Darfur

We wrote this.

The 'Can in the Van

I got to thinking the other night and I realized that The Cat In The Hat makes me very upset. For starters, if there’s some magical cat with the presence of mind to put on a hat, can he at least wear pants? I am profoundly disturbed by this. Why is it a cat anyway? And why is he wearing a hat? Is that supposed to make him different or better than all the other cats? “Oh, look at me, I’m a cat…but I’m wearing a hat!” And we’re all supposed to say “Wow, that’s just crazy. Cats don’t wear hats! You must be some sort of unusual, special cat.”

And going beyond the pretentiousness of his outrageous hat, he’s just a jerk. These little kids are all alone in their house and he just feels he has the right to come in like he owns the place. These kids are already upset – I don’t blame them, their clearly deranged mother went god knows where and left them alone during a storm – and Mr. Look-at-me-I’m-so-special-with-my-stupid-hat walks right in and starts showing them his “tricks.” Yeah, some tricks. He thinks he can hold about a thousand different items while standing with one foot on some sort of Seussian beach ball. I guess he was trying, in his own creepy way that includes breaking and entering, to entertain these kids. He thought he was helping, but since he’s an idiot, he dropped all the stuff and messed up their house.

Then he brings in his friends, Thing 1 and Thing 2, who proceed to fly kites through the house. This cat must really hate these kids. When the children are informed (by the fish, mind you) that their mother is right outside, the little boy finally flips out and says something along the lines of “Enough is enough! I have had it with this motherfuckin' cat in this motherfuckin' hat!” And then apparently there is time for the cat to bring in some massive, ridiculous machine and clean up the huge mess he made before the mother comes home, even though when the children looked outside, their mother was right there walking up to the house.

Wait a minute…funny hats, unwelcome guests, ruining a house…ruining America…I’ve got it! The Cat In The Hat is a metaphor for illegal immigration from the conservative standpoint. The cat comes in uninvited, ruins the house (America), then he brings his friends who continue to fuck things up, much like illegal immigrants who go back and bring their families and thus hurt America even more...and that thing he uses to clean up the house looks suspiciously like a riding lawn mower - that is, if Pimp My Ride did a riding lawn mower episode. Well, illegal Mexican immigrants are unwelcome, they hurt our country, and they use lawn mowers when they take gardening jobs away from...all the white people who want to be gardeners.

-Joe

Carrib-beaner

I was watching The Little Mermaid with my friends, as I am a beacon of masculinity, and it occurred to me that this film is another metaphor for immigration, this one on the liberal side.

First of all, wetback? Mermaids live in the water. Their backs are certainly wet. I would stop there, but I completely over thought this.

Ariel wants nothing more than to live on the land, because she knows it's so much better than the ocean (even though in the ocean she gets a crab band leader that is an unnecessary incarnation of a stereotypical jovial yet neurotic Jamaican dude, and can summon all the sea creatures to jam on a funky Caribbean beat and sing in three part harmony within moments), similarly to how everyone in the real world is clearly aware that America is way better than Mexico. She wants so much to live on the land that she gives up her family for a chance to do it - many Mexican people have to leave their families in Mexico until they have enough money from gardening, dish washing, and hosting atrocious, unfunny shows on Comedy Central* to support their family in America or until the family gets the chance to sneak across the border themselves.

Now let's examine the deal Ariel makes with Ursula, who in this metaphor represents the US government. In exchange for Ariel's voice, Ursula makes her human (American). Ariel's inability to speak when she is in human form represents the struggles Mexican immigrants face when they come to America with little knowledge of the English language. The second part of the deal is that Ariel gets three days to make the prince fall in love with her; if she succeeds, she gets to stay human, but if she fails, she'll become a mermaid again and be forced to live under the sea and be Ursula's bitch forever. She ends up failing and turning back into a mermaid, which represents her being deported from America. But then, King Triton gives his own soul to Ursula in place of Ariel’s, and Ariel’s freedom represents her getting a visa. The battle with Ursula (remember, Ursula is the US government) represents Ariel trying to gain citizenship, and then when King Triton turns Ariel into a human, she has gained full citizenship, and thusly she and Eric can now legally get married and live together on land (America).

