Geez, folks, we are SORRY. It’s been a long time. I could say we were just taking a summer hiatus, but I am WAY too far in this sentence to attempt that.

Last time we posted, it was April 1st. More than four months ago. Four months ago, this whole Charlie Sheen thing seemed like a good idea. I’ve always hated referencing pop culture, because inevitably you’ll look back at what you said (like with this arc) and be out of touch with what made it seem like a good idea in a first place. It totally made sense when we started this! Charlie Sheen was just, like, super crazy! And certainly no person could be that crazy. It was a collective mission as a culture, and it became everyone’s conversation – this famous person is acting weird, and we need to discuss the weird things he does and why he does the weird things and what weird things he might do next. Then we just sorta accepted that he fried his brain on drugs and actually was probably pretty mentally disturbed and it stopped being fun and interesting and thought provoking and just turned sad and unfun to think about. He wasn’t playing “Charlie Sheen, crazy party uncle, the character!” he was actually “Charlie Sheen, empty dried up celebrity vessel craving fruitless public attention to fill a void he is unable to confront in reality”. Try basing a CBS sitcom on that.

I’m seeing ads on Comedy Central for the “Charlie Sheen roast”, and I DO NOT want to see that. I don’t think the man can handle a roast. Whoever is doing the roasting is going to cut deep. It’s not like roasting Chevy Chase. “Hah, hah, your acting career is laughable!”. Chevy can handle that. These guys are going after Charlie’s delicate ego. Charlie went on a whole tour after being booted off his show basically telling “his side of the story”, which pretty much equates to a couple hours of whining. The roast is gonna be saaaaaad :(

But enough about Charlie Sheen. For real. I actually am a little surprised I typed that much already.

Four months is a long time, and it was ESPECIALLY long this summer. So much stuff went down this summer, you guys! I have to talk about it with you!

SUMMER 2011 ROUNDUP

APRIL 2011

This month was significant due to the massive political demonstrations around the world, particularly in the Middle East and in Africa, but I think a lot of the energy people channeled into these movements can be attributed to how devastatingly sad they were over the passing of the WORLD’S FAVORITE LIL’ POLAR BEAR, KNUT.

GAAAAAAAAH THE PAIN NEVER GOES AWAY. POOR KNUT :( :( :’(

Ok, I don’t want to ruin your day, but you have to know this.

Knut’s death was caused by drowning after he collapsed into his pool after suffering encephalitis (w/e that is).

I should’ve been there!!! I know he wasn’t MY polar bear, but in a way… he was ALL our polar bear.  God bless you Knut… wherever you are.

……………………………… too cute.

MAY 2011

May 2011, in my mind, can really only be remembered as the month Osama Bin Laden got shot in the face.

It’s too perfect. It happened like a Tom Clancy novel. So they staked out his compound for a long time. They used satellite imagery to determine a man of Bin Laden’s stature and build was wandering around outside. They sent people in disguise as census takers to try and determine what sort of people were inside. Then Barack Obama (already well known as an established cool cat) gives the word for a team of Navy SEALS to attack the compound. They take helicopters (one of which CRASHES pretty cinematically, causing the SEALS to abandon training and act on their feet, sweet) and land in the compound, silently taking out some ter’rists hiding inside. Then, when one of the SEALS spots Bin Laden at the top of a staircase, he takes a deep breath, aims, then says (out loud) (get this) “For God and country – Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo”, and shoots this decade-long headache in the face. Bruce Willis might as well be dropping one liners like that.

JUNE 2011

“WORLD WAITS WITH BAITED BREATH FOR TRANSFORMER 3 – PROMISES TO TIE UP ALL THE LOOSE ENDS”

- Will Shia LeBeouf be killed by robots, or will he live and not be killed?????

- Will Optimus Prime be blown up by other robots, or will he blow up the other robots??????

- Will the good robots find a magic key that saves a planet, or will the bad robots find the same magic key and use it to DESToRY a planet?????

Here Shia LeBeouf is doing some acting with hot girl, but unfortunately there’s not a lot the acting talent can be used for here.

“Girl, I am sorry I got you involved in an interplanetary feud between the Autobots and the Decepticons. If we ever get out of this mess and restore the Allspark to the divine Foundry of the Stars, then the Decepticons will be sent back to the origins of space and it will reunite the balance of the Galactic Universe”

Hold on while I add that one to the big book of pick up lines.

