American I-Dull

 

Boy does that say it or what? Now, I’ll admit I was an AI virgin last year and I suppose I got swept away with it all. But this year sucks so bad already I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching it anymore. It’s too painful to watch the slow slaughter of popular music that way. And frankly watching paint dry has more twists and turns.

Clearly, there are only 3-4 people who can actually sing. The best singer has absolutely no personality. In fact, when she isn’t singing it’s as if she doesn’t actually exist. Which is kind of spooky and makes me wonder if she is a virtual contestant or something. They can do everything else, why not that? And wouldn’t that, after all, be the epitome of the perfect contestant according to Simon Scowell?

I really am bummed though. When I watched last year I had so much fun being a fan. All of them had some talent and they were all interesting and had their own personalities to project. Even when the bad ones (like chicken little) were voted off I was a little teary-eyed. They were all so easy to love or ….hate. It was a thrill a minute and no one looked forward to Tuesday and Wednesday nights like I did. What’s happened?

Was last year a fluke? Pretty much all the losers from last year could beat the contestants of this year. Will anyone actually stay awake long enough to see who wins this snoozer? I can’t even remember any of their names. Or what they look like. Or even sound like. The guys are pretty much clones of one another. The most original one – the asian guy in bare feet (and sadly it was the bare feet that made him stand out) is gone. And I’m alarmed that it will take weeks and weeks to eliminate all the other bad ones, which by my calculations is about 20 of them.

Maybe the thrill is gone and Idol is now just more bad reality t.v. like all the others. There is a season for all things and a time for all things to come to an end. Could this be Idol’s time? Is that why they are starting that lame camp thing? To distract from the fact that out of hundreds of thousands of people who auditioned they came up with this crap as the best of the best? Are they fucking kidding me?

Dull, dull, dull, dull. I may give it another couple of weeks on the off chance someone with a pulse will actually end up on camera – but I’m pretty sure none of us will be jonesing for Idol this year.

What a waste!

WC

Have You Painted Your Cat Lately?

Apparently, people still are finding ways to waste their money. A new trend appears to be having your cat painted for about 15 grand a pop. And if you want to keep up with the Jones’ you have to do repaints every three months. Can you imagine having nothing better to do with 60 grand a year than to have your housepet painted? Duh!

That being said, they are pretty impressive paint jobs.

(HT to FC for the pics!)

WC

What She Did For Love????

Okay, call me crazy, but don’t they have any psych evaluations at NASA? I mean if you’re going to send somebody up into space (potentially) wouldn’t you want to make sure that they had their head screwed on right? I would. Hell, even if it was just a driver’s license I’d want to make sure. Talk about out of this world. This chick was like Fatal Attraction meets SpaceBalls or something. Jeez. I think it may be time to rethink the NASA program. These folks should be being drafted for politics not space travel. 😉

WC

(HT to Gerry for the toon. Tanks, buddy.)

Would You Put That Spam in a Can?

 

It used to be that Spam was just a really poor imitation of canned ham. I believe it was developed during World War II when meat was pretty scarce (as were all resources) and people were willing to give mystery meat a try. And heck somebody must have liked it cuz, you know they are still selling it today.

I think I tried it once and that was really enough – sort of like balloons with a bologna-like flavor and a might too much salt – but I have a finnicky palate. Kudos to those who can enjoy a hearty meal of Spam and eggs or Spam samiches or spam-hash. Bless you all.

However, the original Spam is not the topic of this post. Nope…

We are talking about the evil Spam. The type intended to overrun mailboxes, websites and blogs. It is junk mail gone wild. If this stuff was on paper, there would not be one tree left standing on the planet. It can be vicious, gross, mean, annoying and bizarre – but mostly, to me, it is really fucking STUPID! Yeah, stupid. I mean, come on already – do these idiots really think that we think that we just won an Irish Sweepstakes or a UK Super Lotto? Do they not know that we know that one must enter these contests in order to win? Do they really think we are as stupid as they?

They don’t even try to be smart about it. They don’t use demographics or any real marketing tools. It’s just so amazingly stupid it boggles the rational mind. For example, why send viagra ads to females? Sure maybe one or two will want to buy some for their disgusting, decrepit, alcoholic old man – but with all the marital aids on the market these days (many of which can be purchased at Amazon for cripes sake) why bother? And hot nude girl pictures also sent to women – now granted there may be a percentage of women who like that stuff but do you really think you’re hitting your niche market by sending a gajillion links to hot teen sex to a bunch of middle-aged soccer moms who blog on the side? Get real.

