I watched Looker, the 1981 Albert Finney non-blockbuster last night for the first time in 25 years. This film is notable for several reasons that I will now explain to you in a bulleted, yet unenumerated list after this semi-colon:
It's rated PG but there are lots of shots of boobs, butts, and people getting shot and bleeding (though not nearly as much as The Bounty)
This was made in the 80s, so it's required to feature an acronym. L.O.O.K.E.R. stands for Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses.
Also necessary to complete an 80's film is a goon with a mustache. Tim Rossovich was also the mustached goon in Cloak & Dagger and is actually credited as "Mustache Man" in Looker. (Fun fact: Rossovich was Tom Selleck's roommate in college.)
There are cool light guns in it that freeze people when you shoot them, and then you can kick them in the nuts (like what's about to happen to Mustache Man).
Albert Finney has a bizarre accent. It's British, but sort of drunken sounding. Not sloppy drunk like Dudley Moore sounded. Finney's voice has a drunken confident swagger, which is why he gets to bang Susan Dey, a young model in Looker.
1981 was the same year he starred in Wolfen, my other favorite Albert Finney movie
My favorite Albert Finney movies are based solely on Albert Finney saying the movie's title with his drunken British accent. "Looker!?" "Wolfen!?"
The film is sprinkled with technophobia and raises lots of concerns about the future of advertising industries (who will kill to sell you their products).
There's a killer 80's theme song:
The film is fun to watch for the futuristic advancements in advertising technology that are all probably manipulating us today. The subplots are not that strong, especially because the scene that tied the stories together was ultimately deleted from the final cut (don't worry, it's on YouTube). Still, not a bad film. Easy to watch from start to finish.
So, after watching the movie, I woke up this morning ready to avoid television's brainwashing. It didn't last long. I flipped past the Golf Channel and was hypnotized by an obnoxious, hollow golf stroke sound. It was an infomercial for The Momentus Power Hitter Driver. I loathe golf, but this sound was so gross that it paralyzed me. I couldn't flip away.
This infomercial had me by the balls. Pun intended. The final screen came up, the one with the prices and contact information. That's when the subliminal messages started. In the background, precisely calculated golf buzzwords were rotating in and out of focus. Velocity... Kinetic Energy... Ass...Ass? Oh, it was Mass, but the M was obscured by the golf club. The words went on... Force... Acceleration... Peed...
Ok, no, it says Speed, but again, obscured by the golf club.
How effective was this ad? All the talk of wrist cocks and shaft control can't possibly make people want to get up and go play golf. I mean, it's just making me want to get up and go to the bathroom, then wake up the RoBeastress and Power DriveHer.
Well, right after I go to Momentusgolf.com and send them my 4 easy payments. Ah, the power of advertising.
All of the Wikipedia vandalism descibed in my last entry was reverted overnight. The person who edited them back was kind enough to call it "cute" and didn't ban my IP address. Of course, I wasn't satisfied with my vandalism lasting less than 24 hours, so like any gambling addict would, I didn't quit while I was ahead.
I first hit up the Megan's Law page:
Not as cute, I suppose. It was reverted within seconds. As was this:
I (or should I say, my anonymous IP address) received another warning, but still haven't been banned or anything. I have discovered that there are people patrolling these Wikipedia pages with anti-vandalism tools that catch shit within seconds of an edit. I suppose I can either stop vandalizing pages, find less popular pages, or teach the world to get a sense of humor.
Let's see if The Used's fans can handle another benign attack...
I don't know what it is that I find so hilarious about Wikipedia vandalism besides my obvious problem with authority and penchant for smartassedness. I don't laugh too hard at most stand-up and am typically unimpressed by the average comedy film. I like to think that my sense of humor is a little dark and sophisticated. But on Wikipedia, the most simple, lowest common denominator-style vulgarity or non-sequitur makes me laugh my ass off.
