B is for Batman Returns

You may or may not recall that I once posted about Batman (see above). It was not what anyone would call a great post. It's hardly worth this moment of reflection. But strangely enough, it is far and away the number one reason people are visiting my blog.

That's right, somehere around 80% of the people visiting this site are here for that very picture of Batman. That means for every time you read this legitimately, four people just dropped by to check out Batman. In the last day and a half, 60 people have come here for Batman and Batman only.

Normally I'd offer several absurd explanations as to why this may be, but I can't come up with even one bizarre possibility. This makes no sense to me at all. None. So instead I'm just going to delete that post and blog more about whale explosions and monocle jokes.

Anybody got a good monocle joke?

2008 NBA Mock Mock Draft

We've once again arrived at the day before the NBA draft. My good friend Qualler reminded me that I once posted a mock draft and asked me if I would do one again. I'm amazed that I was actually able to find my 2007 MOCK draft, but I did. Now, the sequel.

Before I begin, a few thoughts on what changed from last year. Two teams who had picks in the 20s last year are picking #1 and #2 this year. Portland, who picked first last year, is now the trendy pick to dominate the league for the next million years. And, as predicted, The Chicken won rookie of the year. Basically, this league has never been more effed up.

Let's draft.

1. Chicago Bulls
Pick: Sparky the Seal
Chicago's new (and totally inexperienced) coach will be able to ease into the job by taking a trained seal on the team. Coaching in the NBA is often a trial-by-fire business, but a seal makes everybody look good. Unfortunately, this sets the tone for what will be an utterly ridiculous draft.

2. Miami Heat
Pick: traded to Memphis for half a dozen bagels and a ticket to the natural history museum
The surprisingly sudden decline of the '05-'06 champion will no longer seem so surprising. But hey, Dwayne Wade needs to eat, and who doesn't like natural history?
So...
2. Memphis Grizzlies (from Miami Heat)
Pick: The future
They definitely don't have one at the moment, so I'd say it's a wise pick.

3. Minnesota Timberwolves
Pick: A 30-win season
The 'Wolves are easily the losingest sports franchise in Minnesota state history, so they'll look to move up the ladder a bit by drafting a slight improvement in their win-loss record.

4. Seattle Supersonics
Pick: The Seattle Supersonsics
Though it wouldn't make sense for most teams to draft themselves, it does for Seattle. Two reasons: it helps give the team the identity it lacked last season, and it secures the rights for Kevin Durant to write a novel about an NBA team that is actually a different NBA team, which is actually the same NBA team.

5. Memphis Grizzlies
Pick: the past
With the future already in their draft baggies, it only makes sense for them to draft the past. Expect your new history textbooks to be released in early February by 40-Time-Champion-Grizzlies Press.

6. New York Knicks
Pick: Sing Sing Federal Prison
Controversial pick, but the Knicks had little choice but to draft a prison to send their players to. Expect at least one starter to get the death penalty before the end of the season.

7. Los Angeles Clippers
Pick: pick forfeited
For the second year in a row the Clippers are forced to forfeit their pick in retribution for the Marko Jaric-Sam Cassell trade. But this time it's because of the Clips' poor ice cream service to Timberwolves fans last season.

8. Milwaukee Bucks
Pick: Mustard
The Bucks have been looking for a good condiment to put on their bratwurst for some time. They're lucky mustard's still on the board at this point.

9. Charlotte Bobcats
Pick: bunny slippers
I do not understand why the Bobcats are a perennial lottery team. Oh wait, yes I do. It's cuz they're soft. If the players are going to keep it up, they're going to need some nice slippers.

10. New Jersey Nets
Pick: a soda
Don't expect the Nets to prepare for this draft at all. The only reason they end up with anything is because their GM is heard to say, "I could really go for a soda right now." Will the soda deliver on expectations?

11. Indiana Pacers
Pick: Reggie Miller's ghost
Two things wrong with this pick: Reggie Miller is not dead, and ghosts are notoriously poor ball-handlers. Look for the Pacers to dump their whole roster in the Ohio River when this pick doesn't pan out.

12. Sacramento Kings
Pick: robots with lasers
There are many teams that wish to undo the mistakes of the past, and since the time machine withdrew from the draft two weeks ago, Sacramento changed its position to annihilating the possibility for mistakes in the future. Their strategy is to unleash the robots on opposing teams, but expect the robots to turn against the Kings a third of the way into the season.

