Hopping an Emerging Meme Before It's Woefully Unfunny

Wait...I'm sorry, that's totally unfair and biased. Here:

Grim Tidings From the Future

PEOPLE OF THE PAST. Down with your hu-la whoops and malt shops! I come from the year 2009 and I bear grim tidings! Behold and fear:

- On your television show, LOST, the island is revealed to be the Cloverfield monster! Tremble!

- Your Academy Award shall by won by Kevin Spacey MARK 6! His speech shall be unbearable and lengthy, and punctuated with Zenon-Ray bursts from his horrible, horrible ocular cannons.

Your switch-over to high-definition television tubes will fraught with peril and flickering images of Ryan Seacrest, or possibly Mike Rowe! Beware!

Your economy is doomed! Raid your cabinetry and places-of-storage for zinc, as it will spell your salvation. Avast!

Global warming has made ice-production futile! Foster now your tolerance for room-temperature Doctored Pepper and Iced Tea Leaves!

Oh, and also, a black man is totally president.

END TRANSMISSION.

It's a FACT! Part 1

The next time someone hands you a silver dollar, examine the year on the coin; this is the year of your death, as predicted by your 7th-grade algebra teacher and Nostradamus.

If you are ever stranded in the desert, you can find water by sending $3.50 and a self addressed, stamped envelope to the US Department of Water.

Count the number of times that a cricket chirps in 30 seconds and divide that number by 6; the answer may surprise you.

Here's a trick: when tying your shoes, tie the left one first; this will prevent werewolves from attacking you.

When cutting a pizza, pie, or round cake, divide the number of desired servings by the circumfrence of the dish, then multiply by the height of each slice divided by pi. Calculate to the nearest 100th decimal place. Show your work.

In 1943, a chef from Hamburg, Germany mixed ground beef with spices, then was killed by werewolves. The hamburger was already in existence.

In the southern hemisphere, birds fly east for the winter instead of south, because vast air currents from secret volcanoes blow them that way.

You can determine the current windspeed by looking into a mirror and repeating 'windspeed wonder weather' 100 times, then calling your weather advisory bureau.

The burrito was invented in 1912 by Mexican immigrants seeking a passage to the Suez Canal.

According to Scandanavian folklore, you and your whole goddamned family are a bunch of peckerheads, jack.

The Des Moines Abbatoir was founded in 1942 as a means of hastening the Dark One's return to Earth.

According to the International Centre of Lloyd, most American households are dangerously underlloyded.

Count the number of cicada 'swells' in a 1 minute period and multiply the answer by your age; that is the distance, in meters, to the center of the earth from where you are now standing.

Placing a rubber band around your scrotum will help reduce your gas mileage.

The capybara is the only mammal that openly disdains you, even after you spent all that money on capybara-related merchandise at the gift shoppe.

You can always figure out the time of day by examining the shadow of a Box Elder. No-one knows why this is true.

According to the International Red Cross, your interest in a career with them is appreciated, but they are not currently looking for a warlord with ties to the Welsh Mafia, as the position has been filled.

If you are ever caught shoplifting, do not call me, as I do not know you and am unqualified to offer legal advice.

TO BE CONTINUED! LATER!

Things That May Have Contributed to the US Economic Meltdown

Key to economy left on subway.

Too many fucking Wayans.

Cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush replaced with actual George W. Bush in 2002.

Financial leadership farmed to CEOs with no working knowledge of finance or leadership.

Offshore financial drilling operations failed to penetrate speculated cash-shale deposits.

US financial system quietly converted to worthless dollars many years ago.

'Free-For-All Financial Fuckfest' economic model somehow flawed.

Shit costs money, man.

Not enough Wayans.

The Liberal Media (all 3 of them)

Not enough brush-clearing in Crawford.

Like an unleashed dog, free market ran wild and unfettered before being crushed by a van in front of the Peterson's house.

Not enough enough stress-ball-squeezing, axe-body-spray-smelling, power-broking asstards in the financial sector.

Culture of irresponsibilty and lack of oversight fostered by current administration led to...nah, that can't be it—probably communists.

Things I Have Found While Walking

As an American who does not have a driver's license, I often find myself walking places, sometimes in the rain, sometimes while crying. Seriously, walking is great, I totally recommend it. Unless, of course, you need to get somewhere, then I suggest you find a ride.

I especially like walking through alleys because I like seeing the true side of the city, the snarls of powerlines and shoddy masonry, the haphazard do-it-yourself patios threatening to spill onto the cracked and uneven asphalt. And although I'm not a dumpster diver, I have found some pretty cool things discarded in alleyways:

A black metal-lattice shelf: now sitting in my music/art/storage room, holding up my home-brewing supplies, awaiting that day when I reinvigorate my erstwhile beer-making hobby.

An acoustic guitar: played for a day, then the neck snapped off. I put it back in the dumpster from whence it came, and someone else took it home, snapped neck and all.

A bike: an attempted gift, rescued from the dumpster, for my girlfriend (sorry ladies: this classy dude is taken!) The bike was rejected.

A television: It worked for awhile, then started emitting a high-pitched whine that, at first, I was half convinced was entirely manufactured by my psyche. Then the tube went out. Easy come, easy go.

But, so far, nothing tops the gem I discovered while walking through the alley behind my work today:



Yes, that's an elk leg. I'm not sure how I would feel about finding the rest of the elk on my walk home.

