Gee Whiz, I Love Christmas

I have to say that Die Hard is probably my favorite Christmas movie. That's not really the point of this post, as this post really has no point; I'm just at my sister's place right now, watching my nephew make a movie with his Spider-Man camera, a film which involves Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus being flung together at high speeds by his hands. It's not exactly Harryhausen, but what's a kid gonna do? He's now talking to me about making a matte painting of a building, although he has no idea what a matte is, and he's going to be using crayons, but the concept is there.

I might add that Christmas dinner at my sister's place was pizza. I hate pizza.

I got boots for Christmas; boots that are about a size or a size and a half too small. That is what I got, in its entirety. That's not entirely true, since I bought a GeForce FX 5500 yesterday, but then checked the specs out on the internet prior to opening it, and finding out that the card is a piece of garbage, which will be going back to its point of origin tomorrow. I'm considering picking up a 6800 next week, which ought to take me through for a while, at least until I move up to getting a PCI-X chipset.

World of Warcraft has taken over the non-work part of my life. I'm playing on my friend's account, since I don't have broadband, and I lack any desire to download patches of thirty-plus megs in size, but I've managed to play for about seventy-five hours in the last several weeks, and have gotten my Troll Shaman up to level 25, complete with over 150 points in Leatherworking, which makes me just short of being able to make those Night Elves the gimp-suits they've been wanting so badly.

In any case, that was my Christmas, which rated about on par with my birthday for being a giant, steaming load of crap. Pity the restaurants aren't even open for me to go get something to eat.

AIM: therbmcc71

Jaws 2 is NOT a Classic

Jaws 2 is on AMC right now, the mere fact of which just baffles the shit out of me. After all, the name of the station is an acronym for "American Movie Classics," and we all know that the word classic and the film Jaws 2 cannot be used in the same sentence together, unless you're talking about how very non-classic the film happens to be. This is the same station that was, just a couple of hours ago, running Jaws: The Revenge; the film that caused Michael Caine to miss out on accepting his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters.

Anyway. World of Warcraft is down right now, or at least the login servers are fucked up. Fubar (see sidebar) is running slower than Sammy Sosa on a muddy basepath, and I'm got bored with the otherwise spectacular remake of Sid Meier's Pirates! I'm really not that excited about the game; the exclamation point is part of the title.

The link about the ever-expanding product lines at Tarzhay in the previous post originally pointed to an item without description that was merely titled "Marijuana," and cost something like thirty-five dollars. Not surprisingly, the company either moved the product or simply took it off out of the catalog. Personally, I would have started bundling it with Doritos and Twinkies, but the company doesn't listen to me.

Last night I bought I, Robot on DVD, and recommend the movie to just about everyone. Unfortunately, I fell asleep about twenty minutes into watching the DVD, and haven't yet had a chance to get around to doing so. It's lean on extras, though, which pisses me off. The only trailer on the disc isn't even for I, Robot; it's for Arrested Development. Now, I can understand how Fox wants to get behind this series, because it's the smartest comedy they've got, but it's just insulting to include a trailer for a fucking television show and not include the trailer for the movie I'm watching. Bastards.

We've got two links of the day today; one I'm posting because I just thought of it and still think it's funny every time I watch it, and the other was sent to me courtesy of Fubar's jimthej00.

• Mack Daddy Mario 3 - This is a great Flash animation that's a couple of years old, but never gets tired. Broadband connection is recommended, as it is with most things these days.
• New Signature-Model iPods - In response to U2's well-received signature iPod, many other musical artists have jumped in with Apple and are now offering their own signature models of iPod. Now that I think about it, I think that the Tarzhay marijuana from the last post should have been bundled with Snoop Dogg's iPod.

Well, that's all. It's time to see if the World of Warcraft login servers are back up and running. If not, then I'm just going to have to hit ebaumsworld and look at stupid videos there for a while.


AIM: therbmcc71

Casualties of War

I've been single again since Thanksgiving day, and I've been getting through it with the assistance of Tarzhay, which had me working the opening shift on Black Friday, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the seventh season of which I bought at Tarzhay for the bargain-basement deal of $17.77. I get through breakups by not paying retail.

In any case, I've been jumping all over the season, rather than watching it from beginning to end, as I normally do. With the third season, I tore through all twenty-two episodes in a single day; not surprising since Eliza Dushku was in half of it, and I really enjoyed the writing and performance of the Mayor character. In this case, though, I watched the last episode first, simply because it's a bad-ass episode, and it ends the series on a much more upbeat note than Angel ended. In fact, with regard to Angel, the only highlight of the last episode was when Spike actually finished a poem he'd been working on for over a hundred years, and then proceeded to present that poem to an audience of... well, it was just very interesting.

I've also been playing a fuck-ton (my word) of World of Warcraft over the last couple of days, and I'm going over to my friend's house shortly to start playing again. It's terribly addictive, though I take precious little enjoyment in doing quests and grinding up the levels. However, what keeps me playing is the fact that I'm determined to be the Wal-Mart of leatherworking. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to employ illegal Razormane workers for my sweatshop; I'm just offering mediocre products at bargain-basement prices, and making good money by turning over volume and gaining a bit of a dedicated clientele.

And next Saturday is my birthday. I told my human-resources person that I couldn't work after 6:00 on Saturday night, so she -in her infinite wisdom- scheduled me from six to close. While I'm on the subject of work, today's link of the day is an example of Tarzhay's ever more diverse product line. I think I'm going to have to point my H.R. person to that page and go, "Becky, what the fuck is going on, here; and why don't we have this in stock at our store?"

But I digress. My birthday's this weekend, and so I think that I'm going to buy myself something. The only thing that I've absolutely nailed down is the soundtrack to Reality Bites, since I really wanted to listen to it last night while I was ripping the soundtrack to Singles. For some reason, Paul Westerberg just reminded me of the Reality Bites soundtrack, and so now I want it. Beyond that, I'm not sure whether I want to get the Star Wars trilogy, the Nirvana box-set, the new Metroid game, Spider-Man 2 (either the DVD or the Xbox game) ... the list goes on. Ooh, I just remembered that I ought to take a trip out to the comic-book store and pick up a copy of... well, I've got a bunch of stuff to catch up on.

Anyway. I'm going out to play some World of Warcraft now. I'll update more often from now on, since it's pretty much impossible for me to update less often, unless you count my election-day political rampages as a sign of posting more often.

AIM: therbmcc71

NEWS ITEM: President to Order Bombing of the Rest of New Jersey

An F-16 fighter jet belonging to the Air National Guard fired twenty-five rounds at Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School on Wednesday night, marking the beginning of President Bush's latest military operation, which seeks to destroy the states that comprised the 252 electoral votes won by Senator John Kerry in Tuesday's election. The White House is not commenting on where President Bush was on Wednesday night, but they neither confirmed nor denied this reporter's question that perhaps he was finally fulfilling the obligation to his country that he signed up for during the war in Vietnam.

Let's look at the circumstantial evidence:

• We know that President Bush has a flight-suit, which he wore on the U.S.S. Lincoln on May 2, 2003, when he declared an end to major combat in Iraq.
• We're not sure, but we think that the President never finished his tour of duty with the Alabama Air National Guard, as no proof has yet surfaced of his attendance in such from the period of May, 1972 to October, 1973. That said, we're pretty sure he knows how to fly a plane.
• New Jersey's electoral votes will go to Senator Kerry when the votes are officially tabulated. President Bush lost by a seven-percent margin to Senator Kerry in New Jersey, coming in only forty-five points over Ralph Nader. Humbling, I'm sure; possibly enough to drive the most powerful man in the world to hop in an airplane and personally begin furthering his agenda ahead of schedule.
  
• Many have criticized the Bush administration's underfunding of the "No Child Left Behind" program, though (White House Press Secretary) Scott McClellan remarked that, "it would be impossible to underfund the program if and when there were no schools left."
• President Bush, according to CNN exit-polls, fared six percent better than Senator Kerry amongst voters with no college degree. In order to keep the kids from attending college, the Bush administration is expected to order the complete and utter destruction of all K-12 educational institutions within the next week. One anonymous Pentagon official stated that, "This operation will make Shock & Awe look like a couple of kids playing with firecrackers."

It is now more likely than not that the recounting in Iowa and New Mexico will be halted, with the numbers being doctored to show overwhelming support of the President and his war on Kerry's states. Live from a bunker near Wrigley Field, this is Umgawa signing off.

