You know... things

A partridge in a pear tree sounds nice, but the upkeep on that sort of thing is murder. Don't get me started on all those lords & drummers. Had to hock the rings, and we ate the hens, geese and swans sometime ago.

The maids and dancers are nice though, once you get them drunk and start playing truth or dare.

ALSO!

Baby it's Cold Outside always sounds like a date-rape about to happen. No matter what she says, just keeps repeating the same phrase.
"Just let me go, I won't tell anyone."
"Baby it's cold outside."
"People know where I am."
"Baby it's cold outside."
"You'll never get away with this."
"Baby it's cold outside!"


I AM NOT JUST SAYING THINGS I SAID YEARS AGO! I'm just not that original. This has nothing to do with ninjas, kidnappings or the Singh Brotherhood.

Oh look, another link! You like links don't you?

Reverse Bechdel

I've been wonder if there are movies thaty would fail a gender reversed Bechdel Test. You remember that right? From Dykes to Watch Out For? Here is the comic that started it. According to bechdetest.com the way to pass a traditional test is to have three items. 1. It has to have at least two women in it 2. Who talk to each other 3. About something besides a man. That site also grades many movies and gives partial credit to those who meet a few of those options. It's pretty shocking how few movies pass this test in any way.

What I've been wondering though is how many movies don't have a man in them at all. How many have only one man? How many that have two or more men have them only talking about a woman? The point here is to find movies that fail the test rather than pass it. Or perhaps to say the only way to really pass a reverse Bechdel is to have only women. I can't think of any woman only (or only one man) movies off the top of my head. So what about men only talking about a woman?

I'm looking over my collection and I'm not finding much that even gets two men only talking about a woman. I've got a lot of movies too, a lot of little independent movies.

Kill Bill almost counts, but a few small scenes kill it. In the wedding rehearsal the preachers talks to most the men about the rehearsal, after the balloon goes up the cop and his son talk about the massacre before getting onto the subject of The Bride. The only men in Better Than Chocolate never speak to each other as far as I remember. I'm not sure if Josie and the Pussycats would pass. I would say I could watch it and find out, but that would mean watching Josie and the Pussycats again.

There is a 1997 movie called Stand-Ins, that might pass. Id' have to get it off Amazon's On-Demand or buy a used copy if I want to watch it again though.

If anyone knows of a movie that even comes close to passing let me know.

Just to remind you, to pass a Reverse Bechdel you'd need to find a movie
1. Where two men only talk about a woman (or don't talk to each other at all)
2. A movie with only one man
OR for full points
3. A movie with no men in it.

This message brought to you by computer RPGs

You have in your inventory...
1 (one) Flamethrower
1 (one) Box of Matches
1 (one) Lighter
1 (one) Flaming brand
1 (one) Lantern which never goes out
1 (one) Magnesium flare
1 (one) Ball of just... fire! No fuel, no item that it's holding to, it's just a ball of fire

However! If you want to light THIS particular pile of logs, then you need THAT one torch that was in the castle that the old man kept hinting about. You may now walk 15,000 miles back to get it. No, it's cool, don't worry about your freezing friend. Once you turn your back he'll enter a state of quantum flux where he is both frozen to death and alive. When you light the fire, the waveform will collapse and he'll be fine.

Also, ninjas and stuff. Probably not in Marrakech, no need to look for me there.

Ninjas are Japanese covert agents

To prove that I have not been kidnapped by the Sighn Brotherhood, who aren't technically Ninjas by the way, here's an old classic. The Miracle on 34th Street Review.

Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Twenty-Three)

The Return of Jack Collier
A Jack Collier Story
By Brett N. Lashuay

Last week’s entry can be found here.

Chapter Twenty-Three: I Got a Man

 

No it's not that see you don't understand. How should I put it? I got a man.

Positive K

 

 

            I am not a weak and feeble woman. I am a business owner and I have worked for a hard as nails private detective for many years now. I know what I’m doing, and I know what I can handle. Not only that, but I am fully aware of who and what I am. It took me a long time, and getting hurt more than a few times, but I know who and what I am now.

 

            Yes, I am bisexual. Yes, I am submissive. Yes, I like being stripped down, made to wear a dog collar and then forced to crawl around on all fours liking cream out of a dish. I like doing that. I like being spanked and I like being told what to do. It gives me a shiver in places that even naughty girls don’t talk about to have someone snap an order at me. It’s part of my make-up, part of who I am.

 

            However, I like deciding who gets to snap the orders at me. I like doing it for who I decide I’m going to do it for. When I’m not with someone, I don’t respond well to being told what to do. Someone once explained that it required someone who had a stronger will than theirs for them to be dominated, and they so enjoyed finding that stronger willed person. I sort of feel like that I guess, because I don’t respond to people who are trying to act like they’re stronger or are behaving like the person with the collar should automatically respond to the person who wears a leather vest. There is a huge difference between someone like Jack and almost everyone else in the world. He’s got such a strong presence he doesn’t even have to do anything to make you feel smaller than him, he just has to arrive.

 

            I don’t like presumptuous men either. I’m not fond of women who presume, but I can’t stand men doing it. Men look at me, and too often they know that I’m a submissive and they try to presume how I’m going to behave in response to their attempts at dominance. Peter Kurbisesser was being dangerously presumptuous. He’d been acting like he was going to inherit Jack’s throne since I’d first hired him, and that by acting like that I was going to swoon at his presence. He hadn’t really pushed it to a point that required disciplinary action yet, but he was getting close.