For instance, someone made an edit to the Stemshorn page that made me chortle. There's really nothing to the page (which I guess is what made it a target), other than a map and some text:
It was reverted. He was warned. A week later the same user changed it to this: Stemshorn is a fucking awesome species of reindeer located district of Diepholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany.
The second edit really got me going. It may be the tenacity of the vandal that excites me. I can identify with that underdog mentality. The person knows that it's going to be reverted again, but just can't resist doing again, and even one-upped himself (or herself). It's not just the attitude, but the context that's funny. It's such a serious, boring page, that any little piece of flair shines. The word "fucking" blatantly undermines the "Quiet! in the Library" attitude and puts a smile to my face (not so much with Panic! at the Disco though). The word "reindeer" is pretty silly too. And, I don't know... this person may be telling the truth. Maybe the Stemshorn is a species of reindeer. And maybe it is fucking awesome! I don't know, but I think that your average 5th grader knows not to quote Wikipedia for their fucking report on Germany, so there. Victim-less crime.
Like I said last time, it's all for the lulz, so I won't spend too much arguing on the moral implications of internet vandalism. I'm also going to keep doing it as long as I can do it humorously. My Q*Bert McCracken was reverted after 50 minutes and I the Erff is still alive and kickin'.
The Stemshorn vandal received a 31(?)-hour suspension from editing pages on Wikipedia.
How's this? Better? Oh, I deselected bold, so that would mean bold comes on and underline goes away? All I want to do is try out this new Blogger Days-Of-Future-Post, but if this doesn't stop I'm going to knock it in to the middle of next week. Manually. Manfully. If I actually had nipple cannons, I would seriously shoot out the G's in Blogger. Now that I'm all fired up (and things seem to be working again), I suppose I should blog...
Barbara Walters wrote a book and I didn't read it, but I'm going to review it anyway. It's called Memoirs or Confessions or maybe just Walters. It really doesn't matter. Judging the book on the cover alone (which is totally a valid reviewing technique in this blogosphere), I believe the story of Barbara Wawa's life involves lots of gold and silver. It's also probably really boring. She should have spent more time putting some cooler pictures on the front like a snake or a ambulance exploding and maybe I'd look at it twice. If there was a different ambulance exploding on every page, we'd have a best seller for sure, but unfortunately, this book didn't sell a single copy last week when it came out.
Walters' publisher Walter's published waiter had this to say "I didn't buy Confessions or whatever it's called because it probably sucked. Plus I already bought a book this year--Maria Shriver's book!" I bought Maria Shriver's book because it had a picture of one of Arnold Schwarzeneggar's sperm on the cover, and I assumed it would be about hardcore sex with the Governor of Balloonish Sperminators. Actually, that book sucked too. Because it was a book. And books typically suck.
Anyway, so Barbara Walters' book had a bunch of confessions in it, which makes sense since that's what the book is called. She talked about her favorite colors, what it was like to make soup in "the old days" and probably talked about reading books, and what it was like to write a book, and there was a chapter or two about Oprah, and another chapter about Oprah's books. There may have been a part where she talked about pets. I skipped that section because I'm wicked allergic to cats.
would be the title of this post if Priceline didn't work for me, but the stars aligned for once and the Internet actually worked in my favor! My unbeastly mate (with the non-nipple cannoned Ro-Breasts) and I eased on down the road to Philadelphia this past weekend to learn about jail breaks and cheesesteaks (as documented in my Picasa photo library if you're interested), but the most memorable moment is still when Priceline accepted my bid on the hotel room. Hey, nothing against Philly, but when an advertisement tells the truth, you're damn right I'm going to be impressed.
Because I went that whole week without Internet (gasp!), I found myself watching a lot of television. And when I say 'a lot of television,' I just mean I put A&E or USA on for hours and watch the same shows and commercials over and over. One of those commercials was for Priceline. This one:
I knew we were traveling soon, but still had not booked a hotel room. I never used Priceline before and have always been wary of deals that seem too good to be true. Especially on TV. Double especially on the I-Net. Triple especially when they involve William Shatner (who has tried to convince us that warping around the sun enables time travel). I would try to sleep at night, but kept hearing Shatner whisper in my ear. "Cupcake... mamby-pamby..." This was torture.
