Laughable

For years, my best friend has been laughing at my family when they argue. I've always found humor in my family's arguments, but I never got how absolutely hilarious they were until I got to listen to one objectively.

Normally, when my family argues, I'm right in the middle of it, so it's near impossible to laugh at until much later (usually when I write about it on my blog). But this weekend, when I visited them, I got to hear an argument I had no participation in. And damn it was funny!

Of all the absurd things they were arguing about bird seed. Not even about something like what type of bird seed to get or how much to use, but where to put it for feeding the birds. Apparently, she had put it in the wrong place. For a good twenty minutes at least my mom and sister were arguing like this.

My mom's argument:
The birds are used to it being on the picnic table. You should have put it where we normally put it.

My sister's argument: They're wild birds they'll find the food.

My mom's argument: You were just being too lazy to walk to the picnic table and back to the shed.

My sister's argument: That if you spread out the bird seed more birds could eat it without fighting with other birds.

Then the arguments just looped for twenty minutes. To be fair, my sister was probably just being lazy. (I spent all of high school and probably middle school doing the same things.) Also, i really doubt the birds give a crap where the free food is. (College students don't.)

While I have always found our family arguments ridiculous, I never realized how hilarious they were until I wasn't participating. I get it, Holly, my family truly is hilarious.

My Music Collection

I love music. It's just one of those things that is awesome and everyone loves in some form or other. I just happen to be slightly crazy when it comes to my music collection.

I have so much music on my computer that I could push play and it would continue for ten days straight without stopping and without repeating a song. And that's just the music on my computer. I'm always finding new music I love and adding to my already insane collection. I expect that by the time I get old (assuming I survive my inability to do anything without injury) I will have enough music to play for at least a month straight.

Now my music collection appears as quite random to a lot of people and often leads to many very notable "what the hell" looks from friends when I have it on shuffle (which is almost always). I will start off playing something like A.F.I. and then the song will change to Let's Go Sailing (since you probably don't know who that is, I assure that is a drastic change). Then some Rasputina, followed by Phineas and Ferb (I really have a bit too much of this). Then it's likely to leap to Jet and then onto some Patsy Cline. After some good old Patsy, there's Jimmy Hendricks, which will change to Demi Lovato (my sisters never stop giving me crap about this one). Next up some Beyonce followed by some Scooby-Doo chase music. And to top it all off some Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. (This list could go on for pages, but ain't nobody got time for that.)

Like I said, I love music. I really don't care the genre (except dubstep. I have no idea what the hell that is!), as long as it's good music. There are only a handful of artists that I absolutely can't stand listening to for even a moment in time. One of those is Serg Tankian. (I like his lyrics and meaning, but I prefer nails on a chalkboard to his voice.) Another would be Nicki Minaj because seriously that's not music. (My friend insists on playing this when I ride in her car and I have on occasion debated just opening the door and leaping to freedom.) Just about everything else I can stand even if I don't enjoy it. But Nicki Minaj and Serg Tankian are so invasive it physically hurts. (I am convinced if I listen to them for too long, I will end up like the aliens from Mars Attacks.)

The most prominent part of my music collection is oldies. I'm always jamming to oldies. Seriously, if I could only listen to one artist for the rest of my life it would be Ella Fitzgerald (and if you don't know who that is drop everything you are currently doing and Google her. Also that's just sad, dude). She has one of the greatest voices ever! (When an episode of Code Name Kids Next Door made a joke about a disease called Salmonella Fitzgerald that made you scat sing, it made my day. (Then it made me sad because I realized how few children would actually get it.) My favorite song is her version of It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. (I listen to that no less than twice a week.)

While no one would ever dare mock someone for a love of classic jazz and swing, my love of doo-wop is often called into question. Of all my musical obsessions doo-wop is the most random. Seriously, like no one likes doo-wop. Even in my music appreciation class last year, the teacher (who was supposed to be teaching us all the great things about music) kept calling doo-wop "terrible music." I felt so awkward sitting there actually enjoying the doo-wop, while everyone, including the teacher, was treating it as a boring required part of the class. Seriously is doo-wop that bad?

