The Holiday Spirit

In general, I don't like charity. I feel it's almost as easy to harm with kindness as it is with malice (why yes, I am Republican.) Fact is, most charity ends up lining someone's pockets instead of going to who you hope it's getting to anyway. And throwing money aimlessly at poor places of the planet can cause a whole lot of undesirable havok and suffering.

If someone asked me what charity to donate to, I wouldn't hesitate: OLPC. I can't think of a better gift than freedom from ignorance. It's Promethean, it's disruptive, it's like giving original sin. It's also the purest way of ensuring that someone has a better life ahead of them. Feel-good stories are already coming in.

But I didn't give to OLPC this season. Instead, what did I donate to? This. On the one hand, it is a gift that can't really be diverted, used for bribes, or confiscated to line a warlord's pockets. On the other hand, it makes for an excellent prank. The discussion thread has some truly wondrous imagery.

Want to make a donation that makes a difference this season? Well, like I said, OLPC is the way to go. But if you need something a little more, well, deviant, you can't go wrong with the goonswarm.

Random Cartoon Screenshot Thursday

The Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon. Hey, it's really perfect!

When Red Riding Hood Thinks She's The Woodcutter

DC is a very prissy town. City self-image aside, most of the girls here are quite proper, demanding a respectable amount of effort to get them in the sack, where they behave in ways their grandmothers would hardly disapprove of. Despite this, many women like to make themselves feel better by imagining themselves to be dirty, as it adds fantasy to their otherwise orthodox lives. To those who have been around real skanks, this makes DC women seem childish, naive and inexperienced. To demonstrate this, I present the following comparison between the girl who merely thinks herself Naughty, versus the gutter filth of the genuinely Nasty.

• Naughty: Has a boyfriend back home.
• Nasty: Fianceé downstairs playing the slots.

• Naughty: Scratches.
• Nasty: Chokes.
  

• Naughty: Doesn't bother taking off all her clothes before sex.
• Nasty: Doesn't bother leaving the dance floor.

• Naughty: Has slept with at least one guy her best friend has also slept with.
• Nasty: Traded partners halfway through the night, with high-fives involved.

• Naughty: Has slept with an older man solely because of his wealth and power.
• Nasty: Has slept with an older man because he could get her cigarettes.

• Naughty: Has been romanced and seduced by a visitor from a foreign land.
• Nasty: No common language whatsoever, and man stinks of chemicals and fish. Seduction lasted two hours.

• Naughty: Talks dirty. Breathes heavy, squeals at appropriate times.
• Nasty: Is dirty. Grunts and snarls while rutting like a beast in heat.

• Naughty: Has left the club and gone to a hotel room with a strange man.
• Nasty: Has left the club and gone to a hotel room with five other girls and seven strange men, including three Marines.

• Naughty: Had sex in high school, and made no secret of it.
• Nasty: Slept with her freshman history teacher. Made no secret of it.

• Naughty: During sex, will play with herself to hasten orgasm.
• Nasty: During sex, attempts to put a vibrator up your ass, without warning.

• Naughty: Has had a one night stand with a man whose name she didn't remember.
• Nasty: Vaguely remembers his buddies filming it, but is fairly sure none of them know her husband.

• Naughty: Hooks up while on her period.
• Nasty: Leaves the tampon in.

And endless deviations, culled from personal experience. Pretending to be a bad girl when you're not puts you in the same category as the 14-year old trollops at the mall, trying to have their mothers help them figure out how to be sexy. As always, trying not to be someone else is the best way to avoid looking foolish.

Cosmetic Honesty

Women who die their hair are compulsive liars.

