HELL. ITSELF.

Life has never been fair to those on top of the food chain. It is a constant battle for superiority, dominance and control of natural resources. You may think it the reverse, but in fact, no species is as sought after to overthrow than those perched atop the food hierarchy. Surveying our domain for lo these 6,000 years when the world was created, we humans have had very little to fear from other animals. If it's small, we squash it. If it's big, we shoot it. If it's slimy, we pour salt on it. In short, nothing the other species have done in lo these 6,000 years has even remotely shaken the firm base upon which our throne is built. Until now.

A growing menace is gathering untold strength and unspeakable evil to aid its cruel machination. It whispers in the dark, hides well below lines of sight, and is barely detectable unless one dares gaze in to the black maw. Those that would usurp command from us in a bloody coup have gone largely unnoticed and the ugly trail of death they leave behind is rarely blamed on them as the cause. But I know the truth! I have seen the wretched unholy in their darkest hour. I have witnessed the excruciatingly slow and painful deaths of victims caught in the crimson wake. I provide the following glimpse into what lurks in the deepest pits of Hell. Surely you will agree that this scourge must be stopped! Tarry not! Sing into battle with swords and shields! My fellow humans, I implore you to join with me in this war! Bring with you an unquenchable bloodlust and all your most clever devices for killing! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!



Steel thyself! 'Tis a mouse not! Do not be fooled by its large, pink ears and gray facade! Parry! Thrust!

Tiger Woods! NOOOOOO!!!! It is not Arnold Palmer! LET TIGER GO, YOU DISGUSTING WRETCH!! Tiger! Can you hear me? [gurgle, spit, gurgle] OH GOD! IT DEVOURED YOUR NECK! MEN! FIRE! FIIIIIIIIRRREE!!!


Have we more to fear than convicts who break the shackles of their oppressors? What if those convicts were held by Hell itself and wrested themselves from its evil stranglehold?! VOLLEY OF ARROWS! VOLLEY, I SAY!!!



Your Dance of Death is for another, oh murderous blue ballerina! Your grand jette will not help you now! On your right! The crazed hellbitch is trying to stag leap through your sternum! FIRE CANNONS!!



IRELAND IS UNDER ATTACK! I REPEAT! IRELAND IS UNDER ATTACK!!!! SAVE THE POTATOES!!!!! SAAAAAVVE THE POTATOES!!!!!!!!!



We must rereat! There is no stopping the mighty armies of Hell! TO THE BUNKERS! RETREAT! MEN!! REEEETRRREEEAATTT!!!!

Meet Claudette!

Why is "dress up" in quotes? How does one MILK a spirit, particularly a holiday one? What is polyresin? Since when is Spring the only season? If I put Claudette in my toilet after I take a dump, does that qualify as anywhere she would look charming in my home? I have questions, Claudette, questions that need answers if your existence is indeed pure and not, as I highly suspect, a malignant incarnation painfully aborted from a gaping soulless abyss.

Aside from those questions which are based purely on the ad itself, could you please explain your religiously-biased and seasonalist tendencies? The holidays you celebrate are all Christian, and the only season you celebrate is Spring. Why not just come out and say that your Spring outfit was originally going to be Easter? What are you trying to pull? You think you're appealing to a broader base of consumers simply because you throw in a neon flower mumu and claim to celebrate the pagan season of Spring? Please. You don't fool me! Summer and Fall are better seasons by far and you know that!

And also, you're lazy Claudette. There, I said it. To celebrate an entire holiday (or that ONE season), all you do is put on a different hat and cape? If you're going to pull out the same tired outfit year after year for the same holiday, at least have the decency to change the pattern! Your lack of imagination is staggering and only fuels my theory that you come from place of eternal blackness. What? Prove me wrong! ZOMBIES have more originality than you.

How dare you, Claudette. How.... DARE you.

Des Choses Intéressantes

(Translation: "interesting things")

(You may not find them interesting in the slightest. On the other hand, you may find them right droll, I daresay. I hereby claim you pugnacious if you discover them to be the former and delightfully whimsical should you conclude the latter.)

