I'm not what you might consider one of those "current events" type people, those types that are always in the know about the latest catastrophes/natural disasters/presidential elections/Lindberg baby abductions. So I didn't know that the "Sing-A-Ma-Jig" is a toy from Christmas season 2010, I just thought it was a Japanese sex toy gone horribly wrong that had been incorrectly labeled and imported into the United States under erroneous falsified documents and somehow wound up in a Rite Aid in Brooklyn and subsequently found its way into my clammy masturbatory hands after I stood in line to pay $13.97 for it while wondering if I'd be less embarrassed to be buying the Trojan Vibrating Ring that was going for roughly the same price in the "impulse buy" section near candy and gum and playing cards and Abreva. I bought it solely to make the worst video ever, which I think I have done. Enjoy.
I want to make it into a "Feature Length Film" so please donate to the project on Kickstarter so your money will go to a good cause which will be me buying several more plants for my apartment, probably air plants to put in the eyes of my new cow skull hanging on my bedroom wall, or to fund some of the other meaningless whims and temporary obsessions that govern my so called life.
In other news, I have a big weekend coming up: I will be attending the North American Lionhead Rabbit Club's 2011 National Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's only a 9-hour drive from Brooklyn through Pennsylvania and Ohio; or, if you're going to be in the area, you should come too! I don't think there is any entry fee if you're just an average rabbit-loving obese person (like me) and don't have a bunny to show ($7.50 if you do), so you can just come in and walk around and judge rabbits on your own and drink Tab and eat olive loaf bologna sandwiches (snacks unconfirmed). Maybe you'll bid on a show-winning lionhead like one of these, all up for auction! Maybe you're just going for the $20 all-you-can-eat "Italian-American" banquet at Spaghetti Warehouse (15-layer lasagna) and the cheap hotel room with a vibrating bed (unconfirmed) and pool (unconfirmed) to escape New York for a weekend.
Maybe you want to see pictures from a recent Easter photoshoot starring my rabbit and Carlen's shiny rapist rabbit who, thankfully, has been neutered.
like a virgin
touched
for the very first time
(No rabbits were harmed during the taking of these photos, although I was hit with a tsunami of rabbit urine on my lap which, for the second time recently that I have been peed on, I thought was just the animal getting cozy and warming my body with its undying love...)
Speaking of "undying", Happy Easter everybody! Hopefully Zombie Jesus's cannibalistic search for human flesh didn't have him walking across water to eat your brains. Because I think that's the true meaning of John Carpenter's classic 1977 film "The Resurrection", a powerful film in the Catholic educational movie canon, although I haven't been to Sunday School in quite some time and my knowledge of Christian theology is shaky at best and tinged with disbelief and Hollywood and insanity.
I had no idea there are three different gestures in American Sign Language for "abortion", but there are. Two are particularly disturbing. This really has nothing to do with anything, except that after I learn the signs for "Your mother should have had", I will have a much better, albeit time consuming, way of telling unlikeable people what's what in public.
Actually I guess it's because I was thinking about the recent proposal to do away with government funding for Planned Parenthood, which is a ridiculous notion proposed by a bunch of churchy Republicans who still want to scare American women and stone them in the street for indiscretions like Biblical sinners in Tehran. When will this country learn what I figured out years ago: What is right for you may not be right for the next person, and in a country that is supposed to be based on freedom, it's up to all of us to make our own decisions so long as they do not harm someone else. My grandfather was an OB/GYN and an influential figure in establishing Planned Parenthood in my native backward state of Georgia in the early '70s. (BTW, Am I the only one who thinks the term "Planned Parenthood" is kind of a misnomer? I mean, since the people visiting Planned Parenthood are usually people with unplanned pregnancies?)
Anyway, this is why I gave up paying attention to politics shortly after I started paying attention to politics. I thought that when I graduated college and got a job that I'd read the New York Times everyday and follow U.S. and world news. I quickly learned that it was a short track to a heart attack and a Xanax addiction, and I'm a kind of wound-up guy to begin with. So, R.I.P., my subscription to the Gray Lady: Dec. 2005 - Feb. 2006. We had a good run, kid.
I started out writing today because I have been reading about Tycho Brahe lately, a Danish astronomer with whom I share a birthday. Searching December 14th birthdays is a who's-who of nobodys, except my man Tycho here and Nostradamus. Basically nobody worthwhile has been born on the 14th in 400 years, so I'm writing this boring blog to change all that. Back on topic: The more I read about this guy, the more I like him. Some quotes from the gospel that is his Wikipedia page:
While studying at University of Rostock in Germany, on 29 December 1566, Tycho lost part of his nose in a duel against fellow Danish nobleman Manderup Parsbjerg. Tycho had earlier quarrelled with Parsbjerg at a wedding dance at professor Lucas Bacmeister's house on the 10th, and again on the 27th. The duel two days later (in the dark) resulted in Tycho losing the bridge of his nose. From this event Tycho became interested in medicine and alchemy.For the rest of his life, he was said to have worn a replacement made of silver and gold, using a paste to keep it attached.
and ...
He kept a dwarf named Jepp (whom Tycho believed to be clairvoyant) as a court jester who sat under the table during dinner (Ed note: YES!!!). Pierre Gassendi wrote that Tycho also had a tame elk (moose) and that his mentor the LandgraveWilhelm of Hesse-Kassel (Hesse-Cassel) asked whether there was an animal faster than a deer. Tycho replied, writing that there was none, but he could send his tame elk. When Wilhelm replied he would accept one in exchange for a horse, Tycho replied with the sad news that the elk had just died on a visit to entertain a nobleman at Landskrona. Apparently during dinnerthe elk had drunk a lot of beer, fallen down the stairs, and died.