This is why I'm not a very good student.

-Joe

*Carlos Mencia is actually not Mexican, he is Honduran and German, so that joke is not fact-based and is a tad bit of a stretch, and for that I apologize. I just hate him so very very much and I had to say something.

Comedy (Pathetic) Men-tral

Was that last one too long for you?

I apologize.

Here's a shorter one.

Comedy Central is clearly almost exclusively made for completely unsatisfied men.

Firstly, I'm going to ignore the fact that 99% of their show material is completely juvenile and sexist. You are intelligent and probably are already aware of that.

However, if that hasn't convinced you I submit for your approval (and the approval of the Midnight Society) the following.

I am watching Comedy Central (try to ignore the impulse to make a "you're an unsatisfied man" joke) and the exact same two commercials keep airing. Every single commercial break. The same two commercials.

1. Girls Gone Wild: The Search for the Wildest Bar.
The title of this dvd sounds epic. Do not be deceived. This commercial seems mostly to revolve around the same obnoxious faux-Caribbean muzak that was in all of the other girls gone wild commercials and the use of the word wild as many times as possible. "The Girls Gone Wild have gone even wilder! They're so wild! And Girls Gone Wild is searching for the wildy wildest wild Bar! Isn't that wild???" While this guy's yelling at you, the same images that have been in these commercials for decades flash across the screen. Women, who are inexplicably covered in oil, are "spontaneously" flashing the camera while deliciously cartoonish text bubbles cover their underparts. I assume that they have breasts, but because of this intense censoring system, we may never know. Isn't that wild?

The second commercial in this exciting pair is, one supposes appropriate.

2. Extenze Natural Male Enhancement
The title pretty much says it all. Actually, the title says more than the commercial. They spend the entirety of the commercial avoiding any kind of reference to the penis, which, one assumes, is the target of this drug. An example of the kind of "cleverness" they employ for the sake of "propriety":

• Man: Honey, I just ordered these new male enhancement pills for myself
• Woman: Enhancement? What does that mean? Like muscles?
• Man: No honey. MALE enhancement.
• Woman: Does that really work?

Now from an actor's standpoint, the more complex role is that of the woman, because at first, when she has no idea what male enhancement means, one would th ink she was mentally deficient. However, once she figures out what male enhancement is (using only obnoxiously emphasized phrasing), she immediately thinks "Well that's stupid," and all but tells her husband so. Because no. These things do not work, or they wouldn't be advertising them at 2am on Comedy Central. "But, ah!" says the Extenze representative, "we're giving them away for free! Could we afford to do that if they weren't good?" Well, I often give away bad food or old clothing for free, so one would guess yet. But they believe otherwise. And their fierce devotion to MALE enhancement (get it? Male? Penis? Penis enhancement?) tires me. I have no energy to counter their absolutely idiotic argument.

So Comedy Central is intended mostly for lonely men with small penises and no ability to comprehend when they're being completely fucked with.

In conclusion, I will be watching a lot less Comedy Central.

Fully enhanced and socially active,
Ryan

(sorry. not that much shorter. apparently i care as much about irritation commercials as i do about cancer. maybe that's why i find life so challenging.)

Anti-optimism

Well met, fellows.

I'm sitting in front of my computer right now reading an article about how a positive or negative outlook can affect survival rate in cancer patients.

Here's an abbreviated version: It doesn't.

Want proof? Here.

"Maintaining a cheerful or philosophical outlook to one's cancer does not make any difference to how long a person can survive after being diagnosed with the condition, according to a new US study."

Let me lay out for you, gentle readers, the problems I have with this article.

Isn't the ability to think that a positive outlook can cure cancer the ultimate form of optimism? And an optimist wouldn't have done the study, because they wouldn't need to. They would have just believed it because it was good, right? So the person who did the study clearly didn't believe it anyway. Here is where my argument branches. Stay with me.

Ahem.

If an optimist was waiting for this study to decide whether or not to feel positively, he or she was probably not an optimist to begin with. That means that the study doesn't affect them, because you can't just feel positive in order to cure cancer. You have to actually just feel positively about it. You can't decide later and hope the cancer didn't notice.

So we know that people who didn't believe before are largely unconnected to the study.