So the time finally came to book and I announced to my space companion, "I'm going to do exactly what they do in the commercial." I was jadedly confident that it would not work, but there was no harm in trying, I reasoned. I entered my name, then entered my bid. 4-star. $99. Downtown Philadelphia. (Ok almost exactly the same as the commercial - we weren't staying on the Vegas strip). 45 seconds later we had a room reserved for the Hyatt Regency at Penn's Landing. I couldn't fucking believe it. A $99 room in a 4-star hotel with only two days' notice. Rad.
Now the catch... The room is non-refundable. Priceline adds $30 or so for tax and fees automatically on top of your bid. They do not guarantee what kind of room you get, other than the promise that it will be set for 2 adults, and in a hotel in at least as many stars in the area you've requested. Considering that rooms at the Hyatt start in the high $200's, I was all right with the risk.
We ended up with a non-smoking room on the 5th floor with two beds and a shower with a curved rod. I don't know why that's important to anyone, but I like saying "curved rod." It was waterfront, but did not have a particularly spectacular view. So what -- Selena was on the flatscreen TV. And look how happy Jennifer Lopez is reading this paragraph. Not as happy as I was getting hotel sex for only $99 while wearing my new Rocky Balboa trunks!
We unfortunately did not get to go to the Star Wars exhibit at the Franklin Institute because I don't know what "We highly recommend that you purchase tickets ahead of time" means. Shatner would not have approved anyway.
The other thing I learned was that Pearl Jam is required to be on every radio station every 15 minutes in Philly. It's in the Constitution or something.
No Instanet at home means I can't fall asleep listening to prank phone calls, studying the Encyclopedia Dramatica, or constantly refreshing Michelle Branch's website in hopes that she announces more tour dates. That, plus the unfortunate combination of being illiterate and having acute Netflix constipation, I am now forced to pass out while shitty television "entertains" me.
Luckily, I've been completely exhausted lately, so it doesn't take much to knock me out. I have managed to catch some awesome episodes of SVU and CI, but USA and their Law and Order loving ilk have been feeding me too many repeats. I have to say though, the combination of Law and Order repeats and caffeine-free Coca-Cola is conducive to my creative process. I seem to be able to write a lot of music whenever Goren's professionalism is under suspicion by his friends and foes.
I can only handle so many Law and Orders in a row though, so eventually, I have to flip away and see what the rest of the television world has to offer. It ain't pretty, though.
FrankTV - The Frank Caliendo show. Basically just a bunch of impersonations, which is half of everything I already hate about Saturday Night Live (the other half is the musical "comedy"). Do I need to see another parody of Inside the Actors' Studio? Do I need to hear more Bill Clinton womanizing jokes? Who gives a shit? He doesn't even really look like he's having fun.