How can you NOT love this guy? I could eat every meal for the rest of my life with a dwarf jester at my feet telling me my fortune and an elk drinking beer from his dish by my side and call existence a success. Tycho is my kindred soul, the elk my newfound spirit animal. Oh, his day job?
"Spent His Life Observing The Heavens"??? What an epitaph! Plus it's now believed he died of mercury poisoning, mad hatter style, which would be a nice addendum, and one of 11 possible deaths that I have approved for myself. (Also want to sign up to skydive on my 65th birthday, eat a bunch of drugs, have sex in the plane, then jump out without a parachute.) But back to epitaphs, Tycho's is up there with Gene Hackman's in The Royal Tennenbaums, "Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship." Surely there had to be something wrong with this guy, you're thinking, like some sort of crazy physical deformity or sexual deviant? You wish. Nope, straight-up ladykiller with a mustache second only to Tom Selleck or my rabbit, Martina Van Buren.
some guys have it all
History is fun.
But some history is gross, and I came across that today as well. I was spending some time today looking for inspiration in all the wrong places and reading Yahoo! Answers, the best place in the interwebs if you're looking for a little morale booster, when I came across a term that I had never heard before: "Furries." Of course I looked it up and came across this BBC clip from 2006. I don't know how I'm five years behind on this, but I am. Maybe you are too. Time travel with me back to a spooky British day in 2006, then fast forward to about 2:00 into this video, put your 2006-appropriate Sketchers footwear up, open a pre-discontinued Zima and watch.
I'm very fascinated with this. I might be even more fascinated with how many videos there are on YouTube of people who not only don't think this is funny, but outright hate the Furries. I just laugh and enjoy the oddity.
OK, that's enough for today. It's really windy outside tonight but I don't have to worry about being woken up in the night by my hammock rattling around on the back porch: It's still stuck in my neighbor's tree from last weekend. Here's some parting wisdom from kings and celebrities and me:
Corndogs and me, holding hands on a beach, just tryin' to make it through these hard times: This wasgoing to be the topic of my little writing exercise today. I was going to describe my view of life as cyclical, masterfully conjuring the corndog to illustrate my theory about how those who triumph at overcoming the bad and capitalizing on the good cycles in life likely hold the magical secret to success. I was going to talk about how I am currently in a corndog cycle — or more like back in my corndog cycle; how it hits me roughly once every few years. Approaching my ten-year high school reunion — which, unless I happen to find myself roofied up and 900 miles south of here, I won't be attending — I realized that right around now, ten years ago, I was deep in a corndog cycle that stemmed from driving two sisters to school. I planned on waxing poetic, reminiscing that everyday I'd go back to their house, watch about 30 minutes of Dumb and Dumber and have a corndog for an after-school snack. I could get introspective about how ten years have passed in a blur of processed and fried meats: How have I changed since then? What have I learned? Where will I go from here?
I was going to describe my youthful error of heating them in a toaster oven. It's too easy to burn them on the outside and leave them cold and raw inside. Gross. They must be fried. In college, I bought a deep fryer from Walmart and a family size bag of corndogs. I could have talked about how a SuperWalmart is a magical, fluorescent wonderland, a place I have visited many times with the sole purpose of wandering the aisles stacked high with stuff made in Chinese toy-bestos factories.
But do you really want to read an unhealthy person's opinions on corndogs? How insightful could it be? Can't I find a better metaphor? Is this a spec-piece I'm trying to shop to High Times? Who really wants to know anything more than they already do about corndogs? Most corndog knowledge is too much knowledge. They're kinda gross and so am I.
My point is, take unhealthy meat, add cornbread, deep fry and you're basically eating the equivalent of a bald eagle soaring over purple mountains majesty to take a big, star-spangled piss on Communist Russia. I had a corndog at the original Nathan's at Coney Island on the 3rd of July last year, one day before all those phony patriots wearing flag hats show up on the Fourth like heathens (me) flocking to church on Christmas. I also rode the Wonder Wheel. So I guess it's safe to say that I'm a real American who "supports our troops" (even though I'd move to Mexico if there was a draft) and always* votes. We Americans have to take our culture's good with the bad, but at least we know which side corndogs are on.
*never even bothered to register to vote because when I turned 18 I had missed the presidential election by one month so I figured I had plenty of time before the next election but then one thing led to another and I don't think I'm registered at all or at least not in New York... (this explanation is basically an Afro Man song, which I'm listening to now thinking of high school)
Anyway, go to Crif Dogs if you're around Driggs and N. 7th and get a corndog or any of the restaurant's other unhealthy delights (and don't forget to bus your own table or else a boyish art school undergrad will come out from behind the counter and politely shame you in the street).
Now for more important things: Insane Bunny Posse. There is an Internet debate currently raging as to who has the greatest dwarf lionhead rabbit in Greenpoint/Williamsburg/the entire Universe, and this requires all of my current attention.
Check out this poster I made to show how my new bunny, Martina Van Buren, looks just like an old-timey President.
Wait, no, that isn't it. That's a woman who looks just like her pet goat, right down to the beard and the toothless, trashy grin.
This is it. That's my baby-girl there on the right. She's a Patriot. She has a hotdog chew toy (no joke).
My opponent claims that her bun is still currently un-nameable, his essence not so easily captured as mine, even though several great options have been suggested. I thusly enter Martina Van Buren into the "Greatest/Weirdest Bunny in Northern Brooklyn" campaign, and the contest is just beginning. Vote or Die.