Here is a recent list of spam caught on my blog –

MedsMan – he is offering me honey in a lovely nonsensical comment that I supposed was designed to make me so curious I would click on his link and end up on his hideous website.

Stinky – He’s selling sex and cars or maybe it is sex with cars – didn’t really want to follow the link – know what I mean?

JohnB – This one really got me – pictures of Chlamydia AND Hot Mature Babes. Now given that Chlamydia is sexually transmitted disease I can only imagine what the pictures would look like. But really, if I want to see a disease can’t I go to the Discovery Channel or something – with Scientists and lab photos?

752njpgh – Thinks I’m a candidate for viagra.

BadGirl apparently works with Stinky since they hawk the same goods and have the same links.

451yhafft – Kindly offered me amatuer porn – now if I was into porn would I really want to see the amatuer stuff? Couldn’t I do that myself?

Kolia would like to send me some bad nude celebrity photos. Since I’ve seen plenty of bad celebrity photos I’m quite sure I don’t want to see any of them naked.

Kazbert is a GP spammer and is offering directv with a little Disney Channel shopping on the side.

Green simply claims to be a sex teacher – wow they have teachers for that now? I sure hope they don’t get any federal funding for it.

FouFoun – has some cheap airline tickets to Russia. Now I ask you, how many out there want to go to Russia under any circumstance? Cheap tickets or no, I’m gonna pass.

Mr. Carrot works with BadGirl and Stinky – cute names though, eh? Sort of like Porno stuffed animals or something.

Dertaer apparently works with FouFoun to trick people into going to Russia by giving them cheap tickets and lots of black market smokes.

Huss just dropped by to thank me for my site and tell me how much he enjoyed it. Oh sure he did.

Helga Ferg seems to be offering drugs, sex and rock and roll – I’m asking you will the Baby Boomer generation ever get off that anthem? Shouldn’t some of them be dead by now?

Hillary Ferg I’m guessing is Helga’s sisters although she is offering balloon art. Now one could wonder what kind of ‘art’ is on those balloons or maybe just take a pass altogether.

So, there they are folks, the stupid spammers who tried to put stupid spam on my blog and were caught by the spam filter. May they all end up in Spam Hell where they are forced to read their own disgusting crap 24/7 because they are permanently installed in front of a computer screen, have no eyelids and their screams can’t be heard because they are in a hermetically sealed cubicle.

WC

Bad Art!

Call me crazy but isn’t art supposed to be good? Isn’t the idea of art that it is supposed to uplift us, provoke us, make us think, make us respond, make us rethink? If so, I ask you, what does the above portrait make you think? Me? I think it kind of reminds me of Hillary & Chelsea without their makeup and good lighting. But for sure, this is not really improving my life in any way.

Now, I’m not talking about taste. People like and respond to different art forms and different forms of those forms of art. (Don’t worry Michael, we won’t be discussing (c)Rap today.) And while there are certain types of art that really don’t speak to me personally, I can still see it is art. That’s fine and well. It can be far out or whacky or like nothing you’ve ever seen – but if the artist really knows their stuff, like it or not, you’ll know it’s art. Right? To me, if the piece has a high quality of communication and the artistic skill & expertise is there it works.

But what about crap like, Andy Warhole’s campbell soup can? This is art? Huh? Or the famous piece of Jesus’ head in a jar of urine (real urine, mind you) – sorry I forget the name or the museum it’s in. Another of my favorites is a big blue box in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called Big Blue Box. Now, what message am I to get from that? That boxes are big and blue? Eh? In my day I’ve seen plenty, whether in real life or in photographs, on the internet, etc. There’s a lot of bad art going around.

In fact, there is a Museum of Bad Art if you find  you simply can’t get enough bad art, or want an afternoon of bad art, this is your place. My particular favorite is called “Haircut” pictured below:

Hey now, how’s about you trim just a little off the top and please don’t stab my eyes.