I dont actually have a big book of pick up lines.

JULY/AUGUST 2011

It was hot out.

SEPTEMBER 2011

And that brings us to now! We are working on a couple projects we hope to release to you pretty soon. They are cool and fun and exciting. Some semblance of an update schedule should be forming soon here, too. The summer months ain’t good for comics. These winter months are. We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other ;).

GAAAAAAAAAH I CAN’T HOLD IT TOGETHER. POOR KNUT.

JUST STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BAM! I lied. There are five parts to this story. There is one more to come. Good thing, too, now that the whole Charlie Sheen thing has… you know… kinda gone all Borat/Napoleon Dynamite quote on us. “Have you heard about Charlie Sheen?” Actually, that seems like a pretty amusing stunt for me to play on people tomorrow. “DUDE, have you heard about Charlie Sheen yet??” I will get the most incredibly bored and unamused responses. I will follow up with, “He is SO CRAZY! Right?”

So there’s nothing quite like being caught in the middle of a discussion people around you are having about a TV show that you don’t watch. It is complete unintelligible noise. Even the most outward extrovert is left in the cold when this happens. Let’s say you’re talking to friends who are raving about a show you don’t watch. I don’t watch the show “Fringe”, so here’s pretty much how every conversation people have had about that around me has sounded:

“There’s the variables”

“And the doctor, alternate dimensions”

“J.J Abrams”

“Time travel paradox”

“The girl actor”

“Time travel alternate dimension paradoxes”

I know, of course, that I do this all the time too. When Lost was airing, I was a huge douche. If I met someone new, it was pretty likely one of the first questions I would ask (to gauge coolness) would be “Do you watch Lost”? And if the answer was yes, I would cut out every other person in the group to talk about WHAT EXACTLY IS THE SMOKE MONSTER etc etc. And there really is nothing worse, I’m sure, than hearing about Lost if you don’t care about Lost. (but srsly if you are predisposed about Lost I probably don’t have time for you…..)

There are some shows I fully expect to never be “in” on the conversation with. For example, when people talk about stuff like “One Tree Hill”. As my brain knows it, “One Tree Hill” is some show on the CW about some good looking kids who get pregnant and go to the school dance. The run-down my brain gets from conversations in this one go like this:

“Season five was so good”

“Pregnant”

“Abuse :(”

“ROBBY!!”

“I cried.”

“Pregnant”

I was thinking about how I would react if I actually sat down and watched one of the One Tree Hill episodes. I tried that with Gilmore Girls one time (because I am <3 with alexis bledel) and my brain nearly exploded on account of their HYPER QUICK BRAINS. I do NOT BELIEVE that a mother-daughter could be that snappy. Sample Gilmore Girls scene. (you probably don’t actually want to watch that). Anyways they are TOO FAST. No one is that thoughtful and witty in the course of 2:27. They clearly have the might of modestly skilled cable writers behind them.

But you know how people say “Ah, if you miss one episode of Dexter or Breaking Bad, you’ll be lost”! Apparently it’s the same with these CW shows. The plotlines are crazy! But I am going to try to UNDERSTAND One Tree Hill based solely on one Youtube clip. Then, whenever it comes up in casual conversation (likely?) I will be able to say confidently… “I got this.”

Here’s the clip I’m gonna watch. Watch with me, and experience my introduction to One Tree Hill. I will live transcribe.

Hand is getting something out of toaster. Not bread. AHHHHHHH TOASTER STRUDELS WHEN IS THE LAST TIME I’VE HAD THOSE??? is it a babe? Ugh maybe but she’s singing to herself about her pastry. Nobody does that, only characters on the CW do that. “Frosting doodle, on my strudel…”. OH THIS IS BAD. THIS IS BAD. “Quinn?” she pauses eating strudel “It’s time”. So that other girl is pregnant, I guess. This girl would not be this calm about having a baby unless she’s popped out a few dozen already. She is hardly frazzled. It’s supposed to be funny when in fact it is the opposite of that. PUT THE STRUDEL AWAY. “I don’t think I can fit in there!” Yeah, you have a pregnant belly and you’re not going to fit into a car. EVER HEARD OF FAT PEOPLE? just call an ambulance already you stupid ladies! “one tree hill 8/7 central this tuesday on the CW”

guess what I’ll be doing this tuesday at 8/7 central? probably eating strudels in silence.

laterrrr

jkd

Part 3 of 4! The SHOCKING CONCLUSION comin at cha on Friday.

