Also, let me just say that I know plenty about the concept of Filibustering, thanks to The Source. However, before I did such research, the brilliant poetry of the idea of filibustering and what I imagined to be its creation was staggering. What happens if a guy staggers a little bit? Do people start to freak and psych him out? Do congressmen sense their coworker going for the filibuster, and try to sheepishly sneak out before he begins? Do they lock the doors? Do congressmen know it's coming when they see aides go to lock the doors? Is there a secret signal? YES so many thoughts. The idea that someone's power of sweeping oratory and rhetorical gesture and pure intestinal fortitude can grind the wheels of a bicameral legislature to a halt! If we imagine that this was a purely American invention, who came up with it? Was this some sort of concession to Adams? DID THE FOUNDERS NOT FORESEE ITS TERRIBLE POWER??

And that is all.

Radmobile

Taken from The Source:

• In the 1992 comedy Encino Man, Brendan Fraser's character Link loves to play Rad Mobile, so much so that when he takes a road test he speeds and drives wildly.

Thus "Rad Mobile" has for me turned into the adjective "radmobile," which I reserve for things with a radness so great that they are worthy of being described as "national treasures." The spoken word into to the version of "The River" on Springsteen's Live 1975-1985 album is radmobile. The U.S. hockey team winning in Lake Placid is radmobile. "90,000 Tons of Diplomacy" Nimitz-class carriers undergoing sea trials is radmobile (see image above.)


And then I found an anonymous Yahoo Answers post about a kid whose boarding school banned a whole bunch of books, and in response, started running a wildcat library out of his dorm room (hat tip to Metafilter.)


Now this tugs at the heartstrings in a lot of ways; I love resourcefullness like this, I love intentiveness, I love defiance, and I love that this at least sort of reminds me of the film Toy Soldiers. But most of all, I love George Orwell. I re-read "Politics and the English Language" weekly. If you ban the works of George Orwell, the universe will conspire to place under your care the most clever and morally outraged student since Val Kilmer in Real Genius. And he will fuck your shit up.


Because George Orwell is the definition of radmobile.

Mad Libs News

I wake up pretty early. Not real early (I think you have to wake up with a 4 in front of all the numbers on the clock to qualify for that) but pretty early; I get to watch the news channels before the talking heads shows (um, MJ) all start, which means I get MSNBC's First Look.

YES.

At 0530 they haven't quite figured out what is or isn't news yet, so they pretty much just check out whatever the top-rated Youtube clips or the biggest stories on Digg are. For instance, this morning it was reported that an Australian Man, While Surfing, Saved a Baby Kangaroo, From Shark-Infested Waters.

Later they reported that a Chinese guy, while practicing kung fu, saved a dragon from an oncoming tank. And after the break, a guy from Kentucky, while playing his banjo, saved a jackrabbit from a moonshine explosion.

In other, non media-propagated ethnic stereotype news, those Libert Financial commercials about responsibility are ambiguous and confusing, and pretty much the most depressing things on tv, Jim and Pam proved on the season finale why the US version of the Office is somehow the most uplifting thing on television, while the British version (Christmas episode notwithstanding, hope you're still going strong Tim and Dawn!) just makes you feel uncomfortable being around British people.

Monsters. In My Pocket.

So one time in England a bunch of people were experiencing "mass hysteria" over the appearance of the so-called "Beast of Exmoor," some sort of non-native big cat terrorizing the area. In order to calm everyone down, the English sent in a battalion of Royal Marines in order to capture and/or kill said Beast.

The British sent in Royal Marines. To capture a ghostly Puma. In Exmoor (which is to say, it's not running around Pickadilly gobbling tourists, and the Marines can presumably do some rad squad-action shit.) FUCK YES.

According to The Source, this shit happens on a weekly basis in England. Now, I grew up in the shadow of the Pine Barrens, terrified of the Jersey Devil, and rightfully so. Mainly because, as is so often the case, the areas we think of as thoroughly explored and urbanized are either 1) not that at all, or 2) were, but shit changed. For an example of number 2, see the Ramapo Mountain People. Mainly, there is this list.

Now far be it for me to elevate The Source to a position of higher science than it is, but if only 1 or .5% of creatures on that list actually exist, HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE SASQUATCH IS GOING TO EAT ME.

Yes Joc, the boogeyman is real, and he will not be deterred by the high incidence of crime in your neighborhood.

And Liz, stop bugging the English, they have enough to worry about, what with Royal Marines running after various Phantom Cats every odd weekend.