Baywatch - Some weird new channel called ION started airing this after The Drew Carey Show occasionally, but I can't seem to get a grasp of its official airtime. Along with a billion other Erfflings, I used to watch Baywatch on syndication in the early 90's. It was instant camp (and it usually aired after WWF). Back then I knew it was so bad that it was good, and it's even worse/better now. The music montages average at a whopping 4 per episode! And the outro is usually a Hasselhoff tune, such as "Current of Love":
Like a ship that's tossed out On the ocean We get caught up swimmin' In the motion Hearts were sailing, love was on The right track Got out so far that We can't get back But darlin we can't Let our hopes go down It's tough to find out were There's solid ground
You've gotta reach out Take hold of my hand You've gotta reach out Till you're safe on dry land You've gotta hold on Baby never give up You've gotta reach out When you're caught in the current of love
I would continue to sing Baywatch's praises right now, but BLOGGER IS BEING A CUNT AND I CAN'T ESCAPE ITALICS. I swear, Blogging should be the simplest fucking thing in the world. But here I am, typing in a white box that can only handle 14 lines because it's a sixth of the size of my fucking screen, I can't post giant pictures, and I can't unitalicize my god damn text. Simple text and simple images... and it's gotta be mutilated. I have to go and copy something from before when it worked, paste it below, and then go from there. Eighteen motherhumping steps to do one douchebag thing. AND IT'S NOT WORKING. I WOULD KICK SOMETHING, BUT I'M NOT WEARING MY STEEL-TOED BOOTS TODAY BECAUSE I DECIDED THAT I'M GOING TO WEAR SNEAKERS TO WORK ON FRIDAYS BECAUSE WE USED TO HAVE "DRESS DOWN FRIDAYS" WHERE EVERYONE WAS ALLOWED TO WEAR JEANS BUT I DIDN'T PARTICIPATE BECAUSE I DON'T WEAR JEANS, AND NOW THEY'VE INSTITUTED "BUSINESS CASUAL" ATTIRE FOR EVERY DAY (NOT JUST FRIDAYS) AND I STILL REFUSE TO WEAR JEANS, SO WEARING MY SNEAKERS WITH THE DEMONS ON THEM IS MY WAY OF STICKING IT TO THE MAN, EVEN THOUGH THE MAN IS WEARING JEANS AND IS ACTUALLY LESS UPTIGHT THAN I AM.
FUCK YOU BLOGGER. (WHY DO I FEEL LIKE THAT'S THEIR RESPONSE TOO?)
You clearly can't read this because Blogger sucks and refuses to honor my jpeg's original size and resolution and The Blue Lioness will mortally wound me with her metallic claws if I upload it to an image hosting site and link to it. Sure, you could click on it to view it in its nearly original form, but we know that I know that you know that no one likes a two-step process.
Anyway, here's what the letters say:
MATTRES SPICALE ASSORTED BRAND SMART CHOIEC
They even bought the right letters (and even left off the last "S" for Savings) and could really just peel them off the window and put them in the right place if they wanted to. It's sad that I drive by this place every day and don't help them out, but will make the effort to take my cell phone out while stuck at the red light, upload it to Verizon's convoluted Pix Place bullshit, save it to my computer, then upload it to stupid Blogger.
At the same though, there's no reason to feel bad. I may have been a champion speller in another decade, but I'm no elitist. I'm sure English is not the owner's first language, and the intended communication is still there (though it took me a few red lights to figure out that Spicale meant Special), so I don't wanna bust balls. I'm just extremely obsessed with signage and its influence. In fact, I think the world is more interesting with mistakes. If I drove past this place and everything was spelled correctly, I wouldn't look twice. But with a view transposed vowels, they've managed to infiltrate my brain and got some free air time on the most important blog in history.
OK, maybe their mattresses are as half-assed as their spelling. Who cares? I'm going to bash my head on the keyboard now and hit enter afterwards:
hy uyhubujiuuu76uyhj8huj9kkl67 g5f4 f5g4r
IJHORSUPOIAT "o;'P/;'P[/0:"?)p{;'P/[IFDSIUB JHIOB IJPOQYG53JP[HBRJBwY3WY H3WUQ53 yZJTEAZE TEAUT U4IJ4W YR M IUIJJUJHH HYYY66
I'm just going to pretend that no one reading this knows what "Vore" means, even though most of you probably do, and a handful of you are probably into it. But, none of you have the mouth that launched a thousand ships.
(That would be me.)
Let's hit this chronologically. In late 2005 I decided to join the rest of Erff and upload my first video to YouTube. I shot off a quick recording because I didn't know how long upload times would take. I put my mouth up to the lens, said "I'm gonna eat you" and turned off the recording. Uploaded that shit and successfully viewed it. End scene.