I dunno why I haven’t written about this yet. So way back, before Pib, before Everyman, my obsession was drawing cartoons of a character named P-1N+3. Weird name, yes. It doesn’t mean anything. He came about during some high school math class. Now, I am no drawer. If you ask me to draw things well, I would probably do the opposite of that thing that you asked me. And yet, I drew. At the back of the class. And throughout middle school I drew only two things: sketches of Homer Simpson and sketches of Sonic the Hedgehog (no wonder the ladies loved me so much!!!!!!!!!). Then I started drawing a guy that looked like this:

P-1N+3! As the story went, he was a skin cell that lived in a bowl of skin cells (as you do), and after being taken by a little girl to a nuclear power plant (as it happens), a nuclear explosion expanded P-1N+3 to human size, after which he proceeded to fight monsters and the sort.

I went mad with this guy. I planned out comics, and cartoons, and tv show intros… I was dead set on making this the next big cartoon series.

I even got into contact with some dude from Abu Dhabi who (probably due to his fractured English) thought he was talking to an actual cartoon producer, and not some 16 year old kid. I spoke authoritatively enough that he made a 6 minute cartoon based on my notebook sketched drawings and Microsoft Word script. And it was thrilling! (Though when I watch it now I cringe miserably). We parted ways after that point (I think he caught on after hearing the voice recordings done by me and my other still nasally friends), and the next time I heard from him was through an email I recieved at like 4AM local Abu Dhabi time that read:

HI JOEL HAPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rauf.

Oh, Rauf! You’ll bury us all.

The reason I wrote this is because I curiously checked out the old domain for the cartoon, www.p1n3.com. I was met with this:

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET?! that’s filler text. they are filling my old domain with filler text for some lame graphic design studio.

They have a “contact” space below, so obviously I decided to abuse it.

What’s up, studio9one. I would like for you to put this domain to good use. This domain meant a lot to a 16 year old kid some years back. I dunno if you’ve surpassed the probably 90 hits that domain got back then, but know that every one of those 90 people clicked away satisfied. First step: put some real content on here. I’ll be checking back. And judging you, hard.

– Signed, The Spirits of The Past (aka some dude in Canada)

I really want a response.

Come back Friday for the final Sheen comic, and potentially some exciting news….

jkd

I want you to know that:

A) I wrote this post at 12:08 AM on St. Patrick’s Day. Sooooo….

and

B) For some reason (ALL REASONS) I wrote it while listening to this.

That being said, this post will be really unfocused and potentially full of references to Lord of the Rings.

SCREW POTENTIALLY i want to talk about lord of the rings.

i really like the lord of the rings! i like ALL the characters.

there’s frodo baggins

who you really wouldn’t think would be the guy who would ultimately defeat Sauron. let’s be clear, Sauron looks like this:

LOOK OUT! that is about what my nightmares look like. a spiky dude surrounded by volcanoes about to rip my face off.

non sequitur -  I had braces when I was a kid and recently one tooth has been shifting. I think it’s cause I haven’t been wearing my retainer. So basically I have a mouth of straight teeth now and one crooked tooth. I always check it out and it unsettles me and makes me wish I wore my retainer. Last night I had a nightmare that I went back to the dentist and the dentist saw my one crooked tooth and decided that changes had to be MADE NOW. so he got out a scalpel and CUT OUT THE CROOKED TOOTH. totally cut it out!

so anyways there are a lot of other characters in the lord of the rings, like gimli…

i actually think gimli is the worst character in the whole movie series. he sorta got assigned the “comic relief” role…. most of his lines are “grumpy dwarf” lines. i haven’t watched the movies in a while but here’s how basically every scene with gimli goes down….
LEGOLAS: We have to be alert lest the orc hordes attack.

GIMLI: Hah! Us dwarves (me being a dwarf) are never unaware!

