Why Am I Wearing Women's Clothing?

Click Here To Find Out Why...
then come back here and let me know what you think.  
Love.

Photo De La Semaine (And An Update)

Dearest reader:

I like the term "reader" better than I like the term "follower".  Google should change that.

Anywho, today is photo day.  Here's Jera's photo:

Unexpected

Let us know what you think.

Now I just want to give you guys an update on what's been going on with me.  I haven't had much time for such writing of late because of the vampire series, which occupied all of last week, and because I just started school again.  I won't say things have felt hectic, because for me, hectic is hustling to stay high or drunk and hoping that I don't meet any cops along the way.  But things have been busy.  

I am quite enjoying school so far.  I scheduled all of my classes for Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I still have quite a bit of "free" time, although that time will undoubtedly be cut to size once my homework load increases.  I've been trying to get a little more consistency in my life where the 12 Steps are concerned, as I was definitely wavering for a period.  I could feel the effects of that.  In my experience, if I am wavering and feeling effects, then I am already pretty close to relapsing, so it is of paramount importance to stay connected with that portion of my life (which was the main point of the trip to Florida).

Oh, and the big news is that on the 28th I celebrated six months clean!  I haven't been clean for six months in a row in a couple of years at least.  It feels like a major milestone for me.  I am proud of that fact and encouraged when I think about how relatively easy it was yesterday to not get fucked up.  If I do what I did yesterday to stay clean, then I am told I can expect the same results today.  There are only a few people in my circle of acquaintances who believe that I will use again.  To them: get fucked, you rotten soulless pieces of shit.  

I have the greatest possible mix of people in my life, and to all of you who help me along this path, I'd like to say thank you and acknowledge what is essentially my life debt to you.  

...

.....

Well I'll be goddamned.  Don't read much into what I'm about to say... but... I never get writer's block.  But here I am.  Blocked.  This is worse than the constipation I had that I told you guys about a couple of weeks ago.  An unfamiliar feeling.  Perhaps the result of not enough sleep.  Or too much sleep.  Or something.

Fuck it.

Tell me about you?  Where are you from?  Do you write a blog?  How do you find blogs you are interested in?  How old are you?  What's your stance on the death penalty?  Did you know that human produced carbon emissions only account for 2% of total carbon emissions worldwide?  Do you think I should turn my blog into a "Dear Abby" kind of thing, where I just sit on some proverbial high-horse and dish out advice to unwed teenage trailer trash mothers?  Do you prefer Heinz 57 or A1?  Let me know.

Love 

In Review: Twilight (From Charles)

So we reach the end here of our little Twilight adventure. I know some of you have been curious to see what I thought of the book. I have been having trouble deciding how to review the book, and in a way, I've been deliberating about what I really thought of it.

If you have missed the related posts here, let's review real quick:

First, I asked readers to select a book out of a list of three for me to read, by vote, here. I chose the three books (The Audactiy of Hope, Going Rogue, or Twilight) because I thought that reading any of these books would do me good. The idea here, which I try to live by, is that it is good to open oneself to those things that seem least attractive to us on occasion. Sometimes, doing this, I am proven wrong, or at least blown away by how little I actually knew about something or someone. Sometimes, I am totally reaffirmed in my preconceptions. But each and every time I branch out and try to learn or experience something of which I already have (harsh) opinions, I find myself on better ground to offer any further opinion.

Second, I announced the winner, here. The winner, by a healthy margin, was the book Twilight. Twilight, specifically, was on the list because I had an inkling that the book (and the associated pop-culture phenomenon) was more or less a load of horse-shit. My preconceptions about the book were that it would be completely juvenile, poorly constructed, pandering to the lowest common denominator of the female teenage demographic, and that I would be totally disgusted that such an overwhelming popularity had grown around such a shit book. I figured that it would be full of thinly veiled sexual innuendo and that the book would have a message of conformity to the status quo as far as gender roles and sexuality go in middle America. I assumed that it would be the kind of smut an evangelical Christian pastor might let his daughter read.

Third, we heard from a real life vampire, named Count Dread, on the topic. His guest blog can be read here. Count Dread is an acquaintance of mine, but as you could tell from his op-ed piece, he and I have a few differences that we haven't completely worked out between us. Some of you voiced that you would like to see Dread return later for more pieces, and he expressed to me privately an interest in doing just that. Some of you were downright valiant in your defense of me in the comments section on Dread's post, which I really appreciated. You guys are my vampire hunting heros. I don't need to say much else except that, again, I am not a vampire, and that Count Dread is a little sissy bastard child, and that he can blow a giraffe, for all I care. Count Dread: I don't owe you shit, you accent talking, Halloween dressing pale piss-ant.

Fourth, and most recently, a girl named Julia reviewed the book for us, here. Julia is fifteen years old, and attends a high school in the same town where I currently live. It took me about three hours to edit Julia's blog post, but I left in a lot of her quaint mis-spellings and whatnot because I felt that they really helped reflect the kind of education kids are getting these days in America (the bureaucracy really does work! *rolls eyes*). Julia loved Twilight, and among other things, neon colors and skinny jeans. There was a mixed response to Julia's post. Most of you guys found it funny, which I was glad about. For the record: I like the band Muse. As you can see below, I have them on my phone's playlist. 

Furthermore, Julia is more of an individual than she might give herself credit for, as she clearly represents a hodge-podge of cultural memes, as opposed to just one. As some of you pointed out, she may not be as “scene” or “emo” as she might be telling herself. Julia accepts that fact, and said that she would “try harder”. I believe some of you expressed interest in hearing from Julia again, and that may also be a possibility.

After the guests posts, I skipped a day to think about what I wanted to say about Twilight. To think about what my real feelings are on the book. 

Yeah... this is about right.

At long last, here they are.

I don't want to disappoint any of you by not totally tearing this book apart in proper comic fashion, but more important here is the truth. The book isn't horrible. I have read worse. It didn't make me cry tears of excruciating pain, as predicted. It was not the most eloquently written thing I have ever read, and as some have pointed out, it gets a little repetitive at times. But the plot was relatively unpredictable, and the story was easy to follow. It was just interesting enough to compel me to the end of the book.

