The View By Numbers

I swear I didn't plan on breaking the drought with another wacky Christian picture. It just worked out that way. Oh Blogger default fonts, I have missed you. My unplanned hiatus really just came down to one thing. And that is I don't really do enough. But last night, in defiance of all expectation and precedent, I did something. I saw The View at the Metro, and what follows is the experience that inspired this entry.

And just so we're all on the same page, the band, not the talkshow.

The View By Numbers
88, 354. Repetitions of "The View! The View! The View is on fire!"
4, 726. Number of tiny drummer jokes inspired by the fun-size drum kit
100. Percentage of the band that was Scottish
99. Percentage of the audience that was Scottish
20. Percentage of the band that looked like Monty
17. Percentage deafness persisitng in left ear
12. Dollars spent on nachos
8. Litres of beer that got dumped on me
6. Songs I actually knew
5. Number of times one guy got pulled out of the crowd by security for crowd surfing
4. Number of people who managed to jump from the barricade on to the stage, do a lap, and leap back in to the crowd before security could catch them. Did I mention Scottish crowds as awesome?
3. Conversations eavesdropped on while on the train home
2. Number of times the dickhead next to me threw his hat on the stage
2. Number of times he got it back
1. Number of times I wanted him to get it back
0. Words spoken by the band I understood

Good times. Movie reviews soon.

Joe Blogs: Noun or Verb?

I can't have been the first person to think of that joke. Although, it is incredibly lame, so I may well have been the first person to actually admit to thinking of it.

As I type, I'm sitting at uni, deciding whether or not to go get more coffee (which we all know is more about deciding when to go get more coffee) and not really writing some more of Psychopomp & Circumstance for a student reading tomorrow for Creative Writing. For those of you that don't remember, the story's about the two eponymous characters, who write light opera as a form of exorcism.

So before I go any further, or to the coffee shop, an excerpt that I find funny, but is unlikely to see the final cut:

Some startups called Styx had attempted to usurp their body of work, but found themselves relegated to the realm of prog rock after Circumstance wrote a song about their career.

And now, a few more entries to be filed under 'I'm hilarious by association'. Maybe I shouldn't put these directly after my own attempts at humour. Oh well. Historical figures being weird in Hark! A Vagrant! Canadians eliciting depression in A Softer World! Shooting fish in a barrel with Penny Arcade!

That'll do for now.

Now, funny business: Translation party. Move over lemons and MMORPGs, now there's a better use for parties on the internet! Namely, typing in a phrase and having it translated between English and Japanese until it finds a natural equilibrium, and the two translations are the same. Forget just Japanese and back to English once. We demand equilibrium! For instance, the excerpt above becomes:

After his time rock Sutatoappusutikkusu, was demoted Aruhorudingu ended his career in all municipalities.

And, after about 50 iterations, it tells me it's unlikely it will ever reach equilibrium. Domo Arigato, Mr. Translator-Roboto. Okay, another go.

Chasing Geese is a fantastic blog and its writer should be commended.

Becomes:

Must be commended for a great blog writer and geese chasing

See? Far more hilarious. It's also good with song lyrics. Oh, alright. One more then:

Today is gonna be the day
That they're gonna throw it back to you
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you gotta do

Sound familiar? How about now (edit: I added punctuation to the original):

Today, they're going to fight it to you. So far, a handful of people, people to understand other people

Indeed!

I've also finished reading Crooked Little Vein, so expect a review soon. This has been Chasing Geese, brought to you by the wackiness of the Interwebs and the Japanese.

Poosh Leetel Vein

I stumbled upon this yesterday. I found it very funny. If you don't, you need to read more comics, because it works on like four different levels. But the main level is he's blind. Also, with all due fanfare, Blogger tells me this is entry 100. Which I was totally unaware of, so go me.

So go me sounds like some kind of asian cuisine.

My copy of Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein arrived fresh from the UK today. I'm one chapter in, and it's already blowing my mind-hole with charges of tightly-packed scatalogical brilliance. It's basically Transmet, but with a P.I. and America and worse. For instance:

“What I am is unlucky,” I snarled. “You know I got an adultery case last year? You know what the husband turned out to be doing at night? He had formed a sex cult that broke into an ostrich farm at midnight three times a week. You know what it’s like, finding eight middle-aged guys having tantric sex with ostriches?”

You want context? Warren Ellis laughs at your pleas for context. Also, he provides valuable insight in to the origins of the Other Constituiton of The United States:

“It is a small, handwritten volume reputedly bound in the skin of the extraterrestrial entity that plagued Benjamin Franklin’s ass over six nights in Paris during his
European travels. Benjamin Franklin wasn’t some nancy-boy novelist who wrote sensitive books about aliens sticking things up his rectum, you know. On the seventh night he got right up and killed the little bastard with one punch.”

This is the first chapter. The first chapter. I can't wait for more. See the aforementioned chapter here, if you dare.

Also, hark this is awesome. See, because hark is in the name of the comic, and it sounds like fark, which is a way of saying a dirty word.

Orange Dawn

This morning I woke up and the world was orange. And my room was covered with a very fine layer of orange dust, but that's neither here nor there.

The point of this all, dear readers, is that I woke up the wrong side of 6.30 and saw my neighbourhood swallowed in a vibrant, orange cloud. And for a second (but only a second) I was sure the world was ending. And my reaction was "well, isn't that nice".

I blame the story I'm writing, which is more or less that exact plot. Yes. The story, and nothing else.

I Hate It Here

I’m sitting in my English lecture on dialogue, and not really taking much of it in. Perhaps there’s a lesson in and of that. But anyway, I should be doing other stuff, like listening, which means it’s the perfect time for me to blog instead.

I had an idea for a column which I will probably never write, or already exists, or will be poached and exist very soon so I have something new to complain about. I digress. The idea is a column called Know The Enemy, and I will basically martyr myself upon the altar of taste, watching incredibly bad movies, reading incredibly bad books, listening to incredibly back albums, etc., and then reviewing them. So you don’t have to. Well, that and it’s much, much easier to be mean.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m a glutton for punishment, or maybe I secretly really enjoy these kinds of things. But that’s fool talk. So I might watch a very bad movie this weekend, and if I manage not to gouge out my eyes I’ll write about it. Or maybe I will still gouge out my eyes, but I’ll dictate. Unless I can actually taste how shitty this movie is, then we’re down to some kind of fingertip semaphore. Unless I’ve ripped off my arms in a misguided attempt to beat myself to death with them. Then maybe some kind of stump-person interpretive dance. I’ll sort it out.

Soon = Duke Nukem Forever

Monsieur Napoleon, Redux

So I never did get around to re-writing this chapter, and I probably won't for some time. I figured I may as well put it up, because there's still a joke or two in there someone might like, and I did go to the trouble of drawing the damn thing. I might yet re-do it, but it's not looking good.

At least maybe I'll be able to look back on it way back when and cluck my tongue at how full of piss and vinegar I was, way back when.

Enjoy.