And yet his whole stupid race gets slaughtered in that cave. I think the perception of his race in the movies might be a metaphor, like “the dwarves might be small and grumpy but they are a prosperous people nonetheless”, but seriously why do they all have beards? that seems like a really lazy trait to assign to an entire race. Like JRR Tolkien needed to add another race and he was like “okay these guys all have beards and are midgets”. They are just short bearded grumpy men. That’s not a new race. Just like elves are just pretty people. I can dig Orcs. Orcs are a new creature. Elves are people with pointy ears and a big vocabulary. That’s not a race. Elves are English majors with big ears. Star Wars had it right. There were humans, big hairy Sasquatches, Robots, and Green-skinned aliens. NO CONFUSION. don’t try and tell me this is a new race!!!

Honestly, if I met an Elf in real life, I wouldn’t be amazed by their superior culture and diction. I would be very curious as to whether or not they had been home-schooled their whole life and as to whether they listened to death cab for cutie. I hate elves.

But clearly the best characters in the lord of the rings are the Ents.

YEAH! i love the Ents. FA-ROOOOM. why are those trees talking and why do they have faces? doesn’t matter.

i remember when i first read the lord of the rings and i think in the first book it says something like “the trees hear everything. they are watching” and you think it’s some poetic thing about how nature is aware of you and how nothing goes unnoticed, and then in book two the trees actually have like limbs and stuff and like human faces. and they have names. like “treebeard”. and that’s because he is actually a tree and he actually has a beard. ok. because trees would name themselves after their basic traits. like a tall human would be named “heightperson”. the Ents are so weird because they are surrounded by other, normal trees in the movies. they run through forests, and moan when the Orcs cut down normal trees. why don’t THOSE trees have limbs and funny names?? and why can the Ents sense when they are in danger? stupid. stupid. but it’s alllll worth it for that scene where the ents destroy isengard:

pretty rad. and then sam gives that speech that didn’t make me cry

that speech really makes you forget that the trees came to life and threw rocks at orcs. what are we watching????

OK but it doesn’t compare with THIS SPEECH that sam gives!!!
“i may not be able to carry it for you…….. but i can CARRY YOU!”

music swells….

YAHGHHHHHHHHHHH :( :( :( :(

they are brothers!!!!!! :( :(

im seriously gonna go watch clips of these masterpieces all night. good day to you.

jkd

For a variety of reasons, I have been running ragged this week. It’s gonna continue into next, too. I work the preschool in the morn’, then go to school where projects are getting busy, then usually have been catching up on work until midnight. When I realized what sort of week this was going to be, I turned to an old friend.

THE FIVE HOUR ENERGY SHOT!

giver of life! fountain of fountains! other religious connotations!

i’ve written about these before (they really are like a drug, I can’t stop talking about them). it’s not like other energy drinks. other energy drinks take TIME. EFFORT. you have to sit down and really embrace the taste and the harshness of those. i really can’t drink energy drinks. but the energy shot? here’s the experience of the five hour shot put into mid-century metaphoric passion play format.

WEARY TRAVELER: Avast! The long road to rest seems to be long on the horizon.

[weary traveler comes upon Grail on the road, filled with strange elixir]

WEARY TRAVELER: But what is this grail? Shall I drink, and enjoy it’s bounty?

THE LORD: Weary Traveler! You know not what you do! Strange Grails usually are fill’t with unforeseen and bodily harmful substances!

ENERGIZED TRAVELER: WHOA THE LORD TOO LATE I ALREADY DRANK IT AND AM READY TO GOOOOO —

THE LORD: Weary Traveler! Be aware of the way you —

ENERGIZED TRAVELER: SORRY THE LORD I GOT THINGS TO DOOOOOOOOOO ——–

bad call energized traveler! little did you know that by drinking the grail (5 hour energy shot) you would be angering the lord (everyone around you).

yup, the five hour energy shot turns your brain into a piece of junk. it works a mile a minute, but it produces a wide variety of useless, useless thoughts. a few i have had as a result of the 5 hour energy —
“If you were to assign genders to the planets what they would be. Jupiter’s a dude. Sun is a girl. Moon is a dude. Venus is a girl. What about… WHAT KIND OF THOUGHTS ARE THESE”.

“How does a doorbell make noise? There are no speakers in my house to make noise from. I wonder if ….. oh. “Bell”. GEEZ.”

“Do I remember how to multiply? 5×7………………………………….. guess not.”

“Does Kramer have a job? How does he afford that apartment? Oh, class is over.”

I have to stop. They are destroying my “brain”.