13. Portland Trail Blazers
Pick: Memories of the 2006 and 2007 NBA drafts
Portland, taking this whole promising young team thing a little too far, decides to rub it in everybody's faces that they totally rocked the last two draft years. It would have been wiser to draft a healthy knee or something so that Greg Oden could walk under his own power.

14. Golden State Warriors
Pick: superpowers for everyone on the team but Baron Davis
Baron Davis already has superpowers. Everybody else needs a reason to live--but superpowers will keep their minds off of that for a while.

15. Phoenix Suns (from Atlanta Hawks)
Pick: The Hypnotist
Responding to Atlanta's pick last year of The Magician, Phoenix takes his brother, The Hypnotist. While everybody's been talking about The Hypnotist's poor work ethic and slipping athleticism, he's better than the alternatives (an iceberg, or 2 tons of confetti).

16. Philadelphia 76ers
Pick: mustaches
You can never have too many mustaches.


17. Toronto Raptors
Pick: one ticket straight outta this league
I hate the Raptors. Get the heck out of the NBA, you stinky jerks. And take Canada with you.

18. Washington Wizards
Pick: The 1970s
Surprising pick, considering the Wizards weren't a team in the 70s and therefore would cease to exist once this pick is signed. But the 70s were a golden age for Washington. Watergate, Vietnam, Jimmy Carter. Good times.

19. Cleveland Cavaliers
Pick: a half-finished cloning machine
Good pick, considering even one clone of LeBron James would make this team unstoppable. But who's going to finish building the machine? Ben Wallace?

20. Denver Nuggets
Pick: books
If there's any NBA team that needs to learn how to read, it's the Nuggets (and maybe the Knicks). In my opinion, they should draft a tutor. You can't just open a book and learn how to read. Plus a good tutor could probably back up 'Melo at the 2.

21. New Jersey Nets (from Dallas Mavericks)
Pick: the same soda from before
No surprises here. After finishing that first soda, New Jersey's GM is heard to remark, "That soda was pretty good." The pick is announced to much applause, but because of the strict rules of the draft, no refill is delivered, as "that soda" technically refers to the soda picked originally.

22. Orlando Magic
Pick: Alexis Anjinca
Orlando, one of the least creative teams in the NBA, selects an actual basketball player. However, this particular basketball player is French, so I'm sure that the pick will end up being as worthless as the rest.

23. Utah Jazz
Pick: Season Two of Big Love on DVD
Though technically no one on the Jazz is Mormon, is married to more than one woman, or owns a DVD player, they go for the home town pick with HBO's Utah-based show. I bet Big Love will only play well with Andrei Kirilenko, who won't even be with the Jazz after this season.

24. Seattle Supersonics (from Phoenix)
Pick: The Portland Trail Blazers
Just in case picking themselves doesn't hold up, they'll back themselves up with the other team from the Pacific Northwest. Hopefully Commissioner David Stern's head will explode as contemplates how two franchises could actually be the same franchises while still somehow being different franchises though actually having been the same franchise all along.

25. Houston Rockets
Pick: a mechanical spine
It's time the Rockets come to terms with it--Tracy McGrady's back just doesn't work. You have to replace the whole darn thing. Yao, on the other hand, needs so many new parts that he'd take another 2-3 drafts to take care of.

26. San Antonio Spurs
Pick: a different cactus
Last year I predicted the Spurs would pick a cactus. I was wrong, but the guy they did pick decided not to join the NBA after all, so it turns out a cactus would have been better. However, the cactus from last year is now dead, so it's time to pick a different cactus.

27. New Orleans Hornets
Pick: a lifetime supply of whipped cream
They're going to fill their arena with this stuff. Look forward to the greatest 41 games of basketball you'll ever see--this year at wherever the Hornets play now.

28. Memphis Grizzlies (from LA Lakers)
Pick: Hank Williams
It would have made more sense for Memphis to draft the present, what with drafting the future and the past. But now they've got a long year ahead and a dead country singer to exhume.

29. Detroit Pistons
Pick: Al Gore
Kind of ironic, when you think about it. I mean, why would a team pick a vice president when there are so many regular presidents still on the board? But I guess that's not really irony, is it?

30. Boston Celtics
Pick: Al Gore
Didn't he just get picked? Or are they picking a different Al Gore? Seriously, though, why not Zachary Taylor?

The Meaning of Life

I encountered an interesting bumper sticker this morning. I tend to despise bumper stickers, and this one was no exception, but it asked a question that intrigued me. Or maybe it didn't intrigue me, but it seemed worth blogging about.

The question was this:
"What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?"

I have several thoughts about this, but they all revolve around the same idea. That idea being suicide. Because if this statement were true, we may as well all kill ourselves now. The alternative (a lifetime of hokey-pokey) is not especially appealing.