EDIT: Finally, your link of the day, sent to me by Fubar's own jimthej00: Canada 2.0

AIM: therbmcc71

From the Quotable Quotes Department

Upon receiving John Kerry's phone call, which conceded victory to George Bush, he pledged to pursue his agenda on taxes and Iraq while seeking "the broad support of all Americans."

Bill Clinton, from his office in Harlem, is still seeking the American support of all broads.

Thank you very much, I'll be here all week. Be sure to try the veal.

AIM: therbmcc71

At Least the Supreme Court Isn't Responsible This Time

Well, from the counts coming out of Ohio, it's looking like the people of the United States have officially (and for the first time) elected George W. Bush to the office of President of the United States. The up-side to all of this is the fact that in four more years, provided Dubya hasn't managed to start a nuclear war and kill us all, there will be no one to blame but Republicans for any and all of the ills that will befall the nation.

In lighter news, Alan Keyes lost the Senate race by about the predicted forty-plus percent landslide, making Barack Obama only the third black United States Senator since Reconstruction. I considered noting that Illinois also sent Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate, but then I remembered that I like her about as much as I like the outgoing Senator, Peter Fitzgerald.

So, I've been following things since The Daily Show ended a few hours back over at cnn.com, and I have to say that the most fascinating thing has to be the exit-polling. For example, fifteen percent of people polled said that Iraq was their biggest concern, and three-quarters of them voted for Kerry. Twenty percent said that the economy and jobs were their concern, and those people also overwhelmingly voted for Kerry. In the most bizarre statistic I've seen, twenty-one percent of people said that moral values, of all things, were their primary concern, and they overwhelmingly voted for the punk-ass chump, George W. Bush.

In the game of "lesser of two evils," twenty-six percent of people said that they were not necessarily voting for their own candidate, but against his opponent.

Okay, here's a funny statistic: In the question, "Did Bush attack unfairly?" (which is in regard to political advertisements and such), sixty-one percent of people said yes, of which a third of them still voted for Bush. Mathematically, this breaks down to twenty percent of the American populace, and they love their dirty tricks. This explains the success of the television show Survivor.

The thirty-five percent of people polled who were totally against same-sex unions of any sort (marriage, civil union or otherwise) voted overwhelmingly in favor of everyone's favorite National Guard deserter. While we're on the subject of ignorant people, twenty-nine percent of people said their family's financial situation is worse than four years ago, but twenty percent of that number still voted for George Bush, who -due to the 'global economy' we're living in- supports exporting jobs like the Middle-East exports oil.

Four percent of people polled are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Twenty percent of them voted for George Bush, who supports their lifestyle like he supports a strong economy. If you missed that jab, I'm saying he doesn't.

African-Americans only made up eleven percent of the voting populace, if this poll has any legitimacy. Even if it doesn't, the margin of error could be as large as five points, and I'd still have to say that not enough is really being done to mobilize the African-American vote (since ninety percent of those polled went for Kerry). At the same time, though, eleven percent of voters were voting for the first time today (and the majority went for Kerry).

When asked what the most important quality of the candidates was, the candidate's intelligence was primary with seven percent of people. Needless to say, Kerry won that contest with ninety-one percent.

I suppose there's a bright side to all of this: We get another four years of Bush-bashing from the likes of The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, and various non-Fox news organizations who just like to report on the train-wrecks of any presidency. As for Fox, well, they're always fun, since their coverage of the opening days of the war in Iraq was like a comedy of errors; I swear, they announced (and retracted) the death of Saddam Hussein a good five times in the opening week.

In closing, I'm going to tell you about a guy who works at my Tarzhay. He's moving to Japan to teach the little Nipponese children there how to speak English. He doesn't speak a lot of the local language, so I imparted upon him one very valuable piece of advice: If you're an American going to a foreign country, be sure you know how to say, "I didn't vote for Bush," in their native tongue. This could save your life.


AIM: therbmcc71

Pandering to the Dyslexic Democrat Vote

The Libertarian Party here in Illinois is running a guy for Senate named Jerry Kohn. Yes, his name is Jerry Kohn. Read that again, because this is your election-dyslexia test for the day. Now, what would have certainly made this worse is if the Republican Party decided to funnel money over to the Libertarians, so as to run Jerry Kohn for President. Here's a simulation of what a clusterfuck that would be:

United States President (vote for one)

• GEORGE BUSH / DICK CHENEY (REPUBLICAN)
• JOHN KERRY / JOHN EDWARDS (DEMOCRAT)
• JERRY KOHN / EDWARD JOHNS (LIBERTARIAN)

Okay, so I made up the Vice-Presidential nominee for the Libertarians, but you get my drift. In an election as close as this one, you'd think that the parties would be pulling out every dirty trick they've got, short of a total Watergate kind of thing; although I do recall a hubbub about the GOP lifting files out of Democratic Party computers, their defense being, "The files weren't secure enough;" we will not be seeing an independent counsel investigation over this, I'm sure.

But I digress. Dirty tricks, I was talking about. You'd think that the GOP would be begging the Libertarians to run Jerry Kohn for president. After all, I'm not sure what the percentage is of Democratic voters who happen to be dyslexic, but it might very well be just enough for George Bush to retain the Presidency. Oh, sure, it'd be like the "butterfly ballots" of a couple of years ago that had old, practically blind people voting for Pat Buchanan, who was ironically running on the "Soylent Green" platform. ... Pat yourself on the back if you got that semi-obscure euthanasia joke.

That's all for now. Tune in later for more Election Night coverage, in which I will probably refer you to the United States Supreme Court for a final call on who wins. However, I will reiterate that the Packers beat the Redskins, which means that John Kerry will be taking office in January; had the Redskins won, it would have been four more years of George Bush; and if a bunch of gun-nuts were to start plugging referees on the field, putting an early end to that particular football game, no doubt the Libertarians and Jerry Kohn would be taking office.


AIM: therbmcc71

Marathon Election Day Post

"Ooh, they're definitely getting paid," I say repeatedly as Scott quizzes me on the review-scores for videogames in the latest issue of Game Informer. I'm not at all shocked by the notion that certain print-publications and a large number of online review-sites can have their reviews essentially bought and paid for by the publishers of videogames. What irks me about the practice is that they're not up-front about it, and yet they still proclaim themselves to be journalists. This is on par with me attending an all-expenses-paid junket to Las Vegas (and I do mean all-expenses) for a positive review of Leonard Part 6.

What really pisses me off is when it's obvious that they're either getting paid, though I suppose they wouldn't just go and admit that their reviewers are utterly retarded. IGN gave the new Grand Theft Auto game a wildly absurd score of 9.9 (out of 10). Sure, it's a nice game, but it's just GTA all over again, in that it's largely boring and parts of it are tremendously difficult. Gamespot gave the game a slightly more respectable (but still outlandish) 9.6, on the same scale.

And then you have the matter of PC Gamer's review of Half-Life 2, which came out considerably earlier than the game did. While I understand the necessity of having reviews out in a timely fashion, reviewing incomplete code is just bad for credibility. They also gave it an absurdly high score, though I can't remember exactly what it was at the moment.

I suppose all of this comes down to the situation with Fable, which might have been one of the most over-hyped games of all time, if at least since Black & White (which was also designed by the same guy). For the life of me, I have no idea how Fable got review scores as high as it did, given the fact that the game had nearly zero-replayability. It was fun for about three days, and then it got tremendously old, not to mention the framerate-issues.

Professional videogame reviewers are dumb.

Anyway. Scott's moved on to playing Dead or Alive Ultimate, or some such game. This is after he pulled out the first DOA game, which is actually the only game that I've ever seen where there's an option in the settings-menu that will allow you to turn off the jiggle-factor on the female characters' enormous breasts. And if you didn't think that was weird enough, DOA Ultimate supposedly has a special-edition release in Japan in which you also get a life-sized DOA female-character dakimakura, which translates as "hugging pillow" or "love pillow," whichever you happen to prefer. Those Nipponese are pretty fucked-up.

With the sole exception of the Soul Calibur series, I loathe fighting-games. I simply don't have the reflexes for them, and they're pretty much lacking in story beyond the classic, "My kung-fu is better than your kung-fu." The quality that redeems Soul Calibur and its sequel is the fact that they're button-mashers, which is to say that anybody can be competitive at the game, and so it's a great party-game. Get four semi-drunk people in a room, give them a Gamecube and Soul Calibur 2, and you're pretty much good to go.

