The Internet is pretty great for the most part.  It can be massively entertaining, you meet up with distant people you’d never have met any other way… Unless the world really is putty in the hands of Fate and if there were no Internet right now, we really would somehow run into all of these people in strange, strange ways.. But I mean I am on my second sentence of an article and I probably shouldn’t ALREADY be getting distracted from the topic at hand.  Wait!  I haven’t even introduced the topic!  I was starting with a slightly-relevant hook to trick you into reading what I am going to be discussing with myself!  Browser-based Internet Games.

Yeah we've played it. No it isn't fun in any way. Oh you know.. probably like 50 hours, all told. We'll probably go back to it.

What I was trying to say is that the Internet is entertaining, but eventually one day you find yourself being the only person on, so you have no delicious conversation to distract you from whatever it is you’re really supposed to be doing.  You have sickened of reading news and humor sites (I assume that’s what you guys do, I am trying to reach out and relate with you here).  You aren’t in the mood for pornography because sometimes that happens even though you don’t like to admit it.  I refuse to let assumptions make an ass of me in this article!  So what you do is turn to some trivial game to pass the time until time zones in other parts of the world become agreeable and you can talk to people again.  Hey, by the way did you notice that I didn’t even pay service to the idea that maybe you would eat, bathe, sleep, or work on outside projects?  Haha.  I mean, I like to consider myself as sort of ridiculous, but I don’t really want to be downright absurd.

This is what has happened to me.  The turning to games.  You may have noticed past articles and mentionings of “Amanda plays Farmville” and “Pet Society isn’t so bad, even though it really actually is” and “HORSELAAAANNNDDDDDD!”  So this is by no means a current development in my/our existences.  I think actually this bug has gotten most of the internet’s population.  Some people fall to it as though it was a gambling problem, pouring in real life money for “coins” or whatever the word is in that game’s world for game money.  God, game money is so important.  These games are heavily stacked in favor of people who actually give them money for some reason.  It’s awful.  It’s the worst.  Needless to say, I am a proud person.  I will forever be the equivalent of a Dumb Game Hobo, living on the game’s streets, doing my best with what I have.  Carving out a paltry living on the scrubby side of a mountain trying to plant a small vegetable crop.. just enough to get by.  That’s all I need.  The joy in these games is obviously playing at all!  Even though they are all deeply flawed and cause us all needless torment and vexation.

To conclude this ridiculously long introduction to a throwaway article, let me say: I will review the current small list of games that my friends and I have been consumed by on google+.  It is up to date.  It is up to the MINUTE up to date, really.  Yes, I am writing this article because I am out of time and moves on all of my games right now.

Zombie Mothafuckin’ Lane

Zombie Lane got us early on.  And by “us” I mean “me and my friend, Melissa.”  In the young days of G+, we noticed a game section and scowled.  ”What!” we cried.  ”Google+ is just going to be as dumb as Facebook I guess!  Games?  Booo!”  (I, at least, had stopped playing games on Facebook like two years ago because I was annoyed by how they required you to continually flood your friends’ newsfeeds with embarrassing things.  I think they have since fixed that, but the damage had been done for me.  So most of the games on google+ are also on Facebook, okay?  I just don’t use them there.  GOT IT??)  Then we immediately clicked and perused the small selection of games.  Many were sort of lame, or dull, or just like, you know, “bubble blast” and other things that are fun and only take a moment and are okay to do in between messaging people and such.  But then we saw Zombie Lane, and man, it was pretty cute!  Look at it!

Welcome to my home away from home! I am being pummeled by zombies as "Spouse Man" looks on.

So you like are sucked in by the general cutieness of these zombies.  And I don’t even LIKE zombies that much!  But these guys are okay.  They shamble their best.  You are a person of gender and you have to do these set tasks in order to protect yourself from this zombie horde.  You invite your friends who lose interest after a few days, but it’s okay, you can still “visit” them and earn rewards.  So you don’t really give a shit.

Zombie Lane is fun because you collect items to build other items. Sure, that sounds like other games, but what might you need in a zombie apocalypse? And what would you even have around? Duct taping a gasoline can to a water gun, tying a bowling ball to the end of a rope, and putting nails in a bat sound just likely enough to work. You even get to watch yourself swing the bowling ball and fire the flamethrower at the unsuspecting zombies of varying careers.  This gives you a psychological satisfaction that causes you to feel justified in crafting bizarre weapons instead of keeping the house clean, or fulfilling occupational obligations!

The game isn’t all that, though. Turns out being a bored, aimless, homebody is too much for Digital Chocolate, the makers of Zombie Lane. You see, at least thrice we’ve reached so far in the game that we ran out of missions entirely. Whenever they list an impending update, you’ll have to wait about three times as long as they promise. Is it worth it? Well, for a zombie circus and a weird alien crash site I would have waited even longer! (A whole minute, even.)

Get supersoaked with FIERY DEATH, horrid zombie clown!

It all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  A perfect waste of time, watching the goopy destruction of villainous monsters.  Saving the day in this game world frozen in time forever.  Finishing impossible tasks such as “kill a million billion zombies” and “plant/harvest a zillion arbitrarily listed crops” and “help your friends as many times as you can until your brains fall out of your face and you burst into flame,” you are happy as a mule on the moon (the moon is made of hay in that scenario).  You may stress in a way that only a game this pointless will make you stress, but it is good stuff.  BUT THEN.  The flaws appear.  Hey, we can’t send gifts to each other!  Wow, we have tasks that can only be helped by friends but when they try, the game doesn’t count it!!  WOW THIS IS FUN!!!

But does it stop us from playing until one day they (might) fix it?  No.  We just bitch and then wait impatiently until the moves build back up or we can harvest our cabbage.

Backyard Monsters

Switching gears, we finish up our last click on Zombie Lane.  Our last curse word directed at the developers of it still warm on our dry, cracked lips (we forget to stay hydrated), we then move to Backyard Monsters – an unexpected delight.

G+ has slowly been releasing more and more games.  I had been playing some others which, now that I have stopped, I can’t remember why I bothered enduring them, but I can only play about three at a time, I guess, and I start to just naturally forget the ones that don’t keep my interest as well.  Anyway, Melissa was all, “omg have you played Backyard Monsters?  Get it!!” And because I have very little will of my own, and Melissa has never steered me wrong when it comes to choosing how to eat up precious minutes of my rapidly depleting store left in my lifetime, I immediately got in on that Backyard Monsters action.  And boy do I not regret that decision!!

Home Sweet Home Away from Home.

Twigs, putty, goo, pebbles, shiny… it took us a little while to get used to this game. The whole tutorial in fact! But after that, it is second nature to build our little goo monsters into a battle we know full well they will not win. We pump our little resource factories away, saving up to upgrade our weapons and hatcheries. It’s a little monster paradise. And then your immunity timer runs out for the first time, and you are attacked so fully that you think you will never recover.

This is Melissa's monster yard. She needed help. I helped her.

Having friends in this game is a huge advantage. They can knock full minutes off of your two day upgrades and sending you valuable resources that will soon be stolen from you. No, that is too cynical, but here’s the deal. If you are a lady on the internet, well you know how it goes right? Turns out that being a lady playing an internet game is also a good way to draw painful attention on yourself. None of our penis-laden friends have been quite so slaughtered and have quickly climbed our friend ladder to the front.  By the way, interestingly, this is the only game where our other, less-sad friends are STILL playing!  Probably because they are boys and are therefore expressing their inner warriors and meanwhile Melissa and I are getting pillaged almost every day. BUT WE ARE STILL PLAYING THIS SUCKER.  We must like the attention!

Where's all this aggression stemming from, Trey? Why do you keep attacking me? Ransacking my poor Town Hall. I didn't do anything to you! And I never will as long as you have such insane defense towers every three spaces in your yard. ;(

And here we find the only actual flaw to Backyard Monsters.  Which isn’t really a flaw, because it isn’t the result of bad code writing or whatever.  They never overreach themselves.  It is just that other players are better than we are and it makes us frown and huff and puff and whine a little and start private threads on google+ that include only your friends who play this game so we can list all of the people who keep attacking us repeatedly so that they can, in turn, attack those guys.  So they can, in turn, try to attack those guys and instead get whipped by their defenses because they seriously must be spending real money because my god who can have THAT many laser cannons??  Ugh.