Oh, yeah, so we are doing this Charlie Sheen 4 part thing! Or maybe 5 parts. It will be between 4-5 parts. Or maybe we will throw a curveball and do 3 parts. UNLIKELY.

I am going to sleep for 15 hours now to replenish my “brain”.

jkd

I take the bus every day. I used to drive this glorious piece of machinery all ’round town –

stylish AND affordable.

you should see it when I drive this thing around town. all the ladies spot it’s sleek (yet simple!) interior and it’s practical (yet simple!) frame and the way you can fit SO MANY GROCERIES/BABIES in the back, you bet their just THROW their phone numbers at me as they drive by (all ladies have their phone numbers pre-written just in case a ford focus drives by).

and yet, even the strongest of us fall eventually. my 2000 ford focus now sits in my driveway, and will until i have about a thousand bucks to throw at it (it’ll be a while). all the ladies now just have to throw their phone numbers when they walk by. i need to purchase 4 new tires for this beauty and then WATCH OUT, everyone in the world.

until then, im stuck using public transit. it wouldn’t be so terrible if i didn’t live in a tundra – it’s so cold here that waiting at the bus stop could spell your doom. if the bus is late, well, helloooo frostbite.

well you DO get on the bus, it’s very likely you will be treated to the on-wheels version of in-flight entertainment, in the form of crazy people. there are 3 common quirks found in a typical crazy bus rider.

1. The Yeller

at some point, the yeller just decided that he was tired of keeping his thoughts inside his brain, and that it was just about time to tell everyone those thoughts in the loudest possible way. Usually those thoughts don’t come out quite right, and they often seem to be part of a larger conversation the yeller remembered he was a part of from a few years back. “But Terry said I could!” is a classic example. sad reality: terry is probably a creation of their crazy, crazy brain.

2. The Starer/Dead-Eyes

There’s no worse feeling than looking over at the person in front of you and realizing they are staring right at you. They’ve probably been staring for a lot longer than you’ve realized, too. This is about the point you wanna pull out your phone and pretend to text someone or just keep glancing out the window until Dead-eyes falls into a trance. Don’t meet Dead-eyes’ gaze – this guy is a pro. And the last thing you wanna do is aggravate Dead-eyes, lest he add in a bit of the Yeller and put words to their stare, ie. “I can’t wait to find you in a dark alley so I can scoop out your brains with an ice cream spoon”.

3. The Wildcard

Smell that? That ol’ liquor smell? The kind that seeps out of skin? The Wildcard probably drank 12 beers before you even woke up this morning. Because that is how the Wildcard rolls. Who knows where they find the money to buy said beer, but they make it their mission to drink it all, then ride around on a bus with no apparent destination. The Wildcard will probably just fall asleep, taking up 3 or 4 seats, or they might decide to try flipping off total strangers. I meet the Wildcard all the time. They try to form a sentence, like “Dohghj you know who I ammm-fdf—” and when I struggle to put together those words they quickly follow up with “FUUU–YOU@!!” and a middle finger to the face. Pleasure to meet you!

see you next time!!
jkd

HELLO PEOPLE OF EARTH!

two days late on the blog, i know. when people noticed the lack of blog, my inbox was BLOWIN’ UP!

folks just COULD NOT WAIT for my musings and ponderings! most emails were from my crazed fans, as pictured here:

bless them. a common email read as such:

Dear Leader,

I awoke at 12:01am (not that I was able to sleep, knowing your musings and ponderings were close to being granted to the world) and was stricken with grief when I read I had to wait for today’s blog. It was all I could do but weep openly knowing I had to face the expanse of the world without the moral and sensible fortitude of your writings. Please do not keep me waiting longer – I can only stand so much.

Yours, forever,

Barack Obama

bless them.

I replied promptly to each precept.

Dear Followers –

Guess what? Chicken butt.

