Ting-a-Ling

Here's a little joke I thought I would share from Kurt Vonnegut's TimeQuake. It is the origin of Kilgore Trout's phrase Ting-a-Ling, which he liked to say was what he said when the air strikes he called in in WWI hit their mark, but actually it was from a dirty joke that his father came into his room at midnight and told him. His father was insane and killed his mother. Here's the joke:

There was a fugitive who sought shelter in the home of a woman he knew. Her living room had a cathedral ceiling, which is to say it went all the way up to the roof peak, with rustic rafters spanning the air space below.

She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on the top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view.

The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about. One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells.

He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?

He shrieked, TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Unattributed Quotes of the Day

"My poop is stuck."

"You gotta wiggle it."

"It's the carcinogens."

Snow Crash

I'm reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and it's as fine a book as all the reviews would have me believe. It's a cyberpunkish book that is a bit, as the cover blurbs say, like Neuromancer crossed with Thomas Pynchon, only it ends up better than the two.

Here are some quotes that I like from the book:

...I don't know how my face conveyed the information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

...

Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.

...

"All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral--a piece of information that replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next. That's the way it used to be, and ultimately, that's the way it's headed right now. But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands of primitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki about four thousand years ago. The second was made by the Hebrew scholars in the eighth century B.C., driven out of their homeland by the invasion of Sargon II, but eventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made by Jesus--that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of his death. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middle of a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentum ever since."

...

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Probably a full review coming later when I finish the book.

Moon gas may solve Earth's energy crisis

There's a joke here, but I'm too big a person to make it.

Ok, no I'm not.

I got enough moon gas to fuel the whole planet.

But, seriously, Moon Gas? Is that the reason that W wants to go back to the moon? Do we really want giant gas filled canisters hurtling towards earth, going through re-entry at incredibly high temperatures?

And the key to all this would be basically burning the moon and huffing the fumes into our space ships.

How about we figure out how to harness the power of the sun? You know, really figure out how to use solar power, or wind power, or drive our cars on frickin used vegetable oil from all our fast food restaurants. If McDonald's was smart they'd figure out they had a gold mine there if they'd just hook up with some auto companies to fully develop the technology.

New Logo and T-Shirts

A brand new logo which can be purchased and worn on brand new T-shirts from the Evilhippy store.

Sword death haunts workers

Witnesses describe frenzied attack, shock that followed

November 22, 2004

BY BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The metal worker stood over a circular metal grinder, sharpening a 3-foot-long, silver-colored rod.

His coworkers paid him no mind.

"We had gotten off early that night," recalled laborer Henry Tabb. "I went to punch out and I heard a grinding noise. I started to go back there and saw his back turned to me. He was wearing a green hoodie. He was back there grinding something. I didn't know what it was."

The next night was Oct. 27. A lunar eclipse blotted out the moon.

The workers at the Peerless Metal Powders & Abrasives plant in southwest Detroit would soon learn exactly what their coworker James Flemons had fashioned 24 hours earlier.

It was a sword.

I like how my version of that story is pretty accurate.

Coconut Pete Songs

For those of you out there who are looking for songs by Coconut Pete, they're at the Club Dread official site, if you know where to look.

Here's some quick and easy links for you:

Pleasure Island

Naughty Cal

Pinacoladaburg

Comin' Blowin'

There you go. Enjoy.

Total ReCarl

Gotta love that Carl. He just wants to live his life and work outta the home, but those food monsters next door just keep on messing with his life.

There he was, just trying to hide in his house and avoid the FryMonster. They talk him into taking a dump in a high-tech toilet situated in his front yard, and he ends up getting all chopped up until he's only left as a head attached to the FryMan's computer.

Frylock makes it so that his computer can translate Carl's thoughts into words, and, lo and behold, he ain't too happy. What are the words that Frylock feels the need to insulate Meatwad's innocent eyes from? Well let's have a look, shall we?


That Carl, dropping multiple F-Bombs on cable television, but wouldn't you?

I know I would.





Carl Laments

Meat-Wad F-Bombs

Various Links and News

The Pentagon wants to create a new, military only Internet. Firstly, wouldn't that be an Intranet? Isn't that what the private ones are called? Secondly, the company I work for spent a whole bunch of money on their computer system, creating a company only system, and it doesn't really do that much, other than allow you to take worthless training modules, read company policy and check some reports. Hopefully they'll do better in the government, but I doubt it.