I've just about got the science of ripping Final Fantasy VIII videos down to a science. For some reason, it's just not going as quickly as ripping the FFX videos was, which is strange since the documentation for both ripping-programs was in Nipponese (which I don't read). I'd probably have been able to rip and start chopping the videos after about a day, but I've been spending a few hours trying to get my Playstation emulator running a bit better. There's a bit of chop with regard to the sound, and I just can't play like that. I might also add that the emulator's sucking about ninety-four percent of my resources (on a 1.4 GHz Athlon, 768 megs of RAM), so maybe I should test it on a better rig ... I'm pretty sure a driver change should do the trick, though.

I saw Gothika over the weekend, and I can honestly say that it's probably got the most unbelievable, incredible ending of all time. Sure, some people might think that's a good thing, but I'm serious when I say that the ending is completely bereft of believability or credibility. Halle Berry chops her husband up with an axe, but (spoiler-disclaimer: I don't have a problem with spoiling bad endings to movies) she ends up going free at the end because she was possessed by a ghost and her husband was a bad, bad man. Then again, if she asked for a jury-trial here in America, I'm quite certain that she would be set free after that explanation.

Juries are dumb.

Football! The Packers beat the Redskins this weekend, marking the only time in my entire life that I've ever pulled for the Packers to win a football game. This is, of course, because of what I'm referring to as the Redskins Prophecy, which was mentioned no less than eight bazillion times during that particular game. In other news, the Bears beat the 'Niners in a game to see who was truly the worst team in the NFL; a bizarre game in which the Bears' third-string (starting) quarterback fumbled the ball twice in one play, two field goals hit the crossbar, and the referees made two fantastically idiotic (but favorable to the Bears) rulings on challenges. Seeing how I hadn't watched football all year, this was exciting for me.

It's that time of the year again: It's Election Day, which is the best day of the year, and you know why? Because that means we don't have to see any more retarded ads about who to vote for, or who not to vote for; which we are forced to watch, even though the majority of the ads in Illinois are for a congressional district that I am not a part of. There's one retarded advertisement by a Republican that says his opponent "would vote against Denny Hastert as Speaker of the House." Hey, everybody loves Denny, but since his opponent is a Democrat, she wouldn't get to vote for Speaker unless the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in the first place.

Political ads are dumb.

I suppose that the most fun that I'll be having on Election Day is laughing my ass off at the miniscule percentage that Barack Obama's opponent, Alan Keyes, is going to get. I mean, here's a guy who's going to get maybe twenty-five or thirty percent of the vote. While searching for news on their debates, I found the quote, "The third and final debate is over, and the score is clear: it's three straight wins for Alan Keyes and the voters of Illinois." This ran counter to everything else that I had read, and all became clear as I found out that the quote was by Keyes' campaign manager.

I suppose my biggest reason for laughing at Alan Keyes is because he's actually got a stance on porno. Not only that, but in his stance on porno, he actually uses the word harlot, which is a word that I would only consider using if I were going about some sort of sexual role-playing thing, while using Arthurian England as its basis. But I digress. If for no other reason for the citizens of Illinois to not vote for Alan Keyes: He wants to take away my porno.

Alan Keyes is dumb.

Anyway, the polls open in an hour, so I'm going to make myself a sandwich and go out and vote. I might take this opportunity to urge all of you reading this before voting, please, for the love of all that is holy, please vote for John Kerry. And, if you just can't bring yourself to do that, please don't vote for that punk-ass chump who's been running the country for the last four years. Vote Nader if you must, but at least in the event of foreign invasion (which I wouldn'trule out if we get four more years of this guy), you can honestly say, "I didn't vote for Bush." Why not?

George Bush is dumb.

And now, since you've gotten this far, it's time for Israeli Idol.


AIM: therbmcc71

Taking Donations for Psychiatric Help

So I took this quiz earlier today, and now I'm just getting around to posting the results, none of which are good. I'm actually fairly certain that I rate Moderate to High on anything that doesn't show such because, thinking back to when I took the survey, I think those questions were oddly phrased and the answers could have gone either way.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	High
Schizoid:	Very High
Schizotypal:	High
Antisocial:	High
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Very High
Narcissistic:	High
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

In any event, I'm going back to sleep, as I've got a bit of a day ahead of me, since I'm going to start writing down notes for my novel. I figure that, as long as I don't take it as seriously as I do some of my other writings (or lacks thereof), I should be able to haul through it in a month's time.


AIM: therbmcc71

NaNoWriMo, GTA, NFL, Other Assorted Acronyms

All right, so Lizzie's got it on her site, I think Complex Superior has mentioned it, so I guess that I ought to as well. November is National Novel Writing Month, and I think I'm going to write a novel. And I might be able to accomplish that goal, since Tarzhay cut back my hours until at least November or December. I've decided to go with a sort of absurd sci-fi novel; sort of like the movie Independence Day, but with the kind of tone that Peter David's Woad To Wuin was written in. For more information, hit NaNoWriMo's website.

Moving on, my friend Scott has just started playing the new Grand Theft Auto game, and it's already been slightly redeemed by the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is one of the voices. He's currently riding around on a bicycle, so I don't really have any sort of grasp on how good the soundtrack is yet. I can't see how it could be as good as the GTA: Vice City soundtrack, given that the 80's were to music what the 50's were to television; there are people who look back on it, smile, and are entertained by it, but they still know that it's bad. So San Andreas (the new GTA game) is supposed to have a soundtrack out of the 90's, which means I'll be listening to the ever-hilarious talk-radio station while driving around town.

At the moment, Scott is trying to get away from a drive-by shooting by escaping on a bike, and he's no idea where he's going. Somehow, he's managed to lose the guy that he's supposed to follow. Again, without a soundtrack, I'm not thoroughly impressed by Grand Theft Schwinn.

I've been notably absent from my own blog, partly due to the fact that I've been spending a lot of time in the city, and I don't have a computer up there that I can sit down at and ramble to my heart's content. The rest of the time, I'm feeling entirely uninspired, and I end up electing to go around the corner to Scott's house to play NFL 2K5 on his Xbox. I suppose one of these days I should bump up the difficulty level, since I'm playing with the Bears and I've been winning games with scores like 80-0. Unfortunately, I have no players on the team that are worth trading for a few decent cornerbacks who can actually intercept passes.

Okay, Scott's just jacked his first car, and the first song on the Radio X station is "Mother" by Danzig. Kick... Ass. This is then followed by Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage," which means that that soundtrack definitely has promise; or at least that particular station does. He changes the station, and I laugh my ass off as I hear the opening of "Motownphilly" by Boyz II Men. The station is changed again, and we've got "The Payback" by James Brown. Not too bad, but I'd have put "Sex Machine" on instead. The station changes again, and it's over to talk-radio. I'm too busy typing to pay much attention, but it's pretty damn funny for a moment.

And then he changes to the country music station. Now, by and large, I abhor country music, going so far as to refer to it as "possum rock." So the song, "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" is playing, and I think it's the Waylon Jennings version; definitely not Willie Nelson. And, right at the end of the song, I get the best laugh of the day, and probably the week: The DJ gets on the air and -with her overacted southern drawl- says, "You know how to not let your babies grow up to be cowboys? Make him a castrato." I laugh my ass off and Scott's essentially clueless, not knowing what a castrato is.

The links of the day, you ask? If you're on broadband, I highly recommend "Old School Afternoon," which is actually funnier than the redubbed G.I. Joe public-service announcements (also available in the same area of heavy.com as "Old School Afternoon"). It's even funnier than the first part of Spider-Man Reviews Crayons, which I plugged a while back. And, since we have to get the requisite political spin into this series, here's an animation of how the new Florida Voting Machines will function on Election Day (1.7 megs, and worth every byte).

I find it remotely ironic that Scott's being pursued by the police right now (in the game, mind you) for jacking a car. And, of course, what's the song that just happens to be on the radio at that moment? That's right, it's Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing." Scott gets gunned down by the overzealous crackers we call po-leece just moments later. Bubba, I know what you're thinking, so preach on, brother! In the meantime, I'm going to put on a do-rag and laugh at Scott's in-game misfortunes.


AIM: therbmcc71

"I Can't Believe I'm Losing to This Guy."

I told my girlfriend that I was going to sleep about two hours ago, and probably would have achieved that end if not for the fact that I couldn't put down Mick Foley's second book, Foley is Good, and the Real World is Faker Than Wrestling. Is it as good as Have A Nice Day? I can't really answer that, but I do appreciate the fact that it's a bit more random in its storytelling, getting off on tangents that last about a page at a time.

So around three in the morning on Monday, I found out that Christopher Reeve had died sometime on Sunday. I then set to work on Fubar to write up a recommendation of various Christopher Reeve films in the Movies forum, which has since garnered about as much attention as a fart in a tornado. However, if something were to happen to Adam Sandler or even Rob Schneider, they would likely light candles and open a chat-room in some sort of bizarre e-vigil. In summary of those recommendations, go watch the first two Superman films, Somewhere in Time (which is actually just finishing up on AMC as I type this), Deathtrap, and Noises Off.

