This ol’ blog has seen a bit of a spike in views the last few days due to yesterday and Monday’s posts.  I think I’m seeing the connection here.  People like strong opinions.  I need to hit the reader hard and fast without regard to who I may upset.  With that in mind, this potato totally looks like a butt.

it does!

I know this might ruffle some feathers out there but I don’t care.  It totally looks like a butt.  When I posted a picture of it on facebook some people said it looks like tits, others said a pair of balls but they’re fucking wrong!  It looks like a butt.

Some people might be offended that I posted a picture of a potato that looks so much like a butt that I may as well have just posted a picture of a butt but (butt butt!) you’re gonna piss some people off when you shoot from the hip like me.  I’ve got opinions and I’m gonna share them, consequences be damned!

Come back tomorrow for even more controversy, fuckers!

I read an article in the Star Tribune today where you dumbshits are protesting a bottled water ban at the College of St. Benedict. It spoke about how the college banned the sale of bottled water on campus (students can still buy bottled water off campus and bring it in) to try to slow the growing mountain of smelly fucking garbage that’s going to eventually bury the human race. It also spent $20,000 on 31 “hydration stations” around campus where students can fill reusable water bottles.

Pretty noble of the college and a smart idea but you republican morons had to go once again, take an environmental issue and warp it into a political issue.

“Just as the government should not ban plastic bottles in America, a school administration should not ban the sale of plastic water bottles on their campus,” said Ryan Lyk, chairman of the Minnesota College Republicans and a complete fucking douchebag that doesn’t seem to understand that plastic is made from a finite resource and doesn’t fucking biodegrade.

Another statement from Kate Paul, a St. Ben’s student, a Minnesota College Republicans leader and a stupid bitch read “The hydration stations not only cost us money to use, they are costing us our ability to choose and convenience that derives from choice”. The statement was muffled and hard to decipher because she delivered it with her head entirely up her asshole.

You just don’t fucking get it, do you? Pollution is literally slowly killing this planet and there’s no way to stop it with so many people but when somebody tries to slow down pollution just a little bit you actively fight it? How the fuck did you get into college to begin with?

Now I realize that a few thousand plastic bottles aren’t going to singlehandedly kill the human race but your idiotic asshole attitude is symptomatic of a larger problem. It’s just like your stupid lightbulb bullshit from a few months ago. You think it’s all about the “free market” and “choice” and “blah blah money money I’m a dumb fucking republican” but you either don’t realize (because you’re fucking stupid) or don’t care (because you’re fucking evil) that there are more important things in life like the survival of the goddamn species.

Fucking morons.

(note:  this is an opinion piece and none of the statements about any person are, unless quoted, meant to be factual.)

I was watching the cnn.com five minute recap of last night’s Tea Party debate because I like to start my morning with a nice frothy fit of rage (works just as well as coffee). Seeing all the candidates on stage I was left with a really big question.

What the fuck is Newt Gingrich doing up there?

Seriously. Somebody should tell him. It’s kind of sad to see him up there. Sure, there’s plenty of candidates that don’t have a shot up there (Santorum!) but Newt Gingrich really, seriously, holy shit honestly does not have a shot at the nomination. The guy hasn’t held office in about 13 years and all he’s done since then is write Civil War fanfic and hang around Fox News. Why is he running? Who told him this was a good idea?

Ugh. Look at him.

Look at those little beady eyes.  His weird hair.  Would you vote for that?

Didn’t anybody tell him he kind of became the mascot for hypocrisy when he cheated on his second wife (and former mistress from his first marriage) while trying to get Clinton impeached for cheating?  Nobody’s going to vote for him.  It’s almost like the Republicans are fucking with him.

Wait… is that it?  Is this some sort of prank on the poor guy?  When the convention starts up in Tampa next year, is Newt going to step on stage to accept his nomination only to get a bucket full of pig’s blood on his head “Carrie” style?  If so, will his terrible psychokinetic powers finally be unleashed, killing hundreds of republican delegates and candidates in the convention center?  That would be terrible (right?  I keep telling myself that would be terrible).

Please, Republicans.  For your own safety, stop leading Newt Gingrich on.  Don’t vote for him.  In fact, just to be safe, don’t vote for any of the Republican candidates.

I don’t normally talk about the mechanics of comedy on this blog for a couple of reasons.  It’s kind of boring if you’re not a comedy nerd and talk like this should be left to more capable comedians than myself.  Personally, I love talking shop about comedy but this blog is about one thing, feeding my ego.

