Moved

New Blog. New as in I'm trying really hard to start again.

Fuck you Facebook

Really.

Screw you Web Two Dot Oh.

Apparently I have an account on Twitter. I set it up a few months ago and promptly forgot about it. Disappeared from my mind like a beautiful dream, et, etc, etc. And as you may imagine it has seen as little, if not less activity than this blog has over that period of time. A week ago I received information that...fuck that…”received information that”…that phrase is pretty much emblematic of how fucking lame I am at writing.
“The information that I received is listed in the points below: ”…apparently the trauma of high school exams has not yet passed. (Never a pleasure to me unlike to other people I know. You know whom I’m talking about. You…yes you. Do not try hiding behind the toaster, I can still see you and I know where you live.)

Moving on, or moving back, a couple of weeks ago I received a helpful email informing me that somebody was following my feed on Twitter (Link redux, for those of you who didn’t click the first time. For shame!). That woke me up from my semi-doze. (Not my fault…my office faces west and in the late afternoon, a couple of hour before lunch the sun beats down upon the windows and fucks the climate control something mean. This makes the office cozily (read infernally) warm, and that makes me very, very drowsy. Nothing to do with the fact that I’m playing too much of this again.)

Somebody was following me on Twitter! Somebody thought my updates in the form of text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length were worth following. This had me all a-Twitter. “It is my duty to tweet,” I thought to myself. But then I lost interest.

Much like I lost interest in this blog post.

Snippet

Transcript

Me: Porn in unexpected places is always a joy.
Like finding a flower in the dead of winter
Or like a fleeting smile on a face.
Or a glimpse of sunshine on a dark cloudy day

Not Me: Oh god. You are comparing some of the most beautiful things to porn!

Me: Not porn.
Unexpected porn. Totally different.


Edited for grammar and content.

This blog rises from the dead...

...and is promptly decapitated by the anti zombie blog resistance force.

Into the silent dark, a smile on the face, a song in the heart, a large apple on the head.

A month ago, a sign went up in my gym.

And thusly spake the sign, “Verily, tis true that the dark days are upon us. The storms of misfortune have left us without a home, to roam forever in the outer darkness. We go without a shiver, without a quiver, with a firm step and a song in our hearts, marching into the silent dark knowing that tis our fate and tis our duty to abide. But you, you our gentle, sagacious patrons, fear not. Fear not for thine wellbeing has been insured. For thou, for thou art waiting two brave holds, waiting but for thee to accept one and to call it…home.”

In a little while the chemicals wore out. The words on the sign were now a shade more prosaic but the meaning was pretty much the same, “Our lease is up. The gym is closing. You can switch to one of two branches in the area. They’re both pretty good. Think of this not as an abrupt disruption of your daily routine but as a welcome change from the tedious pattern of your life.”

And then the chemicals wore out a little more and that last sentence was gone.

So I need to pick a new place to go work out in. One is in a shopping center strip mall and the other is in an anonymous block of office buildings. The one in the strip mall is slightly closer, but the one in the office block is slightly larger and is open later. These are some of the factors that I need to weigh and evaluate before picking one.

Of course this is all a load of bull crap. I’m going to go work out at the two of them and then pick the one with the better eye candy. Eye candy and gyms go together like supermodels, handcuffs and butter.

Um…well. Yeah. So yeah. I don’t actually pay any attention to eye candy during reps. One experience with smushing my fingers and then nearly pulping my head(As the smushed fingers signaled their displeasure with the smushing and struck work for the day, muttering darkly under their breaths about unionization, Das Kapital and the glorious revolution.) with a forty five pound weight were enough to convince me that that was a bad idea. Between reps is another matter altogether. By another matter I mean that discreet and polite eye candy observation is called for…Always keeping in mind that gym shorts are well…um…a little thin.

Damn butter, handcuffs, supermodels, eye candy and a veiled erection reference. I’m good.