See, it was my grand plan to channel my comics knowledge and draw some kind of parallel between the "Death of Superman" storyline and the death of Christopher Reeve, in some sort of classically-Umgawa totally-overthought and overwrought "pretend it's an A.P. test prompt, you have fifty minutes, begin," kind of fashion. ... Actually, I think that there's a couple of ways of going about that, and it could work, but it's a pain in the ass and I'd rather just rip CD's.

So, just in the time that I've been sitting in front of my computer, contemplating whether and how I would go back to blogging, I've managed to rip the first Nerf Herder album; Alanis Morissette's Unplugged album; Let Go, by Nada Surf; The Rising, by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band; currently ripping Achtung Baby, with Pete Droge's Necktie Second, the Apollo 13 soundtrack, and Toad the Wet Sprocket's Pale still in the queue.

So I've been working a lot lately, though by even using that combination of words, I'm apt to draw the ire of my girlfriend or my father, both of whom know what it is to work a lot. I didn't actually mean it like that; I'm merely saying that I was working enough to preclude updating this blog, since I'd much rather spend time with my girlfriend (even though that brings with it a rather long drive in the utter silence of my truck) or in front of my friend's Xbox, playing NFL 2K5, which is one hell of a slick presentation and makes me wonder why the Madden fanboys keep going to Electronic Arts for their yearly football fix when 2K5 costs twenty dollars to Madden's fifty.

I've decided to put off the whole Christopher Reeve part of the post until later; that I've stated this marks the death-knell for that particular subject, as is always the case when I say I'll get around to talking about some particular subject. In the rare event that I do get back to it, that'll be because I found that parallel that I wanted to draw between the deaths and lives of Superman and Christopher Reeve. Basically, it's got to be damn good, since it's going to have to make up for the sorry excuse that is the current post; the title of which goes back to a 1988 Saturday Night Live sketch in which G.H.W. Bush is in a debate with Michael Dukakis, in which Dana Carvey (as Bush) elaborates on his plan to build a time-machine to prevent the Soviets from launching a first-strike on the United States. When asked for comment, Jon Lovitz (as Dukakis) merely said, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."

It's a big election this year; so big, in fact, that my friend Scott, who has never taken the slightest interest in politics, registered to vote just before the deadline. Now, he's been saying that he's going to vote for Mickey Mouse, and his eyesight's so bad that he might end up voting for Pat Buchanan, along with all of those Floridian senior citizens, but at least he's getting involved. Me, I want to get the biggest Kerry-Edwards sign on earth and put it up in my front yard, which is flanked by Bush-Cheney signs. I think that lighting the Kerry sign at night would be a nice addition, as would bear-traps on the ground around it (so as to prevent any vandalism, and possibly prevent the vandals from reaching the polls on election day).

In closing, I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 over the weekend, and I came to the surprising conclusion that it's a bit too focused. I mean, it really doesn't do much if you already think that George Bush is the Anti-Christ, and that the Saudis are not our friends, and that Halliburton did have the right guy in the right place at the right time. All of that aside, I finished the movie and actually really tried to like it a lot, but it's just no Bowling for Columbine, which was sometimes absurdly fun and other times would make grown men weep like a girl with a skinned knee. While watching Fahrenheit 9/11, there were only two thoughts that went through my head:

• How deep does this rabbit hole go?
• God, I fucking hate George Bush; I hope the Packers whip the shit out of the Redskins.

That second one's almost two thoughts, but they both concern the same thing, given that -since 1944- the election of every president has been determined by the outcome of a football game. By and large, I'd say this was coincidence, but this is fifteen straight election cycles we're talking about, and it's a hell of a lot less vague than Nostradamus. Unfortunately, given how the Packers played tonight, it's looking like another four more wars of Bush. Er, years, I mean ... kind of, not really.

Anyway, now it's time for bed. In the event that it's a while until my next post, that is because I have no doubt that I've violated about ten different statutes of the Patriot Act by criticizing Mister Bush and generally exercising free-speech, and therefore the FBI will probably be taking me off to an internment facility until just after election day.

AIM: therbmcc71

Kill Your Idols

[Preface: I saved this post for last in this series of reprints because it's my favorite. It reads a lot like me, but written with such a bizarre Hollywood commentary that there was no way that I'd have put it on my site as it came out in the end (and I was between sites at the time, anyway). Chronologically, it's from right about the beginning of the war in Iraq, or maybe a day or two before. The above title, "Kill Your Idols," is from the title of a book edited by Jim DeRogatis, because I found it fitting with the message of the post itself.

There were about three people on Fubar who actually got the joke inherent in the following post, while the rest of the comments were vehemently for or against the war. While it was nice to get the readers agitated, most of them completely missed the point, which I thought was completely obvious, in that it's summed up in the last sentence, and that sentence is meant to include Affleck as well, which was meant to defuse any emotion involved with reading the post. Again, that really didn't work, because the readers didn't get the joke.]

In The Event Of War... - 2:35am March 19, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

... be absolutely sure to listen to celebrities with whom you share political views, because we are your leaders. What I think about all of this is immaterial, but just about every actor (except me), actress (except J-Lo), singer (except J-Lo) and even a few of the homeless people on Wilshire (including three of J-Lo's former husbands) have put in their very public two cents about the impending war, regardless of the fact that their fifteen minutes of fame were up about eight years ago.

I mean, first you've got Charlie Daniels. Here's a guy who had been about as much out of the spotlight as Great White was until he released his "It's Not A Rag, It's A Flag" song last year, which was apparently offensive to someone or another, which only served to get him more press and therefore more record sales. He hopped on the pro-war bandwagon this week by writing a letter to the celebrity community, which several newspapers printed for some ungodly reason, essentially saying that anyone against the war is un-American and should be deported or some such thing, which speaks really well for his understanding of the Constitution. Then again, he's a desperate country singer who hasn't had a hit since "Devil Came To Georgia," so we can forgive him, maybe.

And then there's some other country singer with a pro-war song out right now, and we all know the real reason for doing this stuff. It's not because these singers support the war or anything like that, but because it's an opportunity to make some quick green on a hot-subject before their careers go belly-up when their listeners finally realize that country music hasn't been good since the early 80's, when the songs were all about drivin' your big rig.

And then on the anti-war side, you've got Mike Farrel, who did two things in the twenty years between his acting on M*A*S*H and Providence, and those two things were jack and shit. He's opposed to the war, but nobody cares because he's about as much in the public consciousness at this point as Cat Stevens.

Actually, Cat Stevens is back with a new anti-war song. Yes, this is true, but since he changed his name to Yusuf Islam a couple decades back, he's been harder to find than Salman Rushdie during the 80's. He's got a song out, but that's all I know, because no one's going to play a Yusuf Islam song, because he's about as well respected at this point as Jane Fonda was during the Vietnam War.

I ran into Keanu Reeves this week and asked him what he thought of the war, and he responded, "Dude..." I don't know if that was a yea or nay kind of, "Dude..." but that's his opinion. I think there might've been a, "Whoa..." in there somewhere, but I don't think it would matter.

What I'm trying to say here is, if you're not sure whether or not you support an American invasion of Iraq, don't listen to us celebrities. We're either out there because we want to boost sales on something or try to convince the world that we're not actually dead, though our careers might be. Pick up a newspaper, listen to talk radio (Mancow and Howard Stern do not count as talk radio), do anything but listen to us celebrities, because we're just good-looking idiots.


AIM: therbmcc71

I Shoulda Been Don King!

[Preface: It's always been my portrayal of Ben Affleck as a shameless self-promoter. If he had a movie coming out, Fubar was the place to talk it up. Of course, that I hadn't seen the movie, nor had any intention of seeing it, was beside the point. This post has about as much Affleck as I could jam into it, and I actually was pressed for time, since I put a Valentine's Day post on my old website that day, too. On a final note, The Bourne Identity did, in fact, come in far below expectations on its opening weekend, but later went on to gross a fuck-ton of money due to word-of-mouth recommendations.]

Go See My Movie. Now. - 11:18pm February 14, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, Fubar comes back up just in time for me to make a shameless plug for my new movie, Daredevil, which I did solely as a favor to Kevin Smith, since he needed to get the resale value up on the first issues of the series' re-release, courtesy of Marvel Comics.