Regardless of my completely not at all overinflated ego (feel free to comment, link, post to facebook, digg, stumbleupon, email to your parents, print out and hand to strangers on the street while wearing a white robe and singing etc.), I posted a joke on facebook last night that I was thinking of taking onstage sometime and a friend pointed out that it was pretty close to a Mitch Hedberg bit.  I posted –

“The back of the Ritz cracker box is really presumptuous about the effort I’m willing to put forth into topping a fucking cracker. Tell you what, Ritz. You’re getting either peanut butter or cheese and maybe some summer sausage if we’ve got company. I’ll save the roast beef, horseradish and parsley for actual bread.”

This came to me while I was (get ready to peek in to the mind of the auteur as he crafts comedy gold) putting peanut butter on a Ritz cracker and reading the back of the box.

Seriously. The "Cheesy Tomato Melts" recipe calls for pepper and garlic powder. It's a cracker, not an episode of Iron Chef.

A short while after I posted this a friend commented that it was a Hedberg bit.  I couldn’t think of a Hedberg bit about topping crackers so I just took his word for it and decided to drop the bit before I ever took it onstage.  Another friend posted a link to the actual Hedberg Ritz cracker bit and stated that the context is different. It’s true, I certainly go in a different direction than he did but the basic foundation is the same and he came up with it first.

So what should a comic do in this situation? Throw the joke out.

It doesn’t matter that I came up with the joke on my own because I didn’t come up with it first. This rule holds true whether the bit was performed by an icon like Hedberg or a shitty open mic comic. You wrote it first, it’s yours.

Besides, if I’m funny I’ll be able to write a different joke that’s just as good. Comedian and aggressive top Rob Delaney wrote in Vice Magazine about a time a joke was stolen from him and performed on TV. He said “I realized that if I couldn’t immediately write several more jokes to replace it, then I wasn’t funny, and I had no business calling myself a comedian”. This philosophy should hold even truer (according to spell check it’s a word!) if you inadvertently steal a joke.

I’ll just write more, better jokes.  I’ll be fine.  In fact, you can see me at The Monday Night Comedy Show tonight. I’ve got a great new joke about Triscuits.

Sunday will mark 10 years since terrorists hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Wow.  I just read that.  Did I just write the most useless exposition ever?  For those of you who forgot what happened on September 11th, 2001, please read the first sentence.  Glad I could fill in the blanks for anybody who was busy that day.

Okay, the point I’m trying to make is I, like a lot of people, remember what I was doing that day and not just because of all those “Never Forget” t-shirts and bumper stickers.

I was 19 years old and couch surfing in various friends’ apartments in the Twin Cities.  That morning I woke up at my brother’s place in Shoreview.  I was telemarketing part time for US bank and didn’t have to work until 5PM so that gave me plenty of time to bond with my brother’s sweet premium cable package.  I turned the TV on around 11AM and saw the footage of the 2nd plane flying into the tower.  My brother woke up and we both just watched over and over again the plane flying into the tower.  Every station either redirected to one of the big news networks or was off the air.  For hours and hours we saw that footage on a loop.

My mom called me at noon and asked if I was okay.  I assured her I was still in Minnesota and she told me she was worried that I might be at the Mall of America and the terrorists could hit that next.

After a while we just shut the TV off.  We just couldn’t watch that video one more time.  We talked a little bit.  Questioned what this meant.  Were we going to war?  Is this just the way things are now?  Planes fly into shit?  What?

Then we wrote some jokes about the whole thing.

I want to point out that we didn’t joke about the attack out of disrespect to the victims.  We weren’t firing pistols in the air and burning an American flag in the parking lot.  We were confused and a little scared and didn’t know what was going to happen next and this was a way to brush off  some of the anxiety.  We wrote three in total.  I forgot what two of them were about but one was how it would be funny if it was a total coincidence that two planes attacked the WTC.  Like the guy in the second plane is flying up thinking how original this was and nobody’s ever done it and then he sees the smoke and his last thought is “Goddamnit!”.

I never said they were good j0kes.

We laughed about it for a while and that helped.  When it was all over I told my brother there was no way I was ever doing any of those jokes on stage and we tore the page out of the notebook and threw it away.

Please feel free to leave any comments about what you were doing on that day.

Have a fun weekend!

I love hearing 23 year olds talk about how they don’t get hangovers.  They, like I did at that age, will talk about how they can drink and drink and wake up fine the next morning as long as they have a glass of water before they go to sleep.  Seemingly blessed with some superpower, their livers are alcohol processing machines, their metabolisms burn that shit to fuel their ever-partying bodies until the wee hours.

To all the 21-23 year olds out there I have some very sad news for you.  It’s going to fucking happen.  You will get hangovers.  It’ll happen so gradually you won’t know when it started.  Maybe that one night you had way too much to drink or drank sugary mixed drinks or didn’t get enough sleep?  You’ll rationalize a non-hangover reason for the throbbing pain in your head but you’re just lying to yourself.  This will happen more and more until you finally have to accept the fact that you can’t even have a few beers without making sure you get a pitcher of water and 8 full hours of sleep.  Congratulations, you are now aging.