– Dear Leader

BUT SERIOUSLY FOLKS (HA! HA! like i could be THAT conceited! ………) — sorry on the blog failure!

those 1761 emails are mostly really just a result of insane laziness. it’s the internet equivalent of being a pack rat – i don’t delete anything, “just in case i’ll need it”. OH REALLY? when am i EVER going to need THIS?? -

it’s the same deal for me on facebook. I never check Notifications nor mark messages as unread.

and let’s clarify – this is me bein’ a packrat, not popular! this annoys people to NO END. “WHY DON’T YOU CHECK YOUR NOTIFICATIONS???” i just wanna keep em there…  just in case! what if? what would i do what if? huh?? huh?? no reason.

i am the modern day equivalent of the old guy who keeps a room full of letters from Columbia House DVD club “just in case”.

see you tomorrow for an on time blog post!

jkd

Tonight was the Academy Awards. I watched ‘em. I have a paper due, and because I am a great (terrible) multi-tasker, I tried to do ‘em both at once. Gotta say, the Oscars this year can really be summed up in two words: horribly awkward. I like BOTH James Franco and Anne Hathaway, for different reasons (I want to be Franco/marry Hathaway/preferably AS Franco) – but geez, guys… they were really bad hosts. Hathaway giggled maniacally and Franco was… Franco? (squinting, questionable mental state, almost cool but maybe crazy?). The whole show really was awkward. Even Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, a one-two punch of “hollywood cool” had to deal with George-Lopez-Monologue material. I GIVE THE SHOW A 7/10. (CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HOW THE TWITTERVERSE REACTS TO THAT!!!!!!)

And while I reacted to the Oscars with a douchey sense of superiority, I wrote a terrible paper. It was on “the meaning behind the photos” of a photographer. When I read the instructions for this thing, I stared for a while. I don’t know the meaning of any singular photograph. No one does. There really isn’t. I mean, I can speculate, but why write a paper on something like that? Any interpretation is gonna be wildly different. I guess that’s the point. There’s really no reason to break it down. But what if you did? EXAMPLE:

MEANING: America triumphing over the forces of evil.

ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH: Four guys doing a job really one dude could handle.

So I had to interpret the photos of a French photographer who snapped shots on the streets of Paris in the early 1930s. Most shots were kids playing in the streets and candids of people going about their day.

My essay was so terrible that I feel I have to share it with all y’all. PS I do not believe A WORD of what I wrote in this essay. It’s due tomorrow, and my choices were either 1) really commit to this thing or 2) watch the oscars.

Often if we do not stop to admire the art right in front of us we will miss some of the most striking portraits and images around.

WHOA is that a bad attempt to be insightful or WHAT?! So I guess what this means is that if we are busy in our day to day lives then we will miss, like, the bird on the tree beside us. k. Thanks, Grade 4 journal entry. D-

I find Doisneau’s approach to photography very appealing and intriguing in that I have always found myself drawn to non-posed photography, and Doisneau’s non-threatening methods of capturing this sort of action seems to be very effective.

LIES LIES LIES. This is such a pack of lies! I do not enjoy photography WHATSOEVER. I find it a hassle. I don’t like lugging around a camera and I find taking photos a chore when I could be looking at things with my OWN EYES. F for lack of truth.

WORKS CITED

Follain, John. “The Sunday Times.” It Started With A Kiss. Times Online, 06 11 2005.

“Masters of Photography.” Robert Doisneau. Masters of Photography, n.d. Web. 27

Nieto, Margarita. “ArtScene.” Robert Doisneau. ArtScene, n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2011.

I DIDN’T READ A SINGLE ONE OF THESE SOURCES. I SUMMARIZED THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE THEN STOLE THEIR SOURCES. ACADEMIC DISHONESTY AUTOMATIC EXPULSION

but on the other hand, i did happen to watch 3 hours of the oscars :)

Easter egg! Here is a crude email Nathan sent me before he finished today’s comic.

Just bein’ honest.

jkd

yoyoyo

So have you ever wondered what would happen if you were the first person to make alien contact?

Let’s say you go for a hike. You are being pretty independent. You throw on your headphones and a hooded sweatshirt and hit the trails. You’re pretty proud of yourself. You are taking time for YOU. Alone with your thoughts. Who knows what sorts of thoughts you will have about the thoughts you are having!! AND THEN, when you least expect it, in the expanse of nature, you see THE LIGHTS of A FOREIGN AIRCRAFT. AN UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT.

First of all, CHECK YOURSELF (before you wreck yourself). You are about to make human history. You gotta make sure you look good. Now, obviously, you went for a hike – you aren’t looking your best. You’re probably wearing sweats and a sweatshirt from a university you dropped out of. The least you can do is brush your hair with your hand. Try to look respectable. Wipe the sweat off your forehead (that last slight slope was a doozy).