And it's Valentine's Day. What can you buy for the woman who has everything? No, seriously, this is an actual question, seeing how I bought J-Lo a ring that cost more than my salary for Armageddon. I mean, I've bought her a car, a ring, paid for her divorce attorney... and yet she still wants me to surprise her for Valentine's Day. There's no way to stand out from the crowd, seeing how I've seemingly got half of the desperate men in America, forty-three Venezuelans, twelve guys in Peru and assorted guys all over the rest of the world sending her flowers. So I can't buy her flowers. I bet Damon would be able to think something up, but he's probably still in the institution after Bourne Identity flopped.

I'm sorry if I cut this short, but me and J-Lo have dinner reservations at nine, and then I've got to wake up in the morning and talk to Marc Norman about writing a Shakespeare In Love spin-off about my character, Ned, probably due out in late-2004 if I can get it done fast. I'm thinking that in this one, Ned writes a different not-so-well-known Shakespeare play, since the Bard is out sick or something. A "here Ben comes to save the day" kind of movie. And don't any of you make jokes about Ned writing Coriolanus for Damon's character. It's just not funny, and Rupert Everett made the joke when I first pitched the movie to the Weinsteins back in '98.

In closing, I'd like to thank Justin for coming back and granting me the opportunity to hawk Daredevil to the masses. Go see it. Now. If you're on the east-coast, you might still be able to catch a late-show, so push all of the couples down and steal their tickets. It's one hell of a lot more entertaining than The Hours or any of those Oscar-nominated movies. Way I see it, the last time a decent movie got nominated for an Oscar was Good Will Hunting. But, that's another story for another time, because J-Lo just threatened to take my balls off if we didn't make our reservation-time.


AIM: therbmcc71

Happy Halloween from Ben Affleck

[Preface: Only a few more entries out of the Affleck stash to go, and here's one for the holidays. This post basically came from a discussion I was having with a few people about Halloween and the costumes that kids wear today. It basically has nothing to do with Affleck in particular (except for the hooker), and probably reads more like me than any of the other posts "by Ben Affleck." In other words, I'm probably going to dredge this one back up at the end of next month if I can't think of anything better.]

Kid, I Will Shove That Pumpkin Straight Up Your... - 12:13am October 30, 2002

Well, everybody, it's almost Halloween again, which means it's time for all of us to kick back and remember the good ol' days.

Where I grew up, God's little cruel joke on us youngsters was making it snow for Halloween. I can only assume this was because Easter was completely lost on us, and He was getting back at us for looking forward to Halloween so much. I mean, really, when's the last time you saw someone go out for Halloween dressed as a biblical figure? I mean, other than the time me and Damon tried going out as a plague of locusts. Hence, snow for Halloween. Nothing quite complements a great Spider-Man costume like a fucking parka.

I got a couple of older cousins who remember going out trick-or-treating without having their parents hanging over their shoulder. Nothing quite like the badge of shame you get from having mom follow you around in the family station wagon. Hell, they remember a time when parents didn't comb through your candy looking for razorblades and anthrax. I think my mother just wanted her cut of the take, which was probably at least twenty-five percent; this is probably related to her recent indictment on extortion and racketeering charges.

For all intents and purposes, it's a kids' holiday, but the parents don't seem to see it that way. Maybe it's the fact that everyone's totally insane out here in Hollywood, but last year, Saturday before Halloween, I'm sitting in my apartment and there's a knock on the door. I figure it's the hooker I ordered, so I open the door and see this little kid dressed up as Good Will Hunting. I stifle the urge to call him a fucking prick and he says, "Trick or treat." Now, Halloween's not for another three or so days, so I ain't got any candy, and I tell him that. Next thing I know, Queen Bitch of the Universe (his mother) walks up and asks why I don't have any candy for her child, like it's his fucking birthright. Apparently, it was her belief that she could just "bump Halloween up" a few days, so her kid wouldn't be going out on a schoolnight. I, of course, have to break it to the crazy bitch that Halloween isn't one of those floating-holidays like Thanksgiving, and it doesn't take place on the last Saturday in October, so I ain't got any candy for her kid. And, just before I close the door on these buffoons, I get right in the kid's face and say, "So how do you like them apples?" *SLAM*

So, this week, I'm expecting to open the door to a little ten year-old girl and say, "My, my, that's quite a streetwalker costume you've got there," to which she'll inevitably respond that she's actually dressed up like Christina Aguilera.

Posted by Ben Affleck

AIM: therbmcc71

Falling Off the Wagon

[Preface: I barely even remember writing this post. I'm quite sure I know why it gets terribly melancholy at the end, which made this about the only time that the Fubar Emo's didn't scream for Affleck's head on a platter. In any event, the news of the day was that the wedding was off, so that was the basis for what follows. For maximum effect, you have to put yourself in the shoes of Affleck, a man who is stuck in a relationship that simply refuses to end, no matter how hard he tries.]

Loathing and More Loathing in Las Vegas - 1:18pm September 23, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

I know you expected to hear from me last weekend, but I've been kind of busy, what with my gambling and boozing and whoring and what-not. Since three of you are big fans of mine, I suppose I owe you an explanation for why it all happened.

J-Lo and I called the wedding off on Thursday because the swanky hotel we were getting hitched at was double-booked and someone from the other wedding party decided to call up Entertainment Tonight or some such media outlet, who then informed the rest of the media, who then informed the paparazzi and the general public, which led to the cancellation of the wedding. Or, that's how the story goes. In reality, I was the one who called Entertainment Tonight, and it was J-Lo (by herself) who called off the wedding.

There are reasons for this. She wanted me to sign a prenuptial agreement that said she got half of my fortune if she decided to divorce me for infidelity. Now, really, who can blame me for something like that? Just because I sleep with two, three, four strippers while I'm out on a movie set doesn't mean I don't love her. Well, in a passive-aggressive way, I suppose it does, but that's not the point. That's like me having a clause that says if she makes a bad album then I get twenty million dollars. It's just something that we all know is going to happen.

Really, the cancellation is just a sign of much larger problems, anyway. For example, when I tried to move the wedding to Conference Room B of the Howard Johnson's on Wilshire, she stormed off with her entourage, and I took that as a no. I didn't get it, because she wants three-hundred people at the wedding, but she wants privacy. So, I did what any man in the situation would do: I went to Vegas for a boxing match, went gambling, fell off the wagon and woke up with strippers. Maybe they were hookers or possibly dancers who wanted to try out for J-Lo's next video, but that's not the point. The point is I tried, and she backed out on me.

When this all started, we were just another Hollywood celebrity couple. We could have burned down West Beverly Hills and the newspapers would have put it on page 8. Then I made the stupid mistake of proposing and buying her a ring that cost me the better part of a year's pay (after you take out taxes, agent fees and the "donations" I make to the Weinsteins to keep my career intact). I jumped in with both feet, and now look where it's gotten me: The movie I did with her is second only to From Justin To Kelly as the worst movie of all time, and we've still got one more that could conceivably top it.

So, boys (because most of you are boys, merely looking for pictures of the Olsen Twins naked), let me impart upon the lot of you a piece of advice: When you like a girl, you're going to get frustrated, and you're not going to know what to say to her. Then, when you think she likes you as much as you like her, it's all easy. Then, reality strikes, and you realize that she didn't like you as much as you thought she did, in which event it's often because she likes some other guy more than you and failed to mention it over the course of your dating or correspondence.

Just save yourself the heartbreak and always keep one foot out the door at all times, because one day -out of nowhere- she'll drop you, and you'll just realize that you were wrong about everything. They're all blind corners and the end of your relationship is around one of them. As for me, I'll just wait for my agent to say it's okay to get married again, if ever. He said once that my box-office pulled an extra twenty-million per picture when I was an eligible bachelor, so he probably won't, and the closest I'll get to a happy-ending is watching Chasing Amy, and all I have to fall back on is the knowledge that I was the bomb in Phantoms.


AIM: therbmcc71

Put a Shout Out to My Boy Colin

[Preface: This post came right on the heels of Gigli, which is no longer ranked as the worst film of all time, and has since been ranked even more admirably than From Justin to Kelly. Also, with reference to when this was written, Fubar had been down for a while, and someone in a previous post mentioned something about the word 'Fubar' being seen in a subway in the movie S.W.A.T. So, to further the celebrity connections to Fubar, I had to put a shout out to my Irish homeboy.

I just felt that it was a good time for Affleck to plug his new movie, even though he knew how badly it was perceived by critics, audiences and even people who will never see the film.]

I Will Never Work In This Town Again - 6:18pm August 15, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

You know, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank Colin Farrell for putting the shout out to me that Fubar has found a new home. It would’ve been nice to get that information from Justin, but since he’s on the ass-end of the earth from whence come things like SARS.