Gardens of Time

Or “That Time Garden Game,” as we often call it.  This game has quite possibly the stupidest plot in all of video game history. You are some sort of time agent and you visit places trying to recover anachronistic items hidden among the cluttered rooms and landscapes. The game starts with some sort of uninteresting and hard-to-follow argument among other time agents, one of which I guess has recruited you into the time cabal.  However, ignoring the inexplicably complicated story in Gardens of Time makes way for all the good stuff: time wasting. You are given a series of scenes in which you find a list of items, starting with 6 per scene and (very) slowly increasing. It’s fun! And you can even pretend it’s worthwhile, since it almost feels like you’re accomplishing something. Never mind about that watch or that $20 bill you lost in your real apartment, find the rubber ducky, tribal mask, and cigar in this picture of a filthy London apartment!  A filthy London apartment THAT NEVER BECOMES CLEANER.  EVER.

OUT, DAMN SPOT!

That’s right.  This game is basically a picture-find that never changes except that it does have SO many anachronistic items in there that sometimes you get different items to find.  Eventually, you just memorize the whole image and click in the right spots without even looking up at it except for the briefest of moments.  This allows you to compete with your friends’ time scores and feel a strange sense of accomplishment (maybe it is a type of brain exercise?) and try not to feel worried that you are replacing other precious memories with an image of the layout of a market street in ancient China, or a scene set next to the Nile in [undisclosed time period] Egypt.  We can assume that Egypt is always very ancient though because what else has Egypt done ever?

The best part, besides the distracting from thinking about how our lives are going, is that you get to decorate your own Victorian Style Garden.  HAHA DID I REALLY JUST WRITE THAT??  God, it is the best part though.  You decorate it with artifacts you find, and it gives you “reputation” which allows you to open more scenes and more chapters and learn more boring plot twists amongst these asshole characters you will never care about because they are all annoying.  The garden mentioned in the title is useless. I mean, really.  They could have just dispensed with the plot entirely and just given us picture-finds and we still would have played all day and all night and talked about it for hours out of each day while we wait for our energy to come back.  But I guess this is where the *absolute* best part of the game comes in. When you visit your friends you can hide a little present among their cluttered garden. It’s actually really hard to find! You also get to play extra find-em-ups when you visit your friends. They’re on a 60-second timer and give you a lot more items to find, which is nice, but it quickly makes you realize that you need more than 60 seconds. It takes you about 60 seconds to realize, I guess.  You become discouraged for a moment and then remember that maybe you have enough energy to clean that damn London Apartment again.

My home away from home sweet home away from home.

Flaws?  Of course there are flaws.  We haven’t even started listing the flaws.  First of all, I am pretty sure it doesn’t really let you help your friends, or allow them to help you, even though everywhere you look it is like, “ask for your friends’ help in doing this stupid task like UPGRADE BIG BEN what does that even MEAN??”  With the amount of energy you receive in the game, you can only play about 6 times per sitting before you run out. If your friends were able to send you gifts, it might be easier to get more energy, but alas, it doesn’t work. You can send and send until your Backyard Monsters upgrades are done and your Zombie Lane energy is back, but it won’t do a thing. Neither will sending your friends their wishlist items. Or, if it does let you help, and you are getting helped, we haven’t really discovered where the help or gifts are deposited…  Maybe eventually the plot will reveal that the supposed possible-villainous character has been stealing our presents and we will get them all at the end of the game when we will not even need them?  Somehow I doubt it.

What a cruel, cruel tease.

Meanwhile, the garbage in our own homes has long since toppled from the top of Mt Trashcan and Mt Filthsuvius continually threatens to erupt, and all of our hopes and dreams are forgotten and replaced by details of the Time-Romance being played out by poorly written characters in this game.  Sometimes I think that if I had taken up a heroin addiction, I would at least have a reason to leave the house.  However, I know what is going on here.  I am having that moment of lucidity that comes with not having clicked mindlessly at a teensy graphic looping on my screen for almost an hour.  …. Almost an hour!?  Oh man, I bet our energies have replenished!!  See you doggies LATER!

A new year is rolling around, and of course you know what that means.  Besides the fact that old people are going to take twice as long in line writing checks because they’ll put down the wrong year.  It means that most of you will have those stupid-assed “New Years Resolutions” going on.  In case you have been living under a rock or don’t have any fat relatives, a new years resolution is something a person vows to do starting at the beginning of the new year.  MOST OF THE TIME this involves losing weight, getting in shape, etc.  Because for some odd reason it just isn’t that appealing during the summer to start losing weight so your diabetes doesn’t take your other foot.  

If you are making a resolution this year, chances are this isn’t your first time doing so.  It’s also pretty likely that you are making the same resolution from last year.  That’s because you failed.  No, it’s not because you ended up busy with work, or family, or that you were sick.  It is because you made a promise to yourself and you failed to follow through.  You should be ashamed, but chances are you don’t even know the meaning of the word shame.  I’ve been out to enough malls and seen enough of the general public to know that “shame” does not exist.

So yeah, you failed before and you are gonna fail again.  You might be sitting there right now with the pride you’ve been able to piece together from the few shreds remaining, telling me that there is “No gosh darn way” you will fail.  I applaud you for being so sure of yourself, but I’m also pleased to hear that because it just means your fall will be even harder.  I know you have your excuses.  Chances are you’ve already memorized them so that mid-year in 2011 when someone asks why you seem to actually be gaining weight you can go down the line of reasons that conveniently take all of the blame off of you and put it on other people and situations.  But I know the real reasons for your failure.  I know the real reasons why you will not succeed with your resolutions.

I’ve got your fat fucking number.

Reason 1:  YOU ARE LAZY

No need to beat around the bush here, let’s get down to the most obvious reason.  When you make a promise to do something that involves a measure of hard work, you are more than likely setting yourself up for doom because of this first reason.  Look back at that sentence, right now.  About halfway through, you will notice the words “hard work.”  You are probably finding yourself in a sweat right now.  A sweat usually reserved for vigorous exercising or summer-time sex that was so spontaneous that you didn’t have a chance to turn the fan on… and even though you look over a few times while in mid-thrust thinking of switching it on, you pass for fear of having to hear some bitching.

You want to reach that goal, but you have absolutely no desire to put in the work that is necessary for achieving it.  More than likely you’ll never acknowledge your laziness, and you are destined to failure every single year.  Now, if only you could harness the energy you put into avoiding responsibilities and transfer it over to something productive.  There would be no stopping you.

The cats don't care because they tore open a bag of kibble.

Reason 2:  YOU HAVE NO CONCEPT OF TIME

So you aren’t quite the kind of person who falls in to Reason 1, but you are close.  While you do put forth the initial effort to get started on your goal, you quickly stop after a short period of time.  You might make it a couple of weeks, or a few days, or maybe a whole month, but you WILL stop what you are doing and revert back to your usual lifestyle of hitting the bottle the moment you get home from work.  That nagging wife and disappointing children don’t look so bad when your brain is as blurry as your vision.

Why do you quit after awhile?  Simply because you have no concept of time and how long it takes for things to take place.  Do you really think you are going to lose 50 pounds in two weeks?  Do you really think you are going to lose 10 pounds in two weeks?  Normally you get excited and encouraged in the first week because you drop several pounds.

IF YOU ARE FAT AS SHIT AND YOU LOSE SEVERAL POUNDS IN A WEEK, THIS IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT!

Now shove your hollow joy in our faces until you rollercoaster back up and beyond.

You’re losing weight rapidly because you have so goddamn much weight to lose.  It’s no big deal, and no we don’t want to hear about it.  The real test is in a week when all of a sudden you stop losing, and reality sinks in… this will not be a cake-walk.  Not that your fat ass needs to be part of a cake-walk.  When all of a sudden the weight stops dropping, the previously enthused and superior-feeling (because as soon as a fat person starts losing weight they automatically somehow become better than everyone around them) turn to absolute shit.  Bold claims of “this diet just isn’t working” are usually heard echoing, with the person saying it probably hoping that nobody remembers being told just how well the diet was working the week before.

It ain’t easy, and it ain’t gonna happen overnight.  Just because you put on 200 pounds in a year, doesn’t mean it’s gonna melt off in that time.

Reason 3:  YOU’RE A BORN FAILURE

Kill yourself.

Reason 4:  YOU SECRETLY WANT TO DIE

First of all, you should be taking the advice I offered for Reason 3.  This type of person is usually only forming their resolution around what they think their family and friends want to hear.  While they may claim it is coming from a health standpoint (whether it be losing weight, no longer smoking, etc.), it is just simply because they are tired of hearing their significant other bitch at them for not being the person they married.

To sidetrack a little, I’ve got a tip for people who claim that.  Before you trash your partner for not being “the person you married,” make sure you have a real good look in a nearby reflective surface.  No, your husband didn’t used to look like a fatter version of Dan Aykroyd, but your tits didn’t used to rest on your shoestrings either.

It's never supposed to turn out this way.

Your family wants you to get better, but deep down you don’t want that for yourself.  You go to your doctors appointments and listen to him ramble on and on about your various problems.  You know the risk every time you take that smoke, or eat that bucket of chicken.  You tell the doctor you want to get better, you tell your family you want to live a long life with them… but you know better than that.  You’ve adopted the way of thinking that most people in your position probably should.  You just want it to be over.  Of course you’re too gutless to do it yourself, and instead of a fast and painless death you think it wiser to experience a slow, painful death that will be a gigantic burden on those who care about you.

Granted that nobody probably really gives a shit about you, but lord just consider the hospital bills you’re gonna put off on people.  Take a break from being a hambeast for once and be a decent human.

If I Am One of the Above, Is There Hope?

No.

What If I Change and Start Trying Real Hard?

You won’t.

So… What Do I Do?

See Reason 3.

God dammit.

There’s this thing called sledding that people sometimes do when it gets cold enough to freeze your dog solid and a few inches of snow happens to be covering the ground. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I’m sure many of you have even participated in it at some point in your life. Nothing beats memories of your parents dragging you to a large hill when you’re barely old enough to walk, and then pushing you off of it on a small plastic board at fantastic speeds. It’s where every good childhood scar starts. I, personally, haven’t really gone sledding much in my life. And the only reason I’d consider going now is to simply try and hurt myself and the other people I’m with as much as humanly possible. Which is exactly the mindset I was in the other day when Super Friend Ronnie asked me if I felt like dying. I replied with a swift “God yes” and the deal was done.

A Brief Example of Why I’m Scarred For Life

Oh children, if only you knew what was to come

Like most kids, my parents took me sledding a couple of times when I was smaller. I think I was close to something like eight or nine or some shit. Basically that age where you’re like “EVERYTHING IS NEATO” and you simply have no fear of anything on Earth, because you have yet to seen the consequences of most things that would hurt you. This is how I was as well. Little did I know that that world was about to come crashing down when my Dad suddenly asked me if I wanted to go sledding. I, of course, said yes. Do I regret my decision now? Yes. Yes I do.

Now, before you start throwing that whole psychological shit at me proclaiming that something is only as bad as you make it out to be, know this: My family was poor as fuck. And no matter what anyone says, that makes a HUGE difference in terms of how much you can enjoy your childhood. Like when I went swimming and had to use other people’s swim trunks. Or watching other kids go on vacations to cool places like Disneyworld, or Six Flags, while our vacations culminated with a trip to the mall, where I could look at things that I COULD NEVER OWN. My Dad never helped either…

Dad: See that toy?
Little Jeremy: YEAH IT’S COOL!
Dad: Yeah. Well you can’t have it. Go look at shit you can afford. Like… say… nothing. In fact, just go to the car and sit there until we come out.
Little Jeremy:

And sledding was no different. Because of our measly income, we weren’t able to go sledding with the most basic thing that you actually need to go sledding with. Namely a sled. Now you might think that not having a sled would defeat the whole purpose of ever trying such a thing. You obviously have not been poor. Poor people will not stop doing something just because they lack something vitally important. No, they will improvise and use the worst possible things ever to get the job done, which produces many moments like this:

Poor Guy 1: HAY MAN THE CAR ENGINE AINT WORKIN’
Poor Guy 2: SHIT MAN THAT’S FUCKED UP HOW WE GONNA GET TO THE TOBBACCO STORE IT’S FORTY MILES AWAY
Poor Guy 1: LET’S RIDE THE LAWNMOWER INSTEAD
Poor Guy 2: HYUCK!

God forbid I simply skip sledding altogether and not participate until we could save up a few years and buy a six dollar sled. No, we didn’t need a sled. We had motherfucking garbage bags.

Now, common sense will tell you very quickly that going down any type of slope in a small bag is not a good idea. Last I heard, the Mafia does it when they want to kill someone. Not when they want to show someone a good time. But my Dad, being the pioneer in stupidity that he was, saw nothing wrong with this idea, and was positively psyched about the whole plan. As was I. Like I said, I was young and naive. You could have told me I was going over the edge of a volcano in that garbage bag and I would have probably pissed myself in excitement.

Not surprisingly, once we arrived at the hill, we were the only people using such a device, and I must admit that there was a fair amount of embarrassment in having my Dad shove me in a garbage bag and roll me around in it. I’m sure all the other Dads got a good laugh from it at least, including him. I was still pretty excited, at least until I was pushed down the hill for the first time. The hill was already pretty haggard from the millions of kids going down it already, so putting me in a paper-thin garbage bag and being pushed down it was about on par with having a heavyweight boxer punch you in your ass every second or two. Needless to say, my first impression of “WOO THIS IS FUN” at the top of the hill, quickly turned into “I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL” moments later. My Dad, not understanding what it sounds like when you’re own child has broken his hip in thirty different places, tells me to quit being a baby and enjoy myself. Not surprisingly, I don’t really remember much more of the day.

Finding Someone to Endure Pain

And so that’s really all I knew about sledding as I grew up. I simply took it to mean when someone asked me to go sledding with them, that they wanted to get hurt really bad, as that was my basic idea of it. So every time after that, when I went sledding, someone was going to get hurt pretty bad. So most people did not enjoy going sledding with me, as they simply didn’t appreciate a well-delivered clothesline as they came down the hill. And going sledding alone is like taking pictures of your penis. It’s just sad, and not at all right. So a friend was needed.

This is where Ronnie comes in. We’ve covered Ronnie in previous articles, and if you’re familiar with him, then you should know that he’ll probably die before he’s thirty. He doesn’t care what happens to him. You could hit him in the back of the head with a crowbar, and after a few days in the emergency room, he’d probably get up, call you a fag, and then ask if you wanted to play Mario Kart. It’s all in a day’s routine for him. So naturally this is the guy to go sledding with. Now, it’s just a matter of finding a place to sled in this godforsaken town.

The City Made of Flat

Behold, the only hill in Indiana. Note how it isn't much of a hill at all.

Next, we had to find a hill suitable enough to go down. And since our fantastic city (Indianapolis) is about as flat as a fecal pancake, this is no easy task. Scientists will tell you that this is because a big assed glacier sat on the midwest a billion or so years ago, and depending on what season it is, appears to still be here. Yes, EVERYWHERE is flat. As you can imagine, we are short on scenic views. OCCASIONALLY you might see a small hill, but it’s usually a long-dead bum covered up with newspapers. And as far as I know, dead bums are not quite large enough to sled down.

There is one exception though. A park nearby whose name escapes me at the moment, is home to Indiana’s only hill. As you can imagine, this place gets pretty fuckin crowded when sledding season comes along, and at times even has to be crowd controlled by the police. The slope isn’t all that spectacular, but it gets the job done for sledding. We were able to find a small space near the edge of the slope, where we were surrounded by about a thousand small children who all looked on at us in sheer terror.

The Art of Sledding

I’ve long since graduated from rolling down a hill in a black garbage bag, so I was able to actually bring one of those inner tube sled things, which according to the box is actually supposed to be used for water. This can still be useful for when I get adventurous in my bathtub, but for now, it’s gonna be used for a sled. It also has the added benefit of being colored bright yellow and purple, so no one will have any trouble seeing me, as I’ll be the brightest fucking thing in the city. It should also be noted that we both almost died blowing those motherfuckers up since we didn’t have an air pump.

Sledding isn’t quite as simple as what most 4 year-olds let on. This is because small children have the benefit of not being extremely large. They simply glide down the hill rather effortlessly, since they weigh about 6 pounds total. Unlike Ronnie and me, who could probably be referred to as fat adults. We really didn’t fit our sleds very well, which according to the box, was meant for the ages of 6-15. Things get a bit trickier when your ass is larger than the damn sled, and your legs stick out a good three feet. This meant that we were constantly at the mercy of anything that stuck up more than a millimeter from the ground, since one slight touch of my foot to the snow could turn my sled into some incredibly ugly purple and yellow spinning vortex of doom. Especially for Ronnie, since he’s about nine feet tall anyway.

My first attempt down the hill started out fine. At least until my sled decided to turn around and somehow make a 90 degree turn, almost running straight into a small girl and her father, who was looking at me like he was close to breaking my spine in two. Ronnie meanwhile, lost his sled entirely and rolled down 80 percent of the hill on his back, much to the terror of a small boy waiting at the bottom of the hill. Watching his world come apart around him as a large adult with his pants around his knees was coming ass first down a hill straight for him at about 50 mph. As you can imagine, that small boy ran like a bitch.

If that kid wasn't running so fast, and I wasn't laughing so hard, I may have gotten a better picture.

After a few successful attempts of going down the hill without hurting ourselves too much, we decided to try a few advanced maneuvers. Like slamming into a nearby pine tree, and running into each other as we climbed back up the hill to see which one of us would fall back down the hill first. It was like some kind of ultra sad game of American Gladiators.

Actually, now that I think about it, the hill itself was our undoing. Even though it was relatively small, and not at all steep, you must remember that I usually laugh at ground that isn’t paved with floor tile or cement. And my general view on stairs is that if they’re not motorized, then there’s no use climbing them. So after we had climbed that small hill more than once, and thanks to our intense previous physical conditioning – consisting of opening our car doors and occasionally standing upright – we were ready to just lay down and accept our cold fate. At one point, I think after the third time I climbed that bitch, I had to sit down since it felt like my entire chest was going to bust through my ribcage into a steaming pile on the snow. It was at that time that I made a brief mental note to never, ever stand up again. I quickly forgot about it though as Ronnie dropkicked me in the face.

Once we finally got the strength to push ourselves back down, it was more like watching a couple of dead, flailing bodies that someone had flung down a hill. We had no strength to fight back, or even use basic safety measures such as “Cover your face to avoid brain damage” and “Don’t land on your neck.” At least the other people seemed to enjoy the whole spectacle of trying to guess which one of us would be able to get to our feet first. We agreed that if we made it back up the hill alive, that we should probably call it a day, and go home and wait for our hearts to explode.

The Wet Painful Ride Home

There’s a point when your body realizes that you’re done hurting yourself, and decides to let down its defenses, letting you realize just how much pain you’re in. You would think that falling on something that’s generally considered soft, such as snow, would not cause my body to feel like it had just been trampled by a wild hog. Ronnie noted that his thigh was badly bruised, and he couldn’t walk well on his left leg. My chest was throbbing after I was clipped and landed directly on my chest and face, minus my arms though, since god-forbid my camera get wet. I couldn’t feel my feet and hands for a while either, and my left hand got a nice bit of frostbite on it from constantly digging my hands into the snow to try and stop me from slamming into solid objects. But in the end, was it worth it? I’d say yes. But frostbite is much more annoying than I previously imagined it would be.

So now that it’s all over, and the pain has subsided enough for me to once again move my neck without falling on the ground and screaming through my nose, let’s take a look at the pluses and minuses of sledding:

Pluses:

• The chance to slide down a hill on some plastic at high speeds. Most theme parks charge you MONEY to do this.
• The possibility of injury is almost certain (This may be a negative depending on how big of a pussy-child you are).
• Depending on how old you are, the ability to totally frighten other children and parents.

Minuses:

• It’s cold
• You have to climb back up the hill if you want to go down again.
• Frostbite sucks my ass.
• I think Ronnie may have died later that night.

And so there you have it. A long… very long… look at sledding. I’m still not a big fan of sledding after all these years. But it’s always nice to do a few things that you were forced to do by your not-so-smart parents as a kid. And also it is nice to have an excuse to call into work the next day.

What the Hell Is It?

“Chop” is one in an ever-growing number of films that attempts to blend together several different genres.  The thing is, it’s one of the few that actually succeeds at what it sets out to accomplish.  I will admit the groans came hot and heavy when I saw “Horror Comedy” on the front of the case, as honestly I think that is a combination that has cranked out some of the shittiest of the shit-films in recent years.  Begrudgingly I began to watch.  It wasn’t long into the film before I was pulled in, and by the end I had to admit that this was one of the finest blendings of horror / comedy I had ever witnessed.

What Fucking Happens In It?

The film starts off simply and generically enough with the “good guy” of the film, Lance, breaking down on a not-so-busy stretch of road.  Trust me when I say that the rest of the film gets a bit more original than this clichéd beginning.  It is within the first couple of minutes that Lance meets up with a stranger who offers him a ride in to town.  After a rather morbid question and answer session, Lance finds himself on the business end of a tranquilizer dart and then the movie really kicks off.  Now, I appreciate a horror film that has the red stuff a’flyin’ early, and this one does not disappoint.  After having to choose between murdering his half-brother, or listening as his wife is murdered by a friend of the stranger, Lance is planting an axe into his brother’s brain and we get our first idea of the gory, often funny, and all-around strange ride we are in for.

After committing this forced murder, Lance is told that his wife was never in any immediate danger.  As if his day wasn’t beginning to slide down the shit-rope enough, the Stranger informs him that his wife and brother had been sleeping together.  Something is said about a wad being shot down her throat, and that is the kind of talk you don’t hear enough of.  We need the word “wad” used more.  I nearly had to pause the film and allow myself a while to nod my head in approval.  Lance is then instructed to go home and live his life with his whore of a wife, never mentioning anything about the affair… or else the Stranger would make sure the evidence of his gruesome deed would be discovered.

Lance fucks it up.  A couple of weeks pass and he is heavily hinting at what occurred between his wife and brother.  You know, the whole her getting a wad shot down her throat thing?  It is absolutely eating away at him, and he is starting to slip up.  As promised, the Stranger informs Lance that the deal is off.  It is then no coincidence that the police are now breathing down Lance’s neck, his wife (who is extremely hot and the studio should put me in contact with) is confused as fuck, and the Stranger is becoming more and more threatening.

Now I’m not going to spoil any of the big key parts of the story.  Who dies, who lives, and other little bits here and there.  Along the way, Lance finds that he begins to lose body parts.  First a finger, then a few more, and eventually some much more substantial pieces.  The Stranger insists that this will continue until Lance remembers what he did to him and apologizes for it.  Trouble is, Lance is running out of pieces and still has absolutely no clue who this person is.

Lance eventually makes his way back to the Stranger’s lair.  I find that this is when the movie really comes into its own.  The interaction between Lance and the Stranger is nothing short of some of the best serious yet humorous interaction you’ll find.  The two leads in this film have a real knack for delivering heavy lines of dialogue in a way that still passes off as funny, and I highly appreciate that.  Lance’s performance might at times be a little over the top, but you’ll never find yourself squinting your eyes heavily in anger or digging your nails into the couch out of annoyance.

Alright, back to the story.  It is during the time at the Stranger’s lair that we start to learn a little more about Lance.  We learn that the “good guy” of our film isn’t such a good guy, and has a seedy past in which he did a lot of bad things.  We’re talking some major crimes that went unpunished.  I think we can all relate to that.  Who hasn’t killed a hooker or two?   It is through this that the Stranger decides to introduce Lance to some rather odd customers.  Without saying too much, my personal favorite character is an over-sexed, heavily bearded man dressed as a biker who has an obsession with Conrad Bain of Diff’rent Strokes fame.  I could watch that man gyrate and threaten bizarre sexual assault all day.  Probably the all-around best performance since Ass-To-Ass Guy from Requiem for a Dream.

The weirdos continue to roll out, Lance continues losing body parts, and the Stranger becomes increasingly more and more dejected with Lance’s inability to remember him.  You’ll get some actual powerful scenes toward the end of the film with a lot more depth than you expect from this sort of film.  Beyond all the gore, violence, profanity, and often-crazy acting, you’ll find that this is a story with some deeper themes.  It is at heart a story about remembering those we have wronged, a story about apologizing for our misdeeds, and a story about forgiveness.  Or maybe it isn’t… I was drunk halfway through.

For those of you who enjoy that whole closure thing in your movies, do not fear.  Within the last few minutes everything is revealed, and… I don’t say this often about twists… I really didn’t see this one coming.  You’ll either think it was stupid as shit or brilliant as fuck. I liked it well enough.

Why Should I Watch This Shit?

I don’t know your personal preference.  I like our readers and all, but I just haven’t had time to learn your personal tastes.  Maybe I’ll get that kind of time one day.  But until then, I can only say I personally recommend it.  If you like any of the following, you’ll enjoy this film:

• Blood
• Excessive Gore
• Cursing
• Talk of wads being shot down throats
• A nice looking girl
• Horror
• Comedy
• Horror / Comedy
• An eccentric biker character who may or may not be a bear (we need confirmation)
• America

On the disc are also a few little extras.  You’ll get some extended / deleted scenes.  This is what you can expect from such scenes: nothing really substantial to the story yet interesting to watch at least once.  You also get a gag reel, which really goes to show how much fun was had during the making of this film.  That might just be one of the things I enjoyed the most about this movie.  You could tell everyone involved was having a good time.  That it was a labor of love and a project that the people involved believed in.  That kinda shit shows, really.

You could do a lot worse with your DVD rental / purchase, and I really do think that in the realm of B-grade horror / comedy films, this one shines pretty goddamn bright.  Give it a shot.  If you like it, remember that you heard about it here!  If you hate it, fuck off and get some taste in movies.

There’s a lot of blood, one super cute girl, and enough plot to keep you glued.  In my book that ain’t half bad.  You’ll laugh, you probably won’t cry, and if you are into bears you can catch a pretty big stroke.

It’s Christmastime again, and that can only mean one thing for most of us: Mind-numbing depression. Yes, the Holiday season is never kind to those of us who have absolutely nothing to look forward to during the Holidays. While most people are off having a great time with their families and loved ones, the rest of us stare in horrible contempt at the happy people as we sit in our little shack with a loaded shotgun to use on any unsuspecting lifeforms that may venture onto our property. So why are we like this? Could it be horrible childhood trauma? Possibly. Or what about the general anxiety and total discomfort of being around other human beings? Could have something to do with it. But really, what it all comes down to is this: We already know that we’re not gonna get one damn present from anyone this year. Either because we’re too old to get presents now (a worthless excuse used by older family members so they don’t have to spend money on you), or your family has long forgotten about you and would sooner spit on you than buy you a gift, let alone wrap it in festive Holiday gift wrap.

I unfortunately fall into the above category. I no longer receive presents for Christmas because I’m an “adult.” Which to most people means that I no longer qualify to have things bought for me. But yet I must spend ridiculous amounts of money on other, younger, people in my family. This is the biggest gyp of all time. But unfortunately if you don’t buy those kids something, then the rest of your family would probably disown you. And let’s not even mention that the kid would probably hate you for life. I know I would, and by god I still would if I could get away with it at the ripe old age of .. oh god let’s not speak of age at a time like this.

So we’ve got a conundrum here: I want gifts, but no one will get me any. But then I remembered, “HEY, I run a website visited by thousands of people a day! Surely THEY love me enough to buy me ridiculous things!” So now, I’m going to reach out to you, the reader, in hopes that you can make my Christmas much happier. I’m doing this like the day before Christmas; I will happily accept belated presents. This gives you more than enough time, even for the lazier of you who get winded from putting on a pair of pants. So let’s get with the list of booty!

A Forty-Foot Tall Spoiler For My Car

Amanda has no knowledge of cars or car things. Bless her little heart for trying.

It’s obvious I am lacking coolness in some way, and after observing the local teen kids who have tricked out their Escorts and Cavaliers with low-rider suspension and enough aerodynamics to make the White House take a sharp corner with ease, I now know what I’m missing: A giant motherfucking spoiler. It’s all the rage it seems, and will never ever cease to be. The bigger the better, too.

Honestly though, I’m not sure how it would affect my driving, since I’m not known to push my Ford Taurus to the extremes that most GT Cars are pushed. Perhaps I could finally make that turn in the Wendys drive-thru a bit more easily with my spoiler. Or maybe my parking skills will benefit when I’m able to just fly my car into a spot after I hit 15 mph on the road and go airborne. Either way, the coolness would be there, and I would no longer have to worry about those pesky downdrafts.

A Zombie

Which one is Jeremy??

I’ve been needing one of these for a while now. Ever since I watched that horrible piece of shit movie Day of the Dead and witnessed the character Bub (For the lucky who haven’t seen Day of the Dead, Bub is the highly comedic zombie that the evil scientist “trains” during the movie) and saw what was possible with a zombie, I’ve wanted one for myself. I could easily keep him in that one room in my basement where all the rusted pipes are, occasionally feeding him leftover ramen. He may not be too keen on a diet consisting solely of noodles, but neither was I at first either. Soon we would become best friends, and I could show him off to all my potential girlfriends before I “accidentally” feed them to him. Soon it would evolve into one of those “BEST FRIENDS 4EVER” relationships, finally filling the giant void that I had in my life before. Think of him as like a My Little Buddy doll, just not as scary.

A Motocross Bike

Vrooom!

I’ve wanted one of these since I was a kid. Knowing full well that I would most likely die within minutes of actually riding on one, it never stopped my eagerness to own one. I have an iffy record with open-wheeled vehicles at best. Like the one time when I was eight and my cousin let me try out his four-wheeler. Unfortunately, being young and naive, I lacked the knowledge that I probably shouldn’t throttle the gas, which I quickly found was the equivalent of flooring a modified dragster. Except that I wasn’t safely encased inside tons of metal roll bar, and instead was strapped onto a foam pad with a velcro buckle, holding on for dear life. It was mostly my fault that I didn’t come to a stop for nearly two minutes, because my brain couldn’t quite grasp the fact that I should let go of the throttle. Instead it was mostly seemed focused on not vibrating out of my skull. So yeah, a motocross bike would be a great gift for me.

A Camel

A racing camel: Every Indianian Boy's Dream.

Nothing says “I am superior to you, faggot” like rolling down the sidewalk on your very own camel. Personally, I’ve always wanted a camel. I don’t know why really. They’re about the ugliest goddamn things you’ll ever see, and I’m told they slobber a lot, but so what? It’s a fucking camel. It just seems like it would be amazingly cool to travel around on something that most likely smells worse than a pile of rotting corpses.

A Base on the Moon

No one is allowed to ever visit.

This one may be a bit hard to obtain, but the coolness factor would more than assure you a load of brownie points should you secure the rights to build me a giant base on the moon. I don’t have many requirements for it, other than it has to have some type of trap door in it somewhere, and should resemble Castle Greyskull to some extent. It should also be staffed with robots, and possibly some sort of space launch pad so that I can get to and from the moon with ease.

A Panzer Tank

Awww bitches!

Being the giant World War 2 buff that I apparently am, there is simply no cooler thing to complete my collection of WWII memorabilia (which mostly just consists of a copy of the computer game Battlefield 1942 and a miniature Hot Wheels tank with a giant hemi engine sticking out of it) like an authentic Panzer tank from the German army. If any of you have any knowledge at all of World War II, then you’ve probably heard just how much ass this tank could blow apart. I’m not exactly sure what I’d do with it. Possibly sit it in my front yard and occasionally aim the turret in the direction of random houses, pointing out which neighbor is on my shit list. Take my parking space one more time, and there won’t be a goddamn street to park on.

A Sea Monster

I would like you to meet Millie, she is my favorite sea monster pet friend!

You can pretty much go out into any large body of water and find a sea monster these days. They’re everywhere. The larger the better. I would primarily have to keep it in my basement though, but I’m sure it won’t mind since my basement floods above sea level with even the slightest of storms. I’m really not sure what I’d do with it though. Probably use it for bragging rights more than anything. It would most likely end up like everything else in my basement, and after a few months I would forget it’s even there, leaving it to live a long and lonely life with all of my old board games and the remains of the rancid clothes I wore in elementary school.

A Pirate Ship

Hella tight ship, bro. Mega-sweet. Utterly pimped up.

There is just no finer or classier way to travel than in my very own pirate ship. Granted, the only thing close to water in this state is the overflowing sewage in the streets, but it would still impress the pants off anyone. It’s already well built for the massive amounts of gang warfare in this city. Think your homies got the edge with a mag and a few hot blocks out their benz? Well, they won’t think that for long when the first 100 pound cannonball comes through their windshield at 200 mph. Then, wave after wave of flaming arrows and marauding strongmen with no shirts would surely make them realize who’s in charge of this block.

And so that should just about do it. That’s more than enough to keep you all busy this Holiday season. Some people may say that my list isn’t very realistic, and that most of the items on there don’t even exist and are  impossible to find or do. But to that I say bah. They told that one guy who invented the light bulb the same thing, and look what he accomplished! So there’s really no excuse. Get out there and start looking.

I’ll be expecting my packages soon.

So 2,300 years ago there’s this Greek King. And he was all, “Hey, you Jews! It’s now a crime to be an observant Jew. Have a nice day. Actually, don’t.” This made a lot of Jewish people rather angry but, not wanting to die an immediate and painful death, most Jews acquiesced and gave up practising Judaism. At least in public. Prayer and study went on in secret and a variety of sneaky little tricks were used to stop the Greeks finding out.