While non-fruitcake men have always eschewed masking their appearance with chemicals and unguents, women have been doing it for ages. This is because women think it not only acceptable but expected for them to mislead men about their appearance. While foot-binding and girdles are passé, women still dollop their faces with makeup before going to the club, the office, the grocery mart. But with the exception of Tammy Faye-style caking, makeup is a mere fib. At worst it makes a girl look like a painted whore, at best it accentuated pleasant features the girl already has. Neither case is a great deviation from the truth. Most of the time it just covers up bad skin. Men are surprisingly inattentive to makeup anyway, which makes the fact that before leaving the house most women do the same routine as Ronald McDonald does all that much siller.

Hair dying is another matter. At this point the woman is actively attempting to falsify her appearance. A man who likes blondes may find out his object of attraction is a brunette only after she has bedded him. This doesn't sound serious, but it is; it is actively lying in the course of seduction. A woman would not appreciate the man giving a fake club name, lying about his age, his status of employment, whether he is single. This is even more ridiculous considering today's trends of girls dying their hair several different colors at once. The man has no idea which one is genuine, and is left to wonder why girls think it is attractive to look like Cindi Lauper.

When a woman who lies to you about her hair color says she's unmarried, clean, and on the pill, wonder what else she's not being so honest about.

La Saison De Vélocité For The Discriminating Squid

It's one of my favorite times of year. No, it's not due to being able to see the local sports team participate in that event against their regional rival, or because the interns are out in force, or anything so trite. It's not even because my favorite holiday of the year is only a month off. No, it's new model announcing season, and this year, the big Four are coming big.

Yamaha was first out of the gate, but their updates are minor, so far. Yams remain the bike to ride if you want to pick up easy girls with it, as they drench the road in sexy just standing still. That is, assuming you're too self-respecting for a Harley, and can't afford a Ducati.

Next was a big swing by Kawasaki. Now I'm a big Big Green fan, being a Kwak rider myself, and every year I tire of them sucking ass in Superbike and hope they'll come out with the bike that will blow the doors off of everyone else. Well, this year, I dunno. On the one hand, the new ZX-10R looks to be, as usual, suicidally fast. On the other hand, the front end looks stolen from a Buell Firebolt and the can screams for More Cowbell. They festooned my precious Z with this silliness, why the open-classer? And they've done away with the 'tribal' color scheme, which means that again the best color for the Ninja is jet black.

The bike to beat, racing-wise at least, is the GSX-R. And Suzuki made some pretty sweeping changes here, too, ditching the stacked headlights for the first time since '95. On the one hand, the new face now looks even more like the Chinese dragons that GSX-R-riding hoons have tattooed on their backs. On the other, it now looks very much like a Triumph Sprint ST. What is it with the stolen fascia? Regardless, this bike is one seriously, seriously hot ride. It helps that Suzuki actually paints their bikes, well, different colors, instead of one color and matte black. I like the orange best.

Last of the big names, Honda came out with all new plastic as well. In it's favor, it has by far and large the best exhaust of the bunch, not counting the Yam's obsolete underseats. But anyone who can afford the insurance on these things is going to get an aftermarket can anyway. And the front end? Some have claimed it rips off the Duc 1098. I don't see it. I'm sure it's very aerodynamic, but, somehow, it looks smooshed, almost retarded. Maybe it'll be better in person. But compared to Honda's stunning concepts, or even last year's bikes, it fails it.

Do these bikes go faster or turn tighter than last year's model? Who cares? If you're on the street you can reach felony-level speeds on any stretch of pavement out there without shifting out of first gear. You don't even need this kind of ride to do it; my bike, which was a parts-bin special since the day it came out, will beat any Porsche to 60 and will gladly accelerate beyond speeds at which air resistance would tear me bodily from the cockpit. This is about looking good while stunting like your father. Which is why I give respect to BMW, who has fully embraced the single-sided swingarm, the key ingredient to pure, undiluted sex on wheels.

Do I want any of these rides, then? Nope. Sure, the GSX-R's nice. But I know what I'm waiting for.

The Waterfront Job, Pt 1

When you’re on fresh turf for the first time, you’re there to case the joint. Get the feel of the place. The lay of the land. You do not, repeat, not, go for the big prize on the first day.