The worst part about accepting that you get hangovers is that you have to now accept the fact that the path you now walk increasingly becomes one where you work for your body more and your body works for you less.   Your body is now a thing you have to take care of with proper diet and exercise.  To make it even worse, as you get older you can actually exercise the wrong way.  You have to be careful about working out otherwise you’ll end up a fucking hunchback or have torn ankle tendons or get blood clots or some shit.

It’s all pretty heavy, 21-23 year old readers.  I know.  Reading this is a lot to take in and you may just want to have a drink to calm down but don’t go too crazy.  You have an early morning tomorrow.

Why yes I am hungover.  Why do you ask?

I’m not proud to admit this but I used to be an internet troll.   I would get the biggest fucking high off of finding people with ridiculous viewpoints and pretending to agree with them so they would say ridiculous things.  At one point I even started up a fake livejournal account for a girl named Ana_Mal, the pro-anorexic goth vegan wiccan cutter furry.  She works at Petsmart and doesn’t like people judging her.  It’s been a while  since I’ve recycled any old blogs so here’s one of her posts.

It was fun but started to get a little too real when girls started instant messaging me for “thinspirations”.

This cinematic masterpiece is directed by David R. Ellis, the man who took snakes and put them on a plane when he directed Snakes On a Plane.   Once again he takes animals out of their natural habitat by taking sharks out of the ocean and putting them in a Saltwater Lake.  The sharks, ripped from their homes and families, swim around confused and alone.  Crying tears that cannot be seen because they’re underwater, the sharks appeal to some vacationing teenagers for help in reuniting with their families.

The teenagers or college kids or whatever, refuse to help the sharks due to long standing prejudice against sea creatures.  They harass them and at one point, kill the youngest of the shark clan, Chompy.

Torn apart by grief, the sharks vow to avenge little Chompy the only way they know how.  By eating people.  War erupts between the lake sharks and the vacationing youths, lives are claimed on both sides of the conflict and it seems like there will be no end until all are dead but suddenly, it’s revealed that Chompy’s brother, Chomper is in love with the princess of the vacationing youths.

With their secret love revealed, both sides realize they have a lot more in common then they think.  The fighting stops and it seems that everybody will live happily ever after until Prince Beerbong of the vacationing youths shoots Chomper in a jealous rage.

Bleeding to death, Chomper staggers to his people to implore they lay down their weapons (teeth).  He now knows, if only too late, that vengeance is not the path to seek.  As he lay dying, the princess runs to him in her shark cage to tell him she just found out she’s pregnant.  With his dying words, he christens the unborn shark-child.

The princess get’s out of her cage and announces to the dwellers of the lake and island that her child will usher in an age of togetherness and harmony.

Fin.

I’ll be going to the Minnesota State Fair tonight with a bunch of friends but there’s one slight problem. I’m broke. While this may be a problem for some people, a smart fair-goer can still have a blast on a shoestring budget. Here’s some tips.

Food:  Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar has long been a fair favorite for those with a sweet tooth but did you know you can buy the dough frozen at many Twin Cities grocery stores for less than half the fair price?  I suggest buying some, baking them at home, storing them in plastic bags and smuggling them into the fair taped to your body (Bonus: your body heat will keep them nice and warm!).   If you’re a true entrepreneur,  you can bring extra to sell at cut rate prices.  Careful you don’t get caught, though.  Food vendors at the fair run things Mafia style and you don’t want to end up at the bottom of Ye Old Mill wearing a pair of deep fried butter shoes.  If this is too inconvenient for you you can always huff discarded bags of mini donuts for a quick sugar high.

Rides:  While the fair has many unique and exciting rides to offer, they’re also a bit pricey.   There are two things at the fair, however, that are free.  Your imagination and the tractors on Machinery Hill.  Just sit on top of one, move the steering wheel left and right and make engine noises with your mouth!  Now all that’s left to do is yell out “who needs money?” and start laughing like a maniac until the laughter slowly devolves into crying as you’re yelled at by a man in overalls in front of hundreds of spectators.

Midway:  So many games and so many prizes and so much money.  I’d love to get the best prize possible but that just isn’t possible with my current funds unless I play it smart. I had heard about the guy who started out with one red paperclip and through a series of trades was able to get a house. All I have to do is start with one shitty prize and trade my way up. This should be easy since I’m dealing with carnies and they’re basically American Gypsies and love to barter. So I’ll start by winning a plastic mustache. I’ll trade that up for a switchblade comb. Once I have the comb I’ll trade that up for an unlicensed Family Guy plush doll. That should fetch me a nice inflatable squeaky mallet. Once I have the mallet I can trade it in for the ultimate prize. The Guns N’ Roses Coke Mirror.

Booze:  Sneak it in.  Duh.

See you there at the fair!