We've come a long way since the Rennaisance, sure, but the hokey pokey might be our last refuge for a meaningful life in this crazy world? Are video games, politics, and Cheetos no longer enough to satisfy the soul? And what if we invented robots to do the hokey pokey for us? Would we then become obsolete?

Actually, now I'm so horrified at the prospect of hokey-pokeying robots that I have to end this post. Pray that no mad scientists or mad robot-builders ever read this blog.

No Hope

Today is shaping up to be a long day. Each week I'm more impatient for Friday to end, and this week I was ready to be out for the weekend as of 12:30pm yesterday. So this extra day and a half of working is not something I'm enjoying.

Since I'm starting to think that dying of thirst in the desert would be a slight improvement, here's a short play about me dying of thirst in the desert.

ME: Woe is me! I'm dying of thirst in the desert!
(Ghost of Genghis Khan appears)
ME: Whoa, a mirage!
KHAN: I am not a mirage. I'm the ghost of Genghis Khan.
ME: What are you doing here?
KHAN: I'm here to guide you out of this desert.
ME: But there's no way out! It's just desert forever!
KHAN: (slaps me in the face) INSOLENT FOOL!
ME: Ow.
KHAN: But you are right. There is no way out.
ME: Then why did you slap me?
KHAN: The better question is, why am I not slapping you right now?
ME: I guess you're right.
KHAN: Indeed. (slaps me again)
ME: So what do we do now?
KHAN: Do you know if they have any Mongolian barbecue places around here?
ME: It's the desert.
KHAN: Where I am from, they have Mongolian barbecue in the desert.
ME: But you're from Mongolia.
KHAN: True.
ME: Do you know how to get to Mongolia from here?
KHAN: (pause) No.
ME: Great.
KHAN: (pause) Where are we?
ME: The desert.
KHAN: Ah yes. The desert.
ME: We're screwed, aren't we?
KHAN: Not we. You.
ME: Why aren't you screwed?
KHAN: Because I am a ghost. Also because I conquered China.
ME: Oh yeah.

It's a Joke

In my years of blogging, I've received several comments from people who, for one reason or another, take me seriously. When I blogged about Buffalo, Minnesota, a Buffalo native suggested that I reconsider my "stance" on not ever wanting to live there. Over a year after I had posted it, someone commented on my B is for Batman entry aggressively defending the hero (even though I had said literally nothing about him). Most recently, someone suggested that I keep track of my hitchhiking trip on some online journal to give tips to other travelers.

Now I welcome all comments, and I won't even make fun of them. But I'd like to clarify the apparently common misunderstanding that this blog is by any means grounded in truth or fact. It is not. It's all a joke. All of it. I haven't said anything serious here since 1970 (except for this one). I'm sorry if I betrayed your trust, very small number of people who I've never met. Trust is a fragile thing, and I'll try to rebuild it.

Which is why, henceforth, this blog will be no longer a house of lies. I feel too guilty for misleading those three people. Entertainment and humor should not take so great a toll on my conscience. So from now on I'll be devoting my writings to reviews of Broadway plays, detailed descriptions of things I find on the ground, and promotion for my new real estate business.

Would anyone like to buy a Brooklyn Bridge?

The Road

I know I haven't told many of you yet, but I'm planning a cross-country road trip. I'll hitchhiking around the whole country for the rest of the summer. Why? No reason. It's not like I'm running from the law or anything...yet.



Here's the route: I'm heading down south to Houston, west to San Diego, north to Seattle, then I'm going to try to score a boat trip through the Panama Canal to take me to Miami, and then north to Boston, and back west to Minneapolis. The boat part was so I wouldn't have to go through Iowa twice, which would have been really poor planning.

Now a trip like this generally isn't the most safe, so I'll go over a safety FAQ to set your worries at rest.

Where will you be staying?
I have a friend in Arizona, I think. Other than that, I'll be mostly sleeping in caves.

What will you do for food?
That's not even close to a real question.

What if you get attacked by bears?
I don't even think I need to prepare for this scenario. The bears will undoubtedly love me and accept me as one of their own.

Did you know hitchhiking's illegal?
Did you know that you're a liar?

Have you ever seen Milo & Otis?
Yes, and that's actually part of my inspiration for this trip. I'm hoping I'll meet a traveling companion and we'll have kittens together.

What's your favorite part of Milo & Otis?
Can you really have a favorite part of that movie? It's all so good.