I know this. Any pro knows this. Only the greenest kid gets greedy fingers his first time out. You can get burned, bad. Stumble sideways into all the worst sorts of games, snag your limbs in nasty traps, get your face on the wall in all the wrong ways.

Best to lay low, stay a shadow, make ‘em think your only interest is your bottle. Wait till you’ve got the info you need, so when you do see goods worth going for, you move in like a champ, no mysteries. No surprises. Clean and neat, in like you're Batman and dazzle everyone so they don't even think of resistance. But until then, you Bruce Wayne your way out the far side of anyone's memory.

I know this. Any pro knows this. Which is why I was biding my time, nursing my whiskey, keeping the bar stool warm and the bar wench happy. Just some dumpy watering hole anyway, a quick shelter from the foggy evening, nothing to see of any consequence, just some baboons and their painted harpy dames, chattering away with their daily drivel. It was going to be a long and quiet night.

And then she walked in. Long red dress, loose and tight in all the worst places. Dresden in low heels. The kind of haul a man sweats for.

The hyenas were circling before she even made it down to the main floor. Fools. Popped-collar kids fresh from Mamma’s teat. They didn’t stand a chance, somewhere in the back of their mind knew it, but thought strength in numbers would pull them through. The native tramps were trying to kill her off with snotty resentful stares, but their daggers bounced off as if unnoticed. Must’ve been her first time there, too, else they’d have thrown up fortifications in advance. This was going to get ugly fast.

She’d made it to the bar, the first drink was on the way, something by name, and in a pointy glass. Touch of class, this one. The first hyena moved in, and with a glance she had him cut in half at the waist, legs thrashing at the stools while his upper half still gasped for some witty comeback. As his buddies laughingly dragged off his leftovers, another one plopped himself down on her other side and proceeded to swallow air in an effort to appear larger. She had him charred to cinders in seconds, the ashes sifting off the chair and filthying up the floor. This time, no one bothered to come over and sweep him up.

This was going to end up a bloodbath. The indigent goons were licking their wounds, but it was only a matter of time before yet another douchebag wound himself up and went in. This gal could see them coming eight miles away, but they didn’t care. To them she had "Come hither" written all over her in eighteen different dialects of body language. So what the hell was she doing in this shithole? It was like Venus emerging from her half shell in the middle of the bayou. Unlike ome common succubus, she didn’t look to be gaining glee from any of this. Just sat there, sipping the martini and looking lonely. Doll, you could’ve shook that thing up in the comfort of your flat and saved everyone the agony.

I could've sat there all night, watching the chumps jump the trench and get cut down. Could've sat all night, enjoyed the booze, and the next day I'd have been none the worse off for it. But something was wrong with this scene, and it was up to me to get to the bottom of it. Or so I told myself.

Do not, repeat, not, go for the big prize on the first time. And yet, here I was, staring down the goddamned Hope diamond with the case wide open and the security guards out taking a leak. This way leads to destruction.

Fuck it. I went for it.
(to be continued)

Make Fast The Mizzen Mast

September 19th, if you didn't know, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I can only hope you had as much fun today as I did, teaching Indians to add "Yarrrr.." to the end of each sentence. Which is, of course, only the most elementary of piratespeak. To be more advanced you must get more imaginative.



All attempts to date to use my balls and bite down hard have met with extremely undesirable results. I'm chalking this one up to mistranslation.

Boing Boom Tschak

New science projects in the lab keep me cackling maniacally until well after dark, which unfortunately is cutting into my Internets time (unlike most of the blog scene, I don't get online at work.) So here's something to entertain, a hint of hymns hummed to my automata when the pesky humans aren't around.

Happy New Year!

I may not actually do much for the High Holy Days these days, but at least it gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite Hasidim pics.



Vive la France. Oh, and to Roissy, who claimed my SanFran link wasn't distasteful enough, you clearly didn't look around the site much. My personal favorite is the man in the top hat.