Regardless, I’ve been pretty busy lately, what with getting down on my knees and smiling like a donut for the Weinstein Brothers, and pretty much anyone higher up in the Disney company than the kid who runs Space Mountain during the mid-afternoon shift at Disney World.

Then let’s not forget these anti-piracy trailers that I’ve been doing with Jim Cameron and just about everyone else in Hollywood who sold their souls to Satan (a.k.a. Michael Eisner) for a percentage of the back-end on some movie or another. But I’d just like to say that if Justin keeps on buying VCD’s, then Hollywood won’t be able to produce another summer of mind-numbing action extravaganzas that suck your will to live. And then I’ll be out of a job, and Cameron will be out of a job, and the rest of the tools who were in that commercial… well, fuck ‘em, that’s why they’ve got unions.

And the promotional tour for Gigli. … That came right about the same time that I fired my agent for getting me involved with that piece of complete and unadulterated shit. He made it sound so good, because the director of Beverly Hills Cop was attached (but he left out any mention of the box-office on Meet Joe Black), J-Lo was in it (and, quite honestly, I thought the title of the movie was pronounced ‘jiggly’ and it was a reference to her ass)… My agent made the whole thing sound so good, and now it’s the worst film in the history of film.

And then there were those hookers. And strippers. And Damon’s ex-girlfriends. And Casey’s ex-girlfriends. And any women who submitted screenplays for this year’s Project Greenlight.

In any case, J-Lo’s sleeping now, which means this is my chance to kick on the Spice channel (not to be confused with the Spike channel, which is not to be confused with Spike Lee, who is not to be confused with Spike Jones or Spike Jonze), because the alternative is J-Lo’s eyebrow-stylist who’s set up permanent residence downstairs, and looks more like Jim Carrey than Mariah Carey. Thank god for hardcore pornography.

AIM: therbmcc71

Hangin' with P-Diddy and Cris Judd

[Preface: I worked on this post for a couple of days before the Superbowl last year. When I'm writing stuff for my own site, I really don't give much thought to punching-up the commentary, but Affleck's like a three-step process where I have to write the post, then add various Affleckisms (such as J-Lo and Damon references), and then I have to punch the thing up so it's funny or poignant enough for me to serve up to the masses.

But I digress. This one was ready and posted the morning of the Superbowl. It really didn't get very many comments, nor did it get read much at all in the first place, because of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction," which caused this post to go from the top post of the day all the way to the Archives; which is a shame because of the subject matter of the post; not that I think for a moment that the majority of the readers would have understood what I was really getting at.

I might add that I lost the bet at the end of the post. That's what I get for not actually having an Uncle Artie.]

Thank God Almighty, I Am Free At Last - 11:41am February 1, 2004
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

Yeah, yeah, so J-Lo dumped me. It wasn’t because of my affairs with strippers, and it wasn’t because I tried to get Smith to cut her out of Jersey Girl entirely, and it wasn’t even because of her apparently very satisfying orgies with the former members of the Miami Sound Machine. No, it was because of my plans for Superbowl Sunday.

The Superbowl is a long-heralded tradition of testosterone here in America, when it’s perfectly okay to settle down with a bowl of corn chips the size of your television and enough salsa to fill Kathy Bates’ bathtub. Oh yes, Superbowl Sunday is that time when men most resemble the Neanderthals of a million years ago, if only those cavemen had television. It’s the one day of the year when it’s socially acceptable for men to paint their faces and scream like extras from Braveheart. Women wear makeup every day of the year, this is our day.

Anyway, J-Lo wanted to go to the Superbowl with me, which would be fine any other year, but I said, “No, baby, I got plans.” This isn’t like the NBA Finals or watching the Red Sox get knocked out of the ALCS. This is not a day for men to be bringing their wives and/or girlfriends to the show, let alone for the show that I’m going to.

That’s right, boys, I’m going to be at the Lingerie Bowl. After all, Superbowls happen every year. Things like the Lingerie Bowl and the XFL are once-in-a-lifetime occurrences, and I’m going to be there for this one. What man in his right mind wouldn’t go if he had the money and a nagging girlfriend who’s threatening to go back to Puff Daddy? The only downside is that the Lingerie Bowl is only during the Superbowl’s halftime, whereas I think just this one year the Superbowl should be a half-hour and the Lingerie Bowl should be three hours.

After all, let’s weigh the two against each other:

The Superbowl is the fulfillment of an entire season of NFL football, bringing the champions of the AFC and NFC together to duke it out and see which conference takes the trophy this year. The Lingerie Bowl, on the other hand, is the fulfillment of every heterosexual man’s fantasies, like a catfight with rules and corporate sponsors.<>

The Superbowl features eleven overgrown men per team on the field at a time; the Lingerie Bowl features seven women per team, wearing lacy-looking sports bras and volleyball shorts. While it’s not real lingerie, I think the girls win that argument.

In the end, the question comes to, which one do you root for? Which one, out of Team Dream or Team Euphoria, would you put money on? Without going into any huge amount of detail, I’m leaning towards Team Euphoria, whose quarterback is Angie Everhart, to win by seven. Damon, on the other hand is going for Team Dream, quarterbacked by Nikki Ziering. I can’t explain Damon’s bet, but my uncle Artie once told me never to bet against a redheaded supermodel in an event that passes for athletic competition while shamelessly bordering on sexploitation.

And, maybe uncle Artie was right, but who’s getting exploited here? Is it the models and the other gorgeous women playing for the two teams (who often make good money for wearing less clothing than in this event), or the men who are paying $24.99 for a halftime show?


AIM: therbmcc71

Eat This

[Preface: Lizzie -the same one from my sidebar, here- used to post on Fubar, but ultimately stopped one day when she realized that she didn't care for the majority of Fubar's boobie-loving readers. For me, the feeling was mutual, though I had to balance that with my love for the sheer number of them. Her post that I reference at the top of this was in regard to something called "Love Your Body Day," which I'm sure you could probably find the details of if you were so inclined to Google it.

It's probably the least impressive of my work as Ben Affleck, but it drives a point, which none of the other posts ever really did.]

Counter-Werd - 2:51pm October 12, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

I was flipping through the comments on the last post by Lizzie, and WP Legend's right. Seventy-five percent of Americans are overweight, but -this being America- it's our God-given right to be fat; it said so in the Declaration of Independence: Pursuit of Life, Liberty and a Double Quarter-Pounder With Cheese.

That's right, we're Americans who propelled, "I'm OK, You're OK" to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, but seem to have forgotten the second half of the title and now see it as, "I'm OK, But You're A Fucking Asshole, So Stop Criticizing Me Before I Shove This Broomstick So Far Up Your Ass You'll Be Picking Splinters Out Of Your Teeth."

We're Americans, and collectively we're fat, but rather than simply admit that we have a problem with over-eating, we eliminate any chance of being flawed in any way whatsoever and hire scientists to find the elusive "Fat Gene". I don't care if they find the Fat Gene; I want scientists to find the gene that makes people retarded and not take responsibility for anything.

Case in point: The fuckheads who think it's Ronald McDonald's fault they look like Grimace and take the whole company to court. If only Mayor McCheese could step in and say, "You're fat, it's your fault, fuck you. Here's five dollars' worth of gift certificates for your pain and suffering, thank you and come again."

But it's a damn good thing we're fat, because weight-control books dominate the bestseller lists; diet-pills are sold mainly to truckers, college students and essentially anyone else who can't find good amphetamines; Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers offices are open all over the country... Being fat is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, employing thousands of people across America, who likely have absolutely no other job qualifications. Couple that with the money generated by things at actually make Americans fat, and you realize that our own obesity is the only thing keeping us out of the poor-house.

What can you do on Love Your Body Day? Go to Hallmark and try to find a card to send to someone, and then ultimately realize that the Love Your Body Day is just a giant publicity stunt created exclusively to promote the National Organization For Women at a minimal cost by getting their followers to go all Stuart Smalley and say, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and damn I look hot in these 54-inch stretch-pants..." and then hold rallies for yet-wider seats at movie theaters, airplanes and sports stadiums.

If they had their way, Fenway Park would seat nine people, just to make sure the fattest people on earth could all sit there and be happy as pigs in shit, which is a pretty appropriate metaphor, don't you think?


AIM: therbmcc71

I Was the Bomb in Phantoms

[Preface: This actually happened to me. Sure, I exaggerated a few things for the sake of comedy, but the overall event actually happened when I was living in Bloomington in the latter part of 1999. My only regret about this post is that I didn't directly quote the girl when she called me a "carnivore" in much the derogatory manner that one might call another human being a "war criminal."]