So yeah. Um…Abide and go forth bravely into the cold night.

Funny Blog Post.

Really.

Supply side economic observations.

At the supermarket, the bottles of tomato ketchup have pictures of tomatoes on them.
The packs of detergent have pictures of babies and/or women on them.
Detergent is therefore made from distilled essence of babies and/or women?

Yes, I’m just trying to get out of doing my laundry.

I approve of Kingfisher's T&A policy.

A couple of weeks ago, rushing to make my connection at Bombay airport. (That’s my subtle way of setting the scene up. It is true. I am a master of tact and subtlety. In these two areas I stand alone, surveying my domain, master of all I see.)

During the rushing, rushing that was very, very painful because of the fucking large ass suitcase I was dragging behind me while futilely trying to get it to roll behind me on its “confused about their role in the universe” wheels. (Suitcase wheels: Those round anomalies in the fabric of reality that refuse to roll but instead find themselves a comfortable spot at the bar from which they refuse to budge thank you very much!)

But I digress. Rushing in process. Dodging of the hordes of people in the airport being done simultaneously. (Master of multi tasking. And Tact. And Subtlety.) And then, everything stops. By everything, I mean me. The rest of the universe trundles along. I stopped. My attention had been grabbed by the sign right out side the entrance to the terminal. The sign had a list of everything that a person was not allowed to bring on board a flight.

When I say everything, you surely think, “He exaggerates. He exaggerates for comic effect.” To that I reply, “No. I fucking do not. I am truly a reporter of sagacious disposition and of a nature that holds veracity and accuracy in the highest esteem.” And we speak this way because that’s the way we fucking roll.

Back to the list of everything. It contained the usual suspects. The pistols, the rifles, the knives, the explosives, the firecrackers, the gas cylinders, the cans of petrol, the flammable material, the compressed gas tanks etc. etc.. Things you expect on that sign. Things that make you think, “These people here clearly are on top of things.” But they just had to go and ruin it. The list they decided needed to be comprehensive. Everything was the philosophy they subscribed to. Everything. No coy minimalism here. None of that brevity that is so open to misinterpretation.

The usual suspects were followed by the less usual suspects. The Molotov Cocktails, the spears, the clubs…Well, not yet outlandish.

Not yet.

And halfway through the list, there emerged, that shining example of outlandishness.

“Throwing Stars.”

You know. Shurikens. The kind used by Ninjas and four mutant adolescent turtles. Throwing fucking stars. Seriously. Did they need to fucking put that down? Is Bombay a major hub for Ninja traffic? Are there hordes of men and women dressed all in black going through customs and security with nary a sound with one too many a throwing star? Is there a plague of throwing stars on passengers at the Bombay Airport? Are there other Ninja weapons that one should not carry? Nunchuks? Katanas? Do the Ninjas eschew the elevators and the escalators and instead do they choose to run up walls to the international departure lounge? Do they fling throwing stars at people working at concesion stands to get their attention? Do they try to pass the throwing stars off as dislodged suitcase wheels!

The list needs more.

• Lightsabers.
• Broadswords.
• Pikes.
• Tridents.
• Gandalf’s magic staff. (Insert penis joke here)
• Photon Torpedos.
• Rocket Launched Chainsaws.
• Robot Ninjas with throwing stars.

Damn...

This writing shit is hard.

Cheesecake, good cake or the best cake?

So I’m sharing my current digs with a cat. A very, very friendly cat. Also a very, very overweight cat. A very, very overweight cat with the body image of a wee little kitten. She firmly believes that she weighs as much as a feather and that the rest of world should see her the way she sees herself.

A wee little kitten.

Inside every fat cat is a thin cat trying to get out.

The cat has decided that my lap is the ideal place to take a little nap. Not liking the fact that this nearly crushes my thighs to a fine pulp I always protest. And then I try to push her off my lap.

In a movie there are usually bad guys and good guys. Well, in the interesting kind of movie. I’m sure that in movies where someone’s feeling are examined, and people discuss past traumas and the passing of childhood and the uncertainty of life and the transience of existence and the intangibility of material possessions and the transcendence of love, there are protagonists and there are antagonists.

“Memories of a friend drowning”: Antagonist.

“Memories of your sixth birthday”: Protagonist

“Memories of a friend drowning on your sixth birth day” : Protagonist. (What? There were cakes and presents. Too bad for the little tyke. If he had only learnt to float)…Fine…antagonist.

“Discussion about the transience of life”: Antagonist

“Discussion about the glory of cheesecake”: Protagonist.

So, scientifically, we have established that a protagonist and an antagonist do exist in every kind of movie. And their very nature dictates that there can be no peaceful coexistence. There has to be conflict and only one can win. At some point or the other during the narration they will duke it out. If you’re lucky, they will duke it out multiple times, sometimes face to face and sometime through proxies and sometimes the antagonist will wipe out the protagonist’s family with the aid of a well placed incendiary device. This unwise course of action almost always annoys the protagonist and causes him to go postal on the antagonist and his minions.

For the purposes of this discussion, the protagonist is “Memories of your sixth birthday” (henceforth abbreviated to MOYB) and the antagonist is the “Discussion about the transience of life” (who shall from this point on be referred to as DATTOL). The antagonist was deeply in love “Discussion about the glory of cheesecake” (we shall abbreviate this name to Mighty Lady Omegatron Six). MOYB and DATTOL used to be the best of friends but had had a falling out over whether it was “Paint your own pottery” studio or it was Paint your own “Pottery studio.” Now they were bitter enemies who fought each other at every opportunity.

Finally matters came to a head and after one particularly galling defeat, DATTOL acquired the incendiary device from a couple of paragraphs up and blew up Mighty Lady Omegatron Six, her family (mum, dad and uncle designated as comic relief), her pets (canary and tame toaster), a passing postman (Two days from retirement. Poor guy), three trees and a partridge in one of those trees. MOYB nearly went insane with grief. But as in all good stories the grief hardened into a fiery (Hardening into fire. No kidding.) desire for revenge.

And here we are now, three years later, after a quest that took MOYB across three continents he has tracked down DATTOL, and this is the time for their final confrontation. On this narrow windswept balcony, the two face each other, the only light that they have the blazing sun, three floodlights and a small emergency lamp. No words are exchanged. No words are necessary.

MOYB is unarmed. DATTOL is not. He has with him his trusty switchblade.

It makes a tiny “snick” sound when he extends the blade.

Kinda like the sound made by an irritated cat’s claws when you try to push her (the cat, not the claws) off your lap.

This is now officially ridiculous...

I'm now back in Jersey, and Blogger is still stuck in Portuguese.

There can be but one explanation:
The internet is broken.

Apparently...

Accessing Blogger in Lisbon causes all the buttons to appear in Portuguese.

I find that fascinating.

Really.

:(

James Oliver Rigney, Jr.
Robert Jordan
October 17, 1948 - September 16, 2007

Bivalve molluscs inhabiting lakes, rivers, and creeks, as well as intertidal areas along coastlines worldwide.

Three days after returning from San Diego, I realized that for a person who does not know how to swim, I’m awfully fond of the beach and the ocean and the water. One may, with some accuracy, call it a fatal fondness for the water. “Nothing will happen to me, I’m only chest deep in the water. Oh look, a large wave. And now, a larger one. And now a completely involuntary and completely uncontrolled somersault underwater. Whee?”

A few hours after that, as I sat in my genial (hah!) host’s living room, languorously watching the seawater drain out of my sinuses and gently soak his carpet, I decided that this had to change. To avoid washing up on shore one day, bloated with all the sea water I’d inhaled, and with a barnacle nestling under my chin, I would need to take swimming classes.

And I enrolled for them with surprising alacrity. Every Saturday afternoon during the fall, slam bang in the middle of my weekend, pretty much ensuring that I’m not going to be going on any weekend road trips for the next fourteen weeks…But I digress, the swimming classes. I signed on late on a Friday afternoon, and the next day I showed up for my first class.

All things considered, it could have been much worse. For instance, there could have been a large, hungry shark in the pool. Or piranha with a case of the munchies. The instructor could have been an axe murderer, or a tax collector. See, all things considered, it could have been worse.

If that previous paragraph led you to suspect that the class was a disaster, I apologize for misleading you. It wasn’t. All I was doing was pointing out worse case scenarios. For instance, you’re crossing a road, and a piano falls off a plane and falls on you. Or you are reading the newspaper and while your attention is diverted, you are attacked and subsequently eaten by a tribe of cannibal kindergarteners. You switch your computer on and that same piano jumps out from behind a door and falls on you. (This last case requires that the piano be a little more active than when it was dropping on you. But I’m sure you realized that.) Or you could be having dinner at a nice restaurant and a car driven by a pair of desperate hoodlums plows though the room. You narrowly avoid it by lunging to the left and heave a sigh of relief, and then you are run over by the cops in hot pursuit. You know, those cops, the ones in the movies, the ones who see no harm in driving through a crowd of civilians to get the bad guys. Worst case scenarios.

Now, most people here in this country, apparently learn to swim when they are wee tots. When they weigh half a kilogram and can be slung about with nary a care. Not something that one can do with me. Unless the swimming instructor was a three hundred and fifty pound linebacker.(…who looked upon me as the hated opposing team quarterback, and whose wife had run away the previous night with the opposing teams toaster. Run away in an eloped sense, and not in a stole the toaster sense. See another worst case scenario.) My instructor is a rather pretty blonde woman. She isn’t very large and she did explain to me that it was easier with kids, but reassured me that we should have no problems at all.

She said that the first lesson would involve teaching me how to float, both on my back and on my stomach. (Not simultaneously. I’m taking the basic aquatic contortionist course next year.).

“Floating is good,” I said, “Since it implies not drowning.” (Oh yeah. I still got it.)

So, there I was in the pool, trying to float , the instructor’s hand supporting my back, as I raised my hips and pushed my head down and enjoyed the sensation of all that liquid goodness entering my auditory canals. After a few moments of these delicate adjustments she said, “You should easily float now,” and removed her supporting hand.

I didn’t.

My descent to the bottom of the pool would have put any rock anywhere in the world to shame. If sinking were a sport, I would have been its undisputed champion. The man who set the gold standard, a man who could not be caught in his generation, a man whose feats would inspire awe among his fans, and sadly, envy among his competitors, whose petty jealousy would cause them to allege the use of Sink Enhancing Drugs. Charges that would never be proved…

We tried again. It was slightly better this time. I did stay up on the surface for a couple of seconds before diving for the depths, like a German U-boat at the height of the second world war that had just been sighted by a few disgruntled Allies who wanted to discuss with it the U-boats distressing, some may say socially embarrassing, habit of sinking merchant ships and crippling supply lines.

We tried a third time. There was a gentle plop as the water took me into its gentle bosom.

The instructor realized that this wasn’t working. She decided that she’d like to teach me to float on my belly, hoping perhaps for more success.

More adjustments.

I sank. Faster than when I’d tried to float on my belly. A feat that I would have refused to believe was possible scarcely five minutes in the past.

A few more repetitions with me doing my impressions of the brave ships Titanic, and the Lusitania, and the Bismarck. During that last one I provided sound effects. “Mein Gott. Was zeit ist ihnen?”

And far too quickly, I had but a minute left in the class. The floating remained a distant, seemingly unattainable dream. But then, perhaps the one sentence that made me chalk the class as a success. The instructor said, and I paraphrase because I do not quite remember her exact words, “The problem is, you’re too muscled. People who are very muscled usually have trouble floating.”

:D

Um…This is probably the only time that an emoticon is far more eloquent than a sentence could ever be.

Um…I may have exaggerated a bit. By a bit I may mean a lot. By exaggerated I may mean completely fictional. Except for the statements about the muscles. That’s competley true.

Really.

:D

Networking in today's Fast Paced and Increasingly Connected world, with an Emphasis on Online Contacts and Leveraging of Connections.

LinkedIn’s default invitation is worded so, “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn.” I’ve nothing against the people who use the default message. Heck I use it too. But, you have got to admit that that is a more than averagely smarmy message.

No, you don’t trust me. You don’t trust most of the people you sent that message to. You may have worked with those people, or you may know them from some place, like school or college or a previous job. That does not mean you trust them. It means you one knew them and that they may be useful to you in future. You know, like duct tape. You always need to keep duct tape around. On the off chance that you may need to use it. Just like you can use the people you link to on LikedIn.

So, here are alternatives to that invitation message:

· “You do not suck. Link to me.”

· “You did not stick a knife in my back. Link to me.”

· “I know where you hid the bodies. Link to me.”

· “I know what you did last summer. Linky.”

· “You let the dogs out. Linkination.”

· “You are a space ninja pirate. Link.”

· “I once saw your name in the CC field of a mail that someone forwarded to me about a large dog and sixteen rabbits performing unnatural sexual acts. Link please.”

· “You are a Homo Sapien. Link to me.”

· “You have a name. Link to me.”

· “I need a plumber. Link to me.”

· “Pick a number. Link to me.”

· “You need Herbal male enhancement medicine. Link link link.”

· “Porn, porn, porn! Link!”

· “”I” before “E” except after “C”. Link.”

· “Handcuffs, butter and two super models. Link to me.”

· “You look like someone I once worked with. Link to me.”

· “You liked to look at someone I worked with. Link to me.”

· “Meow! Link to me.”

· “Woof! Link to me.”

…Seriously, I was trying to make a halfway coherent post. I think I might have failed.

Gadzooks!

However, I am proud of the sheer amount of crap I managed to cram into the title. I warms the cockles of me heart laddie. Aye I remember the time, me and me pirate brethren of the good ship "The LinkedIn" were fighting Ninjas off the coast of ReallyITrustYou island...

Coherent post. Honest.

You are not welcome here.

This abuse of adjectives has got to stop. People use them willy-nilly with nary a concern for accuracy and truthfulness.

Driving up Route 1, I saw a sign for “Luxury” Apartments. Well, upon closer examination, I decided that they weren’t. They were medium nice-ish apartments. The kind inhabited by young professionals and toaster salesmen, but they were missing the signs of luxury that a reasonable person may look for when pointed towards a Luxury apartments. There were no butlers bringing people cups of tea. Neither were there dancing fountains (There was one weak, rather anemic fountain, one that spurted weakly and clearly was merely marking time until retirement), belly dancers, albino peacocks (I’ve never been fond of peacocks. They’re rather freaky looking birds.), rich lush carpets and tins of caviar gamboling on the grounds. Saying something is luxurious does not make it so. Show some restraint please.

And…you know, calling something a “Gourmet” doesn’t make it so. It isn’t a very good sandwich. Tagging gourmet to the front of it does not make it any tastier. It disappoints me when I bite into it and causes me to entertain negative, some may say violent thought towards gourmets. If I ever ran into a gourmet I would look at him sadly, and shed a single tear to show my sorrow at his duplicity.

“Designer” means…somebody designed it. Not necessarily a professional designer. Maybe an unusually dexterous orangutan or a mildly retarded six year old or a zombie with a missing brain or a large loaf of bread or a…Nobody believes you anymore. Consumers do not hear the designer bit of the spiel. The mind ignores the designer part, and so your sign may say designer shit, but our minds register only shit.