About a year later I discovered that my pointless 3-second exercise in digital sight and sound was getting a disproportionate amount of attention compared to the rest of my clips. What was everyone's problem? Band antics not interesting enough? Little Layla running around in circles talking about poop not cute enough? My aunt starting a mosh pit not awesome enough? Apparently not. Whatevs.
Another year went by and my little clip had well over 2,000 hits and I actually had a few high rating. And comments like "Awesome! Please eat me and swallow my whole. I want to live in your stomach!" and "I would make out with that mouth. For hours. For four Hours. Our mouths. Ours for Four Hours. Oh the spit." weren't from my smart-ass friends. And there were links. Who the fuck was linking to a stupid video of my mouth?
This time I had to know. I did a quick search and found some other YouTube channels with my video on them, along with dozens of videos of other dudes' mouths. The tag Vore was the common thread. Not knowing what Vore was, I looked it up on Wiki-wiki-wiki-wikipedia. I'll save you the search (and continuing pretend you already don't know):
Vorarephilia (often misspelled voreaphilia/voraphilia due to similar pronunciation), also known as phagophilia or simply called vorefor short, is a fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of being eaten, eating another, or watching this process. The fantasy may include digestion, which may be imagined to be painless.
All righty then. How do I feel about my purty little mouth's 15 minutes of fame? Well, I'm not hurting myself or anyone else. I'm not unwittingly encouraging anything illegal or immoral. I have no problems with people sitting naked in front of their computer doing who knows what while pretending they're bumping their forehead on my uvula, if that is indeed part of the fantasy. No one's going to track me down and demand that I eat them whole on the spot, although at the furniture store on Sunday, some dude tripped on the stairs behind me and nearly ate my ass. That may not have been an accident.
I'm up to nearly 2,500 hits (how many tissue boxes does that equal?), but now I'm wondering if I can do better. I've got some ideas on how to top that original clip, but I don't know if producing a premeditated video makes me a Vore sell-out or a pioneer. I mean, maybe part of my audience's fantasy is the fact that I'm ignorant about the whole thing, and that it wouldn't be so naughty if I had a clue. On the other hand, maybe this is my calling? I think I've got decent lips. I'm a good eater. I'm President of the Clean Plate Club. I'm not afraid to take ridiculous pictures of my mouth.
To eat you or not to eat you. This is my eternal struggle.
Speaking of eating, here's a special bonus entry where I bite the hand that feeds the mouth I kiss. I applied for BATR.COM to enable Google AdSense this morning (yes, again with the selling out.) Seriously though, I'm mostly just curious to see what ads show up for the ridiculously colorful variety of keywords we use in these wacky blog entries. But of course, there's the Pink Knight's dream of Pantsless Profit that I can use as a motivator/excuse. I'm obviously not a businessbeast.
Filling out the application was easy enough, but I took a look at their policies, and it just didn't seem fun anymore. The first big no-no is encouraging clicks. I can ads on my page, but I can't tell anyone to click them. I understand that this is somehow in the spirit of fair play, because after all, we would be getting paid for you to click them. "But aren't these ads on my blank space?" I says. And then Google will come back and say "But isn't your blank space actually our Blogger space that we let you use free of charge? And then I say "Isn't our content the only reason anyone will ever see the words Blogger or Google on this blank space?" And then they come back with "Don't you know who you're messing with?" and I retort "When I say 'I made you' you gotta say 'you made me.' How childish can you get?" I mean, I get it, but I don't get it. Google AdSense's job is to trick people into clicking ads, but with no help from me. I can't make arrows and blinking graphics saying "Click these" or any other misleading or subliminally suggestive play to get you to view an advertisement that you normally would not view. But isn't that what advertising is?
And doesn't that make it our time?
Apparently the answer is still "No."
Their next issue has to do with site content.