Give me a call if you wanna meet up in Nebraska or something. Except that I probably won't ever be in Nebraska. Give me a call anyways and I'll see what my hitchhiking can do.

Afraid of Squirrels

Until this morning, I was never afraid of squirrels. Well, maybe mildly afraid of them, but only if they were surrounding me and trying to bite me. I could still probably outrun them if I needed to.

But this morning brought on new waves of fear. I was out for a walk, and in my neighborhood the morning squirrels tend to outnumber the outdoor people 30 to 1, and one of these squirrels happened to dart out of a hole in a cinderblock and into a tree. Except I totally thought it was leaping at my face.

I was getting paranoid about the squirrels before that happened. What with chasing each other out of bushes and around trees, I was sure they'd eventually turn on me. If it wasn't for that build-up of the nerves, I probably wouldn't have screamed, but I guess that's no excuse.

If I had a flamethrower, you better believe that there would be a lot of burning squirrels on my block. And there would also probably be a lot of exploded cars. And actually maybe not that many burning squirrels. I wouldn't be able to bring myself to incinerate something so cute. But I would still blow up all those cars.

It's June

Did anybody else realize that it's June? I totally have not been paying attention. The month's almost over, and this whole time I thought it was May. Seriously. There may have even been times that I thought it was April.

Why is that the best months hardly even seem like they exist. June is probably the #1 month in my book, and I missed half of it. Next thing I know it'll be October, it'll be winter, and almost everyone I know will locked themselves in their basements out of fear.

On the upside, though, it's Friday the 13th. That's...marginally interesting.

Opinions: New Jersey

I learned something new today. I learned that New Jersey has a ban on self-serve gasoline. A ban. Meaning it is illegal to pump your own gasoline. In New Jersey. You have to let a gas station employee pump it for you. You have to. You don't have a choice. New Jersey.

Does any of this make sense to anyone?

Though he may be about 50 years slow, New Jersey's current governor is finally proposing a repeal of this ban. He wants to give motorists the option to pump their own gas. Dumbfoundingly, the reaction to said proposal is mixed. Apparently there are a number of people who are not, in fact, heralding this proposal as a means of ushering New Jersey into the present century.

Check out this quote from Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, a Democrat from Middlesex County and chairman of the Transportation Committee: "Telling a motorist that self-serve will save them money at the pump is like telling someone that they could save money on a new home by building it themselves."

Now that's a confoundingly incompetent statement if I've ever heard one. For one, yes. Those are two comparable things to tell a consumer. You will save money on self-serve gasoline. You will save money if you build your own house. I should expect to see a rise in self-built homes in New Jersey as cost-conscious drivers respond to the assemblyman's remark.

However, I believe he's trying to tell us that self-serve gas will not provide nearly as quality of a product as full service. It takes skill to build a house, and it take skill to pump gas, the statement implies. Now, I don't know how anyone, let alone someone serving on a transportation committee, could legitimately believe such a thing. I know New Jersey isn't the most civilized of states, but even in Mississippi the pump jockey is not considered a skilled laborer. Are the attendants required to go to a specialized school for two years? Do employers require their attendants to have college degrees? Or are New Jersey politicians seriously concerned that self-serve motorists will blow up their cars because they handled the gas improperly?

Cyclops

Meet my new roommate: the Cyclops.


The Cyclops is a jerk. I didn't really notice at first, which is why I said he could move in with me, but it's just gotten worse and worse. It started with him never doing the dishes, but now he's luring wayward ships and explorers into our apartment and then crushing them with boulders. I know that there weren't any stipulations about crushing people with boulders in the lease, but there shouldn't have to be.

On top of all that, I try to talk to him about the problems, but he just bellows punches the walls. Come to think of it, he's only spoken in grunts and yells since he moved in. He might be illiterate. I guess you shouldn't make fun of somebody who's illiterate--especially when they only have one eye to begin with--but he doesn't need to be a jerk about it. I mean, if I was illiterate, I wouldn't go around yelling and punching things. I'd ask somebody to teach me how to read.


Don't get all sympathetic with him. He's a total jerk. I'm serious. If you tried to hug him and make him feel better, you'd be crushed beneath a rock in seconds. Never understimate how big of a jerk the Cyclops can be. That's one thing I've learned through all this. And also don't make monocle jokes. Hilarious though they may be, they will get you crushed by rocks. I've seen it happen too many times.

Root Beer: Deja Vu

I feel like I've blogged about root beer before.


This is that weird I've-blogged-so-many-times-that-I'm-no-longer-aware-of-what-I'm-blogging-about territory. Perhaps you can relate. I assume you can't, and that's OK, because this is about the weird feeling I'm having right now.