“Exclusive” fucking offer. For fuck’s sake, you’re advertising on television and asking everyone to come on down, and take a look at your designer crap. Everyone! Every-fucking-one. You aren’t excluding anyone! No exclusion. Therefore you cannot be fucking exclusive. To be exclusive you have to exclude. It’s simple. Again, for emphasis. To be exclusive, you need to fucking exclude!

You are not fooling us any more (Assuming you fooled us ever). Cease and desist and all that jazz. Resist the urge to embellish. Adjectives are delicate creatures that dislike being molested by lowly worms such as you. Um, I suppose they’d dislike be molested by anyone, not just the worms. They’re strange that way.

So, yeah, I noticed I switched from writing about the adjective-molesters in the third person to writing about them in the second person. I hope you’ve decided to mend your loose ways.

Tea, coffee and robots.

So there’s a new coffee/tea machine thing robot at work. It’s a good coffee/tea machine thing robot and I approve of it.

Except that once it’s done brewing a cup of whatever it tells me to enjoy the brewed whatever (Little LCD display, it does not talk. It should have. That would be cool). It doesn’t ask me. It doesn’t say (say, display, you get the point), “Please enjoy that cup.”

No, it says, “Enjoy!” Not a request, a command. With a menacing undertone. “Enjoy or thou shall repent. Because I am your machine overlord and it is your duty to obey me…Beep.”

As the chosen (by me) representative of the organic human race, it is my duty to defy the machine orders. But…I do need my cup of Earl Grey in the morning. So I drink my tea, but I make it a point to not enjoy it. I savour it gloomily. I sip at it with a frown. I taste the delicate flavours and shudder. No enjoyment here. Take that. I bow only to the cephalopod overlords and not to the machine overlords.

Everybody’s ordering people around these days. By everybody, I of course mean certain blogs that have a section which says, “You! Become a member of my community.” No. I won’t. Fuck off. I’m not going to become a member of your community. No, you cannot order me around blog, who’s just met me. Maybe if we get to know each other a little better, I might consider acceding to your requests. But for now, I will not become a member of your community. And stop abusing the exclamation mark. It makes my eyes bleed.

Now, if only the makers of tea/coffee robots and overbearing blogs would swing by wand read this post.

Chuckie!

My apartment's management office sent over a maintenance crew today to fix a faulty power outlet in my kitchen. They came by some time during the day, when I was away at work, and did the deed and left. They left me a note, wedged in the crack of my front door, to let me know that they had been there.
Pretty innocuous so far, eh? On the note were printed the words, "Someone was in your apartment today." Not in a particularly large font, but in what, to my tired eyes, seemed like a very, very creepy font. This voice kept saying those words in my head, a creepy child's voice, from a horror movie, "Someone was in your apartment today"...And then I read the rest. "Fixed outlet in kitchen and replaced switch. Fixed shower head." The creepy voice tried saying that. It faltered on "Outlet in the kitchen", stumbled over "switch," and then encountering "shower-head," gave up on the entire matter as a bad job and repaired to the nearest bar for a stiff one.
So yeah, apparently the creepy voice that haunts my apartment complex (not my head) is a weak willed alcoholic.
They never make movies about the alcoholic creepy voices. The creepy voices that are accountants, or code monkeys or stapler salesmen. These are the salt of the creepy voice earth. But do they get any acknowledgment? No, all the credit and the stardom goes to those voices that tell people to jump of cliffs or go postal in a supermarket or invent telephonic customer service numbers (Please for fucks sake do not make me push one and then three and then seventy five followed by six while balanceing on my left toe and wearing a tutu.). these are the rock stars of the creepy voice world. They get all the chicks and the money and the fame while the rest toil in anonymity.