The aliens are about to land and make contact with you. This is one important first impression you’re gonna make. It’s not like meeting a date for a first time, this is a whole new species. The first thing you say is going to determine how they first see the rest of the human race for all of history. So you’d better not just say “What uppppp” like some huge douche. You have to make a respectable impression. Might I suggest, “Nice to meet your acquaintance.” Real classy-like.

Don’t be frightened by their almost certainly ghoulish appearance. I don’t have a traditional interpretation of aliens. In fact, I’m almost certain they all look like ALF….

HIDE YO CATS.

I want you to do 2 things for me when you might happen to meet the aliens.

1) SMILE. Like your mamma taught you.

2) Don’t assume they are going to be friendly. If Hollywood has taught us nothing, it’s that aliens from millions of miles away have no other purpose in meeting us other than BLOWING US THE HELL UP. These guys traverse the universe for no other purpose than being SO EVIL. They have solved the mysteries of the universe, and when they are introduced to a new culture, they just can’t help themselves – they have to explode it. It’s just the way super-advanced societies work.

So if they pull anything, be ready to stab their traitorous alien faces right in the face.

(will you believe that i google image searched “dead ALF” for this part of the blog and received drawings of a nude ALF? seriously, internet, sometimes i wonder…..)

that’s it for today. keep vigilant. (and NEVER google image search “dead alf” if you don’t want your innocent early-90s memories scathed….)

jkd

It’s Canadian Reading Week!! It’s the same deal as that week off in American universities – Spring Break – but I guess that that name gives off the wrong vibes to our students? We wouldn’t want to suggest anything irresponsible – neither it being “Spring”, a time of new birth and recklessness, nor of it being a time where you would want to take a “break”… NO, sir! In Canada, we suggest you take the entire week off to READ.

Could we get nerdier??

To retaliate, I’ve spent most of my first few days off watching TOO MUCH TV

like, waaaay too much. And I’ve watched all the episodes to my few favorite shows, now. I just finished Dexter. I’m all done Breaking Bad. I even have almost watched the entire series of How I Met Your Mother. I’ve NEVER watched an entire sitcom series before. I have to stop myself from using the catchphrases in the show. It’s a really gross habit.

Yesterday, my roommates and I watched “Troll 2″. This movie is commonly regarded as being one of the (if not the) worst movies of all time. There’s that clip on Youtube of the kid who hilariously acts his way right out of Hollywood. Yeah, that’s from this.

I don’t know what part of “worst movie of all time” I didn’t understand.

The movie is called “Troll 2″ even though it has no connection to Troll 1 and despite the fact that there are, in fact, no trolls in this movie. Just goblins.

I paid INTENSE ATTENTION to this movie. If it were just a “sorta bad” movie, I would’ve zoned out, played scrabble on my phone, etc. But this was, potentially, the worst movie OF ALL TIME. So I attempted to experience Troll 2 as best I could. Here’s basically the entire plot, from my careful interpretation…..

- Boy is getting told a bedtime story about Goblins by his Grandpa.

- TWIST! His Grandpa is actually dead and is a spirit.

- The boy and his family are going on vacation.

- The sister has a boyfriend. He sneaks in through her window. She tells him that if her father finds him in her room, her father will “cut off his little nuts and eat them”. Gross.

- They all go on vacation. Reach the town of Nilbog. That couldn’t be Goblin spelt backwards, could it?

- Townspeople (actually goblins in disguise) attempt to make the family eat food with green food colouring, which the spirit of the dead Grandpa tells the boy will turn them into vegetables. The goblins don’t like to eat meat – they are vegetarians – and so they make you eat the green food coloured food first, so you turn into plants. WHO WROTE THIS?

- There’s a witch, or something, who captures the friends of the boyfriend and turns them into plants, and then keeps them in her lair where she waters them. The witch has braces for some reason.

- The set of the witch’s lair looks like something out of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps TV series. Really any YTV series.

- Eventually the kid learns the only way to defeat the goblins is to use the “power of goodness”, which translates to going into the witches’ lair and pressing against a large rock. (?)

- The whole family joins in!

- They all push against the rock!

- Fade to white.

- Now they are at home.

- BUT THE GOBLINS ARE THERE TOO AND THEY HAVE TURNED THE MOM INTO LETTUCE AND EAT HER.

- Boy screams. Roll credits.

….
I know I shoulda prepared myself but holy cow folks. It truly is horrific.

jkd