Root beer is totally awesome, and every time I touch the stuff my appreciation for it grows. Which is precisely why I may have blogged about it already--because there was some point in the past in which I was inspired by how much my appreciation for root beer has grown. And we are at a similar point again.

Have you ever heard of time-folding theory? Understandable if you haven't. It doesn't even have a wikipedia entry (or it might, but I didn't look very hard). But I didn't make it up. I've seen a bunch of people demonstrate it. They fold a piece of paper in half, then poke a hole through it, then unfold it and refold it until you get that they're simultaneously two separate holes and the same hole. It's pretty neat. But the theory is that time sometimes works the same way...somehow. Like Donnie Darko, possibly. Therefore, I think my life is a series of non-root-beer-related events that connect to a single repeated root-beer-related moment.

Sorry if that's too much science. Or too little science. Actually, I'm not sorry at all. I really enjoyed writing this, even if I maybe had written something about root beer before. Because I love root beer.

World Peace

This world is what most pundits would call a shambles. Nuclear bombs, wars, earthquakes, nation rising against nation. Why can't we all just get along? It's a question that's plagued the more naive among us for at least two generations. It's not an especially important question, nor is it especially funny. So why am I asking it? Because I know the answer, and I like rhetorical questions better than regular questions.

We can't get along because we don't like each other very much.

I happen to have the perfect solution to this problem. And I propose it to you, my relatively small (though increasingly spunky) readership, in the hope that you will talk about it a little bit and some important world leaders will overhear you on the bus.

Here's the idea: an international buddy system. We pair up nations of different cultures and backgrounds in hopes to foster greater understanding. We'll send our nation pairs on a month-long retreat in Vermont, and at the end they have to write a report about all the things they learned about each other.

Think about it. China and Sweden. Iran and Australia. Mexico and the Czech Republic. The world's problems will be healed in a matter of minutes!

Of course, if a nation's end-of-retreat report isn't up to standards, there are consequences. We'll send them so many ducks that they won't be able to sit down. We'll pave their streets with banana peels. We'll have a really boring-sounding guy read them science textbooks.

This is why, come November, I'm going to vote for as many hippies as I can. I don't know their names yet, but I'll make them up if I have to.

The Man Who (Thankfully) Had No Superpowers

"Quack," said the duck.
"What was that?" asked the man, who somehow believed the duck had insulted him.
The duck stared at him silently.
The man got particularly angry at that and said, "You're lucky I don't turn your pond into a volcano, or that I don't freeze it with my mind."
The duck cocked his head to one side, his confusion having grown beyond what his equilibrium could handle.
"Shut up," said the man.

----------

Later, the man was in the locker room at the gym.
"I almost turned a duck pond into a lake of fire this morning," he told another gym patron.
"What?"
"Well, I would have. This duck really pissed me off."
"You're not serious, are you?"
"I'm always serious," the man replied. He wanted to grow a mustache right in that instant so that he would look more serious, but he hadn't the power to do it. Instead, his towel fell off.
The other man laughed. "Man, now I can never take you seriously."
"You'd think differently if I had a mustache," he replied, raising an eyebrow.
"Dude, get that eyebrow down and just put your towel back on."

----------

One week later, the man went out for a bike ride. He was enjoying the day when all of a sudden a ladybug assaulted him. It landed right on his burgeoning mustache.
"Drat! A ladybug!" he exclaimed, and he nearly crashed trying to brush it away. "If only I were made of electricity," he said to himself, "then whatever touches me would be electrocuted. I'd never be bothered by bugs again."
Then he crashed his bike into a tree.
A duck strolled up to him and looked him in the eye. If the man could read the duck's thoughts, and of course he couldn't, he would have been able to tell that the duck was wondering if he was OK.

Broken Skeleton

What if every single one of my bones broke at the same time? That would suck beyond belief. I really doubt it would ever happen, but still, it wouldn't be good news if it did.

A few minutes ago I was worried that my neck would break. I'd just be sitting here, and all of a sudden, SNAP. Broken neck. Again, I really doubt it would happen, but better safe than sorry, right? Though I don't know how to be safe about spontaneously broken necks. Still, broken neck would be better than a broken skeleton.


If I had a choice between having a totally broken skeleton or to have no muscles, I would probably choose the totally broken skeleton. Cuz check out that rhino: sure, all his bones are intact, but he's dead. Granted, he could still be alive and have no muscles (in theory), but the he'd look pretty ugly.

So I'm really glad that I have an intact skeleton and all my muscles.