The compulsion to finish the book was to see what was finally going to happen with this “Edward” character. My interest in the main character, “Bella Swan” was overshadowed by my curiosity about what kind of amazing feats Edward might perform in the heat of battle. The story was set up perfectly for some all out carnage, with buildings getting knocked down and cars getting blown up. Edward's investment in Bella was clearly so deep that he would certainly kill or maim anyone that got between them. But alas, the book errs on the side of romance, and the climax, while somewhat exciting, left a lot to be desired. No buildings fell down.

This would have been a proper ending to this book.

Ultimately, I prefer action when vampires are involved.  I prefer this style of vampire, I guess:

Not that this is much better... but the action scenes were good.

As a lot of you guys pointed out, Bella is probably not the best role model for a young girl. She is set up at the beginning of the book as being self assured and able to take care of herself, but the author quickly abandons this concept for her character, and turns her into a helpless sack of meat who is hopelessly in love and ready to sacrifice anything for her cold blooded hero. While I do find the character antithetical to what I might want my hypothetical daughter to use as a role model, Bella is a far cry from the “Jersey Girls” or the latest harlot fare depicted on any number of reality TV shows. At least she doesn't represent the hooker-chic that so many other females in mass-media do today. I suppose it's give and take in this realm.

Some fictional female role models, displayed mathematically.

I anticipated this book sucking so much harder than it did because I tend to be grossed out by things that become very popular with the broader population (especially with regards to media that become popular with the youth). I don't know why that is, but I find it useful to inoculate myself with pieces of that cultural stew now and again, for perspective.

I am giving the book a rating of three Charles heads. As per usual, this is out of a maximum possible five Charles heads.

I will say this: the fact that this book was the beginning of a multi-million dollar franchise that has (apparently) sucked in just about every girl in America is still alarming to me. I find it most disturbing that the books, as far as I can tell, have taken a back seat to the movies. I have not seen the movies, and don't know that I will. The book, of itself, although not perfect in a literary sense, represents something great: the fact that kids can be compelled to turn off their Xboxes and read a book now and again. As usual, though, Hollywood seems to have ruined that, and I wonder how many kids are just watching the movie instead of reading the book.

It is disturbing how quickly the Hollywood media machine can drive a spike like Twilight into the consciousness of millions of people. It could be argued that the book has value, both as a story and as a tool to help encourage children to value literacy more. Hollywood, as a gigantic organism, fears literacy. Hollywood stomps out literacy. Our place is in the theater or in front of our fucking televisions. Books offer knowledge that they don't control, and I believe that as Hollywood has evolved, it has realized it's greatest defense mechanism: control of information.

Encourage a kid to read this book. Encourage them to read any book. And if you have seen the movie and liked it, why not give the book a try? You might, like me, find it a lot harder to bag on Twilight if you check it out.  Or perhaps your worst predictions will be confirmed and then at least you will have a leg to stand on when ridiculing Twilight fans

The fans of Twilight are still fair game though. Skinny jeans and stupid hair included. Get with the program people! Button up shirts with long sleeves, collars popped, and chest exposed, is the ONLY way to go.  And jeans that don't force your balls to recede into your abdomen from whence they came.

Go ahead.  Take a shot.  I know I deserve it.

What do those of you who have read the book think about it? Are you all completely disappointed in my review? Have you enjoyed this little series of blog posts? Let me know.


Oh.  And one more tiny thing:


...


...I don't care what the fuck happens... there is no possible plot twist that could land me on "Team Jacob".  Screw Jacob.  Go "Team Edward"...


... I feel so dirty.  

Love.

In Review: Twilight (From Julia)

HI GUYS!

Well, as you can tell from the title of this post, my name is Julia.  I live in Longmont (where Charles lives) and I LUV IT!  lolz

I met Charles at the mall the other day.  I was just chillin' wit' my friends, eatin' some TCBY, when I noticed that Charles was looking at me from the nearby taco stand.  When I first saw him, I thought he was dressed kind of weird... I mean, he didn't have on one of these:

or one of these...

So I was thinkin', like... "what the eff is with this guy?  He could be hawt if he knew that it's cool for all of us to dress the same.  He could be cool if he knew that neon colors are totally bomb and that there is a new shoe brand called "Converse" that has never been used before to represent a flamboyant movement towards a monosexual society, and that they are awesome.  This guy really needs to get scene".

But he wasn't cool at all.  He was dressed like a weirdo.  He had some like... shirt with buttons all the way down the front and long sleeves.  He had his collar popped up in the air for some reason, and me and my friends could see almost his entire chest because the shirt was halfway un-done.

News flash, Charles.  There is only one kind of shirt, for girls or guys.  A neon or black t-shirt with a kitschy print or band logo on it.  For girls, it's worn billowy, and for guys it's worn tight.  And get some skinny jeans, would you?!?

Then I noticed that Charles was not just looking at me.  He was kind of scowling at me.  And then he was smirking.  He looked something like this:

What a freak!

I figured he was just totally diggin' on my cool clothes.  A lot of people have that look on their face when they are lookin' at mah stylz.  I looked like this:

You can't get much cooler than this.

ANNNYYYWAAAYYY.... Charles finally walked over and started talking to me, stupid shirt and all, and askin' me about MY shirt.  Maybe he had a little emo/scene in him after all, I thought.  But it turned out not to be true.  He could just tell from my shirt that I really LUV Twilight and everything related to it.  I'm serious, you guys.  It's like... my FAVORITE effin' thing ever.  OMG.  OMG.

Charles told me that he writes a blog, and that he wanted to get some different perspectives about the book to publish online.  He asked me to e-mail him a review of Twilight, and so I did.  I wrote the review while I was listening to the newest Justin Bieber album, so I was even EXTRA happy while I was writing it.  (Don't let the razor wounds throw you off.  I am VERY happy to be alive.  The therapist at school sez I was just "going through a phase" or something, and now that I'm on Ritalin and Prozac and one other pill (I can't remember the name), I feel comfortable being just like everyone else.)

So here's the four-one-one from the three-oh-three on "Twilight".  I seen the movie first.  My mom always says "it's better to see the movie first.  If you like the movie, then you can consider reading the book.  But books take up a LOT of time..." So I saved up my allowance for two weeks and me and a bunch of my scene friends went to go see it in the theaters.  I was purty scared at first, 'cause I don't normally like vampires and monsters and stuff, but WOW.  This movie ROCKED MY SOCKS!  I was instantly in LUV with Edward, or "Eduardo" as my and my friends call him, as a joke.

Eduardo almost makes me wish I hadn't taken that

purity oath at church.  But Pastor Dave is right...

it's better to wait for s-e-x.

I immediately called up my friend Sarah, who had some of the Twilight books.  I asked her if I could borrow the first one.  (Since dad left us, we haven't had a lot of money for books and things like that.  Mom gets some welfare and some charity from Pastor Dave, but she says "God has a plan for us"... even though she hasn't applied for a job anywhere.)  Sarah brought the book right over, and her and I spent a wholesome afternoon listening to Muse and Justin Bieber, and reading the first part of the book.

Four weeks later, after reading pretty much non-stop, I had finished the book.  It was AWWWEEESOOME!  I laughed and I cried the whole way through it.  I was getting kind of worried though, because I sure was getting a lot of unclean thoughts and feelings while reading it.  But the girl in the book, Bella (luv that name) seemed so nice and so sweet that I thought "if she feels that way about Edward, than it can't possibly be offensive to the Lord for me to feel that way". LOLZ.

I have to tell y'all that this book is the most important one you will ever read.  It's just written so good, and stuff.  Like, I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next the whole time.  I loved all of the people in Edward's family.  Especially Alice.  I would love to be her, being able to see the future and to see if some boy is finally going to notice my cool hair cut and ask me to a dance or something.

For real... you have to get this book or borrow it or whatever you have to do.  I missed, like, a BUNCH of episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" to read this book cover to cover, and I NEVER miss episodes of "Dance".  Not for homework or anything.  Mama sez "Julia, you can do your homework later.  It's time for our mother-daughter time, an' there gonna be some HAWTIEZ on "Dance" tonight".

I know, I know.  I didn't think anything could beat "Dance" either.

In conclusion, let me just say that this is the most I have ever written in one spot before.  I think I am going to show all my friendz the link to this blog post, 'cause I am really proud of it.  And I am really proud that I read a book as thick as "Twilight" all the way through.  I give the book six "awesome emo haircuts".  This is on a reviewing scale of zero to five "awesome emo haircuts".  That's right.  It blew the lid off of the ratingz scale.  

Ok guys it's time for me to go.  Get Twilight.  Know the sexiness of Edward.  Know the riveting story that is without a doubt the best book ever written ever ever.  

Or if you can't find the time to read the whole thing, you can just watch the movie.  It's just as good.

And tell Charles to get some Converse and some skinny jeans!  Doesn't he know that the only way to express his individuality is by being exactly like someone else who is expressing THEIR individuality?  We don't want to see your little tiny bit of chest hair right beneath your goofy lookin' popped collar, you silly boi!  DANGIT!  Lolz.  Omg.  Bye.  

Love.

In Review: Twilight (From Count Dread)

Greetings.  My name is Count Dread.  (If you chuckled at my name, please sodomize yourself.  This was a bad ass name 400 years ago.)  I am an acquaintance of Charles' and I am a real vampire.  Charles requested that I write a review of the popular shit-book "Twilight" which he would then post as a "guest blog" here at "In Review".

Before I start though, I'd like to tell you a couple of things about Charles.  This will almost certainly disqualify my review from ever actually appearing on this stupid blog anyway, but I have something I have been meaning to get off of my chest.

Charles is a prick.  All of you have been duped by this guy.  He is a liar and he doesn't care about anything except protecting his anonymity and keeping the truth about his life from coming to light.  Because the truth is that... brace yourselves... Charles is a vampire.  A fucking cold, evil, blood sucking vampire.

The only proof I have of this is this single photo of him when he came to visit my estate in Latvia two years ago.

Here he is, the smug day-walking bastard.

I don't want to get into too many details here, but let's just say that while I am pure blood vampire, Charles is a repugnant half-breed, making him capable of enduring direct sunlight.  Ever since I have started reading his "blog", I have become more and more irate about this issue.  I just thought you all should know the reason that Charles is such an inconsiderate ass-nugget: being a day-walker, he is the victim of the human urge for sex, but is not capable of achieving erection.  This is the curse of the half-breed.  They roam the earth craving blood and sex, but they can only satisfy one of those needs.  After hundreds of years, the unreleased sexual energy becomes overwhelming, and the day-walker starts writing shitty blogs with stupid Photoshopped pictures and going, otherwise, generally insane.

Fuck you Charles.  I dare you to publish this, you pussy.

Okay.  Now on to business.  I know that you are all thinking that vampires don't really exist.  I am here to tell you that we do indeed exist, and we have existed for as long as mankind has been around.  We know nearly as little as the human population does about our origins, but I will make a few things clear as I tell you what I thought about this book Twilight, which I will be using for toilet paper now that I have finished reading it.

I am not saying that the book wasn't a cute story, or whatever.  I am merely upset about how far off point the book was as far as actual vampire biology and circumstance are concerned.  Because, in reality, the vampire tales of yore are actually strikingly more accurate.

The Truth About Vampires vs Twilight's Misinformation Machine

The book centers around a "vampire" named Edward, who is, for some unknown goddamn reason, more or less a Superman figure.  He can yank massive branches free from mystically gigantic trees with a single bare hand.  He can run as fast, or faster than Superman.  He appears to be indestructible, even when struck at high speed by a moving vehicle.  

The truth about vampires is that we are weak as kittens.  Our bodies metabolize at a rate 5000 times slower than a human being's.  Essentially, this results in an atrophying of the nerves and muscles across out entire bodies.  I can't open a damn jar of imported pig's blood on my own, half the time.  I doubt if I could lift more than fifteen pounds with either arm at any given time.  And I bleed like a stuck pig even with the tiniest scratch.  Whatever Charles tells you about how much he can lift, he is lying.  The kid is a bitch and any one of you readers could kick the shit out of him without even breaking a sweat.  Twilight gets this aspect, and so many others, completely wrong.

Another big problem is the wardrobe of the vampires featured in this book.  They are described as more or less being GQ and Vogue magazine models, with their hip affluent outfits.  The truth is that I don't know one single vampire who doesn't sport a super sexy black cape.  It's absolutely necessary, because of how cool they look, and because they make it easier for us to not be burned alive by the powerful and deadly rays of the sun.  Aside from our capes, we dress pretty modestly, as most of us are too handicapped by our "condition" to be major money earners.  The estate I live in in Latvia is my only source of income, as I have used the equity from the place to invest in quite a few bonds and a select few well managed mutual funds.  I am not rich enough to dress like Edward and his kin in this book, and no vampire I know is.

This leads right into the fact that, beyond their extravagant and impractical clothing, these fictionalized monsters are, somehow, fabulously wealthy.  They drive fancy tricked-out Jeeps and Mercedes-Benzes, which they supposedly can afford from the salary of the leader of their group, a doctor who operates on humans.  This is a joke, and it spreads a dangerous fallacy about vampires.  Most of the few remaining real vampires have to use the following modes of transportation almost exclusively:

The author seems simply not to care at all for the plight of the true vampire.  The author seems to be entirely unaware of the fact that vampires are the number one minority in the world, and as such, we have been relegated to poverty and illness and pain.  The author must be some kind of maniacally cold-hearted bitch to make light of these problems or to downplay them in any way.

Other major plot holes include the fact that the main vampire takes a sexual interest in a young human girl.  This makes no sense, on a basic biological level.  We reproduce merely by infecting other human beings with our saliva or blood.  The vampire disease is not sexually transmitted.  Evolution has selected a non-sexual route of reproduction for us, and so genetically we have no need or desire to "hit skins", as some of you call it.  Although I am certain that the sequels to this book harbor many awkwardly written vampire sex scenes, I must tell you the truth: we can't bone!

Charles will never verify this for you.  Like me, he is perpetually flaccid and icy, but unlike me, he refuses to admit this.

There are a million ridiculous assertions made by this book, and I won't be able to get to them all.  Suffice it to say that Twilight gets it all wrong from page one.  Vampires can't go out in the daylight.  If we do, we become incinerated in a matter of minutes.  We don't "sparkle as if covered by millions of tiny diamonds".  Who ever heard of such malarky?  The mind boggles!  Vampires don't normally sustain themselves on human blood, because we are too weak and (in my case) too lazy to hunt out human blood.  Normally we just have jars of pig blood delivered to our houses in the dead of night.  We drink that almost exclusively.  The pigs blood does just fine, contrary to the author's tale.  We don't act like prancing fairy highschoolers when we are in fact hundreds of years old.  How fucking degrading.  We are nothing like the vampires illustrated by this pop culture phenomenon.  We are not super heroes with super powers.  We are a sad and lonely people that can turn into bats if we wish.

We don't look like this...

... we look like this...

This is a photo of me getting ready to drink the blood

of some random lady in 1933.

Overall, because I am so enraged by the terrible depiction of my kind in this tome, I am going to have to give it only one half of a coffin.  This is on a scale of zero coffins (the worst) to ten coffins (the best).

The book did receive one half of a coffin, rather than zero coffins, because I found the human girl character enduring and cute throughout the book.  

What?

I'm not made of stone.

I know Charles isn't going to publish this anyway.  He can't afford to let people know that he can't get boners or that his face isn't pasty white like that "because of a sort of anemia".  If he does post it, tell me what you think.  If he doesn't post it... again... fuck you, Charles.  You're a total asshole and I want that $2000 you owe me back immediately.

Love.  

Photo De La Semaine: Reach For The Sky

I'm back!

I have to be honest with you.  I am whipped.  The trip to Florida did me some good.  I returned Sunday evening and spent all day today (Monday) getting stuff ready for school.  I had to get school supplies, my student ID, some more books, a new back pack, and some other shit.  I love the feeling of new pencils and notebooks and pens.  I guess that's why I am an aspiring professional writer, as opposed to, say, a gay-for-pay pornographic actor.

The excitement level about my return to academia is pretty much as high as it could go, I think.  I am pumped.  I can't wait for class tomorrow, and I am not totally certain that I will be able to sleep tonight because my mind is really racing about all of this.

Just so you guys know, I finished Twilight over the weekend, and I will be posting reviews of it thrice this week.

"Thrice, he says?" you might be wondering.

That's right.  Thrice.  From three different perspectives.  The first one will be from the perspective of an actual vampire.  The second review will be from a young American girl's perspective.  The third review of Twilight will be my own assessment of the book and it's literary value.

I don't want to give you too much information on that now, so I'll just stop there, and tell you about Florida.

An accurate rendition of me in Florida over the weekend.

I don't have too terribly much to report about my trip to Florida.  I took some photos, and presumably those will end up here soon enough.  The trip was not all leisure, and the matter that I was attending to was one of a more personal nature.  As such, I won't (yet) burden you guys with the details.  I will tell you that I have come back to Longmont with a clearer mind.  I feel a little more serene, and I definitely feel more equipped to jump into this school thing.

Panama City, though, it must be said, is a fucking natural furnace (as you can see above).  I really missed this beautiful dry crisp Colorado air.  Mostly 'cause I kept randomly bursting into flames down there at the drop of a hat.

Other things I missed: 

-My beautiful girlfriend (who started school today again).

-My personal toiletries (I am very particular about the products I use in the bathroom).

-My cat (who missed me mucho).

-And of course, writing this little blog here, and reading everyone else's blogs.

Just a couple other items to whiz through here before I hit you with the photo of the week.  First, I have added the "link exchange" section to my "sites I like" page.  I added links there and elsewhere on that page, so check them out at your leisure, and remember that you can find your name on the link exchange list by linking to my blog first, and then e-mailing/tweeting/facebooking me with the URL and a blurb about your blog.  If I have overlooked you (I received quite a few e-mails on this, some of which may have fallen through the cracks) or if you are already linking to me, let me know so that credit can be given and we can keep growing this blogosphere thing until it becomes self aware and murders us all in our sleep.

Also, I've been noted at another blog.  "The Loaded Handbag" is the title of this blog, and I think everyone should run over there and check it out.  The blog post in question can be found here.

Lastly: (this one's for the gentlemen) if you keep your penis inside of your pants, but just flip your balls out over the top of your pants, exposing them, and then walk up to people and say "check out my new belt buckle", directing their eyes to your misshapen bag of goodies, you will get some awesome reactions.  Laughing will ensue.  I promise.

And now.... the (belated) photo of the week....

Let Jera, my girlfriend and the photographer, know what you think.  You can see this photo, and some others in the related series, at her blog here.

Illicit Shooting

Love.

Touch-Down

So I just touched down here in Atlanta, Georgia.

The people here talk fast but move slow.  They drive faster than they talk and they give off that vibe like they got somethin' I don't, or know somethin' I won't.

I fucking love the south.  It's smooth like butter here.  My connecting flight to Panama City is in about an hour, so I sit here in the smoking lounge of an airport bar wondering why, in Colorado, they pipe in Jack Johnson and here it's naught but R&B and hip hop.

No.  No.  That's not what I wonder.  I wonder why it is that if the muzak were switched, and I heard Jack Johnson over the bustle of this blue-colored bar, I would feel suddenly as though I wasn't here and that this wasn't real.  I wonder this and white smoke curls up from the ash tray next to me, connecting me to the known.

To travel in America is to be reminded that the threads of culture, while consistently made of the same fiber, are woven in distinctive patterns, and that the distinction is only visible by removing oneself from the normalcy of one's life.  If the patchwork appeal of the American tapestry is only visible from such a broader perspective, then I am reminded that I ought to remove myself at every given opportunity from what is my "normalcy".


The young girl serving drinks pauses briefly to see the CNN report of Iraqi deployed US troops coming home.  She looks over to two equally young men in fatigues and asks:

"Are y'all comin' home?"

That sweet, wet Southern drawl is musical.

One responds, "no.  We on leave for two weeks.  Then back to Afghanistan."

"Why they get to come home and you don't?"

The older one glances at the screen, then back at her.  He smiles wryly.

"Cause that one's done... and Afghanistan ain't."

"That's some bull shit..." she says.  He laughs and pulls off of his bottled beer.


Normalcy here.  Someone else's.  I love these things.

The tally was approximately as follows:

"The Audacity of Hope" - Nine Votes
"Going Rogue" - Twelve Votes
"Twilight" - Twenty-Nine Votes

Thank you all for voting.  I have Twilight and have begun reading it.  I'll step back from my normalcy and look for the fiber beneath the weave of this book.  I will let you all know how it goes.

Apologies in advance for my lack of blog interaction over the next few days.  There's a beach in Panama City that I'm told is calling my name.  There are warm people there, waiting for me.  There is unconditional love in odd shaped packages there, and I must attend to these matters with the care that such matters warrant.

Love.

In Review: Freakonomics, or: Make Me Suffer

First, some business: I have gotten some responses to my "link exchange" plan, and I will be posting up some new links very soon.  Again, if you are interested in being under the (yet to be created) new "link exchange" section of my "sites I like" page, link to me on your blog and e-mail me telling me where your page is so that I can link to it.  It's that easy.  Use the subject line "link exchange" in your e-mail for simplicity's sake.  That new section will be up very soon.

Moving on...

This post's purpose is two fold in nature.  First, I wanted to shoot you a review of a book I read recently.  Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  There is a reason this book is a big seller.  I had been meaning to read it for months, and finally got around to it.  I regret waiting as long as I did.  

I got turned on to Steven and Stephen via their podcasts, which come out very irregularly, but are very interesting.  The book is about the research of Mr. Levitt, an economist who looks at the world differently.  He claims not to be great at math, and to have a limited understanding of economics in the way that most people think of economics.  He says that if someone asks him "what the stock market is going to do", he has little point of reference and little ability to answer that question.

Levitt is interested in economics in a broader sense of the word.  He is interested in economics as a way to study human behavior in general.  He studies what he says drives us all: incentives.  He answers bizarre questions like "what do real estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common?"

The book has no cohesive underlying theme.  It is just a few very well written chapters exploring some of the interesting topics that Levitt has studied during his career as a (now) well known and well respected economist.

The book even caused some controversy based on some of the research contained in it.  It shows statistical evidence that the rapid decline in the national crime rate starting in the mid 1990's was not due to an increase in police, an increase in imprisonment rates, or even a massive influx of sophisticated crime fighting techniques in major cities around America.  Levitt's numbers show that the biggest contributing factor to the drop in the crime rate was the Roe v. Wade supreme court decision which legalized elective abortion in the US.  Despite the hubbub created by his assertion, I have seen no evidence anywhere that can readily dispute his research.

The book slaps you in the face with it's candidness.  He says simply that, by the numbers, abortions are disproportionately performed for women who are young, poor, and socioeconomically ill prepared for a child.  He draws the conclusion that these unborn children would have been the very ones most likely to  have entered into a life of crime, because of these conditions.  The mid 1990's correlates with the time when those first children to have not been born would have been reaching their "criminal prime", or their late teens and early twenties.  Levitt and Dubner, of course, take no side publicly on the abortion debate, but merely state the facts as they see them.

The book also recounts how Levitt helped the Chicago public school system weed out teachers that were blatantly cheating on their students' standardized tests in an effort to mask their own poor performance.  The teachers were fired when he was able to prove that they had cheated.  His methodology, something you might imagine to be boring or tedious, is actually fascinating when Dubner and Levitt team up to describe it to you in this book.  No matter what they are talking about, they keep you turning the page until the end when you wind up wishing there was more to read.  I hope they decide to write another book.  Seeing as how their first book was so successful, and everyone acts strictly on incentive, I can't imagine why they wouldn't.

I forgot that I was reading a book that (supposedly) had some basis in economic theory, or that I was reading a book based on some guy who gets off on exotic data sets.  Levitt and Dubner will help you get off on those same data sets, whether you are a fan of Roe v. Wade or not.

I give this book a rating of five "Charles Heads".  Steve and Steve deserve it.  And you should read it.

The coveted five head rating

Ok, now that we have that out of the way we can move onto the second portion of this post: you torturing me.

I have recently finished the other book I was reading, and need to start another.  Here's where the fun starts.  We are having a contest of sorts, in which you get to turn me from this...

...to this...

"How are we going to torture Charles," you might ask.  Here's how: I am going to list three books that I presume to be total crap, and you guys get to vote on which one you want me to get and read.  I will get the book tomorrow evening.  

Your choices are as follows:

#1- The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama

As is the case with most (99%) of the politicians administrating for the federal government, I find Obama to be another in a long line of scam artists.  I am perturbed by much of what he does and even more perturbed by the seemingly arrogant "I know better than anyone else" way in which he does it.  He is no real friend to the socially liberal, which is a shame, and he is certainly no friend of anyone who understands that (as Levitt and Dubner would remind us) an economy is run on incentives.  

What?  We were supposed to just start trusting the government because it had a different face to it all of a sudden?

I don't relish exposing myself to any more of this guy's elitist rhetoric, but I do have an interest in understanding a little more about his background.  I'm not one of these jerks who thinks he's an Al Queda plant, and I'm not by any means saying he's worse than W. Bush.  I'm just saying that the worst parts of the Patriot Act were extended by him, he hasn't taken us out of a state of war, and his health care plan is a bailout for the insurance companies.  Not worse than Bush.  If he's better, though, it's only by a thin margin.

#2- Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin

Since I despise both sides of that aisle in American politics pretty much equally, we're balancing Obama's book with this one. 

While I anticipate Obama's book to be full of bleeding heart, rich-man-knows-best, Chicago-style partisan crap, I anticipate an equal amount of crap from this woman's book.  Every time I hear her talk, I just want to use an electric drill to give myself a lobotomy.  

It's not just that she is that very annoying (and she is).  It's that she is respected by so many people who make big decisions in our country.  I can't believe this woman gets air time at all.  I can't believe that republicans and Tea Partiers (sorry about the redundancy there) come out in droves to support her and her cause.  If she had stayed in Alaska and been a "hockey mom", maybe I could respect her.  But somehow the GOP has engineered her to be palatable to their base as a politician.  She appears to be too disconnected from reality to be anything but a brainless GOP puppet (let's mention Bush again here).  

The lady represents to me, as usual, more of the same: national level (or aspiring national level) politicians imposing their will on a populace ever weakened by a torrent of mind numbing media designed to keep us from seeing the truth.  The two party system-machine is a single installation with a single purpose.

She is prettier than Obama and Bush put together, though.  And I hear she can field dress a deer double-quick.

I am sure that it will be painful to get through this book, but I am interested in it in the same way I am interested in Obama's book.

#3- Twilight, by Whoever the Fuck Writes "Twilight"

I don't know.  I mean... a whole series based on nothing but pale shirtless boys suffering mal-nutrition and biting each other?  

I could just go rent a couple of John Waters movies and actually get a laugh out of stories of intense sexual confusion.  Seems easier and more pleasant.

I have said a million times that I would never read this.  But here is your chance.  If you don't want to hear me go off on political tangents a couple of book reviews from now, then you should vote for this one, so I can instead bag on cross-dressing emo kids and other diseases of youth.  (I don't have anything against cross dressers per se, I just think that a self-respecting cross-dresser should have the decency to be a real sexual deviant of the freakiest calibre, not some hungry junior high kid who is sad 'cause he can't throw a football.)   I don't at all understand the hype behind this particular portion of the brainwashing machine, but it's always good to know the enemy, so I am willing to give it a read through if that's what you decide.  It will hurt, of that I am certain.

***

So the polling will be open until sometime late tomorrow afternoon.  Get your votes in, in the comments section below, and I will get reading ASAP.  If you are a supporter of Palin, Obama, or Twilight, unleash your disgust with me by voting for the corresponding book.  Or if you just want to make me whine a lot, pick the book which you think I will dislike the most on a personal level.

I promise to be even handed in my review.  If I like the book and am proven wrong, I will humbly let you all know.  I've been proven wrong before.  About 3 billion times, by my count.  Happy voting.

Love

How To For Men: Have The Best Day Ever

Having the Best Day Ever:

A How To Guide

There is a lot of wisdom my father has passed down to me throughout the years.  One bit, in particular, is this method I have for having the "best day ever".  Dad, if you are reading, thank you.  Thanks also to follower "Micael" who inspired this post with a couple of related tweets a couple days ago.  

The Problem:

In a word: Yoda Balls.  You men know what I am talking about.  Yoda balls is the condition of having an excess of heat and moisture in your "private" area, which leads to torturous maladies such as: Yoda Stink, Yoda Itch, and the ever troublesome Yoda Sticks to the Side of my Legs While I'm Walking Around.

You know what I mean, right guys?

Yoda Balls are named as such because they are hot and gunked up with swamp crap.  They are steamy and dirty, and they smell like Dagobah.  