Dates From Hell - The Animal Rights Activist Episode - 3:51am October 19, 2002
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

Hey, folks, I figured I might as well follow up today's posts with a man's point of view on things. Yes, in Justin's absence, I've been brought in to bring a dash of testosterone to the page. So, in this posting, I'm going to impart upon the readers of the page a few lessons I learned on a date a while back, back when I was a struggling actor playing bit parts in movies like Dazed & Confused.

First impressions are terribly important. I can't even begin to tell you how important. For example, when a girl introduces herself and mentions how her name is spelled, all in the same sentence, just run away. Quickly. What would normally sound like, "Hi, I'm Christine," turns into that very phrase followed up with, "spelled with a K... and an H... a Y, a double-E and a silent Q." So, of course, while she's babbling on about god-knows-what, you're trying to figure out how her name is actually spelled.

Khryqsteen? What the fuck, was she named after a region of Persia?

Well, Khryqsteen was a pretty girl who I met at a party being held at the apartment complex I was living at. Unfortunately, I didn't know to run after she explained how her name was spelled (that's experience for ya), so I asked her out for the trusty ol' Dinner & A Movie, which is the easiest type of date because you can always bump the movie if the dinner conversation is particularly enlightening.

Okay, the budget for the date was sixty bucks for both the dinner and the movie. Struggling actors don't make much, you know. She orders a salad. Not like a Mondo Chicken Caesar Parmegiana Salad or anything like that. She orders a house salad with oil and vinegar. So, what's a guy to do in a circumstance like this? I was living on ramen noodles at the time, so I ordered an eighteen-ounce filet-mignon, medium rare with sour cream and bacon bits on the potato.

She launches into this five-minute monologue about how "I killed a defenseless cow, meat is murder, the cows don't deserve to die, you could eat soy, blah, blah, blah..." She goes so far as to accuse me of misrepresenting myself when we met by not informing her that I occasionally eat animals. I mean, she's done everything but accuse me of being the Chupacabra of Latin-American myth. I light up a cigarette, knowing full-well that it's the non-smoking section, but I just don't care anymore. I say to her:

"You're wearing leather pants. The same cow that's going to be on my plate in five minutes is wrapped around your thighs right now... Hey, before you go, just one more question: Are you a hypocrite or just plain stupid? Because I really want to know." The waiter brings the dinner in a bag and I went to see two movies that night.

What's the lesson to be learned from this? Disclosure. When you first meet someone, just spend the next twenty minutes telling each other everything about your respective lives, because eventually you'll find something you wouldn't be able to live with, and that'll save you a whole lot of money, time and grief in the long run. Of course, J-Lo still doesn't know about the trips me and Damon make to Thailand every year.

AIM: therbmcc71

Being Ben Affleck

[Preface: This was my first post on Fubar as Ben Affleck. Prior to that, I was just Umgawa in the comments-section of various posts, and Justin pulled me aboard. After some discussion as to my role, we came to the conclusion that my being Ben Affleck would be pretty damn funny, given the way I treated Affleck on my old website. Because, let's be honest: J-Lo jokes are funny and extraordinarily easy to write.

In any case, I should mention that this was the Fubar era where Avril Lavigne was all over the site, and various users thought Justin was actually Avril Lavigne. Of course, there were probably a few people who actually thought Ben Affleck was writing for Fubar. And the "editor's note" at the bottom was written by me at the time of posting, since it would just be silly for Ben Affleck to post a link to a series of pictures that he deemed to be from a "Popeye-thinkin' fuck."

Finally, I might add that the teenagevictory link, along with various others along the way over the next few posts do not necessarily work, but I'm leaving them in there because I have no intention of editing the past... or I'm lazy. -Affleck out!]

Who's Your Favorite New Kid? - 7:29am October 20, 2002
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

This Justin guy really pisses me off sometimes. He starts off by dragging me on for three weeks, letting me think he's Avril Lavigne, talking about this and that... not cybersex, but cyber-foreplay for sure. So anyway, I'm seeing a connection here, and so I went to an Avril Lavigne concert, got backstage and she's like, "Oh my god! Ben Affleck!" And I'm like, "Good to see you, too, sweetkins," dropped my pants, and next thing I know I'm slapped with a restraining order. So I get back online and find this Psykotik2k person and I'm like, "Bitch! You lied to me!" and then Justin explained it all and we both had a good laugh over it. Well, he had a good laugh, and I fell off the wagon. God, I hope he doesn't still have those IM's logged away somewhere.

So anyway, maybe he felt so guilty that he decided to give me this job, or maybe it's because he found some jackhole on the internet who hates me and linked him to my name at the end of the story I wrote, and I can't do anything about it. I mean, I can stand criticism, but this guy is saying I look like Popeye-meets-Rambo, and that's just the nastiest thing someone's done to me since Damon convinced me to play Chuckie instead of Will Hunting. He gets an Oscar nomination for acting, and I end up playing second-fiddle to Mork From Ork! Damon's a manipulative bastard, Justin's a lying bastard, and this Popeye-thinkin' fuck is fucking clown shoes. Yeah, you piece of crap, I read your Pearl Harbor review and I ain't gay!

So let's talk about breasts. You want proof I ain't gay? We're talking about breasts. Now, let's be honest: J-Lo ain't got much up top. You ever seen Money Train? Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about. I bet you can probably find that picture over in that naked celebrity thing on the left there. I mean, I am a man in pain. Gwyneth? Ha ha, nope, nothin' up there, either. I think I'm getting known for this, which might be why they cast me against Liv Tyler and Kate Beckinsdale in Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. If I had a thing for Canadian girls, I'd be on the first flight to Toronto for a Leafs game and visit the girls who post here on Fubar.

So, me being Mister Dissatisfied Ben Affleck, let's talk about the actresses I should've nailed on movie sets over these past years: Salma Hayek in Dogma, Christina Ricci in 200 Cigarettes, Claire Forlani in Mallrats, Charlize Theron in Reindeer Games, Kristy Swanson from when I was an extra in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and this chick even though I never acted with her, because she's really hot! Man, I'd dump J-Lo in a heartbeat for that chick. She must be like a foreign superstar or something. The name's just so exotic, like Cher or Bjork, who are superstars that I don't want to nail, but I will if it'll prove to all of you doubters that I ain't gay!

[Editor: I'm sure Ben would've wanted me to add the Popeye-Rambo link for clarity.]

AIM: therbmcc71

The Affleck Chronicles - Part 1

So, now that Fubar's gone corporate, I'm raiding the archives for my own personal work. My is work is coming with me. I wrote it, it's mine, plain and simple. ... even if it does have someone else's name attached to it. So, they're getting reprinted here, because nobody's ever going to read them in the Fubar archives. Not that anyone ever reads this site, but that's beside the point. Anyway, they're probably going to come up non-chronologically, but that's because I just want them transfered as quickly as humanly possible.

But, for the time-being, I'm going to sit and look at a blinking cursor.

AIM: therbmcc71

Nothing Corporate

Alright, welcome to one of the last sites on earth to not open with a EULA. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Fubar is now corporately owned, probably along with a bit of my soul, given the work I've done there. But we'll get back to that after the sixth, when the Regs Test is finally over. Note to self: Copy all of my major Fubar materials over to this site.

It'll be like Christmas, I swear. Y'all will love it.

Anyway! Remember the link from a couple of days ago? Well, I've got the last two parts! Woohoo! So that makes this like Halloween! Here we go again with Spider-Man Reviews Crayons!

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

I'll be back later with some other stuff that I wrote. It'll be like stepping into the Time Tunnel and going back a couple of years to the old days when men were men and Affleck was still with J-Lo. It'll be a trip, I swear.

AIM: therbmcc71

News In Brief, or Equal Time

Once again, I'm fulfilling your daily quota of actual news:

Bizarre News Story of the Day
Early Sunday morning, a Georgia man was driving drunk and managed to decapitate his best friend with a telephone pole support-wire. I am not making this up. Apparently, after a night out at the bar, the driver's friend was hanging his head out the window for some undisclosed reason just as the driver sideswiped the support wire. The driver then continued to drive home, slept in his bloody clothes, leaving the decapitated body in the truck, only to be discovered by a man who was walking with his baby daughter on Sunday morning. The head was found to have rolled into some bushes near the telephone pole. [This shit makes Scott Peterson look like a fucking genius]

And we move on to Politics...
The Republican National Convention is underway, and 9/11 has gone from national-tragedy to re-election tool. The highlight of the opening night was when John McCain got resounding applause when he referred to Michael Moore as a "disingenuous filmmaker" who portrayed the war in Iraq as a misguided war for oil. I applaud McCain's comments as well, since we all know that this was actually an extremely well-guided war for oil. McCain is a prime figure in the Bush campaign because, to quote the Chicago Sun-Times, "McCain's history as a prisoner of war in Vietnam could help Bush, who spent the war stateside."