Chief among these sneaky little tricks was the use of the Dreidl, which translates roughly as Four-Sided Spinny Top Thing. This was a gambling game that children would play to mask their illegal learning of the rich and varied tapestry that is Jewish history. Not an actual tapestry, mind you, just that the history is analogous to a tapestry in that it is made of many different threads that have been weaved together over time to make poorly rendered pictures of things. Imagine playing poker, but written on each of the cards is a page from a philosophy textbook or something. That’s kind of what Driedl was.

BEHOLD, the way an entire culture learned religion.

Also during this time the King busted into the Temple in Jerusalem and started desecrating it gangster style. We’re talking pigs sacrificed on the altar, filthy idols put up everywhere and bad Hanson impersonators performing round the clock. Dark times whichever way you want to cut it.

So, to recap, we have Judaism outlawed, the Temple desecrated, and Jews carrying on being Jewish in secret through cunning use of gambling. Pretty soon, it all got a bit much for some of the Jews and they formed a roving band of vigilantes called the Maccabees. This translates as The Hammers (no joke, it really was hammertime) and they began a guerrilla war against the more numerous and better armed Greeks. This went on for a couple of years with the Jews generally cleaning the Greek’s clocks (winning) until eventually the Greeks had enough and were all, “Screw this, let’s go institutionalise sports or something”.

Such poor losers.

After cleaning up the pig’s blood, burning all the idols and kicking the Hanson tribute act in their collective blonde throats, the Maccabees turned to the serious business of getting the Temple in normal-working order again. First task was to relight the Everlasting Light, which was (amazingly enough) supposed to be burning all the time. Of course, you couldn’t use any old supermarket Flora to light this bad boy – it had to be sanctified oil, but the Greeks had smashed all the pots and it would take eight days for new oil to be made. Eventually the Maccabees were able to unearth one small pot containing enough oil for about a day. Deciding that something is better than nothing they lit it and here’s where the MIRACLE HAPPENED!

Yes, instead of burning for just one day, the oil lasted for EIGHT WHOLE DAYS! Yowza!

And that’s what we celebrate on Chanukah. Not that we opened up a giant can of smackdown on the Greeks, but that the oil lasted 8 times longer than it had any right to.

Chanukah is not really a family-comes-together-from-miles-around festival – that honour is reserved for Pesach (Passover), so it is usually just my parents, my brother and I. My grandparents would usually come around for a couple of the nights and occasionally my Uncle too, but it has always mostly been the four of us. Each of the eight (ooh symbolism) evenings has a short service with lots of out-of-tune singing and includes the lighting of the menorah.

And here you thought it was just a swank looking way to light your dorm on the cheap.

Menorah literally means Nine-Branched-Candle-Holder-But-One-Of-The-Branches-Is -A-Bit-Higher-Than-The-Other-Eight. Also I may be lying, but that is an accurate description of what it is. The number of candles lit goes from 2 to 9 throughout the 8 days (the extra candle is lit first and used to light all the others – for more information consult your local Rabbi). When we were younger my brother and I used to play Dreidl, but we tended to get bored with gambling for matchsticks and the whole experience would quickly descend into us hurling the Driedl back and forth with deadly intent. We don’t play Dreidl anymore.

Food eaten during Chanukah-time tends towards being The Same As The Rest Of The Year, but we do eat more latkes. They are fried. In OIL! Do you see the links here? They are quite subtle, so it’s ok if you’re missing them.

Now, the gift-giving. This is the one that makes people loudly claim “CHANKUAH IS CHRISTMAS FOR THEM JEWISH FOLK!” Yes, in my family it is traditional for the parents to give gifts to the children. A small token gift each night. Like a sock or a button. Maybe one nice thing on the very last night. Like a lego set or a hairdryer. Note the gift giving is only from parents to children. It is not the obscene gift orgies that seem to be part and parcel (ha) of the Christmas celebration where everyone buys everyone a thousand items and subsequently drowns in the rising tide of wrapping paper and emotion.

Your typical Chanukah present. It keeps your foot warm!

I am convinced that the only reason gifts exchange hands at all during Chanukah is to placate the monster children and stop them feeling victimised at schools when kids ask them why their parents are mean enough to ban Christmas. When I stop to think about it I kind of get annoyed that the holiday most involved with battling assimilation and staying true to Jewish culture is the one that has become the most secular and assimilated, but then I remember I got a nifty lego set out of it and the whole thing is suddenly a lot less painful.

This has got a bit long and confusing and I can’t even remember what I was supposed to write about, so I shall end with this Childhood Lament. Once upon a time when I was a young and innocent child I learnt the story of Chanukah. Afterwards I simply could not fathom why my primary school was putting on a play of the story of Christmas. I mean, sure it had shepherds and angels and births and whatnot, but 7 year old Trevor would much rather have been involved in a story of gambling, guerrilla warfare and burning stuff.

It just seemed more Hollywood, you know?

I don’t even know how popular this one is.  When I was little, I loved animated specials very much, so I would be sure to catch them whenever they were on.  Not this one though.  I am not sure if it is because I just avoided it magically, or if it was only shown one time because it inspired a wave of angry calls from parents.  I can’t really even remember what upset me so much about it, except for one obvious part I will tell you about in a moment, as we watch it together, hand in hand.

So, let’s get this over with, my friends, my strangers.  Let’s watch Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey -- for the first time in decades.  Let’s see if it will stir up more feelings, feelings I have spent a lifetime trying to silence.  And for those of you who don’t feel like watching along with me, I’ll just summarize this son of a button for you as it goes along.

Part 1:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmSvoyIit7I

For Non-viewers: This is an animation from the same people who brought us such delightful classics as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (Rudolph is even in it for a moment there), and that one about Jack Frost and Baby New Year or something.  CLASSICS.  So naturally this one seems like it should be pretty entertaining and cute, I think.  The narrator of this animation turns out to be Santa’s Donkey and he is all going on about his ancestor, Nestor, the SADDEST BABY DONKEY TO EVER LIVE.

Nestor shares a similar story to Rudolph.  He is different from everyone else and is therefore shunned, mocked, and tormented.  He sheds giant animated tears and makes me frown deeply, oh gosh his mom is so nice and kind and loving.  :’[ Like Dumbo’s mom, in some ways.  Boo hoo.

So essentially this story in Part 1 deals with these things: The donkeys live way up north and are Pagans and live on this little farm.  At the Solstice they have a celebration and everyone is like “Nestor we actually love you sorry if we made you sad.”  And he is like BEST DAY OF MY LIFE :”””) and then the ROMANS show up, demanding donkeys for the Emperor.  But not Nestor!  NO.  He is a FREAK and HOW DARE THE FARMER try to sell them a mutant donkey and in order to punish him they’ll just TAKE the donkeys and NOT pay that guy.  This of course leads to Nestor getting thrown out of the farm into the freezing wilderness and his mom comes to save him.

Emotions Brought Forth: Well, at first I felt sorry for Nestor because no baby animal should have such bad self-esteem, and I was mad at the other farm animals for being so mean to a baby animal, a donkette.  Then, my heart was gladdened by the reconciliation and his joy.  HE COULDN’T SLEEP because he was SO HAPPY.  Then the Romans came and HIT HIS MOM and rejected him and called him bad names and drove the others off and called them slaves and the shitty farmer got mad at him for his ears and and so so so sad.  Then the farmer BEATS THE SHIT OUT OF HIM and throws him out into a blizzard.  Nestor is left cold and crying for his Mama which means that her instincts take over and she kicks down her stall and rushes out to protect him.  So I felt the welling up of emotion that comes from observing brave maternal care.

Part 2

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL2nRApptqQ

For the Non-Viewers: Man I don’t want to spoil this delightful tale for you, just go back and watch it right now!

