Archive for the 'Silliness' Category
The Annotated Richard McBeef
April 22nd, 2007
SomethingAwful.com! Thy silliness–and cutting wit–is greatly to be praised! Witness their latest bit o’ comic genius:
I cite the opening paragraph of the new “standard edition” of McBeef as one of the most uproarious and ironically potent examples of contemporary satire:
Richard McBeef, written in late 2006 by playwright Cho Seung-Hui, remains one of the greatest domestic tragedies ever produced in English. Originally titled State of Virginia Exhibit 14-A, Richard McBeef was not accepted by the public upon its completion. Similar to the initial release of Catch-22, it took American audiences a few years to warm up to the complex plotting and rich dialogue of Richard McBeef. Combining the post-modern techniques of Robert Coover and Don Delillo, the suburban theme of quiet desperation from Something Happened and Death of a Salesman, and a dash of Eraserhead, Richard McBeef was met with disapproval by a reading public who preferred books about dragons written by the children of people who own book publishing companies. Even The New York Times, famous for its scholarly reviews, called McBeef “utter pig shit,” with guest columnist John Updike claiming, “The only McBeef Seung-Hui’ll be familiar with after this stinker is at McDonald’s. Because he’s going to work there. And serve beef.” Luckily, Richard McBeef has stood the test of time, and, five years after its original publication, is now taught in English classrooms alongside classics such as Romeo and Juliet and The Giver 2: Give Harder.
Good lord, just go and read it. Particularly if you are either, like me, a member of academia literaria, or merely an English major with a Monty Pythonesque taste for silly intellectualism. This is required reading. You will be quizzed later.
World War C!
October 5th, 2006
Parody is the sincerest form of flattery.
If you thought Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars was amazing, then you simply MUST check out SomethingAwful’s absolutely brilliant send-up:
World War C: An Oral History of the Cobra Wars!
Remember, folks: the forces of Cobra may rise again at any moment. Only a knowledge of our past will be able to help us if the “Blue Wave” ever rises again…because knowing is half the battle.
Sedition
September 29th, 2006
Readers of this blog have noticed that I rarely address politics here–and when I do, the political issues lining up to get holed in my shooting gallery are most often related to technological matters. I don’t really like discussing politics, for two reasons: 1) there are much better political news and discussion outlets than this one-man virtual donkey show; and 2) politics generally bores me blind. But the Bush administration’s ridiculous “War on Terror” and the horrendous, almost McCarthyite domestic policies it has lately been stirring up have finally loosened my lips.
Brace yourself, people. This is not going to be pretty–and, ohhhhhh yes, there will be foul language. Send the kids out of the room now before my invective scars their fragile little minds for life.
George W. Bush is a goddamned moron. Nay, not a moron, which Answers.com defines in turn-of-the-century psychological terms as “A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.” A true “moron”, following this definition (which has not actually been used in psychological parlance since the early part of the Twentieth Century), at least can be a valuable member of society by serving some kind of positive function. But George W. Bush serves no function whatsoever save to dig a deeper and deeper hold for this nation to slip into.
Let’s, for the moment, forget the fact that he suckered Congress into redefining the definition of “torture”, as well as permitting warrantless wiretapping. That stuff is heinous in its own right, but the straw that final broke the blogger’s back was his pronouncement, earlier today (29 September 2006) that “critics who believe that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe are ‘buying into enemy propaganda.’”
WHAT enemy propaganda?! The only propaganda I have been exposed to lately are statements from the Bush Administration attempting to prop up our public opinion concerning the miserable, unwinnable “war” they marched us into by way of getting some good ol’ red-blooded American payback against them filthy towel-heads what blew up all our buildings. Consider the following statement quoted by USAToday.com:
Some of them [Bush’s critics] selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home….This argument buys into the enemy propaganda that the enemies attacked up [sic] because we are fighting them.
The “document” in question is a leaked National Intelligence Estimate whose pertinent data appeared recently in the New York Times. Bushy claims that his critics “selectively quoted” from this document to support their perfectly common-sense thesis that “extremists were using the Iraq war to recruit more terrorists.”
Honestly…no one needs a leaked NIE report to realize this. The United States military invaded an Islamic country (that, incidentally, had one of the few truly secular, non-religious governments in the entire region) and destroyed the law-enforcement infrastructure in that country, which allowed a fullscale religious war between Sunni and Shiite factions to boil up on top of the perfectly natural anti-American sentiment that brewed among the Iraqis because we invaded their country. Whether our actions were justified or not on an international, or even a merely social, level is irrelevant: we, a very large, and very powerful military power invaded them…and, come on, people - NO ONE likes their lands and homes being invaded, whatever the reason. Especially when that invasion topples a regime that, yes, was certainly tyrannical…yet managed to keep sectarian religious violence under control. Now, the stabilizing influence of the Hussein regime is gone, and what’s left? An American “peacekeeping” force and a “new Iraqi parliament” that are so ineffectual and so confused that they are, for all intents and purposes, worthless. The religious wackos are having a field day. And anti-American sentiment is running wild.
And guess what? Al-Qaeda really likes to recruit religious wackos who have a thing against Americans.
Even if there weren’t data Out There that obviously supports this thesis, a simple, high-school-level Social-Studies-class understanding of the situation in Iraq would lead even a moron - ”A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years” - to conclude that it would be VERY likely that Al-Qaeda recruiters would be having a bloody field day swelling their ranks in Iraq.
“But,” Bush said (to long applause, USAToday.com notes), “I want to remind American citizens that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001.”
Well, DUH. The Al-Qaeda bastards who got the drop on us on 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. But the Al-Qaeda bastards who are someday going to attempt - and, who knows, maybe even succeed! - at topping their 9/11 stunt with another sweeps-week attack on the Great Satan are probably going to come from Iraq. Why? Because we stirred them up - we poked our stick into that ant’s nest of Medieval religious insanity.
Mr. Bush, dig the shit out of your ears for one fucking second and listen to what the entire world is telling you: THE WAR ON TERROR IS PRODUCING TERROR. It’s a vicious cycle of truly Orwellian proportions. Witness:
- Al-Qaeda terrorists representing militant Islam…oh, I mean, Islamic fascism (as opposed to, what, Bush/Blair PseudoDemocratic Fascism?) attack America. We respond by attacking the nation and regime (Afghanistan) that initially harbored them - an attack which I still believe to be justified - but then attack a nation which had NO roll in 9/11 whatsoever.
- Islamic radicals see the US’s invasion of Iraq as fulfillment of their beliefs that the US and the Western Powers have some kind of crazy grudge against Islam - which has been one of their recruiting messages for years. Way to go, Bushy: you just confirmed (in their minds) one of their primary doctrines.
- By pursuing “anti-terrorist” measures abroad, you have, in effect, stirred up even more anti-American sentiment…especially by “liberating” the Iraqi people from the stabilizing influence of a truly fascistic, but nonthreatening (to our nation), regime. Al-Qaeda recruiters would be stupider than you are if they DIDN’T flock to Iraq and any other Islamic nation feeling angered or threatened by US aggression.
- This will eventually, and inevitably, spur another Al-Qaeda attack on the US. Then what? Another invasion? Another “liberation”?
Lather, rinse, repeat.
And you have the gall to accuse American citizens who point out your obvious failings of succumbing to “enemy propaganda”? I ask again: WHAT PROPAGANDA? Do you honestly think we, your critics, are visiting www.al-qaeda.com and reading their convenient online FAQs? Or do you think we’re getting our news and information from - GASP! - overseas sources via the Internet?
Oh, you do? Well, I guess that does explain the warrantless wiretapping and revised “enemy combatant” laws you just railroaded through our equally-idiotic Congress.
Well, here - let me make it easy on you. I’m sure the NSA or CIA or some other intelligence-gathering organization will red-flag the following text and it may very well appear in the next “domestic terrorism” newsbrief to land on your desk:
Dear Mr. Bush:
I, Derek C. F. Pegritz, am entirely opposed to everything your administration stands for in regard to the so-called “War on Terror”. My views on this subject, and all of the information that I required to support them, was gleaned from the publication George W. Bush: Rapist of the Prophet which I received by anonymous courier after I used my PayPal account to donate a “love gift” of $3.25 (USD) to the Al-Qaeda Missionary Fund. Upon reading this three-page, photocopied pamphlet, I have decided that there is no God but God (that is, Allah, not the Christian or the Jewish “God”), Muhammad is His Prophet, and the United States is the Agent of Shaitan - by whom, I believe, they mean you. Al-Qaeda mail-order propaganda has now permanently influenced my views and, I believe, I am now what you would consider Un-American.
Oh, yeah - while we’re at it, I might as well tell you that I am a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, an Anarchist, a “Hippie”, a supporter of Iberian Expansion in the Philippines and the Caribbean, a “white indian” riding with the Apaches, a Confederate sympathizer, a Tory (God…I mean, Allah Save The King!), an Abolitionist, a Black Panther, a Branch Davidian, and a supporter of Universal Suffrage (yes, even for Negroes).
Before sending an NSA “extraction team” to my house, please call ahead and inform me of their dispatch so I may properly barricade my house for a proper fourteen-day-siege and prepare enough Plutonium for a minimum of seven dirty bombs.
Sincerely,
DCFP.
PS: I shall, in the future, refrain from calling you a moron out of respect for actual morons, who have informed me that they take offense at being lumped into the same category as yourself.
I was a Twenty-Something Candle Muncher!
September 21st, 2006
Yeah, I know it’s been a while since I rapped at you with my smoove, Cormac-McCarthy-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis flow….Things have been a bit chaotic here in Pegritzland, what with the new semester upon me and sheaf after sheaf of student writings coming in to writhe beneath my savagely critical gaze. But here’s a little tale for you that’s been sitting around on my hard-drive for a while now. I’ve dusted off its bits and bytes, added a few details recently declassified by the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, and generally polished it up to make it worthy of bearing the Pegritz(.com)! Stamp of Wicked Awesome Quality. So, without further ado…ladies and gentlemen, I give you a tale of thrills! chills! and complete idiocy. It’s….
I was a Twenty-Something Candle Muncher!
I do a lot of stupid things - usually for humor’s sake or to prove some sort of esoteric philosophico-ethical point that can only be illustrated by, say, leaping wearing a cowboy hat covered in J. R. “Bob” Dobbs buttons to a formal dinner. I do stupid things just for fun. Not Jackass-stupid, mind you. I’ve never done anything that really hurt, or in any way involved my scrotum. My idea of stupid is just…pointless and dumb. Case in point:
In the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Six, I was employed at The Book Store…which was actually a video store that also sold silly Americana bricabrac and assorted lame pseudocollectible trinkets. Franklin Mint collector’s plates and anime-eyed hummels and the like. I’ve many a tale concerning The Book Store and the hydrocephalic hillbilly cretins that frequented the place seeking New Releases to assuage their appetites for romantic, Sandra-Bullock-filled drivel or big bright explosions of the Action-Adventure variety…but those tales must await a future telling, for now I must expound the subject of my stupidity rather than theirs.
During the time I worked at The Book Store, I only got along well with one employee: a cute li’l blonde thang named Shelby. Shelby was completely and utterly awesome. She was quite easy on the eyes, let’s we say, but more importantly she was quite bright and was, therefore, an excellent coworker for me to hang with during the long hours of retail tedium. She and I could finish putting out all the new magazines on a Thursday morning ten times faster and ten times better than anyone else, and when it came to managing the video racks we were the acknowledged experts. Shelby had a great sense of humor, a wicked tongue raspy as a cat’s with sarcasm when needed…and a husband - which was really weird, because she was only eighteen and had, apparently, been already married for two or three years. To a backwards-ballcap-wearing dingleberry one year her senior who, when he would arrive to pick her up from work, would sit in his big ol’ rusty hooptie right in front of the store and stare daggers at my back as if I were pawing up his wifey right in front of him. Shelby found Hubbyboy’s antics just as hysterical as I did, and probably talked more shite on the poor loser than I ever did…which speaks volumes about the quality of their wedded bliss. Safe to say, though, that Shelby and I always had a great time working together…especially when we were closing the store.
Which brings us to the present narrative. It was a Tuesday night toward the end of May, and Shelby and I were closing as usual. The Book Store officially closed at 10pm on weeknights, but we prettymuch started shutting up the shop at a quarter ’til when we turned off the video monitors in the corners, shut off most of the lights, did the final video returns, and then spent the last fifteen minutes sitting around on the checkout counter waiting for the Official Time Clock to strike the 10 Spot so we could cash out the registers and head home. Hubbyboy was sitting out front as usual, his smoldering gaze lying upon my shoulders like an irritating sunburn, and of course Shelby and I were fake-flirting like mad just to piss his dumb ass off some more. I, however, was somewhat distracted by something other than the usual gravity of her lovely bosom: the luscious scent of the box of 100 Honeydew-Melon-scented Yankee Candle Company votives sitting in a box next to my register.
Shelby’s melons were pretty damn mind-devouring to a twentysomething single male such as myself, but nowhere near as hypnotic as the scent of honeydew melon that drifted up like a pale green breath of cool, latesummer freshness to my nostrils. Honeydew melon! One of my alltime favorite scents! The candles were a lovely pale green that matched their odor perfectly, and since I’d put the fresh new box of them out that afternoon I’d been completely entranced, my skull light and thoughtless, filled with their etheric scent, my eyes soothed and seduced by their delicate, faerie-wing greenness….Every five minutes, I’d pick up one of the candles and run it beneath my nose like a crack addict snorting up the precious fumes of his fix, filling my nostrils with dizzying, opiate honeydew bliss. Shelby found my melon-candle addiction particularly hilarious, and, yes, I tried to hide my habit from her view but there was no hiding such a special, special love from the world. I wanted to marry one of those Yankee votive candles and live forever in dewy ecstacy with my waxy bride. I wanted to stuff my pockets with those candles and fill my car’s glovebox with them, so I could be surrounded day in and day out with their lovely stink.
Worst of all, I wanted to eat one.
“Shelby,” said I at some point, only half-joking, “I could just take a bite out of this candle right friggin’ now because…because…something that smells so good just cannot possibly taste bad!”
“Oh, really?” Shelby answered (probably by this point ready to just take one of the goddamned candles and jam it down my throat to shut me up about them). “Well…I’ll buy you one of them - but only if I get to watch you eat it.”
Mind you, the candles were only a buck a piece…and, yes, I’d certainly thought about buying one and surrpetitiously giving it a long, sensual lick or maybe a delicate little nibble just to assuage my own idiotic curiosity because I really couldn’t imagine something that smelled so delicious could possibly not taste the same. But sensibility always won out and I restrained myself to just sniffing. But now that Shelby offered to buy me one of the grounds that I eat it before her…well, hell! Not only could I finally answer the question of the candle’s taste for myself, but I could do it before a cute girl and thereby prove my ineffable manliness. Fucking Hubbyboy out front wouldn’t dare eat a candle to impress a chick, but PEGRITZ SURE AS HELL WOULD!
I thought about it for a second, then replied: “Allright. You’re on.”
Shelby gave me a dollar and I rang up the candle on my register. Then, as she watched, I slowly peeled the wrapper off the candle as though I were undressing Shelby herself - a minor fantasy that I’d entertained now and again, of course - letting the unfettered honeydew airs rise from the candle. I looked upon the naked candle with a sudden spike of trepidation, which I kept carefully hidden for fear of impugning my stonecold idiotic image - but…it had been ages since I’d eaten a candle, something I actually had done before. When I was SEVEN. I vaguely remembered chewing up the tasteless wax and I wondered…might this candle be as tasteless? NO! It couldn’t be! I mean…it smelled so GOOD, it had to taste the same. Right?
Shelby was watching me, nodding, saying, “C’mon…eat it already. You know you want to!”
Well, what else could I do now?
So, holding the candle sideways, I sank my teeth into its melon-colored flesh and bit a huge chunk out of it.
I chewed slowly, feeling the wax crumble between my teeth, a strange, subtle chemical flavor slowly diffusing across my tongue….