A random side note of awesome: While listening to my music on shuffle, one of my best guy friends (who happens to be my sister's boyfriend) didn't bat an eyelash at The Platters (doo-wop in case you were wondering), but seriously questioned my sanity when Cohead and Cambria began to play. (For the record they have an awesome drummer.)

I love my music and am not afraid to show it. Life's just too damn short to not be singing I Feel Pretty while riding your bike to school (something I do daily, although the song changes). I love my music collection and am damn proud of it. Also I can out nerd even the nerdiest people with it. (Nothing can beat the Japanese Spiderman theme song.) And just so everyone knows, I will likely be the only old lady of this generation who will be playing the music of her grandma's generation. (A lot of Bing Crosby I'm afraid.)

Door to Door

Living in an apartment is drastically different from the house in the middle of nowhere I used to live. When I moved out, I actually had some idea that this would be the case and even adapted to it quite nicely. There are some things I've experienced, however, that wouldn't have even crossed my mind as something that could happen before it did.

My first couple days into the apartment living experience, I was awoken at 4:00 am by mariachi music. This, while annoying, wasn't really something surprising. A month after moving in, it rained in my bathroom (the day before my birthday no less). Again annoying, but not really something I hadn't heard of happening. (It raining while I was watching Singing In The Rain, however...)

A couple months in and the Jehovah's Witnesses had figured out at what times I would answer. There were ones who even managed to find the house in the middle of nowhere, so to be honest I was actually surprised at how long it took them.

A few months ago, I started running into a guy at the Chinese place who was always trying to sell me pirated DVDs. Again still nothing surprising. Then about two months ago a chick and some guy would come by knocking on the door asking if I'd buy movies. None of these events really surprised me. They may have annoyed me (or in the case of the third bathroom rainstorm made me ask "seriously?"), but none of it was something I wouldn't have thought of. Well that is until yesterday.

Yesterday, I was chilling and pretending that at some point I might actually do my homework when there was a knock on the door. I expected either someone with pirated DVDs or a Jehovah's Witness. What happened instead was so endlessly random, I had to double check that it wasn't just some weird dream. The two people who normally try to sell DVDs, had a giant basket full of donuts they were trying to sell. Seriously, donuts. Of all the things people have asked me to buy (one being a vacuum cleaner), the door to door donuts salesmen were by far the strangest.

A Moment of Evil Genius From My Childhood

A friend of mine at film school, said that she thought I was probably the perfect child growing up. I found that hilarious. Even if by some fluke I actually appeared to be a perfect child, I was in fact not. I was, to be honest, a little bit evil.

Some summer when I was little, (I think like six maybe) me, my older sister, and my dad all stayed with my aunt while my dad was getting some training or something. I don't remember much of it, but I do remember my evil scheme.

Back then, like now, I enjoyed staying up until God awful hours of the night reading. When staying with my aunt, I didn't have as much of an opportunity for this because she had us turn off the lights. She would tell us good night and would leave me in the dark with no light to read by. This was a problem for me and it needed to be remedied.

Somewhere in my tiny little mind, I came up with a wonderful awful idea. After my aunt would tell us goodnight and go upstairs, I'd wait a moment or two. Then, I'd start screaming bloody murder "because of the dark." My aunt would come down to see what the hell all the screaming was about and after awhile she started leaving a night light on. I would then read until I decided to sleep. It was an effective plan and I was never actually caught for my crimes against eardrums. (Now I'm confessing because it is very difficult to try an adult for childhood crimes.)

It was a lively subject of discussion that summer as well. My much older cousin make jokes about it and at one point, I think I explained to my older sister that it was because I had read Goosebumps earlier in the day. It should be noted, I have never in my life actually read Goosebumps.

