I’ve recently self-imposed a diet, just out of curiosity.  Specifically, I’m curious as to whether or not I have abs.  So for breakfast, I usually just have one of those cups of sliced fruit you can get in the produce section of Ralph’s.  Mostly grapefruit, sometimes peach.

Anyway, in order to get at the delicious grapefruity or peachy sustenance, you have to peel a piece of plastic off the top of the cup.  This plastic is apparently bonded to the cup at the molecular level by overly ambitious fruit cup physicists, and it’s damn near impossible to get it off without spilling fruit juice all over myself and my keyboard.  And sometimes I’m wearing a really nice black t-shirt!  I really have no idea how to get around this without bringing an acetylene torch to breakfast.

Update: No abs yet, but compelling evidence of abs.

–Eric

I was gonna do some stuff over the weekend.  I had all these grandiose plans about the doing of stuff.  But really, what I mostly did was watch Top Chef. 

They made stuff out of vending machine food!  There was molecular gastronomy!  There was a wild boar sous vide!  It was glorious.  Really, why can’t every show be about really great chefs making interesting things to eat under strange conditions?  And why is every other reality show about stupid people with no skills except the uncanny ability to make me simultaneously bored and angry (trickier than it sounds)?  And why do fools fall in love?  And I want some rack of lamb stuffed with fig mostarda, with chickpeas and fried rosemary.   Or maybe roast grouper with gnocchi, peas, bacon, and parsnip.

On second thought, damn that show for making me want food I have no access to…

Thanks to my well-placed sources, well-connected minions, and network of informants, I was able to find something very very interesting.  It’s an assignment Michael Bay did in his freshman English class in high school, and seems to be a sequel to the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens.  It’s…well, I’ll just let the man’s work speak for itself.

Thirteen More Totally Kickass Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

by Michael Bay, age 15

I.

Among seven thousand mountains,

The only thing moving

Is the eye of a blackbird

On the scope of a sniper rifle.

II.

It squeezed the trigger

And somebody’s head totally exploded

Like overripe steak.

(Steak is way more kickass than a melon)

III.

Holy shit!

That blackbird over there

Totally just blew up!

IV.

A man and a woman

Are totally having sex.

A blackbird is watching

And really getting into it.

V.

Then the man and woman

Both explode (not like a metaphor).

It was the blackbird!

Boobs fly everywhere.

VI.

We’re gonna need to bring in

Jake Rocketgun–

The world’s leading expert

On blackbirds and explosions.

VII.

A bunch of blackbirds

Fly in super-slow-motion.

Are they robots?

(Yes, they are robots)

VIII.

We know

The blackbird robots are involved

With the gun explosion shootings

And the blowing up of the

England White House

(Is it called something else?  I don’t want to look it up.)

IX.

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

Everybody knew it would soon be back

With millions of other blackbirds

To kill everybody in the universe.

X.

At the sight of blackbirds,

Jake Rocketgun would get totally pissed off

And shoot everything.

Also, there’s a really hot chick with cleavage.

XI.

Car chase!

With blackbirds.

XII.

Shooting!  Guns!

Explosions!  Boobs!

Everything gets totally rad all at once.

XIII.

The blackbirds are gone for now…

But they will be back.

(Explosion!  And then end credits)

OK, I’m pretty sure the Venn diagram of 1) People who visit this site, 2) People who read my posts, and 3) People familiar with Wallace Stevens basically looks like this:

O                      O

O

But maybe I’m wrong.

–Eric

It may not have been obvious, but the reason my victim in the post below will be headless is that I will have forced him to eat his own head. Just thought I should clear that up.

–Eric

…before I get into an elevator that contains somebody talking on a cell phone, and then the door of that elevator opens on my floor, and only I exit the elevator, and the walls of that elevator are coated with blood, and the floor of that elevator features a headless, mutilated corpse with a cell phone suppository.  This will eventually happen, and no court in the land will convict me.  Also, I think the soundtrack will probably be a beautiful and haunting Chopin nocturne.  Or, better, the full version of Francisco Tarrega’s Gran Valse, which serves as the default Verizon ringtone.

–Eric

I’ve decided to do something useful and contribute to “society” for a change.  To this end, I’ve created a “Suck Scale.” This handy 1-10 scale will allow you to gauge and categorize your daily irritations and annoyances, and I’m adding examples for each numeral value to give everything some perspective.  I’ll probably update these when I think of more.  You’re welcome, world.

1. Paper cut; somebody talking on cell phone in elevator; no hot dog buns available at convenience store; email spam involving penis enlargement

2.  Paper cut on webbing between fingers; somebody talking on bluetooth in elevator; stuck behind slow driver (<50 mph) on freeway; email spam involving ousted Nigerian royalty

3.  Reunion tour by 70s-era band including original lineup; reality TV show involving dancing; actual Spam

4.  Reality TV show involving people trying to win money; boxed in by 2 semis on freeway; pursued by average mummy

5.  Average stand-up comedian’s routine about how his/her ethnic background differs from others’; rumor about no more Christopher Guest movies

6. Car overheats on freeway; reality TV show involving brain-dead ex-celebrity; reunion tour by 70s-era band without original singer; pursued by mummy with a gun

7. Rejected by object of affection; having to replay the whole level because you forgot to save; car overheats on freeway during rush hour; 70s-era TV show made into movie

8. Kidney stone; Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace; 80s-era TV show made into movie; car overheats on freeway during rush hour

9. Zombie apocalypse (slow-moving Romero zombies); any movie directed by Michael Bay; Broadway musical made into movie

10. Zombie apocalypse (fast-moving Rage-induced Danny Boyle zombies); Fox News; Firefly canceled; movie made into Broadway musical; reality TV show involving singing

So, I borrowed the complete box set of Robotech DVDs from a friend.  I am not a fan of anime, but Mike recommended it, so I figured I’d give it a shot.  I thought, “Hey, giant robots that turn into jets and also half-robot half-jet things… Can’t go wrong there!”  And under normal circumstances, you really can’t go wrong there.  Unless you include one of the most annoying characters from any show ever made, ever.

I am speaking, of course, of Lynn Minmay.  She is orders of magnitude more annoying than, say, Dawn Summers from Buffy. Or Orko from Masters of the Universe. Or Snarf from Thundercats. Hell, even Scrappy Doo has nothing on Minmay when it comes to making me want to claw my own eyes out and jam railroad spikes in my ears.  Minmay makes Scrappy Doo look like goddamn Billy Dee Williams!

First of all, it’s the way she blithely toys with the affections of poor idiot pilot Rick Hunter!   It’s sickening!  If she’s Japan’s conception of an ideal woman to have sex with, I’m surprised there are any people left in Japan at all.    If Robotech is any indication of Japanese dating, couples must just decide in advance which one is going to be the irritating one and which one gets to be the mopey one.  Then, apparently, they meet at a coffee house once a day to play the emotional equivalent of rock-paper-scissors: “Irritating annoys Mopey!  Mopey depresses Naive!  Naive confounds Irritating!”  They never taught us about any of that in Japanese class in college.

Anyway, back to Minmay and the way she insists on singing that one horrible, horrible song episode after episode… It’s worse than anything Yoko Ono ever recorded.  It’s like if Yoko Ono discovered golden tablets in a hole in the ground that told her how to write the worst song ever written, recorded the vocals with a bad head cold, and then it was orchestrated by Yanni on one of his off-days, and they ran the whole thing through some sort of Pro Tools auto-detuner plugin.  And yet, Minmay finds a reason to sing that song at least once per episode.  Maybe it’s to toughen Varitech pilots up in case they come up against some experimental Zentraedi weapon that explodes people’s heads with awful noise.  I don’t know; I haven’t watched all of it yet.  But I’m gonna keep watching, just in case Minmay gets crushed under a building when the SDF-1 changes form.

That leads me to another question… When the SDF-1 does undergo its modular transformation, is the city inside it destroyed every time? And if so, why the fuck do they keep rebuilding the city in exactly the same way?  And can’t the captain give them more than, say, ten seconds of warning before their city’s destroyed?  Just as a courtesy.

C’mon, Mike, I need some answers here.

See below.

This may at first sound like nitpicking, but please hear me out.  This intersection is a serious thorn in my shoe.  A nail in my side.  A slug in my hair.  It sucks.

It all started one hot August afternoon in early October, when I found myself in the air-conditioned splendor of the Cap & Cork liquor store on Hillhurst and Prospect.  I remember being moved to purchase some Pliny the Elder, the most delectable of Russian River brewery’s cask-conditioned beers.   After paying the salesclerk, and exchanging pleasantries as to the state of the weather, I entered the confines of my car, which was already similar in temperature to a pre-heated convection oven.  As is typically my wont when my driving route necessitates taking the 5 freeway from a starting point in Los Feliz, I drove east on Franklin until the road made a turn and became St. George (I find this route to be far superior to taking lowly Los Feliz boulevard, which is usually full to bursting with belching, sweating automobilery).   St. George took me pleasantly around a corner until it intersected with Tracy street, at which point a traffic light mocked me with its insoucient redness.

It occurred to me as I sat awaiting the smug light’s conversion to liberating green that this was not the first time I had encountered this maddening flippance from this selfsame traffic light! In fact, I reflected, every time I had ever taken this secret route, this quintessence of malefaction, this devil of all traffic lights, has never been begreened upon my approach!  Much to the contrary, it taunts me with a promise of verdance until I am just far enough away that I cannot possibly speed through as its glaring eye transitions from green to red.  What’s more, there is never a conveyance approaching on a perpendicular path which would require that the light change to accomodate it at the expense of my expedience.  I have never, in all my blighted days, seen a vehicle of any description driving on Tracy street–yet this malicious traffic light seeks only to bar my route, whenever I approach it.

Something must be done… For the sake of myself and my country.

In the distance, a dog barks.

First, McG tries to do an American version of Spaced. Next, I hear a rumor that Christopher Guest may not be directing any more movies.  And today I catch wind of an evil plot by Kaz and Fran Kuzui to do a movie relaunch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Joss Whedon… Double-you tee eff.  None of this is acceptable.