Tommy had the link, and I had forgotten about the site, but Hulk has a blog, or should I say, the Hulk from Toyfare's Twisted Toyfare Theatre has a blog. I like to think that this is Spider-Man from the same series' blog.

Ol' Dirty Bastard Dead?

All for now.

Don't See Saw

I should've heeded the portents trying to keep me from seeing Saw. Two times I was supposed to see the film with someone else, and both times I was thwarted.

If I'd just listened to what Universe was trying to tell me, the film would've been able to remain in that land of gumdops and candy corn where everybody has a good time and nobody starts checking their watch after ten minutes to see how much longer they have to endure their torment.

On the way home I searched way back in my memory for a film that I was this disappointed by, and all I could come up with was John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. I was looking forward to both films, and they both came up waaaay short.

For those who don't know, Saw is about two guys who are locked in a room by an evil genius and told they have to kill one another to escape. The premise is all fine and good, but then the filmmakers added about three layers of greasy, fetid crap on top and came out with a steaming turdpile of a film.

I could ruin the plot-twists for you, but it wouldn't matter because except for the last one, they're not really very surprising, and the subplots with Cary Elwes' character's (can he do just one movie where he plays an American that he doesn't slip out of his accent whenever he plays 'emotional?') wife and daughter and Danny Glover's detective character are utterly pointless and weigh the movie down unnecessarily when it should be centering on the two main characters.

Bad, cliched writing, barely adequate direction and scenery devouring actors combine to make this film barely watchable.

The filmmakers need to go and study the works of Japanese filmmakers such as Takashi Miike and learn how to do a proper tragedy/horror hybrid which they were trying to do.

And, for Chrissake, if you're going to do a plot point where a guy saws off his own foot to get out of a shackle, show some gore and spend a little money on a prosthetic stump, that covering his foot with a longer pantsleg is just bullshit.

Man, this movie really bummed me out. Ebert was too easy on it in giving it two stars.


1/2 babe (it only escapes a zero rating because I actually liked the little killer reveal at the end, but it came after two hours of wasted celluloid, cut about 90 minutes of this two hour film, and maybe I'd give it two babes).

Crash Near To Me

81-year-old walks away from crash

By: BEN BENTON Staff Writer
Source: The Daily Post-Athenian
11-09-2004

A Kingston man might agree with the saying among pilots that any landing you walk away from is a good one.

Around 1:30 p.m. Friday, McMinn County emergency personnel scrambled to the area of County Road 67, where local residents said a small, single-engine airplane went down in a hilly field.

Nearby resident Josh Guthrie said he was the first to reach the man, identified by authorities as 81-year-old John K. Franzreb of Kingston.

“When I got down there he was hanging upside down,” said Guthrie, who noted the pilot seemed calm and relatively uninjured.

...

“I asked him if he wanted us to call an ambulance and he said, no, that he was all right. I said, ‘I’m going to call them anyway,’ and he said, ‘Well, OK. But don’t call my wife,’” Guthrie laughed.

...

At the scene, it appeared that the pilot might have successfully landed the little canvas-covered aircraft had it not been for a barbed wire fence stretching across the field where he attempted his landing.

From the marks visible, it appeared the man got the plane on the ground and slowed down considerably before hitting the fence which folded the plane’s wings and turned it upside down.

...

Another nearby resident, Bill Woody, also talked with the pilot and had seen the plane circling with apparent problems.

“He was flying around my house next to the nursery,” Woody said. “He was going real slow and his engine kept cutting out and then it died on him.”

This is right out near my house and I didn't even know about it until I happened to see this story on the front page of the paper on the way out from work.

Gives me something to think about every time I hear one of those small planes buzzing by overhead (which is alot more often than you might think).

More Sound Files

Because nobody demanded it, here are some sound files from my favorite movie of all time, Rutger Hauer's homage to Zatoichi, Blind Fury!"

First, what is quite possibly the most clever line of dialogue in film, ever. (profanity alert)

Next, Nick (Rutger Hauer) tells us all why life is so difficult.

Finally, Nick reveals how witty he truly is.

And, one sound unrelated to Blind Fury, "Some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a Keyser Blade."