They are unpleasant for a guy.  It weighs a man down, psychologically, to know that he has no control over the odor, position, or general comfort of his "Yoda Balls", because they are so sticky they might be climbing their way around his leg to his buttocks, or tryin' to stretch their way down to the floor, at any given time.  It's disgusting and it makes for a terrible day.  

Guys: it doesn't have to be this way.  Here's the solution:

Step One: Hot Soapy Morning Shower

Step one is arguably the most important.  What you are going to want to do is to get the area in question as clean as possible in water that is as hot as possible.  Not so hot that you end up in the ER.  Just hot enough to really get those pores exfoliating a little bit.  As far as soap goes, I recommend the following:

Yes, Olay Bar Soap is LITERALLY what I use.  

It will leave you feeling dry and clean and smooth.  Everywhere.

Step Two: Blow Dry Your Testicles

Yes.  You read right.  You must use one of these...

...to do this...

Be sure to get those bad boys real dry, but don't hold them too close to the dryer or you can certainly end up scalding yourself.

Step Three: Baby Powder

Once you have your Yoda Area totally totally dry, like the sand dunes of Tatooine, where Luke encountered two lost droids and learned of the plight of a young Princess and.... shoot, sorry, I get off track easily.  

Once you have your area totally dry, you need to get a container of the following:

Any old baby powder will do, although I enjoy the kind infused with aloe, as you can see above.  A good rule of thumb on products that you are going to be putting on male genitalia: "if it can go on little babies' butts, it can go on your nuts."

Put a liberal amount of the powder into one of your hands as shown.

You may need more, but start out with this amount.

Now take your powder and gently dab it all over the Yoda area.  On the front.  The back.  The bottom.  The sides.  I even like to get a little on the very top of the inner thigh to maximize dryness and minimize sack chafing.  

It may take quite a bit, but that powder is now your greatest defense against sweat and moisture buildup.  Sweat and moisture mean dirt and chafing.  Itching and scratching.  Then we're back on Dagobah with Yoda right where we started and that's the last thing we want.  So use enough, 'gents.

WARNING: Do not do this step after putting on pants, or any other clothes.  Your clothes will look like you just lost a fight with a bunch of bread-bakers.  The flourery look is not "in".

Step Four: Enjoy The Best Day Ever

So that's it.  If you have completed this easy process, you will be on your way to having a really great day.  I mean really great.  You will be more confident.  You will smell better.  You will be able to run, unhindered.  You will appear less fidgety, and you will have to stuff your hands down the front of your pants a lot less.

You have successfully transformed your Yoda Balls into Wampa Balls.

A friendly Wampa on Hoth

Wampa Balls, like the Wampa's home planet, Hoth, are cool, dry, and confident.  Of course, there's the added benefit that Yoda Balls are tiny, wrinkly, and nearly hairless, while Wampa Balls are epically huge and furry.

Conclusion: Wampa Balls = Good

Trust me, guys.  You want to have Wampa Balls.  And the ladies want it too.  What are you waiting for?  Go hop in the shower!  And please, to all of you, even the ladies, let me know what you think about my simple process here.  

Love

Photo of the Week, 8.14.10

As mentioned in the previous post, this is a two post day.  Check out the photo of the week here, and feel free to check out the preceding post immediately below this one.  It's a two post bonanza!

Before we see the "Photo de la Semaine", I'd like to mention that the photographer, my girlfriend Jera, has started a blog of her very own.  She is still going to supply "In Review" with an awesome photograph on a weekly basis.  But now she will be posting alternate photography and other things at her own blog as well. You can visit her new blog, "Watch the Birdie", by clicking anywhere on this sentence!  She does a lot more than take awesome photos, and I am sure it will all shine through on her blog. 

And now, I give you the "Photo de la Semaine".

Up or Down?

Love.

Update: Constipated and Anxious

Howdy, y'all.  This will be a two post day.  Read this one if you want to know what's going on with me and with "In Review".  Read the subsequent one if you want to see the "Photo of the Week".  If you are a real daredevil, you'll just read both, but I am not liable for any broken bones incurred as a result.

It seems as though I'm on the down slope of a bi-polar hill, of late, and I haven't pooped in several days, so I figured I'll just let you guys know what's been going on around here, since I am a little on edge.

I have updated the current music and current book items on my side bar.  I am not finished with the new book, "The Big Short", yet, but it is riveting thus far.  The new album appearing on the side is pure poetry.  One of my favorites.  I would advise anyone to make a "Pandora" station around it and see what happens.  In regards to the book I was reading before, "Freakonomics", I will probably blog up a review of that later this week.  It was a fabulous read, but I don't want to go any further than that.  I will tell you more in the corresponding post.

I also added a few blogs to the "Sites I Like" page, basically by combing through the most recent blog posts appearing in my "Blogger Dashboard" area.  If I am following your blog, but your most recent post wasn't recent enough to be in that list of blogs I glanced through, let me know via e-mail and I will be glad to add you to that list.

Speaking of which, I am possibly going to start a "link exchange" on my "Sites I Like" section.  I can't find enough time to read all the blogs I would like to, and thus don't follow all the blogs I would like to.  This will become an even greater problem in the near future when I start school.  But I do believe in the great networking capacity of the blogosphere, and would like to foster its efficacy by linking to those blogs that link to "In Review".  If you would be interested in a link exchange, e-mail me.  I'll be glad to check your blog out, since you have been kind enough to check out mine, and will be happy to link to it.  I won't be able to link exchange to any pornographic websites, though, nor will I link to Al Queda related websites (I still think it's too soon).  If your blog is a Toddlers & Tiara's fan-blog, then I must also decline your link.

Things I Cannot Link To

In regards to the Toddlers & Tiaras thing: I am going to put that issue on the back burner for a bit, as I am waiting for some e-mails back from someone at Discovery.  If you have further advice regarding how we might properly disseminate "The Letter" to people involved in the show or their advertisers, let me know.  For now, I play the waiting game (illustrated below).

I play a mean "waiting game" as long as I keep a cigarette lit and my hand on my junk.

So.......

Ultimately, I feel like I am experiencing a little "blog burn out".  Has anyone else out there experienced this?  I have spent a large portion of my time this summer writing blogs and reading blogs and commenting on blogs.  I like the reading and the commenting part the best, probably.  Normally I like the writing portion as well.  But just over the last couple of days I have felt somehow less excited about the creative side of this.  It's a new and disconcerting feeling.  Will it pass?

I am certain that this will turn around.  I am likely just anxious about school...

I'm worried that this will be me on my first day of school.

Thank God I'm not taking a drawing class, at least.

...and I'm anxious about being able to make a poop again soon.

Love.

More Al Gore, or: Do You Like Pancakes?

The pancake is a staple of American breakfast cuisine.  I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy the occasional pancake.  According to Wikipedia, some archeologists believe that early forms of pancakes were probably the first and most widely eaten forms of cereal food for the developing human race.  Apparently, our ancestors would just grind up whatever seedy stuff they could find into a flour, mix it with some eggs or milk or some such thing, and slap that stuff down on a hot flat rock to cook in the sun.

What Wikipedia should have said, in addition to that, is "pancakes fuckin' rule, son!  Dem shits is da bomb!  Word!"

'Cause they do.  And they are.  Word?

We Americans like our pancakes in a variety of formats.  We like them:

Flipped by a robot-

Finally, electronics brings us something useful

In the shape of an iPhone-  

Who could resist the taste of Apple's charming product line?

Or with puppies inside them (apparently)-

I will reiterate my first question: why?!?

You might be asking: "So, Charles... are you going to get to the damn point here?  I mean... a post about pancakes?  Who cares?!"

To which I would reply: "Hey, hold your horses!  I'm getting to it!"

The "it" to which I refer is the tale about the pancakes I made this morning.  Have you ever heard of those miracle pancakes?  Or "heavenly pieces of toast"?  Have you ever heard of anyone seeing a relgious figure or celebrity outlined in their food?

Michael Jackson appears on yummy toast.

Well, this morning I slapped the butter onto my homemade cakes, and heard a voice whispering to me.

"Charles," it said.

I glanced around.  No one here but me and Jera, who was still sleeping.  I thought I was hearing things and got up to grab a glass of milk.

Louder, I heard, "Charles.  Hey, it's me Al."

It sounded like it might be coming from the bedroom, so I walked in there to check.  Jera was definitely still asleep.  My cat hasn't talked since I stopped doing drugs... so I sat back down at the table.  I was confused, but willing to ignore it.  Then, finally:

"Hey Charles.  I'm talking to you, man!  It's me, Al Gore!  Down here.  On your plate!"

I looked down and saw something disturbing.  Probably the most alarming and unusual thing I had ever seen.  I grabbed my camera and took a picture, straight away.

I didn't recognize his face at first, but his voice was, indeed, Al Gore's.  

"What the hell dude?  What's going on?" I asked, after taking Al's picture.

"I don't know.  I woke up this morning down here in this pancake... this is weird!"

Weird?  I thought it was crazy.  I thought I was crazy.  I slapped myself in the face to wake up from the dream, but when I glanced back down, there he was again.  

Tell me this wouldn't have freaked you out!

"Alright this is too much.  What do you want from me?!" I demanded.

"What do you want from me?!" 

I spoke in a hushed tone, which is proper etiquette either when talking to a Vice President or to a pancake.

"I don't want anything from you!  I was going to eat you.  How is this possible?"

"I don't know.  I went to sleep in my multi-million dollar mansion who's carbon footprint dwarfs that of your hometown, and I woke up here.  I have been so fucked up without Tipper, lately.  Maybe my spiritual pain bent space and time and morphed me into a pancake...?"

"Whatever man.  Look, I'm hungry, so..."

"No, don't do that!" he shouted.  But I really was so hungry.  Mr. Gore had never looked so appealing to me.

"I'm sorry man..."

"No wait wait... let me regale you with tales of melting icebergs!  Or I can give you the dirt on that whole Lewinsky thing!  Did you know Monica, Bill and I all had a... what do you kids call it... a "threesome"?"  

"That's really gross, Mr. Gore."

"Well come on.  Give me a chance here.  You don't have to eat me.  Please.  I am begging you."

Folks, I was as tired of this Nobel Prize winner as I ever was this morning.  And that was before he appeared, deity-like, in my hot pancakes, to annoy me.  So I jammed my fork into his face and said "fork you!"  His scream was short and muffled, and followed by silence.

I looked around, wishing someone had been there to hear my witty last line.

I felt a moment of remorse, then a moment of intense fear and wonder over the whole thing.  But those feelings were rapidly washed away in a sea of deliciousness.  My "buttery-goodness" nerve receptors were working overtime.  When I was done, I didn't feel bad anymore.

And that, brothers and sisters, is the story of the enchanted pancakes, and one Vice President Al Gore.  Tell me what you think, and tell me about the last time your pancakes talked to you.

In other news: 

A nation mourns today after the news that former Vice President Al Gore passed away mysteriously in his own home this morning.  The inventor of the internet was found in his bed, smothered with "Mrs. Butterworth's" syrup and melted butter.  There were no signs of violence, but a conclusive cause of death will not be known until an autopsy can be completed.  He is survived by an ex-wife, who wishes she had stayed in their marriage for, as she put it, "you know... the estate and stuff." 

And finally, in blog news:

Today was a busy day, and I made only a little headway on the T&T thing, but one reader has offered her service in watching the show and writing down the companies she sees there.  Thanks, Jenn!  I humbly accept your assistance, as I don't have cable and cannot do that.  Everyone has had really good advice regarding the whole endeavor, and I am excited to see that people still seem interested.  I promise some progress tomorrow on the relevant contact information.

Also, a quick plug for the blog "Red Means Go", which has opened an online store containing various wares with various hilarious images from the blog.  I believe I will be ordering a "Red Means Go" coffee mug.  Take a look at the store here.  Quite funny.

As always: Love.