Which is good, because we still haven't figured out where, exactly, stateside the president was during the war. Jesus, we've got swiftboat guys coming out of the woodwork saying Kerry wasn't a good soldier, but at least they can attest that he was there. All that Dubya has is the testimony of some dentist, proving that the President's teeth were indeed in Alabama at some point in 1972.


AIM: therbmcc71

Written Last Month

Last month, on the second day of the Democratic National Convention, I wrote up a post that basically equated to my dance of despair and disillusionment with the post-Bubba Democratic Party. The notebook in which I wrote that post just turned up again yesterday, and I've decided that the second day of the "Fuck What the Rest of the World Thinks" Rally (read: Republican National Convention) would be a good time to post this:

Upon the Democratic National Convention and the Future

Going back to Kennedy, the first president whose speeches I ever read out of personal interest, the Democrats used to be the party of the future, complete with big dreams of a better tomorrow; who proposed great things "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." [I should clarify here that I'm talking about Northern Democrats, not the Southern Democrats who ran the White Primary until the Voting Rights Act of 1965]

Yesterday, John Kerry was campaigning in Florida, a hotly contested state despite being run by Jeb Bush, proposing research dollars for cures to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other ailments that predominantly afflict the elderly. While no one wants a cure for Alzheimer's disease more than my family, I couldn't help but see through the good intentions and find ordinary political pandering to the locals, who will most likely be dead by the time that cures for these diseases are found. I don't care what he says to the elderly, largely because I'm not one of them, just as I doubt Senator Kerry cares what my generation thinks because we don't vote in percentages significant enough to warrant fighting for. We're simply a non-factor.

Really, I just want to be inspired, as I almost was by Jimmy Carter's speech about being able to trust your government; and how our government should be respected by other countries out of admiration rather than fear of reprisal. I think that Carter is probably the single greatest representation of what America should and could be all about, and that's helping other countries to help themselves. Politically, Carter got a raw deal, in the way that time may look back on the current Bush regime; however, Carter really elevated the role of the ex-presidency to a level that Reagan couldn't because of disease, Nixon couldn't out of reputation, and Ford and G.H.W. Bush just didn't care to bother with. Time will tell with Clinton, but I think he's probably too happy kicking back a few with Jimmy Carter's brother to bother going around the world, trying to change things for the better. Jimmy Carter, though, only became a great statesman once he got out of politics.

So, more than anything that I want from this convention, I want to be inspired. To quote Fox Mulder's poster, "I want to believe." However, we're just not being given anything to believe in, at least in terms of our generation. Social security, medicare, prescription drug coverage... there's something in it for everybody except us. Meanwhile, we are the shoulders that have to hold up this country as our parents retire, eventually (hopefully) followed by the politicians who leave the country with a mind-boggling national debt, a bad reputation, an economy that has American companies outsourcing jobs faster than a 1980's General Motors, and what plans do they have for our future?

None. I think that the Democratic Party has gotten so far from being the party of idealists that we're left with the horrific choice of Kerry, Bush (read: Cheney) or voting for Ralph Nader (read: voting for Bush/Cheney). And I found myself wondering last night, if there was any one thing that they could say that would wake me from my political coma and get me to believe in the party again, what would that one thing be? So I thought about it for a moment, and then it came to me like a bolt of lightning from the gods. And I thought about it, and I smiled as I sat back and sang to myself:

I'd like to buy the world a Coke and shower it with love...

AIM: therbmcc71

Quickie Link

I've got a post back home, but I'm going to bed the second that I get home, which will be shortly. But I digress. Fubar is down at the moment, no doubt due to the Psycho Bitch movie, or whatever it's called, so I'm actually posting something on my own page. It's a rarity, I know; but not everyone who reads this site is coming from Fubar, and I'm sure that not everyone who hits this site from Fubar is actually reading the site, largely because they probably think that there are pictures and/or movies of scantily-clad women. See the title of the page, if you're in that group. That's right, move along, move along...

Anyway. Today's link of the day is nothing short of absolutely hysterical, and it's only slightly more bizarre than last month's Onion article by the Incredible Hulk. In any case, I present you with Spider-Man Reviews Crayons! I know, right? Where the hell do I find this shit?

AIM: therbmcc71

4 Years Until Crisco-Twister in Beijing

Well, the Olympics are over and I can honestly say that I completely failed to pay attention. They say that billions of people tuned in to see the opening ceremonies, and who can blame them? Their choices of watching something other than the ceremonial Greek contortionist doing his best impersonation of Spider-Man crawling around a floating cube... well, there wasn't much else on. I think it was probably King of Queens, TV's Funniest Bloopers and Survivor: Compton.

I think that it's my lack of patriotism that made the Olympics strike me as completely uninteresting this year. I still remember the heroes of twenty years ago, though: Mary-Lou Retton, Mitch Gaylord, Kurt Thomas, Greg Louganis, Carl Lewis... I remember them so well because they were winners, and that meant free food from McDonald's. You think you do well when McDonald's Monopoly happens every year? 1984 had the United States send a truly amazing Olympic team, and McDonald's promotion comprised of pieces that essentially said, "If the U.S. wins a medal in this event, you get this, this or this," with those three items varying in value depending on whether we won gold, silver or bronze. I don't know if McDonald's knew this going into the promotion, but the United States was going to run roughshod over a lot of the competition because the U.S.S.R. boycotted the Olympics, just as we had boycotted the Moscow Olympics.

In any case, they were heroes, because they ended up on more than just Wheaties boxes.

• Okay, so Carl Lewis basically ended up on a Wheaties box.
• Greg Louganis gained fame as a posterboy after he developed HIV, which isn't a good thing at all, but it at least puts a recognizable face on the disease, thereby promoting awareness.
• Mary-Lou Retton ended up getting children to exercise on Mary-Lou Retton's Funfit! which ran for something like fifteen minutes on Saturday mornings, splitting the half-hour between cartoons with Menudo. ... Yes, I said Menudo.
• Mitch Gaylord ended up in the movie American Anthem, opposite the extremely hot Janet Jones; she who later betrayed me by marrying Wayne Gretzky.
• But Kurt Thomas wins the award for Outstanding Post-Olympic Career Move, in that he starred in the movie Gymkata, which got a whopping 2.7 stars out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database. I mean, the movie is bad.

I mean, I thought there might be some highlights this year, but the Women's Beach Volleyball just didn't live up to my expectations. I was expecting Gabrielle Reece and I ended up very disappointed. It's like going to a local talent show and expecting the girls to look like Laetitia Casta. But I digress. Beach Volleyball without Gabrielle Reece is like tennis without Anna Kournikova: Utterly pointless.

And then there was Table Tennis. That's right, it's still an Olympic Event, just like Synchronized Swimming and Water Polo, all three of which garnered about ten seconds of coverage on NBC over the last two weeks. Every year, the International Olympic Committee (or whoever the hell they are) adds sport after retarded X-Games sport to the list of Olympic competition, and they never take any of them off.

I mean, the fucking Equestrian is still in the Olympics. That's not a sport! The horse does all the fucking work! Seriously, give me one of the Budweiser Clydesdales, and I'll just plow right through all the shit that those pansy horses have to jump over. Gold medal for Umgawa in 2008!

Probably the one Olympic sport that I was most looking forward to this year was Girls On Trampolines. That's right, the very activity from The Man Show that drew the ire of women everywhere is now an Olympic sport. Unfortunately, when it went to becoming a competition rather than just entertainment, that meant that it was going to be performed by "athletes" instead of The Man Show's "juggies," which knocks the appeal down ... about to zero. I mean, if only Sweden had made it past the preliminaries.

So, over the next four years, we can look forward to a lot of things:

• The Winter Olympics in 2006, which will feature at least as many retarded sports as the Summer Olympics offer.
  
• Michael Phelps will find out that nobody gives a shit how many medals he won; Mark Spitz is still better.
• All-Around Gymnastics gold-medal winner Paul Hamm will make his motion-picture debut in Son of Gymkata.
• And, the United States' Men's Basketball Team will go back to the pros, forget all of this Olympic stuff ever happened, and get back to doing what they do best: Knocking up groupies and making a lot of bling.

AIM: therbmcc71