 

            He had a regular habit of coming to the main office, Jack’s office, and trying to talk me into closing it and letting a man take over the operations of the company. The man he had in mind was himself, and he also thought I needed a man to keep me warm at night. He had a man in mind for that too. He was a pretty good agent, and mostly I could brush him off, but he was an irritating little twerp.

 

            As it happened, that day he’d come to the office to tell me how I should get rid of Jack. He didn’t take the gentle hints I was dropping that this wasn’t a matter for discussion, and he kept going even after I told him that we were done. I don’t like yelling at my subordinates, but I was getting close with him. He was being such an insufferable little prick, it was driving me mad. And for him to act like he had some sort of right made it even worse.

 

            “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be paying out this much for someone who isn’t even bringing in any money,” he said. “He’s been a leech on you for years Debs.”

 

            “Don’t call me Debs,” I said through my teeth. “I have told you that it is none of your concern.”

 

            “It is my concern,” he tried sounding defensive, like he was about to tell me that he was just looking out for me. “I work here too you know. I’ve got to look out for you, make sure the company doesn’t go under.”

 

            “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about Jack, and you sure as hell don’t know anything about me.”

 

            “Now Debs,” he said putting his hand on mine. “Don’t be like that.”

 

            “Don’t call me Debs,” I shouted. “And don’t act like you’ve got some fucking right to…”

 

            I didn’t finish because the door swung slowly open at that point. Jack has never let me replace the big wood door with a glass door, so I didn’t see him coming from the elevator. Normally he takes the stairs, which means he passes the window next to the door before opening it. He’s taken the elevator a few times since his return though, which makes me think there must be more lingering pain than he lets on.

 

            The door swung open slowly and he looked at Peter and then at me. He had a look in his eye, something like mingled annoyance and overconfidence. It’s hard for him to be overconfident, since he has so much to be confident about and normally his self-image is down near my ankles. Granted, if it’s at the level of my ankles it’s probably trying to look up my skirt, but it’s still pretty low.

 

            “Well hello,” he smiled at me and then looked at Peter. “Who have we here?”

 

            “This is Peter Kurbisesser.” I told him. “He works in our satellite office.”

 

            “Does he?” Jack asked.

 

            “For the moment.” I growled.

 

            “Ah,” Jack nodded slowly. “Has your paycheck bounced Mister Kurbisesser?”

 

            “No,” Peter said, looking confused.

 

            “It arrived late?” Jack asked.

 

            “No.”

 

            “So you are being paid, regularly,” Jack stated.

 

            I sort of wondered if Peter saw the trap and was trying to be clever or if he was really too dumb to see where Jack was leading. It could have just been that Jack worried him, he worried people sometimes. Particularly at times like this when he was looking both friendly and dangerous.

 

            “Yeah,” Peter nodded. “But I’ve got to look out for Debbie’s interests.”

 

            “Oh,” Jack nodded back. “Are you fucking her?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “Boning,” Jack said. “Sticking it to her. Are you putting your pork steeple in her gut locker? Sticking the tube steak into her flesh cave. Are you cleaning her chimney with a bald chicken? Putting your sausage in her pickle pocket?”

 

            “What?” Peter asked.

 

            “Are you having sex with this woman?” he put his right index finger into his curled hand and then pointed at me.

 

            “No,” Peter said, looking shocked.

 

            “Do you have any sort of relationship outside of work with her at all?”

 

            “Well--”

 

            “No,” I asserted.

           

            “So maybe you don’t know her reasons for the things she does,” Jack said. “And maybe you should worry about pissing off the boss instead of how the business is fairing.”

 

            “Look, you’ve been taking advantage of her generosity,” Peter accused.

 

            I thought Jack was going hit him or something, the look on Jack’s face was half surprise and half amusement and I swore that I thought he was going to grab Peter by the hair and smack him into my desk a few times. Instead he just shook his head and looked at me, smiling.

 

            “Debs babe, could you file this contract?” he asked as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and slid it across. “We’re going to need to make some real accounting of the figures in there, but half of the Piper Pickle fortune is probably going to be sizable.”

 

            “Huh?” Peter’s voice was small. “Half of Piper Foods?”

 

            “And our retainer,” Jack said pulling a thick envelope out and dropping it on my desk. “These are supposed to be about two million in bearer bonds. That’s to help fund the recovery operation, but I think old man Piper is trying to pay off some of the bills incurred by the coma inducing event.”

 

            “I’ll get them turned in,” I said having a look at them. Two million one hundred thousand dollars worth, which is a shit load of money to be handed all at once. Last year we’d brought in four million dollars from our three offices, but to have almost half of that handed to you all at once was something else.

 

            “You need something Mister Kurbisesser?” Jack asked.

 

            “What?” he asked.

 

            “Do you need anything?” Jack asked again.

 

            “I guess not,” he said.

 

            “Then you’d better go,” Jack indicated the door. “We grownups have real grownup work to do.”

 

            “I--” Peter said.