Brave New World

Roissy posts today on a street festival in Adams Morgan and believes it heralds the worthlessness of the neighborhood. Frankly I see it as just another way DC fails to live up to the standards set by other big cities. Scenester opinions aside, the District is not and never will be trendy and hip like New York. It is not happening and filled with excitement like LA. The eternal transplant population will never have the heritage and history of Philadelphia or Boston.

And, in this case, regardless of aspirations it will never attain the stultifying strangeness and frothing class denial of San Fransisco. For those of you who know better than to follow my links, an excerpt:

"On the way, we passed a giant purple head emerging from the ground."

Even little old Austin has a world-famous transvestite hobo. In return, DC has, what? Congress? Total bush league.

The Long Tail Fails You, or, A Tirade To Our Bulimic Heroine

Like it or not, the above comic, while cute, is bunk. The truth is, it really is a numbers game. A 30 year old dates anyone from 22-46? No, dear, that median age really does screw you, much more so than it does Stick-Figure Graphy Man. See, guys are out there for one of two things from women: a quick fuck (or series thereof) or a long-term relationship. Quick fuckers, depending on their desperation levels, are going to balance looks with easiness. So as youthful appearance fades, your suitors get skeezier and skeezier. That may keep you warm at night, but that path does not to happy marriage lead.

And the men looking for love? Serious relationships (successful ones, at least) lead to children. As women age, not only do their bodies lose their corporeal enticements, they also deteriorate in ways that lessen the chance for healthy offspring. This is basic biology; it's why men are attracted to young women in the first place. Banging a chick who can pop out kiddies is the survival of the species. And if you think you're going to pull a man by trying to deny his baser bestial instincts, you're crazy.

Men don't have this problem, and again, it's biological. Absent disease, men will spout sperm of viable volatility till the day they die. Older men if properly maintained retain both their physical attractions and the mating appeal of being able to provide and protect. That's why Makes-Graphs-On-Saturdays up there will be bending some intern into hot Reverse Polish action long after your jagged line-titties have draped into bezier curves. Throw yourself on the mercy of the Bell at your own peril.

Stupid Is

If you haven't been keeping up with this story, it continues to get sillier and sillier. There's two reasons I bring it up here.

For one, these goofballs are suspected of planning to attack NPTU Goose Creek. Gimme a break. I was stationed there for a year, and it was a great experience, primarily because the only active units on the base are Naval Nuclear Power Training Command and the Nuclear Power Training Unit. Collectively, Nuke school. It may sound intimidating, but it's home to the biggest bunch of nerds in uniform today. Before this story broke the base was mildly notorious for having the highest rainbow chit rate in the whole Navy. A would-be attacker would have to fight their way past innumberable golf courses, navigating a gauntlet of drunken Chiefs towing their bass boats up and down Red Bank all day. Any attempt to avoid the main road would put them at dire risk of being devoured by gators. Not to mention the site is guarded vigilantly day and night by the ghost of Hyman G. Rickover. Seriously, Pope AFB's right down the street. At least there you stand a good chance of blowing up a volleyball game.

That being said, and not really knowing much about this case, I have a strong suspicion these guys aren't guilty of anything more than speeding while donning bodacious chinbeards. But c'mon, guys. Us Jews, we've learned the hard way when it's a good time to lay low. If it was 1942 and you were Japanese, you probably would think twice about that camping trip to the woods around San Fran with the Amateur Ham Radio and Astronomy Club. Similarly, if your name is Mohamed (or, alternately, Megahed, which I'm pretty sure is a Bobby-Sue like combination of Mohamed with Megatron) you probably should avoid speeding around in the dead of night outside a nuclear submarine base with homemade bottle rockets in the trunk. I'm just saying.