Sites displaying Google ads may not include:
Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
Pornography, adult, or mature content
Hacking/cracking content
Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
Excessive profanity
Gambling or casino-related content
Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites, or reading emails
Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank
Sales or promotion of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, fighting knives, stun guns)
Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
Sales or distribution of term papers or student essays
Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others
No more hate speech against the Blue Bastards on Planet Doom? No more dudes' faces "accidentally" getting jizzed upon? I can't say "EAT MY SMOKING NIPPLE CANNONS, YOU WHITE BITCH" or even "Let's go buy lots of beer for the Law and Order drinking game I'm trying to invent"? Beauty and the Ro-Beast is a website filled with extreme maturely immature content and we're not bowing down for you do-gooder Goo-dooders.
As soon as I agreed to their terms, I immediately wanted to retract. Then I thought to myself, they'll just see the last entry and deny us anyway. I wanted to get this shit-talkin' entry up before they came 'round to explore, but alas, I am too slow, and they are too fast. The bastards approved of us.
I had an exciting Scrabble morning. These days I play 75-point Scrabble (Hard mode) against the CPU on my cell phone. I won 3 games in a row today, bingos abound. Thrilling indeed. I attempted to open the 3rd game with "INLINED" which is apparently not an acceptable verb (or sport). I settled for "LINED" so I could get the Double Double on the D, and crossed my fingers get a C on the next draw so I could spell "INCLINED." Well, not only did I get that rackafrackin' C, I also replenished the high falootin' tootin' L, I, E, & D and bingoed any damn way.
Speaking of wacky cell phone anomalies occurring while not completing my 2007 Year-end Self-Assessment for work that was due last Friday, I keep accidentally setting off the one and only music track I've ever downloaded to my mobile. I've had this LG for two years. I'm not much of a cell phone technology chaser, so I basically just pick out the most expensive free non-Motorola phone that Verizon offers me. Two years ago, it was this goofy LG flip phone with decent stereo speakers that for some reason, the LG design decided to make face in opposite directions (like Yosemite Sam's guns). But it wasn't that big of a deal for me anyway because even with my phone enabled for VCast or whatever that music service is called, I had no intentions of ever paying $2 for a shitty quality music track that would be forever banished to my telephone, unless of course I wanted to pay even more money for a memory card or adapter thingee that would allow me to pull it off and put it on my computer where I could've already had the track for $1 from Amazon.
Somehow on Friday, I accidentally accessed that Verizon music database and saw that they actually had a free track available! It was an Eddie Vedder song from the Into the Wild soundtrack that was a low priority wish list item of mine. I heard it once on the radio and thought it was decent, but not mind-blowing. I think the reason it crept into my head so easily was because the melody is very similar to the Pearl Jam ukelele song from Binaural ("Soon Forget" I believe it's called). I downloaded it and now I have a song trapped in my cell phone. And much like General Zod, it is constantly trying to escape the Phantom Zone.
It just keeps randomly playing in my pocket. I have no idea what button is accidentally being pressed because I can't replicate the problem on purpose. I have no idea what to disable and it's pretty fucking annoying. I'll be sitting here and I think I have it stuck in my head, but then I realize it that it's just playing out loud. It's extra bothersome to me because I never use a ring tone as my phone is perpetually set to vibrate only. Yes, I could always just erase it since I've already clearly stood at the apex of modern technology (circa 2005).
Also necessary to complete an 80's film is a goon with a mustache. Tim Rossovich was also the mustached goon in Cloak & Dagger and is actually credited as "Mustache Man" in Looker. (Fun fact: Rossovich was Tom Selleck's roommate in college.)
Ass? Oh, it was Mass, but the M was obscured by the golf club. The words went on... Force... Acceleration... Peed...
Ok, no, it says Speed, but again, obscured by the golf club.
Blogger, as usually, is completely fucking pissing me off. I don't know why this is blue or underlined, when in fact the only buttons lit up in the shitass text editor are Bold and LeftJustification (neither of which I requested anyway). 