 

            “And don’t ever let me catch you calling Debbie anything like ‘Debs’ again. You don’t get to call her little pet names because she isn’t your pet. In fact, don’t ever let anyone catch you acting like you’ve got anything going for you around here besides being employed. You’re not the boss, you’re a paid employee. You don’t set policy you don’t know how much we’re making and as you were acting like such an unlikable fuckbend before I came in I must assume concepts like loyalty are alien to you so I won’t even bother trying to explain that one. Now go back to your office and think about how you’ve just been told to fuck off by the guy who has just now brought in more money in retainer than you’ve made in billable hours over the course of your life.”

 

            “Sorry,” Peter said looking at me and then at the floor.

 

            “Go on,” Jack said gesturing to the door again, “shoo.”

 

            “Sorry,” Peter said again and shuffled out.

 

            I was sort of sorry to see him humiliated like that. He deserved it and it needed to be done, no doubt, but you don’t actually like seeing it happen. Jack watched as the door closed and I could see his shoulders bunching up under his shirt.

 

            “Should I do something about him?” he asked.

 

            “No,” I said, giving my head a shake.

 

            “You’re sure?” he asked. “I’m not sure how much your girlfriend would like to hear about him slagging off your boyfriend.”

 

            “He’s a good agent, and he doesn’t know about either my girlfriend or my boyfriend,” I told him. “People in the office have no business knowing anything about my private life.”

 

            “None of them check up, just to make sure?”

 

            “If they did, they would be gone,” I told him. “I don’t like people prying.”

 

            “Ashamed of me?”

 

            “I don’t need people asking questions,” I said. “I don’t need people assuming things about me. I like things kept private. It’s bad enough some guys get it into their heads that they’re going to be my new beau whether I want them to or not.”

 

            “Well I don’t want that either,” he said. “Maybe I should explain things?”

 

            “I think you’ve proven to be the big seller this week,” I reassured him, grabbing the papers. “Speaking of which, Peter Piper is going to give us half his kingdom?”

 

            “That’s what he claims,” he said. “Although I wouldn’t go picking out drapes for our side of the castle just yet. I’ve got to go out to California and you’ve got to make sure a more legal document than that one comes along stating exactly what we’ll get and how he intends to pay and so on. The securities are nice, but I want to make sure we’ll actually get paid if this job ends up costing more than it needs to.”

 

            “Do you think that’s going to happen?”

 

            “Did the last job with them end up costing too much?”

 

            “Well,” I said and sort of let him eye me after saying it.

 

            “I told him to get some contracts over to us,” he said. “That reminds me, I’ve got to make some calls.”

 

            “Oh?” she asked. “To who?”

 

            “People,” he said walking to his office door. “Oh, and if I’m going to drive across country, do you think I could borrow your car? I’m not to keen about taking the Hudson for that long a trip.”

 

            “Why would you drive?” I asked, having to lean across my desk to see him going through his door.

 

            “Guns, knives, shovels, rakes and implements of destruction,” he said. “Got to tote my gear.”

 

            “We have people out there with those things.”

 

            “Not as good,” he let his door close behind him.

 

            I got up and walked around the desk, even though I knew it was a breach of etiquette. I opened the door of his office and found him opening his safe. I think the safe might be the oldest thing in the office. I’m also pretty certain that he managed to get the price he did because Butch Cassidy once blew it up and it was stuck back together improperly. I’ve always sort of thought that you could probably yank the door off if you gave it a good jerk.

 

            “We’ve got people to do this sort of thing,” I told him.

 

            “Our people are going to Banbury Cross,” he said as he opened the door of the big green antique he called a safe. “I need them to go to Banbury and look around down there. I need them making a big sign of doing it too, because I want people to think that’s where we went.”

 

            “Why?”

 

            “So people will think I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “Someone needs to drive my car, very carefully, down there too. They’ll think I went with the car.”

 

            I knew I was going to let him borrow my car, and I knew it wouldn’t be coming back in working order. I looked at the computer in front of me and wondered if I couldn’t blackmail him into buying me a new car. Or maybe I could even get him to get me my own classic. I decided the first thing to do was to call Shiri in San Francisco and tell her he was coming and then start looking for cars that he could buy me in California. It wasn’t a question of would my car come back or not, it’s how badly he would smash it up. It might not even be too wrecked to drive home, but I wasn’t going to chance it. I would make him get me a new car. He owed me anyway and while he might not be aware of it, it was more Motor City than making him get me a ring.

 

OMG! More Kidnappings!

This post is written by Fancy, the Ruler of the Universe.

Good lord n' Butter! I thought my number was up! It's one thing when the boy is kidnapped, but those vicious bastards tried to kidnap ME! Me! Fancy! The Ruler of the Universe was not spared! I was shoved in a box, taken to a strange place, poked, prodded, x-rayed, and told I have arthritis!

However, through daring do and cunning plans, I escaped and am now back at home. Still no boy, no brushing, and those dead ninjas are still lying around, but I am home!

THANKSGIVING! YAR!

Killed Syd for being a witch.
Went up stairs and enslaved the black guy in 306
Went next door and told the Indian* family I owned their all stuff and killed half of them.
Will soon force the Japanese couple across the hall to do something pointlessly humiliating.
Most of all, I told everyone to be grateful I was here to rule over them.

Thanksgiving is fucking celebrated right in my household!

*From India, not natives to the Americas, but I've only got so much to work with.