People are going ape shit over Michelle Obama's clothes. Ape. Shit. I cannot for the life of me understand it. She's an incredibly beautiful, wealthy woman who (GASP) wears department store clothes and manages (SOMEHOW!) to look elegant and put-together. She of course wears designer duds to fancy shindigs; state dinners, G-20 Summit galas, et cetera. But the hilarious thing is that people keep comparing her fashion sensibilities to that of Hillary Clinton, whose tenure as First Lady was during the 90s. The 90s which, at its best, was a decade of ill-fitting, shoulder-pad-sporting hell. If you managed walk outside and not look like the slightly more dressed-up version of a Fly Girl backup dancer, you won.

Speaking of the Obamas. I was watching a brief news bit this morning and our very own, U.S.A.-blooded Brian Williams was interviewing some Brits about their thoughts on the Obamas. Hard hitting stuff! Journalistic fluff aside, he walked up to a lady who began speaking about her excitement at the Obama's arrival. Her name was Trudy Cogdell. I burst out laughing because that, that is the most British-sounding name in the English language. Go ahead - say it with a really bad cockney accent. TruuuDEE COGdewwl. Oh sure, you can think of something like Sir Archibald Flufferbottomshirington, but that's just silly. At most, his last name is simply Fluffer. Trudy Cogdell, however, is someone I expect to show up on my doorstop and offer me sweetbreads with mum's puddin'. She's a woman of the people, salt of the British earth, someone who can scrub your dingy whites until they're clean and bright.

Our "friend" Scott will be heading down this weekend for revelry and shenanigans. We haven't seen him since New Year's, which means that it has been far too long. We will probably also hang out with our other "friend" Evan, a gentleman of leisure (pronounced LEH-zure) and pleasure. Together, they become the formidable ScEvan 2.0.1, a dense humanoid hybrid comprised of massive probability and protracted alcohol ingestion. I expect some kind of singularity at their joining, something to do with Earth's magnetosphere and heightened boson levels. I've told NASA to scan for loose ScEvan particles in the stratosphere, should they escape the singularity. They are easy to spot because they're usually wasted drunk and hollering Tenacious D songs at passing cumulus clouds.

My office is on the second floor overlooking a basketball court. A red-haired college kid was pacing back and forth. I recognized him as one who worked in the downstairs café. I couldn't yet tell he was perturbed until out of nowhere, he picked up a clump of sawdust, hurled it at the entrance to the café and screamed, "FUUUUUUUUUUCK! FUCK IT! FUUUUUUUCK!," and stormed off. When I inquired about the incident at the café a bit later, the barista told me that he had been asked to not do his homework when customers were in line waiting for him. Rather than simply say OK, he quit on the spot. Thank goodness we have a robust job economy for him to fall back on! Oh wait.

April has become, unsurprisingly to me, the darling of my Twitter group following. Everyone wants a piece of her. Everyone says how snarky and funny she is. Her wit is legendary. Her literary flourish, unmistakable. They wish they could meet April, shake her hand and take her on a play date. I have made excuse after excuse as to why April has something or another preventing her physical self from manifesting physically. What they don't know, but are soon to find out from reading the following, is that April isn't a human at all. Rather, A.P.R.I.L. stands for The Assembled Party of Really Intelligent Lemurs. "She" is actually a gathering of adorable monkeys whose sole purpose is to spread joy and laughter through Twitter. Oh, and to fling poo. It's all covered in The A.P.R.I.L. Bills of Laughter and Poo Flingage.

FOOOOOOORE!!!

I have never enjoyed the game of golf. Some may bristle at my use of the word game when, according to them, it is in fact a sport. Since I have no personal experience with the game, I can only speak to that of my friends, for whom golf is an activity that involves hitting balls across long distances, drinking, ferrying oneself to said balls in a golf cart, drinking, and walking around on some grass. And drinking. Sorry golf snobs, but to me that series of activities describes a game.

Having never played the game, I never considered the possibility that one might need to take a bathroom break while on the tenth green and having no resources to do so. I assumed there would be bathrooms along the course at certain points, but my assumption appears to be incorrect. I had no idea that the desire to relieve oneself while playing golf was so profound. It is so great, in fact, that the makers of Uroclub invented a giant pee stick disguised as a nine iron.