Shelby saw the light fade from my eyes as I slowly ground up that waxen cud between my teeth. “Well…how does it taste?” she asked.
“Uhhh….Waxy?”
“So does it taste as good as it smells?”
It actually kind of tasted like a mouthful of unflavored salt-water taggy spiced with a few drops of dishwashing liquid. Somehow, all along I knew it would taste just like a gobful of phlegm, but hey….Duty had called. And now I answered truthfully: “Not really.”
“You know, I paid good money for that candle,” Shelby said. “I expect you to finish it.”
“Finish it?!”
“Yeah. You need to whole damned candle now. I don’t want it now that you took a big nasty bite out of it.”
“….Sure,” I sighed. I mean, I had to conclude my part of the bargain now. Shelby had spent a good dollar that she could’ve used to buy herself a Coke or a bottle of Lipton’s Apple-Spice tea to buy me a stupid candle to eat. Plus, a really attractive young lady was demanding, with her luscious blue eyes, that I - oh, what else could I do?
I ate the candle. I ate the entire fucking thing.
I chewed and chewed that wax and gulped it down in gritty lumps, each synthetic bolus of candlemeat sliding down my throat like the derision and laughter of the gods themselves. The tantalizing - but false, alas, sooooo false - scent of honeydew melon continued to float up through my sinuses even as the completely non-melodic, non-melonic taste of snot and Palmolive tortured my tongue and made my uvula writhe with every swallow. Thankfully, my stomach didn’t seem to mind being insulted by a few ounces of wax, for it didn’t hurt or otherwise object as I’d thought it would. In fact, it actually killed the gnawing hunger that had been troubling me since lunch that day.
When I was done, all I had left was the wick dangling from my fingertips.
“You’ve gotta eat that, too,” Shelby said.
“Ok, no. Uh-uh. No fucking way.” I don’t really know why but…after having gulped down so much wax, I knew that if I curled up that little two-inch-long piece of string and swallowed it, that would set off a volcanic eruption of spew. Shelby kept trying to get me to eat the wick but I patently refused and threw it into the wastebasket. Fortunately, by that point, it was officially 10 o’clock, and we could shut down everything and go home. I had officially proved to Shelby that I was a Real Man, not a highschool-aged, ballcap-wearing toyboy - I could choke down an entire votive candle like a MANLY MAN! Of course, that must prove that my wang was at least fifteen inches long and my complementary skills as a lover unmatched by any mere mortal!
Yeah. I’m sure that’s exactly what Shelby thought when I ate that stupid candle. By that point, I was just feeling like being a total blockhead. A veritable nimrod. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. And for what? To impress a girl? Ultimately…not really. Shelby was just a friend - a coworker whom I thought was cute, but that was it: I never had any real interest in her. To prove something to myself? No. I already knew I was a dumbass with a penchant for such strange stunts.
To this day I don’t really know why, precisely, I devoured that poor candle. Some stories don’t have happy endings - or sad endings…or even any kind of endings. Much like a Samuel Beckett play rewritten by a ten-year-old, the Culinary Investigation of the Yankee Candle has no real conclusion. No real resolution. It was dreamt up, it happened, and was promptly forgotten by all but me immediately afterward amid the same overarching air of Complete Mystery. Perhaps the Templars know why I did it…or the Gnostics. But I sure don’t!
EPILOGUE:
Sensitive readers be varned! The following material contains references that many many find…well, feculent. Procede at thine own risk!
So…now you may be wondering what the aftereffects, shall we say, of the candle-eating were. Everyone always asks that. Well, let me tell you so you’ll finally stop pestering me.
Two or three days later, the wax emerged as per the usual course of nature. And though the process wasn’t particularly difficult, I still found myself afterward entertaining a peculiar sense of relief, never known to me before, as though I’d finally put the entire ridiculous incident behind me, as it were. I’d finally expunged that moment of frippery from my life. But then…
rising from below…
came the pure, unsullied scent of honeydew melons.
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, MO’ MONEY!
August 27th, 2006
Just so you know:
My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?
That’s enough money for me to either buy a really, really powerful MIDI controller to use with all my softsynths, or a whole ‘nother desktop computer. Any buyers?