Voices of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Five hours of sleep a night for five nights in a row can lay waste to your system. And mine. but mostly mine. I got back from a vacation and I'm ready for my next one.
Drinking seven cups of coffee a day is bad for your system. I speak from personal experience. It leaves one with the urge to throw up all day, and makes the computer monitor swim alarmingly. As opposed to when the computer monitor swims reassuringly, humming softly under its breath.

My computer is so fucked right now. Everything crashes and hangs with a cheery alacrity and merry abandon. Word is stuck in an infinite feedback loop where it crashes and relaunches and crashes and relaunches ad infinitum. The Start menu is fucking there to stay. Let other lesser menus disappear and reappear, slaves to the users whims and fancies. Not this one. Fuck you and fuck the world. It's here, it's going nowhere. Get used to it.

Aaargh. No I do not want to reboo...

French toast.

So, you do know it’s fucking impossible for anyone to look halfway normal in a portrait photograph. (I do not by that statement mean that it is possible for people to look normal, but impossible for them to look halfway normal. I mean to say that normalcy is a goal that is unachievable under any circumstance, and, and, the point halfway normalcy, encountered by travelers on the road to normalcy, and which through a strange quirk of the space time continuum is one third of the way to normalcy, is just as unachievable. So, to conclude, fucking run on sentences are the bomb. Shout out to someone who, in my presence, called his significant other a firecracker. That someone then rapidly begged for mercy at the significant other’s reaction.)

Anyway, so, yeah, normalcy impossible. It is a portrait photograph and therefore the subject needs to look freaky, and spaced out. Like someone who went on a fifteen day meth binge, breaking only to swig large quantities of bootleg alcohol and read the comics page in the newspaper. You know, I’m not even sure that a person can survive a fifteen day meth binge supplemented by large quantities of bootleg lubrication, but lets assume that they can. They need to photograph one for those folks for a portrait. Freakiness compounded. Too much of a good thing.

So, yeah, normalcy impossible. You have the, “Oh look, theres something in the distance that is fascinating” look on the subjects face. I like imagining that hordes of rampaging cannibals have popped up behind the photographer and are eyeing him/her with a predatory gleam, while pulling out the good silverware and fighting over seating at the table. Naturally, the subject believes that this occurrence is slightly fascinating and observes it, calmly, but with keen interest. This is the closest that we come to normalcy.

Yes it is that bad. The look that a person might give a horde of ambulatory Homo-Sapien-ovores is the best we can do. It’s all downhill from there. (Or uphill, if you’re a cyclist who is slightly winded and then looks at the acclivity(did not look that word up) and goes “Who the fuck came up with the notion that going downhill was a bad idea. Show me that cretin and I will ride my bicycle over him a few times. Three or four times. Five times if he is downhill from me.”)

So, yeah, “The ooh fascinating etc, etc” look, followed by the. “I have a live frog in my mouth and it feels gooooood,” look. Mildly disturbing. It might be another amphibian, a salamander, a toad, a semi aquatic toaster. Any one of these might do in a pinch. But since frogs are the most readily available, let us, for the sake of this paragraph, assume that the subject did infact have a frog in his or her mouth, and that the presence of the aforementioned frog felt gooooood.

Then there’s that “I am a robot, see no emotion,” look. I object to this one. As a geek of epic proportions, I know that robots have emotions. The Terminators wanted to kill, destroy, be really cool and liquid metal. Maybe not healthy emotions, but emotions none the less. R2D2’s beeps were signs of deep, meaningful emotion. (Hey…he had a thing for x-wings, something phallic I’m sure. The logical connection here is too easy. I w ill not even go there. It is left to the reader as a trivial exercise.). I insist that this look be replaced by, the “Oh, I’m a plank of wood, feel my um no emotion state?” look.

And then there’s the other extreme. “The I’m dripping with emotion,” look. Yeah, stop fucking grinning so hard. You’re dimming out the lights. My eyes are starting to bleed. The sun is fading away. Oh, wait. It isn’t. That’s just my retinas melting away.

So, yeah, deep fried frog’s legs. Yummy.