Emotions: Okay so like it immediately starts off revealing why I cried when I was a kid, having to contemplate the serious matters of loss and regret and consequences and depression and loneliness and forever and if this animation had ended right there with baby donkey suicide, it would have seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Part 3

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJdyqs04NOo

Okay.  I mean I never cried as I watched it this time but I can totally remember why this turned me into a serious, depressed child.  For reasons unknown, I empathized with Nestor and felt his sorrows.  I became almost obsessed with the hardness of life and the sacrifices that parents give, how feeling sorry for yourself can lead down a spiraling path to things being worse than you ever expected.  How death is forever and if you aren’t careful YOU will bring about not only your own anguish, but even possibly that of others.  This was probably the show that made me have dreams that consisted of just tombstones with my parents’ names on them and I would wake up wailing.  Ugh.  That seems likely.  It doesn’t bother me anymore of course because I am an adult, and therefore, like any adult, I have been thinking about these things and experiencing them frequently over my lifetime so this just seemed like yet another story to my cold icy robotic heart today.  But when I was a child, this was my First Experience with thinking of these terrible things.  So thanks, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.  Thanks for ending my carefree childhood a little prematurely.  Thanks for finishing what accidentally viewing Watership Down started when I was seven.

Someone wants me to review a book? Someone thinks that our readers enjoy reading books? Have the attention spans for reading books? That *I* have the attention span to read a book?! And not just someone, but someone who has their own shelf space at Barnes and Noble? This is surely trickery in the highest order. For we are merely an underground humor site that houses confused articles on things that made us shake our fist in anger, or possibly shake our fists in horror. We are, if nothing else, just a few people who got together and decided that writing about these things was probably better than going to jail for severely hurting someone down the road because we never had an outlet to ramble on endlessly about things no one could possibly care about – including ourselves. Needless to say, I was skeptical, as the closest we have come to notoriety before was when Showtime asked us to participate in some sort of freakish porn sitcom or whatever. So I made sure that my email reply got the point across by stating, “Yes, please send me this free book which will be of no cost to me because it is free and you will send it to me free of charge without me spending any monetary items on said free book that I am to recieve for free. Free.” A day later, I received my free book. Score.

Actually holding the book in my hands, however, really blasted home the fact that I would have to review it, which is entirely new grounds to me. Sure, I’ve reviewed movies and cartoon pornography, but that was just for fun since I hated those movies. I had everything bad in the Universe and then some to say about them, but books? That’s a whole lot more effort. I can’t just stare at a book while eating packages upon packages of Ho Hos, and lay there in a half-conscious sugar daze as the book plays out in front of me. Books do not flash and blink bright colors at me and emit blooping noises which are at once highly addictive and amazing to me. No, as it turns out, you have to actually pick up and open books. You have to READ them and turn pages! They do not turn themselves, as far as I know. MADNESS. After figuring these things out, I realized that I may be a bit out of my league and I began to feel the harsh weight of Madam Panic resting firmly on my chest. Damn you, Madam Panic.

I put on my reading glasses and turned into an owl.

The book itself is from the whole Sparknotes series of books, which, if you’re unaware as to what Sparknotes is, then welcome to my world. Apparently, judging by friends, I must be the most uninformed Internet person ever, since EVERYONE knew about TheSpark. Perhaps, but I was rather late getting on to this whole Internet game, and once I did, my first intention wasn’t to immediately hunt down humor sites, but rather immediately hunt down all those porn sites I had been hearing so much about. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of TheSpark in passing, but was never a big part of its userbase, or for that matter, aware that Barnes and Noble had bought them or something, and now produce books from their writers under the brand Sparknotes. At least, I think that’s what’s happened. I am a book reviewer, people, not a journalist. I don’t need to know your damn life story. This of course lead to many people telling me that they “Sold out” and “Aren’t as funny as they used to be.” I brushed that off immediately, as people tell me that about OMGJ all the time, and I’m not even selling books yet.

This puts me in a rather nice position to review the book though, as I am completely unbiased to TheSpark and whatever the hell TheSpark became. I don’t care if they sold out. If their book makes me laugh, then thumbs up. If not, I got a free book and I can pretend I know what I am doing when I write this review. It’s a win/win situation if there ever was one. So let’s get on with this thing, shall we?

The book is Snafu University, America’s Oldest Safety School. Basically, it is a giant parody of recruitment pamphlets that you might receive from colleges trying to get you to throw large amounts of money at them. Which is every single college in existence. Snafu is a University that long ago gave up the tiresome process of applying for colleges, and that whole acceptance thing that I’ve heard happens. Snafu doesn’t care. The school is built around the belief that anyone can be a student at the University, and will cater to just about any whim and insane plea its student body can think of. The book covers everything from the very beginnings of the amazing fictitious college, to its various academic and athletic courses, and virtually every reason ever why you shouldn’t think twice about attending Snafu University. And it covers all of these things, and more, in a way that is actually pretty funny.

Welcome to Snafu University

This is all, of course, a giant parody, but it’s well known that a parody of something is a rather delicate thing to write, since if you approach the subject matter contained in the the wrong way, or are simply way too over the top, then the parody itself will fall flat, and the jokes will be hollow. Your audience will just think you’re a hyper child that missed medication time and won’t care what the hell you write. The ideal parody is one that goes over the top, while still maintaining a solid foundation of semi-seriousness. Yes, the parody is quite an advanced state of humor – one that can easily turn around and bite you in your fucking FACE if you aren’t careful – and these Snafu people seem to have been careful enough. The question though, is whether or not they can keep this up for 100+ pages without it all getting tiresome. Keep in mind I have the attention span of a small bug, and yeah… distractions… like how my left foot looks slightly different from my right, and how if i squeeze my eyelids shut really tight I think I can see into the futur-NO MUST KEEP ATTENTION ON BOOK REVIEW.

My first impressions of the book came as I was doing the mandatory flip through, the preferred method of most people who review books. Or at least, the preferred method of THIS person who reviews books. Because this is obviously my new calling. For this week anyway. You accomplish this by taking the book firmly in your left palm, then using your right fingers to quickly flip through the pages while skimming maybe five or six words here and there, and then making a rough guess as to what the rest of the book could be about. By doing this, I noticed that there were a ton of pictures in Snafu, which immediately told me that either this book is for people who have no time for such inconveniences as actual reading, or LEARNING to actually read, or it’s simply going to be a bunch of photoshopped pics with generic descriptions throughout. But judging by today’s teens and early twenty-somethings’ (the apparent target demographic of the book) attention spans, this was a wise decision on the Author’s part. However, I figured that I should go above and beyond my actual book reviewing responsibilites, and perhaps read the book entirely before I pass judgement. I am a professional, afterall.

We lost the original images so here is a Bookworm, my totem animal.

To its credit, the book does have its fair share of actual written content, it’s just sorta hidden by the sheer amount of pictures that you might initially see when you flip through it. And while I realize that Sparknotes probably doesn’t want to put out a giant parody book filled with monstrous wordy chapters (this is a parody of college recruitment pamphlets, remember), it would have been nice to see a bit more space devoted to writing. This is the main unfortunate part because Snafu is at its best when it does just that. They have a real talent for this writing thing that they do, and I found myself favorably impressed by their skillz. For example, at the beginning of the book, where it documents Snafu’s origins, and how it came to be. It’s clever, uses a perfect word-to-picture ratio, and really shows off some great writing in that part.

It’s also nice to see an Author who seems to have a relative grasp on modern humor. I mean, I’m all for Dave Barry and his millions of clones, but it’s always refreshing to see someone go the route less travelled, and produce something that will entertain your average person. But at the same time, it also allow the readers who are tired of reading the same humor column 1500 times the chance to smirk at some of the more obscure tastes of humor. After all, TheSpark was once solely Internet based, and while those days are long gone, it’s nice to see that a lot of the Internet-type (read: obviously superior) humor is still here.

For the most part, the humor carries throughout the book well enough. Sure a few jokes fall flat, but whose don’t? Fortunately for them, most of their humor is top notch, so when some things are a bit off, it’s easy to shrug them off because the majority is good stuff. There’s nothing worse than reading humor and begin to subliminally count the amount of times a joke or gag just falls through. Thankfully that didn’t happen here. The humor is kept on a level of maturity that you aren’t distracted when you see a picture of a girl making out with a donkey mascot, since the Author doesn’t immediately start screaming “LOL LOOK AT THE DONKEY OMG NAZTY!” Instead, he goes about his business as the somber, serious guide that he should be as if the pictures were nothing out of the ordinary. Thank god. As I mentioned earlier, this keeps the parody “grounded” so that it works. And I think as a whole, it ends up working. It’s an entertaining read that held my attention, and that’s saying a lot by itself.

This is probably the point where I can stop this review now, I expect. I mean, I’ve never actually read a book review before – so I don’t really know what’s appropriate. This was a lot of hard work though, what with the thinking and the reading and the unbiased looking at a thing I most certainly don’t hate, instead of ranting on endlessly about some crazy bench I saw at the mall or something, which is what 99% of this site is. That was the strangest part for me I think. Talking about something that didn’t fill me with an intense hatred for all humankind. In fact, this book filled me with a benign feeling towards the world, which must mean that my final analysis is that this book is good. It didn’t make me hate. It didn’t make me cry. It was actually funny.