Then there are these green monstrosities:

 

I’m not sure but I think they are in the nominations lane for entry into the Museum of Bad Art. Or maybe they are just bad and are floating around the universe with all the other really bad art. Like this one:

Spooky huh?

I’m wondering, is really bad art a result of really bad books, really bad television shows, really bad movies and really low standards that is now the American pop culture? Is do we have really bad television shows, really bad movies, really bad books and really low standards because of the the really bad art out there? It’s something to think about.

What do you think?

WC

That Cat!

Okay, she looks like my cat – and has the appetite of my cat – but my cat can’t do that! It would come it very handy in the morning and at night, let me tell you. Nothing more annoying than a whiney, bitchy cat who wants to eat.

WC

The Joy of Creating

My good pal JG lives in Texas now. I miss her but I also envy her, as Texas has a certain something about it – where you just feel like the individual is king. You know? She sent along some pics of recent innovative inventions out her way. I’m in awe frankly, the ingenuity it took to come up with these is amazing. 😉  WC

Now you did know I was funning ya, didn’t ya? 😉

The Blog Gods Are Angry!#$%@&*!

First of all let me just say this is all Bill Gates’ fault! The dawg!

Okay, I’ve been blogging for a little while now- I think I’ve learned the ropes more or less. Know how not to crash my hard-drive, or blow up my computer, can’t write code but sort kinda know what it is, right? Right. Got a photobucket account, just like my mentor told me to – learned how to download pics so they don’t look like you’ve just had a hit of acid or something. Can tag surf, check my comments, response to readers in bold, add links and blah, blah, blah. Right?

So suffice to say that given the glorious ease that WordPress gives you in blogging – I can function within the normal confines of blogging. I’m not a blackbelt or anything – but I know my way around the ol’ blogosphere. And yet….

In my adventures as a blogger I have had to actually shut down a blog and reopen it under a different name because one day I just couldn’t add categories to my posts. For you layman out there, those are ‘tags’ ‘keywords’ that people use to find subject matter on the net. I tried and tried. But there was clearly no way to trick the system – even tech support was baffled. So – okay, no big deal transfer the blog over and start again.

Then I’ve had posts just disappear. Now you see it now you don’t. Again, some sort of glitch in the cyber universe, as I’ve commiserated with others whose posts have vaporized as well.

I’ve had code that simply refused to be deleted and finally won because after two hours you just say uncle. Which resulted in half the post being in one font and the other half in another.

I’ve had regular readers end up in the spam box, rather than having their comments posted and spammers doing pingbacks, making nonsequitor posts and happily running down the halls, spraying graffitti everywhere.

Not long ago, I added a bright new blogger to my blogroll. He’s bright, funny and a pleasure to read. And I thought, what the heck, I like this guy and I’m linking him. No problem, right? Well the weird thing is that whenever I click on the link I get redirected to some weird admin link and one of those insipid messages that says basically ‘screw you, you’re not getting in.’ I’ve recently discovered that if I’m logged out I can sometimes actually access his page. Sigh. So, I’m trying Chris.

Then today – well I had this cute little post all set up about snow in L.A. and a great little vid to go with it. But nope, wasn’t going to happen. The last two hours have been chewed up trying to make it work and it just goes into download hell and never arrives.

Poor tech support, I’ve emailed them so much lately that surely I’m in their permanent spam list – and pain in the ass file. And who could blame them? I feel like that little old lady who is always bringing stuff back to the store insisting it doesn’t work but of course it works for everyone else.

So, now I’m sure of it. It is simply the Great Blog Gods in the sky. They are pissed at me. They are making me pay. They got an email from Bill Gates telling them I refuse to download yet another version of his piece-of-shit IE browser and they are conspiring against me. They’re all up there smoking cigars, counting their money, drinking beers and laughing their asses off. Trying to figure out how else they can screw with me. The rat bastards!

Well, I will not relent! I will not download that hideous browser. They can torment me all they like. I still refuse to be herded like cows into their mindless one-world order composed of all of those who must obey! (Can you hear the trumpets now?)

Give me liberty or screw you! I have not yet begun to bitch! I will prevail!