That friend I mentioned earlier said that she'd like her daughter to be like me because of my incessant need to read all the time. She, however, should be aware that incessant reading was the motivation for my most evil plan to date. I was really just a budding evil little nerd and likely still am.

Offensive?

There's this political cartoon going around Facebook. It features a fellow walking down the street past lingerie ads, violent movie posters, and a porn shop, but stops to call the nativity set offensive. The point is obvious, but my question is: Has anyone ever actually been offended by something like that?

I've seen my aunt get offended because a commercial said, "Happy Holidays." But I have never actually seen a person get angry about someone saying "Merry Christmas." I've heard people say things like, "Well actually I celebrate Hanukkah, but thank you." And stuff like that, but never in my life have I heard someone say, "You can't say that. The term is 'Happy Holidays!'"

I'm not convinced it's ever actually happened. The fact that someone's spending a second of their life to even say "Happy/Merry anything" should be taken as a compliment. Seriously, how many people pass you who don't say anything compaired to the ones that actually talk to you. It's their time. They don't have to be polite. The fact is, you're really not important.

I feel like people just like to be offended. I really doubt anyone's declaring war on your religion simply because they choose not to include it in their holiday greeting. Nor are they declaring war by including their own religion in a holiday greeting.

I personally don't care if come the holidays you decorate you house with Santa, Jesus, or a giant lizard. It really doesn't affect me. And if you happen to be nice enough to say "Happy Purple Monkey Day!" I may be confused, but I'll still be happy you decided to be nice and notice my existence.

I'm sick of everyone trying to play the victim. Sure some people actually are attacking and people are victims, but I have a feeling a lot of it's bullshit. Maybe it's because I grew up in ChristianVille, USA, but someone please tell me if anyone has ever actually been offended by your Jesus/Cross/Giant Purple Monkey display. Because I'm not convinced it's actually happened.

Disney's Subliminal Messages

People read way too much into things. I don't know if it's because our culture, despite having more things to do than ever, is designed for antisocial people who sit at home with too much time on their hands or if humans just have a predisposition to act like Freud, but it's kind of ridiculous how many rumours go around about Disney movies.

Disney isn't actually all that shy about hiding dirty jokes in their movies. I'm not talking about hidden boners or "sex" secretly written all over the place either. I'm talking about the run of the mill adult jokes that are right there subtly hidden in the dialog. Yes those exist. Children won't get them so no one has an issue when the genie in Aladdin and the King of Thieves says, "I thought the ground wasn't supposed to shake until the honeymoon." (What makes people think they'll notice the other stuff either for that matter?)

Instead of spending your time trying to convince everyone that Disney is secretly hiding dongs in its movies, why don't you campaign against the things that are actually there? I'm not saying these dirty jokes shouldn't be in there because they are damn entertaining, I'm just saying if you're going to complain, actually have something to complain about.

Thanks to the internet everyone seems to have a bug up their ass about something. One of those somethings happens to be Disney movies. Everyone seems to be convinced that they're brainwashing children in the Tyler Dirden "cock flash" way. I could argue that they are brainwashing children (that's a rant for another time), but they're not doing it by secretly giving the priest a boner in The Little Mermaid. 

That boner mentioned above was supposed to be the priests knee and if you actually look at the frames in question you'll relize it's either a knee or that priest has a serious penis deformation. After much complaint (and likely many face palms) Disney did remove that sequence from newer versions of the film just to get people to shut up. (That's what Disney gets for giving priests knees. Everyone knows they don't have knees.)

Now that I've dispelled (or more likely sparked people angrily telling me I'm wrong about) the rumours of the priest's boner someone else has to pop up and ask about the penis that was drawn on the VHS case. I will admit that yes it does suspiciously look like penis. Not going to lie, but that doesn't mean it was intentional. According to the artist, that piece of artwork was rushed and it's just what happens when you're hastily drawing something that already looks sort of phallic. It is quite possible that he didn't notice it until way later when some bored kid with no life decided to stare intently at the case.