I'm going to guess that most golfers wouldn't want their friends knowing exactly what their "new club" actually is. Telling someone that they aren't practicing a shot at all, but rather peeing into a giant pee stick is a delication situation at best. Furthermore, how does one disguise the fact that they have a piping-hot hollow plastic handle of urine? Wouldn't it smell? When one is using the green crotch bib, wouldn't it be obvious what they're up to as they are sighing relief and shaking the stick three times? Or is this something you would tell, nay brag, to your golf buddies about? Would they all get giant pee sticks and have a giant pee stick bag disguised as a regular golf bag?

Move over, Japan. You might have cornered the market on ridiculous baby things, but the U.S.A.'s got a steaming river of golf handle piss headed your way.

But... But Why?

In an early morning meeting, one of my coworkers used the phrase, "You can't have your cake and eat it too," speaking about an aspect of our user database. Being one that has on many occasions had this phrase directed at me, I understand the meaning. Another synonymous phrase would be, "You can't have it both ways." I went back to my office and began to think about the cake phrase and the more I thought about it, I kept arriving at the same conclusion: it sucks.

Let's start with the cake. Mmmm... delicious cake. My preferred cake is white with fruit filling [insert gay joke here]. I don't often eat cake, with the exception of mine and other people's birthdays. When I go to a local patisserie, my usual choice is something delightful and small, say a truffle or petite tart. That said, I don't turn down cake, in either the proverbial or literal sense.

Cake, in the phrase, is of course a metaphor. "Cake" refers to that which you want but cannot realistically have. In today's meeting, for instance, we wanted our database to perform in a certain way, but there was no realistic means to make this happen. The realistic piece being the money with which to pay a programmer. So there we sat, bitching about the extra steps in work we have to take, while in the same breath refusing the cost to make the necessary changes to assuage the aforementioned work.

So back to reality. Let's say you set a cake in front of me. Let's say it's not even my preferred white with fruit filling, but one that is nonetheless something I would devour in an instant (e.g. chocolate ganache). What kind of monster would give YOU a cake and then say you can't eat it? [Setting cake down], "You can have this, but you can't eat it. Ah ah ah! I said you can't eat it. But it is yours. I'm giving it to you." Now let's make it personal. Forget that someone bequeathed it unto you. You slaved away in your kitchen, carefully measuring ingredient after ingredient. The oven warms to bake a perfect sugary confection while you whisk together a cream cheese frosting befitting a queen. Then what? "Ah ah ah! You can't eat it." You know what? Fuck you. I baked this cake.

If you hadn't picked up on it, the crux of my frustration is the possessive "your" in the phrase. If it's MY cake, I can do with it as I please. I can eat it. I can lick it. I can serve it to my imaginary friends. I can throw it in your face. I am willing to bend the literal collection of words to make phrases work ("don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!,"... uh... OK). But there is no metaphoric use of your. It's yours. Or mine. You gave it to me, or I created it myself, in either case... MINE.

I submit to you that we throw the baby AND the bathwater out when it comes to, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Because you know what? If you get between me and my cake, something is getting torn off and I don't mean that in the figurative sense.

I Farted, and Other Current Events

Flowers are blooming, my nose is revolting. I wake up each morning and dutifully squirt Flonase into my nasal cavities. A light floral aroma and tasteless fluid make Flonase quite pleasant to take. But despite what I am certain are well-aimed squirts and well-crafted chemical compounds, my allergies persist. The Flonase is trying as best it can. I feel absolutely fine except for the fact that my nose will not stop running. I can work out, go running, and do whatever other physical activity I want. My lungs and throat are clean and clear. Something in the air is causing this ruckus and I have no idea what it might be. I could go in for testing, but that's so... I dunno... efficient. I'd much rather wait until I'm bed-ridden and destitute.