Nothing to worry about

Just to make things clear. Grey Weirdo was not kidnapped by the Singh Brotherhood. He has not been taken to a remote location. He's not being tortured until he breaks. There is no reason to worry, Grey Weirdo is fine and sitting in front of Big Orange eating cupcakes or whatever.

Look, here's a picture of one of the cats, just to prove everything is fine.



Also, we are not ninjas, this is Grey Weirdo talking about himself in third person for some unaccountable reason.

Turkeys are pointless

This post is written by Fancy, the Ruler of the Universe.

Why do people get so wound up about the turkey being killed for us to eat it? You never hear anyone go on about the cow that was last night's steak or the chicken in tomorrow's soup, but good lord ‘n butter(!) they are so sad that a turkey died. This, despite the fact that a turkey is, without a doubt, the stupidest and most pointless bird I have ever had to deal with. These are not smart, nor noble, or particularly handsome creatures.

The turkeys you eat can't even mate on their own, they need help for that. The breast is so large on a modern turkey, that the male literally can't mount the female. So because you like white meat, we have to train people to jerk off a turkey and stick a… well, a turkey baster up another turkey, just to get more turkeys. Does that sound like an animal that could survive on its own, or does it sound like something that needs killin’?

Also, different subject, where the hell is the boy? He's been gone for hours and these dead ninjas are starting to smell.

There is no need to panic. I am fine. Everything is normal.

Hello everyone, everything is fine and normal! I am Grey Weirdo! Of course I am! Look, I will say some wacky non-sequitur now.

BAKED GOODS!

That's the sort of wacky thing I say, right? Of course it is, so you can stop worrying now.

As further proof, here is a video about movies. I talk about movies all the time.

Fancy is posting in the blogs now

This post is written by Fancy, the Ruler of the Universe

What the hell?

Okay, where is the boy? He's supposed to be brushing me for the next seven hours whether he wants to or not.

And what are all these dead ninja doing here? And while I'm asking questions, why the hell is this song playing? Why does he even have Ninja Rap?

Do not be alarmed! All Is Normal!

So I'm working on a couple of things and...

Hang on a second... can anyone else hear ninjas, commandos, nets and a kidnap van? And is that a blow gun armed with drugged darts? *HURK!*


...


Dear Internet. Remain Calm. Nothing is wrong. GreyWeirdo hasn't been kidnapped by ninjas or anything. Would we post it if he was? Please carry on with your work. All is well. Nothing to worry about. He's defiantly not being held in a prison, or being subjected to horrific tortures. Pay no attention to anyone who says anything to the contrary. All it well.

Christmas Night Of Zombies

This is a real song. It exists. Sometimes it's called Christmas Night Of Zombies... but it's not a joke. Someone even cut a video with scenes from Zombieland.



I blame hipsters, because I can.

TSA remains stupid

The TSA remains fucking stupid. They tried to demonstrate their new pat downs, and made an entire room full of people throw up in their mouths a little.

People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes.




And let's not forget the man left covered in his own piss because these people have no training and have no idea how to deal with that sort of situation.

Put that in this mega list of links about the TSA lately and a picture emerges. The picture I'm getting is untrained grunts being told to do fucking stupid things, that they really don't want to do, by people who have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. Not only that, but we're told that these are necessary by people who never have to go through these procedures. Can't help but notice Obama is once again telling us to shut up and take it while he never has to stand in line and wonder if the person about to grab his junk is one of the sex offenders the TSA had no problem hiring a few years ago.

Personally,. I can't believe Amtrak isn't running a "We never molest you" campaign right now.

(cue Vader) NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Eve on Sesame Street isn't on netflix? What the hell!

I mean, I don't exactly need it on Netflix, I have the dvd. You can get the DVD on Amazon and I suggest you do. It's the only way to ensure a Elmo free Holiday while still watching Grover.

Do NOT listen to these people! Only listen to me!

Okay, you can listen to some of what the writer of this article is saying, but by all means skip #3, #6, #7 and #9!

The chicken broth/ water idea has been floating around for years, but it's false. The problem is, animal fat & protein releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel good. This is as technical as I'ma gonna get! Without the fat, people tend to eat more looking for the mild emotional high they would get from eating the fat. And besides, even if you don't eat more, do you really want to go through life not eating the skin off the turkey? Do you really want to avoid having butter and sour cream in your masheded patoes? Don't you want to cut loose for just one day of the year? If you don't scoff cheeseburgers every other day, it shouldn't be a big deal.

However, I will agree with some of this. Don't skip breakfast, do start with some soup, have some orange juice instead of gin, and go for a walk after dinner. #8 sounds like sort of a neat idea, but I'm not sure it will replace real pie. I'm not even going to address the tablespoon to serve thing because it's fucktarded.

What shocks me is that they don't mention the most important thing! Here is it, the thing you should remember for Thanksgiving...

Eat with people you like to talk to.

Ta-Da! That's a number one hit right there. When you talk, you eat more slowly and you get to feeling full with less food. Granted, this may mean skipping your relatives, but you know, fuck 'em. Grandma has been a pain in the ass these last three years and Aunt Mertle was a stinking rotten bitch when she was a kid too. Just ask your dad. No one has EVER liked Aunt Mertle. Go ahead, call your friends and see if they want to share in the turkey instead.

Also, fuck Aunt Mertle. Rotten, fucking, judgmental bitch.

Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Twenty-Two)

The Return of Jack Collier

A Jack Collier Story

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Last week’s entry can be found here. 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two: Talking to Daddy

 

            As I approached the Piper residence, I couldn’t help but think about how things had been the last time I’d driven up this path. It wasn’t so much being shot by the daughter that bothered me, as it was being shot at by the father. If Jill had been snatched again, then she couldn’t shoot me here anyway. With Peter Piper here though, he might give it a go.

 

            He didn’t look like he was getting ready to have a repeat of the night he and Cole King tried to gun me down in his living room though. He looked panicked and scared out of his wits as he came out of the house. He was wearing a silk robe over his pajamas, the pockets bulging with papers, which made me wonder how long this had been going on before he decided to call me. I didn’t worry about that too much because I was quickly concerned with trying to decipher his speech. I’ll break the words up, because if I wrote them like he said them it would be one single word shot out like a torrent.

 

            “They took my little girl again. They stole her from her school grounds on the last day of school. They’ve taken her away again and they’re going to harm her. They took her like they took her mother form me.”

 

            “Slow down!” I said holding my hand up in front of him. “Who has done what?”

 

            “They’ve taken my little girl away from me,” he said as we stood on the porch. “They snatched her off the school grounds.”

 

            “Where?” I asked.

 

            “In California where she was going to school.”

 

            “Okay, now second question, who?”

 

            “They,” he looked around him nervously and grabbed at his robe. “We shouldn’t talk here, they may be listening, let’s walk.”

 

            Almost running, he left the porch and started down the path that I’d taken three years ago when I was chasing Cole after he ran from the house. We walked in silence for some time, walking along the path that I’d taken to chase after the man I’d watched shoot himself just a few days ago. I could have asked him why we were pursuing the path of a man I’d caught up with, but no one actually knew that part except me.

 

            We walked for a half hour in silence, I noticed that the field where Cole rolled his SUV had grown up to the point where you could only tell where the car had crashed if you knew the spot and were looking for it. This path led to the hill where Jill had become very confused about things and put a few rounds in me. As Piper started to walk up the hill I almost wanted to grab his arm and demand that we had walked far enough. After all, I wasn’t too happy about all of this to begin with, but walking to the exact spot would be too poetic if he’d decided to finish the job his daughter had started.

 

            I decided though, that Tracey wouldn’t approve. He’d say I needed to climb the hill and look at the spot where I fell. He’d also say that I needed to get that big rock I hit my head on and take it home. It’s a good thing I only followed his advice to a point and then decided things for myself.  I couldn’t tell which rock it was, but it must have been a big one and it would have looked weird if I’d gone looking for it.

 

            “They’ve taken her,” he said as he started up the hill.

 

            “Who?” I asked. “I mean they can be quite a large group.”

 

            “The people who took her last time,” he whimpered as he walked.

 

            “No,” I corrected him. “Cole King is dead.”

 

            “Cole King was just the individual they had do the taking,” he told me. “They told him he could take her from me, and now they’ve done it again.”

 

            “Who took her then?” I asked.

 

            “The Council.”

 

            “Council?” I asked.

 

            “The Council of the Church.”

 

            “Act, if you will, like I spent two years in a coma and then another year recuperating,” I instructed. “Then you might be able to tell me what the hell we’re talking about.”

 

            “The Church of Thinkonomics,” he said, as if I were a simpleton who should have known all this. “The Council took my daughter away for the second time.”

 

            “Took her away?” I asked.

 

            “Kidnapped, stole, confiscated, it’s all the same to them. They took her,” he said.

 

            The hill was pretty much as I remembered it. The tree was a bit older, but not changed much. The spot where I fell looked the same, the place where Jill knelt down and begged me to take her away was still there, it might have all happened yesterday. I didn’t feel any particular spot on my body ache from the proximity, but I was aware of the spots where bullets had torn into me.

 

            “And they did it the first time you say?” I asked him.

 

            “That’s right,” he nodded. “They told Cole he could have her, even though he wasn’t supposed to take her yet. He was supposed to wait until she was sixteen to take possession.”

 

            “Take possession?” I repeated the phrase, which has always has a connotation of property to me.

 

            “It’s in the Church law,” he snarled. “You can’t take a man’s child as your own until they’re sixteen. Then you have to wait until they’re the age of consent to have sex with them,” he spat the words out with anger and indignation. “But he broke the rules! He had her when she was still too young. He took her when she should have been my precious flower.”

 

            “It would have been okay to steal her away and lock her up in a room and rape her after she was sixteen?” I asked.

 

            “It would have been according to the Church’s laws,” he said.

 

            “Could we call this group something other than the church?” I asked. “It’s just calling them a church sets up a confusing mental name thing with me. I know a guy named Church and you keep making me think of him.”

 

            “I suppose,” he shrugged. “Call them the Council or we could call them the Thinkonomics people.”

 

            “Council works for me,” I told him and then asked, “So how does it work that they’re allowed to take your daughter and make her his property?”

 

            “If you want position you have to pay up,” he shrugged. “I thought I wanted position, so I gave them three million dollars. They tried to take controlling stock in the company, but the board of directors stopped them. They temporarily seized the stock from me, so I couldn’t sign it over. So I signed over my wife and our child instead.”

 

            “You what?” I asked.

 

            “She was so beautiful,” he continued. “They gave Carol to some Swiss businessman who got the EU to recognize Thinkonomics as a church instead of a cult. Just came and told her she was going and took her away. I never saw her after that but Jill was able to visit her a few times. They just came and took her.”

 

            “What did she have to say about that?”

 

            “It doesn’t matter,” Piper snapped. “Women do what we tell them.”

 

            “Right,” I said and nodded sagely. If I’d been alone I would have kicked my self for not bringing a gun to shoot him with.

 

            “Carol did what she was told,” he assured me, “After they broke her of course.”

 

            I did not like the sound of that.

 

            “Broke her?” I asked.

 

            “That’s what they’re going to do to Jill in a few days,” he said. “They call it the Rite of Kahn Singh, but it’s just breaking her.”

 

            “You want to explain?” I asked.

 

            “They’ll put her in a white room, make her dress in white, leave her for a few days on water and vegetables. That’s to detoxify her. Then they rape her. Then they beat her, starve her, rape her again. Gang rapes are a large part of it. Makes her indifferent to whatever man or men she’s assigned to. After a while the subject comes to understand her role and even accepts it. If you don’t completely ruin her, she’ll even come to enjoy it. You’re a man of the world, you know how these things are done.”

 

            I’m going to admit to you that I was just too flat out astonished to argue him on that final point. I may have read some of those books Debbie keeps around for when she’s feeling a bit frisky over the years, but I hadn’t seen any of them as how to guides. There seemed to me to be a line where fantasy was supposed to end, consensuality being a big wide part of that line. I knew what he was describing though, I had read about it. It sort of made me a little ill that in a way, yes, I did know how these things were done.

 

            “And they’re doing that to Jill now?” I asked.

 

            “They’ll wait,” he said. “They’ll wait until June twentieth.”

 

            “Why?”

 

            “She’ll be eighteen on the twentieth,” he said. “They’ll follow the rules, they will wait until midnight and then they’ll either rape her into compliance or to death. They claim I am still a member of the Council and I should come to California to help in the Rite.”

 

            “How delightful of them,” I said. “You know where they’ll be then?”

 

            “I know some of the houses they own,” he said. “I can give you some addresses.”

 

            “Where?” I asked. “In California?”

 

            “That’s right,” he nodded. “If you can bring her back, bring her back safe, I would give anything.”

 

            “Well, we’ll talk about payment later.”

 

            “I would give half my kingdom,” he announced. “I’ll pay you half of everything I own!”

 

            “Okay,” I told him, waving a hand for him to calm down. “Just stay cool.”

 

            “I’ve written it out here,” he pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “You can have half of everything, if you just bring back my daughter.”

 

            I looked at the paper, which outlined that half of his company, land and assets would go to me if I rescued his daughter from harm. That’s the wording he used, rescue his daughter from harm. There was then a quick list of assets for me to have half of along with their value and what I would be getting if I could return said daughter. While I was glancing over that he reached into his left hand pocket, the one that was really bulging and pulled out a largish manila envelope.

 

            “These are bearer bonds,” he said. “Everything you’d want is attached. They should be worth about two million dollars. I think it should fund your operations.”

 

            “Yeah,” I said taking the envelope, looking at it and then him. “That’s probably a good retainer.”

 

            “You’ll find her, won’t you Mister Collier?”

 

            “Yeah,” I said looking in the envelope at the bonds. “I’ll find her. What are you going to do?”

 

            “I don’t know,” he shook his head.

 

            “You think they may come here and try to force you to go there?” I asked, and his face was a sudden mask of shock.

 

            “They…” I could see the idea had only just exploded in his mind.

 

            “I’ll send some people up here to take care of you,” I said, and considering the look on his face I added “Professionals, guys who know what they’re doing.”

 

            “You think they might?” he started, but faltered. “They might force me?”

 

            “Not if I get some people here,” I said and when I looked down the hill I saw a large chunk of granite that looked like it would get in the way if I rolled down the hill from here. I looked at the tree, the place where Piper stood and then at the ground again. I was standing in the same spot, so that probably was the rock.

 

            “Can you get some guys here soon?” he asked.

 

            “Yeah,” I said glancing down at the rock again. “Yeah, I’ll get some guys sent up right away.”

 

            “Are you alright?” he asked.

 

            “This is where it happened,” I said looking at him and letting the weight of my stare fall on him.

 

            “Oh dear lord,” He put his hand up to his mouth and gasped. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t…”

 

            “Forget it,” I said. “I’ve got to go to my office and get some guys arranged. I need you to get some contracts together, this letter is nice but I need something more concrete than this. I’ll have to get people started on the paperwork while I go find your daughter.”

 

            “When will your men arrive?”

 

            “They will be here as soon as I can get them,” I said.  

 

            “How will I know it’s your men?” It was a fair question, but he was getting on my nerves.

 

            “When they arrive they will give you a phrase.”

 

            “What?” he asked. “Should I write it down?”

 

            “No, it’ll be easy to remember. Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas.” I said, because it was the first thing I could think of.

 

            “Pardon?” he blinked.

 

            “Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas,” I repeated. “It’s a Civil War era song. If the guys who get here don’t mention goober peas, start shooting and then run.”

 

            “It probably won’t matter,” he tried to smile.

 

            “Yeah,” I smiled back. “If they’re not from me they’ll probably just shoot you on sight anyway.”

 

            I started down the hill after that crack, I had a lot of work to do.

 

Sad really

Syd just noted that Charlie Brown is the most bullied kid in all of animation. His specials are just a series of everyone telling him he sucks. He has one friend, Linus, who either goes with the flow or sometimes tries to talk Charlie down. And yet, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is called a classic, rather than a series of events that led to another childhood suicide.

Bullies suck, cartoons that implicitly allow bullying suck harder.

Open Letter

Dear Ronan Keating and Maire Brennan,

If you're going to cover something like Fairytale Of New York, you should at least give it a tenth of the feeling of the original. The song is about two people eating away at each other, hating one another and yet needing each other because they can't bear to be alone. See, no one wants to hear people being melodic and showing off their lovely voices with this tune. This is one of the few songs where you ruin it if you sing it beautifully. This is, if anything can be, the one song that SHOULD be sung by Shane MacGowan. I mean, Kirsty MacColl was a lovely singer, and yet she matched her style to MacGowan's for this song.

Original


Lame Cover



YOU FAIL!!!!!


Also, the line is: You scumbag you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot. and not You scumbag you maggot, you're cheap and you're haggard. I mean really. Haggard? Are these two over educated liberal arts majors? Who the fuck puts haggard in place of faggot? Who ever says haggard in any regard? Yes, faggot is an offensive term, but he just got done calling her an old slut on junk for crying out loud. Quite frankly I find trying to make this song PC far more offensive than the line itself ever could be.

Reason #349 why you want to date a geek (Possibly)

For a few years, I’ve had this idea floating around in my head. I think geek men, fall for girls in a much more… there is no other way to say this, feminine way than other men do. I’ve been watching geek guys for years and I definitely see a correlation in how they dig a celebrity chick and how I dig a celebrity chick.


Your geek male loooves that chick from The Guild. Hang on a second while I go look up her name. Felicia Day. Now, I don’t find her ugly or anything, I think she’s very cute. However, I know for a fact that I don’t get anywhere near as excited about her as some of the guys who will no doubt read this get. Guys who watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog are far more likely to pick Ms. Day over say... Scarlett Johansson. A matter of taste you say? No, I say it isn’t. It’s a matter of differential brains. According to this Cracked Article* women are far more situational about what man they find attractive. I dig Scarlett because she has a kicking bod, but the geek lad digs Felicia because she’s a geeky sort of girl. I’m pretty sure that neither girl would be kicked out of either of our beds on a wet Saturday night, but I’m pretty sure I know which would be chosen by who first.
*Yeah! That's right! I'm using a Cracked article for back-up. Beat that for useless internet sources!

We actually know that women are more situational about what men they find attractive. If a man is good with kids, loves soft furry animals, does the dishes and can perform foreplay for up to seven weeks, he’s going to be picked over a guy who kicks children and neglects puppies while letting the dishes sit in the sink for a week. There have been studies that prove women are more likely to dig a guy who does the dishes while holding a baby, but I won’t cite any because fuck accuracy and proof.

Now, your basic geek guy is into chicks who sort of conform to their interests. While a non-geek will hit on anything with a pulse (And between 15-21, a pulse is sort of optional really) the geeky guy is far more likely to restrict himself to the cute girl in the library with the horn rims and the “Librarians do it quietly” t-shirt. Again, I’m going on my own observation here, I have no hard data. I’m only using the evidence of what celebrities I’ve seen geeks crush on.

Geek guys tend to crush on girls who have been in Sci-Fi or Fantasy shows. Quite often, if taken objectively, they will overlook a slight lack of hotness* if the woman in question was in a show they really like. I have seen guys declare love for women I wouldn’t give a second look to on TV and really would never even think of looking up photos of them online. However, because of the connection to the show, they dig the girl even more. I’ve even caught one or two expressing that they like the girl because of how she acts on the show. Conversely I’ve heard some women say they don’t like a perfectly good looking guy because he was a jerk in something they saw. As an example, I’ve been told some women don’t think… what’s his name, the guy who was the captain on Firefly… you know… the one who looks like he suffered some Casino style vice incident in his youth. Whatever, because he played Captain… Vegetable (?) in Dr. Horrible, these women don’t like him. They can’t separate the douche he played in that with the actor. Similarly, geeky guys are into the nice girl in movies and will pant after the actress who played the nice girl. If they decide they like bad girls, they’ll pant after the villainous chick. Where as I look at them and if they’re both hot I wonder why being between both girls doesn’t occur to them.
*I’m talking they’ll mark a girl as a 10 when by all objective measures she’s only an 8.5 at best. I’m not seriously suggesting they’re upgrading a 2 to 10 status.†
†Oh don’t give me that fucking look! We all do it, you know we do it. Don’t act surprised just because I refuse to pretend like we’re above this.

I have no reason, or conclusion on this, I’ve just been finding it interesting. Try it some time. Show a guy a nude photo of Betty White and then one of that chick who was in Battle Sun Galactic… or whatever it’s called. See if they don’t pick the chick who was a robot, or did they turn out to be angels? Is it a spoiler if I don’t really know anything about the show besides the fact that the end ruined the whole thing? Hell, I could be talking about Lost if I were going to use that criterion.

My point is that geek guys react to women in a more interesting and less shallow way than other men. Yeah, that’s it.

Girls!

It's okay to like Star Wars!
It's okay to like Highlander!
It's okay to like Transformers!
It's okay to like Lord of the Rings!
It's okay to like Westerns!
It's okay to like Kung-Fu!
It's okay to like G.I. Joe!
It's okay to like Star Wars!

Anybody who says it's not?
Fuck them!
Fuck them sideways!
Fuck them with that strap on from Seven!

If you think girls shouldn't like Star Wars, then fuck you!

I would like to file this under "Some motherfuckers are always trying to skate uphill."


Addendum: Boys!
It's okay to like easy bake ovens, Care Bears, Romantic Comedies, wearing pretty shoes and Dr. Who.
Again, if some says it ain't, cut the bitch* and tell them to fuck off.


*Bitch in this case refers to whatever motherfucker tells you you shouldn't like Care Bears, not to gender. Men can be as a big a bunch of bitches as any woman, and when fighting for equality, all that matters is that you keep your pimp hand strong.

Red Cliff

So we watched the two halves of Red Cliff this week. We didn’t watch the cut down version that’s on Netflix streaming, we went for the original 2 movie cut.

It’s a good movie, but with limited appeal.

The actions was very good, the characters were well fleshed and individual, the story (such as it was) went along at a fairly even pace, and the actors all did a good job being the sort of people they were expected to be. As I understand it, this story is a bit like the Arthurian collection of knights in that they’ve got the wise one and the funny one and the nice one… so on.

Here are the problems:
1. Chinese people don’t all look the same to me, but their names do. I ended up giving some of the character’s nicknames or referring to them by the actor who played them. That wasn’t a big problem and didn’t distract me because, as I said, my issue was purely with the fact that Asian names all run together for me very quickly.

2. I don’t know Three Kingdoms history. I know a pretty good amount of China’s cinematic history, and I know the legendary history they put in their cinema, but I don’t know about this period of their history. As a result, I was lost at sea. The movie is more or less made with the understanding that you know the history and know who at least some of these people are. The generals are presented without any fanfare or announcement. You’re just expected to know them on sight. Well, in this instance, it worked for half the house. Syd has played Romance of the Three Kingdoms since it was on the NES and even commented that the generals look exactly like the drawings from the games. For once, Syd was telling me about Chinese history, which was an odd place to be in. I did recognize Guan Yu, but that was for different reasons.

3. There isn’t much of a story. It really is just a battle and a siege. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t good side plots, because there are, but it isn’t some grand sweeping story. It’s just the story of this one battle that, in the end, didn’t come to very much.



Still it was a good movie although your mileage will vary. It’s nice to see John Woo make something watchable again at any rate.

I want to punch the whole internet.

First it was the Charlie Chaplin Time Traveler and now it's Disney is hiding copies of Tron so people can't see it. The idea is that if people remember Tron was actually sort of naff, they'll stay away from Tron Legacy.

Never mind that fact that Tron on Blu-Ray was supposed to come out just before Tron Legacy was released. There was some kind of issue and it’ll now come out early next year. Also, we know about Disney, right? They put a movie out on video for about an hour and a half and then chuck it back into the vault for a decade. That’s sort of how they do business. The Tron 20th Anniversary edition has been OOP for years now, it's just no one noticed until this week. Interestingly, no one seems to have asked Disney what the deal is, they're just all deciding that Disney has engaged in a conspiracy to keep a movie off the radar. Yeah, like their conspiracy to keep Bambi off Blu-Ray despite my calling it one of the great fantasy movies in a moment of extreme logic bending.

But let’s address the (stupid, stupid) idea of the conspiracy…
I think anyone going to see Tron Legacy is probably a fan of Tron and accepts its naffness as part of its inherent charm. I mean let’s be honest, the only reason Tron Legacy is being made is because fans of Tron have been steadily clamoring for a return to that world for damn near 30 years. Just about everyone who is on board to see Legacy, has probably already seen Tron. And besides, when you watch Tron and realize it's a bit silly, you sort of just look at the year it was made. “Oh, this was made in 1982. Well! That explains everything. That’s just how they made movies in the early 80s.” And why would they try to hide the original when Legacy is a sequel? Did anyone even think about how stupid the idea was before spouting? No, didn’t think so.

Another photo

TV Shows

Watching The Berenstain Bears: Christmas Tree. I think Stan and Jan Berenstain should have sued The Simpsons, since Homer is clearly a rip off of Papa Q. Bear.

Photo

Vote for something awesome!

Look at this poster, isn't it awesome? Don't you wish you could tell te artist how awesome it is? Well, you can!

Go vote for it to win a contest!

Go on, sign up for Etsy and give "Stay Curious" a vote. I'll post another photo of a cat if you do.

And now a post...

In which post a link where I am very mean to This is America, Charlie Brown “The Mayflower Voyagers” and the so called Pilgrims in equal measure.

Mostly pointing out that this educational cartoon is about as much use as an education tool as a photo of Pat Buchanan is as a masturbation device*. I also shit all over the Not-American, Not-Pilgrim's record and point out that they were, in fact, douche nozzles.


*I apologize if masturbation and/or sex is now ruined forever.