Paranoid Android

I once attended a concert featuring Atari Teenage Riot, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Rage Against The Machine. I really only wanted to see ATR, my buddies and I were big Rage fans, and we kinda figured Wu-Tang would be an added bonus. ATR turned out to be a wash; German thrashcore ends up sounding like total crap in a big outdoor pavilion. Rage was pretty good, since this was before de la Rocha went nutty, but I got beaten so badly in the mosh pit I ended up throwing up in the lawn. When you're 16 and 130 pounds soaking wet, don't put yourself in a pit where everyone else has the size, build, and demeanor of Henry Rollins. I'm just saying. But Wu-Tang spoiled the whole escapade. Hip-hop music, like thrashcore, really doesn't work outside at anything bigger than a block party. And the Clan, who has more members than Parliament (and I don't mean the George Clinton kind) kept shuffling people on and off stage so we had no idea from the cheap seats what was being sung or if we were even looking at anyone famous. At any given time there were at least 5 people schlepping around the stage shouting, with no indication they were even doing the same song. ODB didn't even show. Instead, vast portions of the show were screamed by somebody's (RZA's?) 7-year old nephew, who didn't give a shit about the words and whose voice kept clipping the amps. Wu-Tang would easily lead the list of "Worst Performers I've Ever Seen" if not for that David Bowie concert.

I bring this up because I'm pretty sure these guys could've put on a better show.

Positive Reinforcement

One of the things technology gets us is the ability to communicate, quickly and easily, with those who share similar ideals, visions, hopes and dreams. The Internet takes this to the next level; newsgroups, chatrooms, message boards and blogs allow rapid gatherings of those with like minds to share and develop great and powerful ideas.

At least in theory. In practice it allows people to build insular communities shielded from those who might think of disagreeing. While at the worst case it helps build al-Qaeda cells, the more common examples are more mundane. If, at least, you consider dressing up like an animal and having sex with other people dressed as animals to be mundane. (Note: Do not, ever, actually follow the second link.) As the title of this post states, it becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop, with no hope of correction.

Which brings me to the reason for this post. These glasses.


Click on the picture and you'll get the Coolhunter post describing some fashion designer making it huge with her "fun and funky" yet "quirky fashions." Coolhunter every now and then has some bitchin' resorts I'll never have the millions to afford to go to. But in the end most of what's on the site is ridiculous, and remains so because it focuses on the avant-garde of the fashion industry, and the fashion industry has such a flawed feedback loop. You would need to have your head firmly ensconced in your own sphincter to really believe that a guy who looks like this is a hip trendsetter. The creme de la creme, though, is these glasses.


Look, I don't know why these women have some unidentifiable but clearly not sweat fluid on their faces. (Maybe they're crying after seeing their visage in the mirror.) They look like they might even be attractive in person. We'll never know, because they look like they decided to get their accessories from a Happy Meal.

Don't make their mistake. Seek exterior feedback today.

In a world run by Men

US Out Of The Mall

This is clearly a quagmire, regardless of how the Administration tries to pretty it up. By the sounds of it we're losing ground every day. The whole town crawls with soldiers and it's not slowing the deterioration down one bit; if anything, having those boots on the ground is just making it worse. If you ask me, it's high time we strategically redeploy out of that cesspool before we get any more bogged down. I recommend Philadelphia, of course.

Reanimation

So I'm starting this thing back up. Previous blog attempts haven't made it very far at all, but hopefully this instance has a bit more staying power.

Why am I (re)starting this blog? Pretty simple, really. One, blogging (disturbingly enough) seems to be an excellent venue for meeting girls. Why, I'm still not quite sure; you would expect it to have about the pull power of administrative rights in a Debian support chat room. But no, it seems to work pretty well. Two, I enjoy telling other people what I think; this could be rephrased as 'I like the sound of my own voice'. I don't think typing it out takes any of the oomph out of the narcissism.

Some change is in order, of course. Minutiae of blog appearance may be changed. I've anonymized the blog upon recommendation from legal counsel. But the big change is that I'm gonna try to cut the politics crap down a bit and transition to more entertaining stories of drunken downtown antics. We'll see how that goes.