So that means the study only affects optimists.

Those who did believe before will continue to believe. They're optimists. They're going to assume the study is wrong and that positive thinking will help. Because they themselves are positive thinkers. Follow?

So that leaves two ways of following the positive thinking positive health philosophy.

First, and frankly lesser, is the kind of optimist who thinks that only positive thinking is necessary to beat cancer
"What? Chemo? No thanks! I'm just gonna sit here and think positively!"
Clearly, they have problems beyond cancer. They don't need this article coming after them too.

The remaining kind of person is the person who keeps a positive outlook and takes all possible steps to beat the cancer. They take the chemo or whatever else the doctors think will help. And good for them! They're doing what they have to do and they're keeping upbeat about it.

So, basically it comes down to the fact that the article is directed at this last group. The study is designed to depress the most capable, intelligent, productive kind of person. These people have cheerful personalities and a desire to work and heal and this article comes along to crush their spirits. Fuck this article. It was clearly written by a bunch of douche bags.

And, finally, did we really need a study for this? It's not like a positive outlook hurts these people. The study basically proved that we don't know what the fuck is going on. Were we confused before? Did we think we knew the cure? Cus, we didn't. That's why we do studies.

And wouldn't the time, energy, manpower, and money that went into this study have been put to better use in, I don't know, ACTUALLY CURING CANCER.

Fuck these guys.


An optimistic hug,
xoxo
Ryan


(if this comes off as rambling or angry, fuck you. it's 3:30 in the morning.)

Coin Tricks

Seat-Pissers

Well congratulations, people who piss on toilet seats, you've made the list of things I hate more than my dad hates French people. You've joined the ranks of smokers, vegans, and the reslife and dining hall people at Ithaca College.

So here's what happened. It was about 2:30 AM. I hadn't gotten to sleep yet, but I was about to start the process, when I had to do my business (that means shitting). So I went and put the paper down on the seat like I normally do because, ew. But there arose a problem; toilet paper may satisfy my OCD in normal scenarios, but unfortunately, it is not a shield for liquid. That liquid, of course, another man's urine. I was sitting in at least one other man's liquid bodily waste. I'm not ok with that. I went across the hall and used the other bathroom, but I still felt tainted.

Here's how I see it. You can now blame people who piss on toilet seats for global warming. Hear me out. I put the paper down on the seat. But if it turns out there's piss there, I have to first use that toilet paper to wipe it away. Then I need to use more paper to sit on. In this case, I went to a different bathroom, because the piss was too great in quantity, but that still means more paper. And now, the thing is, I need to take a shower. Because I don't know about you, but having another person's urine on my ass makes me feel slightly unclean. So I feel that this seat-pisser is responsible for the water I am about to use in the shower. Now. At 3A-fucking-M.

If I somehow caught someone in the act of seat-pissing, I'm afraid I would have no choice but to tear open his body with my room key, and proceed to forcibly remove his kidneys with my bare hands. I would then force this fellow to eat his own kidneys, while kicking him in the testicles every 3 seconds. Then I would have to break his backbone and bend him over so he could fellate himself, at which point I would kick him in the face, causing him to bite his dick off. Then I would use his head to break the mirror, roll him around in the broken glass, and set him on fire.

Don't piss on the seat.

Sweet dreams,
-Joe

Interesting Names for the Effects Being Tired Has On Me

I am, and have been for some time, very tired.
For your entertainment pleasure, I have decided to list the effects this has had on me.
Additionally, I've decided to make up both a pseudo-scientific name for them, as well as what they might be known as more colloquially.

Here's an examply from reality: Restless Leg Syndrome or "The Jimmy Legs"

Here goes:

• Fuzzy Oculation or "The Burny Eye"
• Visagial Twitchitude or "Itchy Itchy Face"
• Blurry Unspecific Visual Fixation or "The Empty Stare"
• Subjective Contraritude or "General Not-Wantiness"
  
• Aestuosomposco or "OH MY GOD LET ME SLEEP!"

If you have any or all of the above symptoms, you may be suffering from tiredness. You should contact a doctor, or, alternatively, a bed.

I hope this list was helpful and informative.


Tired,
Ryan