Plus it was free.

Thumbs up.

For anyone interested in reading more about Snafu University, follow the link below:

Snafu University

And Barnes and Noble still has a thing for it, too.

These two bears fighting symbolizes my hatred for Christmas. It also symbolizes that I am too lazy to find a better picture symbolizing my hatred for Christmas..

The onslaught of the Christmas season begins just a few days after last year’s Christmas, but really doesn’t pick up steam until November hits. For some reason, this appears to be the time that the magical holiday season clock simultaneously blares out its shrieking alarm in everyone’s heads, causing them to immediately realize that they only have 40 days left to buy just enough shit for their family to avoid the shameful stares from them until next Christmas. This in turn causes most people to react by losing all sense of natural human logic, and replaces it with the single thought:

“I HAVE TO GO TO EVERY STORE IN THE CITY RIGHT NOW AND BUY EVERYTHING – POSSIBLY SOME AT THE SAME TIME IF I CAN SUCCESSFULLY SPLIT MY ATOMS INTO TWO EQUAL PORTIONS OF MYSELF”

This of course leads to herds of cowpeople running to every possible store in the city, in the hopes that they will find presents for their loved ones, thus forming a giant panicked crowd wherever I happen to go. Grocery stores, once a place of mild annoyance and food browsing, now become a war zone full of people who seem to have no clue where they are, and their only instinct is to grab every fucking thing on the shelves with wild abandon while looking like they’ll murder you if you so much as think about touching their precious canned yams. Malls, usually just the home of insufferably depressed teenagers, become the permanent home of about thirty million women, all of whom took every parking place within 5 blocks. Public restrooms, once a disgusting place to urinate while waiting on whoever you were with, now become children’s playgrounds, where bored children go to take off all their clothes and take a shit for two hours. In short, everything has turned against us.

GO AWAY

A quick example of this: I went to the mall the other week. I figured this would be perfectly ok, since it was not even December yet. Surely the holiday crowds would not have gotten the urge to go shopping. Unfortunately, I forgot to account for a certain type of shopper. This shopper is called the “Early Shopper.” The Early Shopper thinks that they will be super geniuses and will outsmart everyone on Earth by doing their shopping a few weeks before the rush of everyone else, enabling them to seize popular worthless merchandise before it sells out. This would be a good idea, except that they are highly stupid, and must not realize that everyone else has been aware of their scheming for years now. This causes the lazy people to start panicking and buying every damn thing with a price tag within their reach, just in case someone else might decide they would want it later. Fights soon break out. People randomly wander from one store to the other. Parking spaces are tracked by personal Global Positioning equipment. Children bitch and cry. A lot. This is what we experts in shopping, who are not experts and cannot stand shopping, call “The Shopping Season”, and it must have all begun on the day I went to the mall.

The first sign that this was all taking place was the parking lot. The sprawling empty lot that’s usually there had disappeared entirely, now replaced with hundreds of minivans and SUVs with stickers on their bumpers claiming that their child is one smart motherfucker at Abraham Lincoln School Number 564. I was further amazed to see that no one had been considerate enough to leave us a parking space in the front… or the back. You never realize just how hard it is to get to a fucking mall when you have to drive around for an hour, hunting prospective parking spaces like some insane stalker. Endlessly watching everyone that comes out of the mall, and following them to wherever they are going. Even if they didn’t even drive, and walked to the mall. We’d still follow them, and when we got to their home, we’d park in their fucking driveway. The situation was that desperate.

We found a parking space just off the main street, in the parking lot of a restaurant that must have been infested with a skin-eating disease, which is the only thing I can think of for there actually being available parking spaces there, because from what I saw, there were absolutely no parking spaces left anywhere on Earth that day. Unfortunately we were still very far away from the mall, and the weather was not helping our cause much, seeing as how it was trying to murder us with severe frostbite.

Upon entering the mall, we were greeted with a large frog singing various Christmas musics, and all the indications that this was no longer a mall and had instead become a holiday wasteland. Lights and signs were hanging everywhere letting everyone know that it was in fact “the season for shopping” just in case their brains hadn’t registered it yet. Holiday sales and merchandise were flung everywhere, the mall Santa was now out, sitting on his sturdy plastic throne. While this was all happening, I began seeing distinct similarities between the people running around frantically like if the special Olympics had somehow gone horribly wrong. It seems that most of them can easily fit into certain categories. So to help you out this holiday season, I’ve taken it upon myself to educate you in a few of the people you might see at the malls this year:

The Panicky Mother:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU BOUGHT A CINNABON AT CINNABON? GOD I'M JUST GOING TO KILL ALL OF YOU.

Seen: A lot

Identifiable trait: Has the tendency to look as if she’s been infected with a deadly brain disease that causes her to be able to justify bringing her five children to the mall on the most crowded day of the year, and then expect them to not go fucking apeshit in the process. Things quickly go downhill when child #1 decides to start choking after sticking his hand down his throat, child #2 decides to have a mysterious screaming fit, shrieking in terror at random shit she barfed up earlier on her shirt, child #3 wanders off into an errant black hole, never to be seen again, child #4 strips himself and joins child #2 in the screaming fit, and child #5 spontaneously dies for no apparent reason. This in turn makes the mom into a living panic attack, all while trying to buy things. Avoid by burning.

Screaming Child

But I want my CINNABOOOOOOONNNNN

Seen: Way too much

Identifiable trait: Placed at seemingly random places in the mall by the Government Agency for Placing Random Screaming Demon Children in Public Places (GAFPRSDCPP), is the screaming child. Most of the time a direct effect of the panicky mother, screaming child usually has no other reason to live other than to scream in your ear at a constant rate for hours on end. This makes life uncomfortable for anyone within a range of 50 feet however, since screaming child’s voice is usually about on pitch with a cat being torn in half. The only way to avoid screaming child is to simply walk in the opposite direction. But thanks to a recent law that congress passed, it is now illegal for malls to have any fewer than 6 screaming children within 50 square feet. Avoid these children by getting face level with them, and screaming back. It may not make them stop, but you’ll feel better before you pass out from your brain exploding.

That Woman That CANNOT STOP COUGHING

Why *cough* yes I can give *coughcoughcough* you both money *cough* for a cinna*cough*bon

Seen: Sometimes

Identifiable trait: This lady is usually spotted in a random store, slowly pushing her old lady cart or old lady buggy, and once she spots you with her one good eye that isn’t infected with liverspots or leprosy, she will immediately hunch herself over in a position that looks like she’s about to push a pig out of her ass, and begins coughing up the six gallons of industrial strength tar that has seemingly become lodged in her lungs at that very moment. You can try to get away from her, but she will follow you, while her lungs continue to make noises that have more in common with a cow having a chainsaw rammed down its throat. Coughing lady has somehow lived nearly fifty years past what studies show most humans can live, and doesn’t appear to have any plans on slowing her exciting existence down for you. Avoid her by banishing yourself into an alternate dimension.

The Raging Father

WHAT DID YOUR MOTHER TELL YOU ABOUT CINNABONS? I'M GOING TO SET ALL OF YOUR TOYS ON FIRE WHEN WE GET HOME

Seen: A lot

Identifiable trait: Spotting the raging father is very easy, since you can usually hear him before ever actually seeing him, yelling at his children for being such disobedient shitty bastards, and cursing the day he ever went shopping with his wife and children in a crowded mall. The more popular types are usually wearing Nascar-related apparel, and hats that identify them with only the most popular of products like “Big Al’s Homefries” or “Hanks Rattlesnake Bar and Barbershop.” They may also be drinking, which raises their danger level by 400%. Raging father is never calm or laid back. Instead, raging father is usually enraged and saying derogatory comments to his wife while she darts back and forth between store sales. Do not approach raging father, as he will most likely punch you until you bleed. Avoid by pleading for mercy.

After seeing all of that, and eventually making our way out of the mall, I basically decided that the best thing to do until January 3′rd is to simply stay in my house, and never leave. Ever. Even if my house has suddenly burst into flames, or is targeted by hostile enemy missiles, I’m not leaving. I would sooner be vaporized by an evil army than attempt to go out. So do yourself a favor this year, and remind everyone that giving the perfect present usually isn’t worth the effort it takes to get it.