A Very Stupid Post 3: Face 'fun'

So a friend (the one who helped me tunnel out of that Eritrean prison with shoehorns - more on that later) showed me this site: http://flashface.ctapt.de/. I promptly drew my own face, but only after drawing these two faces:

1) 'Amelie' star Audrey Tautou's 1962 Omaha 'Huskers!' yearbook photo:


And, 2) Conan O'Brien with down syndrome:


So, visit this website, and draw something fairly offensive and insensitive, and send it to me here.

Reasons Why I May Not Win This Nationally Televised Beauty Pageant

Shouldn't have punched Celebrity Judge Jimmy Carter in the neck

Forgot to shave 'flip-flop zone'

Thong bikini worn backwards

Seig Heil-ing Minnie Mouse tattoo visible through mesh 'CLAMDIGGIN' t-shirt

Talent showcase: breakbelching not as impressive as in rehersals

When asked 'What does the American Dream mean to you?', should not have thrown up

Perhaps looking directly into the camera and pledging to murder Al Pacino should only have been done once

Totally unprepared for rattlesnake cage match with Miss Idaho

Should not have had that second helping of Szechuan bison enchiladas last night

How to Make a Blodge Under Duress

Blodges are hard to make. You need to have something to say, you need to have a style, and—most importantly—you must update your blodge every single day. Of course, I satisfy only 5 of these 7 requirements, but that's at least 87%, so I think I still win.

However, in defense of my "oh-hey-lets-not-post-shit-for-a-week" philosophy, I'd like to explain a crisis gripping the Estates at Pixel Creek household. You see, we have a massive infestation of cute. It's a fucking crisis:



OH THE HUMANITY. You may not think .25 pounds of cute is bad but, people, it's...BAD. Especially when the infestation is as interested in cuddling and purring as it is in biting your toes while you attempt to sleep.



AH DEAR SWEET JESUS. So, if you want to start one of these blodges that's sweeping the intersphere, make sure you have purged your house of horrible, horrible, delicious and needy cute things. Make sure, also, that you don't need to get up early to take public transportation to Boulder for a business meeting, because that just won't work, man.

Also, heed the opinions of others. Here is one reaction to the current infestation as exhibited by a mainstay on the Pixel Creek scene:



...these are the types of faces my grandfather makes when notified that dinner will be occurring at 7:30 instead of 4:45. Sadly, that is not a joke. Anyway. Hopefully this infestation will be somehow addressed soon. As it is, my main plan of defense is just to giggle and poke the cute thing in it's soft, squishy belly. What hath God wrought.

Coke vs. Pepsi

I've had occasion to indulge in an utterly pointless interior dialog about the merits of Coke vs. Pepsi; I often drink neither. These instances usually happen while I'm waiting in line at the taco place, wondering why they serve one instead of the other...did someone harbor a preference when setting up the business?

Did some eager distribution salesman pester them with sales calls until they relented? Did they go to the mall in the 80s and take place in the Pepsi Challenge, carrying forth the scars into their adult years when restaurant founding blossomed from dream into reality? How does one choose?

For me, it's all about the words. 'Coke' is terse and matter-of-fact, while 'Pepsi' sounds like someone with a lip problem was trying to say something else. Case closed, let us all get on with the real debates: soft serve vs. fuel injection.

Next up: Dominos vs. Pizza hut vs. Eating a Handful of Dogshit and Sand and Tomato Sauce.

An Ominous Portent?

I was walking to work this morning with my head lowered in abject submission, my eyes scanning the ground for change or bits of discarded plastic, as usual. Anyway, on the sidewalk I noticed a bit of movement and, looking closer, I saw a honey bee and a wasp locked in some sort of struggle.

They were grappling with each other face to face, each trying to sting the other, but in their positions, neither could flex their abdomen far enough to deliver the barb. They rolled on the concrete, buzzing angrily. They sort of reminded me of those pathetic fights you sometimes see in front of bars or hair salons, where inexperienced or out-of-shape combatants just roll around on the ground with each other, cursing and grunting.

So I watched for a few moments, thinking that the wasp would probably win this one, eventually. Then, the most bizarre thing happened... the wasp changed his (her? its?) position and picked up the honey bee and flew away with it, slowly and noisily like a helicopter airlifting a VW bug. It careened slowly into some ivy on a wall, then buzzed away into a clutch of small trees, its captor buzzing in protest. Is this normal? Is this the way nature works?

I never really thought about the sort of interactions that must go on between wasps and bees. They don't seem to intermingle and, until now, I had never seem them hostile with each other. I assumed they would maybe have some sort of kinship, as they are both in the business of causing me to yelp and become irrational.

But, moreover, does this incident perhaps have some sort of portent? You shall see a red sun in the west, or a great bird will descend from the sky, you will be met by a mysterious stranger from afar, you will see a flying wasp carrying a honeybee, etc.

I ate Chinese food the other night, and the fortune in my cookie said, "You will receive wise counsel from a friend." Somewhere, perhaps in Omaha or Florida or Chile or Space, someone opened a fortune that said "You will see a wasp fighting a bee, and then the wasp will fly away with the bee, and after posting about it on your dumbass blog, you will get herpes and run over" and then a friend of theirs walked up and gave them some wise counsel. This is the way nature works.