One of our dear friends is preggers and ready to pop. We're hosting a baby shower this Saturday. Rather than make it one of those "girlz only" kind of things, the soon-to-be mom wanted it to be a coed event. I think this is a fantastic idea, if nothing else for the fact that we won't be the only men present. You see, being gay embiggens one with all kinds of special qualities. Chief among them is the inclusion to all gatherings feminine: baby showers, candle parties, Tupperware parties, knitting parties, gossip parties, sex parties and tampon parties. Robin and I have been invited to all sorts of these things. I would be lying if I said I didn't appreciate some of them. My first Pampered Chef party had me in such a state that I was squealing at each little gadget and stone pizza slab. We were in college at the time, had no extra money to speak of, yet walked away with a food chopper, thermometer and dry/liquid combo measure.

We went to a local Moroccan restaurant last Friday. It specializes in spice-filled Mediterranean cuisine and is absolutely delicious. Their dedication to authenticity is apparent when they bring you warm, damp towels and ask if you would like silverware or not. I ate with my bare hands until the hot goat meatballs came at which point I decided to revert to my Western sensibilities. The main reason for going, however, was not just to sample their foodstuffs, it was to see one of Robin's coworkers belly dance. Regina is, without a doubt, the best belly dancer I have ever seen. Her self-made outfit was bedecked with shiny baubles and stamped pieces of metal. She wafted around the room with a remarkable balance of delicacy and hot ass sex goddess. Every part of her body was dedicated to the performance, her fingers being one of my favorite parts. Rather than keeping them straight and posed in different directions, she allowed them to slither and wave, further enhancing her misty aura. My jaw officially fell on the floor when she took a sabre, turned it so the blade balanced on her head, and continued to move about. Her arms stretched and flowed, her hips jangled, her shoulders rotated, all the while the sabre remained absolutely still. I plan on going again sometime. It's great that the food was yummy and all, but Regina was the highlight.

The last month of winter in Oregon sets me on edge. Sick of the dreary weather, I just want to see buds on the trees and color return to the landscape. We are fortunate to live in a place where the diverse array of flora makes the spring season start early. One could argue that crocuses and daffodil are actually late winter plants, but the one arguing such is clearly being argumentative.

Grammatical learning of the day: "It's" is never a possessive. Ever. OK? "It's" is always used to signify the highly successful and lavish marriage of the words "it" and "is." You might think to yourself, "But I'm describing a quality that 'it' possesses." Something like, "it's flying buttresses." Yes. You are correct that it "has" flying buttresses. Though tempting, the correct usage is its: The neo-Gothic cathedral and its flying buttresses are bitchin' to the max. But if this causes the brain hurts (because in every other case, one uses 's or s' to signify a possessive!) simply circumvent the "its" all together and make possessive the flying buttresses like this: The neo-Gothic cathedral's flying buttresses are totally giving me the shits.

I've been wanting to use the word fecund in a sentence so badly! It means a couple of things: 1) Capable of producing offspring, in abundance, prolific, fruitful and 2) Very productive or creative intellectually. It seems forced to do it here, so I'll try to use it in a sentence with one of my coworkers today. Something like, "I rather appreciate the fecund effort you put into this email," or, "The fecund law professor worries less about the quality of his work and more about the rate at which he produced it," or, "My, for a woman in her fifties, you're fecundity is astounding!" I'll let you know how it goes.

Hooray for Child Labor!

Ok, ok. I know that my blog has of late been nothing more than pithy commentary with the occasional side dish of snark. It's not my fault! Japan is clearly out of control:


Baby Mop from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

First You Can Shave the Baby, now this! What do the Japanese think babies are? Certainly not smaller versions of themselves. This complete de-personification of their young baffles me. The gorier aspect of floor cleaning, namely the use of soap and water, is totally circumvented in the ad. Were this to be a real depiction of Baby Mop, and using a real baby instead of what I'm convinced was a jacked up robot baby, here's how it would play out:

A young Japanese woman purchases Baby Mop once her child reaches the working-age of three months. After running a bucket of warm, soapy water, she puts the baby in Baby Mop, dunks the child and places the soaking tyke on a dingy floor. The baby begins to wail in protest, not crawling about and not squealing with happiness. The woman scratches her head, rereads the directions and regards the now furious baby. Faced with the decision of a clean floor or a contented baby, the woman fashiones a stick and digs it into the back of her child. Twenty minutes later, she has a clean floor and a quiet, lifeless young one!