Phew…I feel better now. Have a nice day. 😉

WC

Time To Embarrass Mom…

Sorry folks, I just couldn’t resist – it was too funny not to post. In fact, believe it or not, it reminds me of a real life story from my childhood and it goes like this…

One winter morning (I was about 13) my little brother, CE was outside with his buddy Jimmy playing war. No big deal because he was always outside playing with Jimmy no matter the weather, much as you would expect of an 8 year old.

My bedroom was in the back of the house and had a back door, with a window, that led out to the back yard. Mom and I were in my room chatting about something or another and for some reason Mom looked out side. All the color drained from her face and see ran to the door and pulled it open. She screamed for my brother to come in immediately.

I had no idea what was going on or why my mother was so non-plussed but was quite intrigued. My little brother hurried inside and said, ‘What’s the matter?’

I almost died. Around his head he had wrapped a kotex, which he also colored with ketchup or something red and I suppose he was make believing it was a head bandage or something, given that he was playing war.

I had to keep digging my nails in my closed hand to keep from laughing out loud. So it went like this:

Mom: What is that on your head?

CE: It’s a bandage.

Mom: Where did you get it?

CE: (pointing to me) Her closet.

Mom: Take that off right now!

CE: Why?

Mom: Because I said so!

CE: Oh man!

Mom: Right now, young man!

He took it off and handed it to her and she almost passed out.

Me: What’s that red stuff?

CE: Ketchup.

That was it, I fell over laughing and even Ma joined in. We couldn’t even speak much less answer all of my brother’s demands to know what was so funny.

Nothing like making the most of what you’ve got, eh?

Life is funny sometimes, doncha think?

WC

Really Stupid Shit

 

Since the internet is filled with stupid shit, I thought I’d get in on the act. Hence my favorite stupid shit, and stupid shit that is just stupid:

Favorite stupid saying: You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can’t pick your friend’s nose. (How come?)

Favorite stupid movie: Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I especially love the horses they use and their many special effects.

Favorite stupid food: Artichoke, steamed with mayo for dipping. This is a stupid food because 1) who the hell figured out you could eat it? 2) who the hell figured out how to cook it so you could eat it 3) and  how did anybody convince anybody that you should all sit around an artichoke, pulling off leaves, dunking it in mayo and the scrape the meat off the leaves?

Favorite stupid sign:

Favorite stupid car: The original VW Bug. First of all, who wants to drive something called a bug? It conjures visions of motorized cockroaches or something. Then there is the engine in the back. And of course, the ever popular heating system (has anyone ever felt warm on an icy day in a VW Bug?).

Favorite stupid song: Weird Al Yankovich’s “Eat It.” Nuff said.

Favorite stupid website: Stupid.com – yep there really is a website by this name and you can check it out here. In fact, I purchased many stupid Christmas gifts from them this year and they were a hit. Don’t believe me? Ask Michael at Smoke & Mirrors.

Favorite stupid dance: The pony. For those of you who have never heard of this dance or seen it performed, see if you can find some old American Bandstand reruns. It’s worth it and hysterically funny.

Favorite stupid children’s character: Barney the purple Dragon. Not only is he huge and purple but he is butt-ugly. If I were a kid I’d be afraid of that sucker. And also somebody needs to work on the lyrics for his songs.

Favorite stupid tv show: Friends. A bunch of 20-somethings (who are really a lot older than that) have adventures in the big city. They are all struggling, lost, have career and life issues but live in a really cool apartment in the village, dress in all the latest fashions, go to fancy restaurants for dinners and have problems like jellyfish bites, whether or not to kiss Rachel, getting rid of annoying girlfriends and sibling rivalry. Great fun.

Things that are just stupid:

1. Bicyclists can ride on the open road but cars can’t drive on bike paths.

2. Joggers jog to become more fit and healthy but jog along heavily traveled roads – can you say carbon monoxide?

3. People who don’t pay taxes are pissed that they don’t get refunds.

4. Indecivise customers at fast food restaraunts.

5. Diet coke & chocolate cake.

6. Frisking old ladies at airports in case they’re terrorists.

7. Road construction during rush hour.

8. Cheerleaders at pro basketball games – for that money, they don’t need encouragement to cheer – you bet your ass they’re going to.

9. Pocket protectors – you might as well just stick a post-it on your head that says “Geek & Loser.”

10. Stop signs in California (more like avoid the oncoming car, signs).

Okay – that’s about all the stupid shit I can come up with tonight. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.

WC