Before you go telling me, "That's total bullshit! How could you not notice?" Let me tell you a story.

When I was a freshman in high school we were doing charcoal drawings in my art class. My teacher had us doing this (what I found frustrating and annoying) exercise of drawing a blurry image and she'd focus it in more and more as time went on. When the class ended, she had us put our drawings up on the wall. The next class she told us to take our drawings down and get to work. Mine wasn't there, so I went up and talked to the teacher. She asked me which drawing was mine and when I told her, she nodded like she totally knew why it was missing. She led me across the room to her desk where she opened a drawer and pulled out my drawing. She asked, "did you do this on purpose?" Me being a totally confused ninth grader said, "no." I didn't know what she was talking about. I went to sit down and get started. I saw my art teacher go across the room and could totally tell she was telling the other art teacher about what just happened. I remained confused until the other art teacher yelled and I quote, "Bad Penis Girl no more penises on the wall!" across the art room. I spent the next three years of high school being called the penis drawer by that art teacher who didn't bother to learn my actual name until my senior year.

So there you have it. It is completely possible to draw a giant dong and not notice until someone else points it out. If you don't believe that anyone, even me, could be that oblivious, then the only other explanation is that my subconscious mind had taken control and was making a political statement about the assignment.

Now for the whole "sex" written in The Lion King bologna. I've looked multiple times and even if I play the movie frame by bleeding frame, it's still a stretch. Sure I see a bunch of blobbular dust that could maybe form a word, but I highly doubt it was intentional.

People have this annoying habit of seeing things that aren't there. Have you ever looked at a knot in the floor board and saw a face? What about in the random placement of objects? It's the same basic principal here. This guy named Gestalt had this brillaint theory about closure. People generally like to connect object that are broken up. It's why you can look at a square drawn with dotted lines and still see the square. We piece things together in out minds. The sum is greater than the parts to use a more cliche explanation.

I also remain sceptic of the "sex" hidden everywhere theory just because of how freaking ridiculous it actually is. There is one video on YouTube where a guy litterally spends ten minutes ranting about this by taking random frames from Beauty and the Beast and finding ways to write "sex" in the blobbules of water in the frame. He's trying just a bit to hard for me to believe that it was intentional and that this guy's not just being a jackass because he has nothing better to do.

Then of course there is the suspicion that in Aladdin he whispers under his breath "good teenagers take their clothes off." Again I find this just people trying too hard to find something to complain about. If you actually listen or at the very least turn on the subtitles you'll discover that that he's talking to the damn tiger. You know, Raja, the giant tiger Jasmine's got as a body guard. He says, "Good Kitty, Take your claws off." Probably because that tiger was likely planning to eat the random guy that just showed up on it's owner terrace. Just a thought, but doesn't that make just a bit more sense (or really any sense at all).

While I find all the above claims to be total bullshit there is one case where there was some of that Tyler Dirden-esgue subliminal messaging going on. In the 1970s a movie called The Rescuers came out. There was a topless woman shown in one of the windows they fly past. It was only there for a fraction of a second, too quick for the human eye to consciously register. Disney didn't actaully play the whole denial game with this one because it was actually there. They said, "Well, will you look at that?", apologized, and took it out of later releases of the films. It is the only case of this that actually has any supported evidence.

I find it hilarious when people start saying that Disney must be guilty because they deny it so much. Well don't you deny things about you that aren't true? What the hell are they supposed to do? I personally like the option of saying, "Screw it! Believe what you want!"

There is something about having too much time on one's hands that makes everyone turn into less spectacularly bearded version of Freud. Seriously, it's kind of amazing how many blogs and websites are dedicated to debating this stuff.

The War On Classic Cartoons

Is it just me or has Cartoon Network declared war on classic cartoons? Don't get me wrong. I love cartoons, always have and always will, but a lot of the ones that are being remade are terrible. I spent my childhood watching cartoons and still spend more time than I should admit watching them. Hanna-Barbara cartoons alone make up at least half my cartoon related thoughts. The old cartoons were great because everyone could enjoy them.

The old Tom & Jerry covered everything. There was wonderous amounts of slapstick for everyone to enjoy. There was situational comedy. There was even comedy of manners (for those of you that don't know that's the highest form of comedy) shoved into these short mostly nonverbal surprisingly ungraphic, but ridiculously violent cartoons. They were genius.

Then Cartoon Network decided they had to keep resurrecting the poor show until even it's hoping to die. It doesn't matter whether they're on the mars, a pirate ship, or working for a magician you just can't make a two hour movie out of Tom & Jerry. It's boring and even the best slapstick gets old after awhile. The old ones worked because they were to the point and funny. The new ones don't because they're trying too hard to exist. They're dragging out the same story line for so long no one cares anymore. If you're gonna show a kid Tom & Jerry, please show him/her the classic ones.

Worse than that, Cartoon Network is destroying Looney Tunes. The old ones with Bugs in drag duping everyone, Wile E. Coyote trying too hard, and that one really annoying rooster who gets kidnapped by the tiny chicken hawk, are no longer the same. They have been revamped into what is called the Looney Tunes Show. It's like the writers once saw a picture of the characters with a half assed biography and decided to write a terrible sitcom. (Actually that's exactly what it is.) There's no Bugs in drag (at least not in any of the snippets I cringed through), they've completely butchered the personalities of the characters, and seriously what's the point of Daffy and Bugs if they're not trying to convince Elmer Fudd to blow the other one's head off? Please please please. If you're going to show your kid Looney Tunes, show them actual Looney Tunes. I'm begging you.

The ultimate crime against classic cartoons, however, is that of Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. It is like the Scooby Gang's arch enemy got license to write about them. (Basically like what happened to Edgar Allen Poe. Look it up.) I am damn right depressed at the thought of children growing up thinking of this when someone mentions Scooby Doo. In future generations, no one will want to dress up as Velma, Daphne, Fred, or Shaggy for Halloween. Few thoughts are that depressing.

The classic ones were fun. Silly and light hearted. The same every time, but that's how cartoons work. The characters at the very least had brains. I don't care if you don't like the classic Scooby Doo (but if that's the case; What the hell is wrong with you?), but you at the very least should appreciate the fact that the characters aren't stupid. Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated sucked out everything about Scooby Doo that was awesome and replaced it with drrrrrrrrrr. I'm not even kidding.

Velma who was once the brains and most levelheaded of the group is now an irrationally angry slightly psychotic girlfriend who's pressuring Shaggy into the next step (not even sex, but just telling their friends). Fred who, while not the smartest, at least had something in his head, is now just a dude obsessed with traps. That literally is his personality. Daphne is just a girl who does nothing, but chase after Fred; trying just about anything to make him forget about traps and notice her. Shaggy and Scooby are about the same because messing too much with them is asking to be assassinated.

Who ever wrote this show sucked out the traveling around in a van, the actual solving of individual mysteries, and all the fun. Instead of traveling the world they stay in Coolsville. Instead of multiple mysteries there's this one nagging mystery involving some previous group of teens called Mystery Inc. With all this added space now that they don't have to do anything interesting, they just have annoying teen drama pitty parties. This show is like listening to a thirteen year old complain about everything.

The worse part is that there are no longer strong female characters. Sure Velma's kinda maybe possibly smart (actually no no she's not), but we don't see it in action because she's too busy bitching at Shaggy. At least in the old cartoons I cared if the saw hacked up Daphne. Now I kind of just hope there's somehow a disaster that leads to everyone's demise in a Quentin Tarantino blood bath sort of way.

If you let your kids watch these shows and don't at least show them the classics, "Parenting you're doing it wrong."

Stick World Comics

My friend makes these awesome comics. I figured the world should know more about them. so here's the link if you're interested.