Unhelpful

Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time again: Wacky phone hi-jinks!

A few months ago, I was screwing around with the computer, as usual, and the phone rang. Not my cellphone, but my dorm phone. I don’t know anyone who would actually call me at midnight, so I picked up the phone. Usually, I answer with a “gameplan.” I usually do some sort of “character” (Mr. Happy, Mr. Monotone, etc) with telemarketers, but this was too late to be a telemarketer, so I answered unprepared.

I picked up the phone, and a male voice said, “Hey, sexy, what’s up?”

I immediately knew I was getting a crank call, so I knew I had an opportunity for some real fun.

Me: “Ooh, I’m not doing anything, stud.”
Him: “What are you wearing?”
I hestitated a moment… then inspiration hit me.
Me: “I’m wearing an extra-large adult diaper and a rainbow wig!”
Him: *silence*
Me: “Ooh, all this excitement made me soil my diaper. I’ve been a bad, bad boy. Will you change my diaper and spank me?”
Him: *a brief pause, followed by “uhhh….”*
Me: Hello, lover?
Him: *click*

My roommate at the time had been staring at me quizzically for a few moments, like I was some kind of weirdo. But this was the dude who used to have phone sex with his girlfriend while I had family and friends up in the room.

I bet he’ll never look at rainbow wigs and adult diapers in quite the same way.

Well, worth watching, and worth the effort I spent to go see it seeing as how only one goddamn theater in D/FW saw fit to carry it. The setting is 1969 Australia, in particular the radio telescope that was key to the video of the first moonwalk. There is a very good review on IMDB that captures everything perfectly. I’m actually glad finally to see a comedy that has genuine humor, as opposed to movies that are comedies simply because one of the actors used to be a comedian.

The plot is simple, there aren’t any “hidden” parts, no surprise twists. The comedy doesn’t lie in the typical “sit-com” vein of putting people into an odd situation and watch them make fools of themselves, it’s done in a far subtler way, innocent dialogue that you don’t see coming ’til it’s said.

Simple movie, simple characters, simple plot, simple rating: 1 star.

(Rating system: Movies I like get a star. Movies I don’t, don’t)

You know what I really fucking hate?

Wacky hi-jinks.

The astute will recognize that the random quotes happily gracing the top of your browser window each time you visit Unhelpful are the words of Marshall McLuhan. If you’re lucky, you may catch the profound “the medium is the message” phrase. If you were me, you’d be lucky enough to have an English professor who actually used that very quote in a class discussion, but not before referring to McLuhan as an “expert on modern media.”

After class, I asked my usually talkative and helpful professor WHY OH WHY she quoted, of all people, McLuhan. I told her I couldn’t believe it.

“Sorry.”

Sorry? I want to know her reasoning behind tainting an otherwise logical class discussion with the words of a token idiot, and I get a “sorry” in response? Adding insult to injury, she walked away after the “sorry.”

I understand now. Obviously well aware of her crime, she in all probability pleaded to Allah during the remainder of class, after the terminal error, that none of her students would pick up on it. I think it was pretty crappy of me to ruin her day.

[Before we begin: I want to apologize for being retarded initially. Elton John, indeed. That's what you get for writing updates on 3 hours of sleep.]

Anyway, I saw the following inspirational quote by Helen Keller today:

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

When I read that, my inner cynic couldn’t help wondering if she had actually said something so inspirational. She obviously required an interpreter, and who’s to say that the interpreter didn’t “put words in her mouth,” so to speak.

I know that if I were in her position, I wouldn’t have been very inspiriational. Most of my speeches would’ve been along the lines of, “Someone kill me, please. I can’t take another moment of this living Hell.”

But that’s probably because I’m not blind and deaf. I’m sure that it’s wonderfully relaxing. Once you go blind and deaf, you never go back!

It occurred to me as I was scrubbing a cookie sheet vigorously in a vain attempt to make it clean that I do not have to expend such effort to make it clean, I can replace it for probably under a dollar or two. I then think back to the last time I used this cookie sheet, which was about 4 months ago. Throwing it away seems to be a good plan, as judging by my roll of aluminum foil, I need a cookie sheet about once per annum. And then I was enlightened.

The tacit amount of emotional disturbance a resident of Long Beach, California endures by default due to said locality is moderately trying for me, Calvin Brodus.
With so much drama in the LBC, it’s kinda hard being Snoop D O double G. Read more »

Today is the most magical day of the semester for any student at my college: Class registration day. Dozens of sweaty, smelly students packed into the shoebox-sized Records and Registration Office, desperately trying to get into classes marginally better than “Basketweaving 101″ and “Intermediate Jamaican Steel-drumming 253.” Read more »

This is a personal message to the driver of the silver Mercedes that was turned over on I-30 earlier this evening.

Your “accident” (really now, we both know you were being stupid, but I’m trying to be nice) backed up traffic for 20 minutes. That 20 minutes put me 10 minutes past the closing of the local drive-through for some food.

As I sit here, hungry, I hope you feel guilty for your inconsiderate way of life.

I just tried Napster out for the first time a little while ago. I don’t see why RIAA is having such a conniption fit.

So far, every Napster user I’ve seen lies about their connection speed - funny how a nine meg file comes down over a 14.4 in 3 minutes. That’s assuming though, that anyone actually lets you download anything. A good 95% of my attempts to download anything resulted in errors, disconnections, or cancels by the remote user.

For the record, I wasn’t trying to acquire any material that RIAA is trying to get removed.

While cleaning up the Unhelpful Archives, I also remembered that I had saved what I had written for the now-slumbering r33t.org. I’ve added those archives to the side bar to the right. Just remember that these are only my contributions; I didn’t save the entire archive, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be my place to reproduce the entries I didn’t write or graphics I didn’t create.

Or for the impatient:

1917 (Revolution)
August 1999 - December 1999

Monkeys In Your Mind
July 1999

Slug Love
May 1999 - July 1999

[Since the entire site has been revamped in a php-based content management system, retrieving the documents in the CMS is the preferred method. The old locations will be intact for legacy use.]

Are you tired of watching the slow, agonizing death throes of proper English as it succumbs to injuries suffered at the train wreck of real-time media, laziness, and idiocy?

Do you flinch when you see so-called “d3wd-speak” even in jest?

When people use “ppl” for “people” and “u” for “you”, does it get on your nerves?

If you’re like me and answered yes to those questions, relax. Apparently, we’re wrong.

Retired British TV, print and radio writer Richard Wade wants us to ignore spelling rules and just type whatever sounds right.

LETS CHANJ the way we SPEL… on paper, on our mobiles, on our screens…

Freespel for comprehension, clarity and cumfert
Don’t worry if you cant be konsistent
Praktis on your mobile fone ‘I luv u…c u 2 moro…I o u $5…’
Invent new words to replace tricky ones: ’she brings, he brought’ why not ’she brings, he brung’?
Start NOW…tell you frends, use freespeling…GO FOR IT

That’s right, literacy, apparently, is for snobs who actually know what a semicolon is and how to use it. I’m a member of an online community where ‘freespeling’ is pretty widely practiced, and I’m here to tell you, Mr. Wade, it’s pretty goddamn ugly.

Discuss: Comentz?

Last weekend, I had an odd dream. It was a dream about a martini. There was no plot. There was no action. There was just a martini. And it was there, you see.

When I awoke, I knew it was my job to save it.

“Save the Martini” Read more »

Here’s a little help for getting that new job you’ve always wanted!

Those funny questions on job applications? No problem — We’ve got you covered. Here’s some no-lose answers for those questions: