Colored* Cigarettes

Sorry your mint mojito cigarettes were outlawed, kids, but have no fear! Now there are cigarettes that look like colored pencils that no grown adult would be caught dead smoking. I guess cigarette companies have stopped even trying to pretend they're not marketing to kids, what with the pastel pink cigarette brand named after a Disney movie, so let's all heave a sigh of relief and buy a pack for a kid you love. I guess in theory I didn't think anyone over the age of 14 and/or born with a dick would want to smoke these, but Facebook proved me wrong -- a friend's 17-year-old sibling staged a nice little photo shoot with friends, each of whom looked elated to be smoking these. I was upset; not because they were smoking, but because Nat Sherman had so publicly pwned them all. There was a guy with a piercing in his face, a guy who had paid money to have someone puncture his face with a needle, sucking on what appeared to be a CoverGirl eyeliner from the 80's. Nat Sherman: 1, Pierced Dude: 0.

*you know I didn't mean it like that... my boyfriend's black!

RATING: 8% (the green one looks pretty)

Dark Humor

Saying something like, "I suppose we'll be seeing Patrick Swayze in Ghost 2 pretty soon," might make people uncomfortable. But, wait! I'm using dark humor here, so it's okay.







Rating:
60% funny
40% shame and guilt

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Dawson's Creek with fairies and ecstasy. I'm working on a postmodern version that ends when a jealous Oberon puts a bullet in Donkey Kong's frontal lobe and no one ever has to hear another word about the fucking play-within-a-play. You're welcome.

RATING: A grudging 70%

(Image from www.proprofs.com.)

KFC

I haven't eaten KFC in a really long time and I don't know anyone who has. I remember when they had Hot Wings™ in the 80's, but my parents wouldn't let me eat them just like they wouldn't let me watch Ghostbusters or wear blue Spiderman jogging pants with my blue Spiderman jogging top like Glenn could. I also remember when they had Extra Crispy Tasty™ chicken, which was pretty good in a horrible, crusty sort of way. When I was a kid they had those really soggy fries that I liked but then they switched to the batter-coated ones under the red lights and that's why they say you can never go home to KFC again.

RATINGS: Nostalgia 79%
Quality of "chicken" 30%
Humane treatment of "chickens" 15%
Hypothetical Bucket of Just Skin™ 99%

(Image from 1.bp.blogspot.com.)

Sports

I mostly hate sports but sometimes I pretend to like it to fit in. Pretty much every time I've played sports it's struck me as a bunch of people I sort of don't like getting really mad about a bunch of imaginary rules that someone just made up one day. Boxing can be fun in a violent kind of way but now people like UFC better and I say why not just watch gay porn because there's fewer commercials. Sports supposedly keeps you in shape but running from the cops keeps you in shape too so I guess by that brilliant logic everyone should sell crack. In conclusion, I suppose I think sports is pretty dumb even though I was sad when Titania said the nine men's morris was filled up with mud. The End.

RATING: Jock%

(Image from www.siampolonews.com.)

Piano Concerto No. 4 by Prokofiev

Prokofiev's 4th piano concerto is written mainly for the left hand, which means there are a lot of low notes. Some may say that sucks where's all the high notes, and others may say high notes are for scary movies and children's songs, or scary movies featuring children's songs, which is basically all of them. Reminiscing about the early part of this review, I can't help but regret not making a masturbation joke or an R3 joke, but at least I didn't live my whole life artistically oppressed by Stalin only to die on the same day as him, am I right?

RATING: 89%

R3 Classics: Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the worst of the Great Lakes. It's small, shallow, polluted, and the lake with the most shipwrecks. In other words, of all things bad about lakes it's the worst at everything. The only cool thing is the Lake Erie Monsters hockey team, but I'm pretty sure there are no real monsters in Lake Erie because nothing can survive there anyway. In conclusion, Lake Erie is like the Pluto of the Great Lakes.

RATING: 3%

(Originally published by Lollsies, Thursday, November 27, 2008)

Adenosine-5'-triphosphate

ATP is a damnable lie perpetrated by hell-bound atheists and Jew doctors. The only enzyme substrate in my signal transduction pathways is G-O-D.

RATING: 666%

(Image from www.anat.ucl.ac.uk.)

Comic Three-In-One

X-Statix Vol. 1: Good Omens

I guess Marvel wanted the X-Force name to stick around for an actual X-Force team, so by the third volume of Milligan and Allred's X-Force, they switched the name to X-Statix. Anyway, it's good I suppose.

RATING: 68%



Squadron Supreme Vol. 1: The Pre-War Years

A Squadron Supreme is just like a regular squadron, but with sour cream.

RATING: 70%





Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 1: The Fantastic

Jesus, these kids are whiny. Takes the 20 page origin story of the real Fantastic Four and balloons it into 90 pages. That's progress maybe?

RATING: 65%

Prairie Oysters

Prairie Oysters are bull testicles that have been peeled (and sometimes flattened), and either battered and deep-fried or served in a demi-glace. They're pretty good, but if I'm gonna eat a bunch of deep-fried stuff, I think I prefer clams. I wonder if that makes me an institutional homophobe.

RATING: 79%

(Image from www.elitesavers.com.)

Sezme Brand Sesame Snaps

Sesame Snaps are the best thing to come out of Poland since Jan Sobieski bested the wily Turk at the Battle of Vienna in 1529 (sorry, Glenn). Unlike Da Ali G Show, they make your teeth hurt in a good way.

RATING: 91%

(Image from groceryhomedelivery.ca.)

People who Sleep in Libraries

Are you homeless? Do you have a medical condition that causes you to fall asleep on public couches in the middle of the afternoon beneath incredibly bright fluorescent bulbs? Oh, you do? No. You don't. I know you ain't homeless, bro: your iPod is nearly as loud as your snoring. Look, I know the very thought of using your eyes for anything other than porno sends you into deep neurological shutdown mode. But Jesus. If I drop hardbounded editions of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology (yrs. 2006-2008) on the floor and half of your fellow students immediately jet for the emergency exit--believing they've heard a gunshot--and you, you cannot so much as stir, fart and a look around--that's on your drug dealer, man. That's on him.

Rating: 14%

Dawson's Creek

Dawson's Creek was a television drama about teenagers in a small town in Taxachusetts who are all like 30 and married to Tom Cruise now. My fave episode was probably the one where two characters separate themselves from the crowd at a football game, clambake, prom, or Hallowe'en party to have a heart-to-heart talk about their feelings for opposite or same sex characters who are also having a different heart-to-heart talk about their feelings for them. And also the one where the guy in the rabbit suit gets shot in the eye.

RATING: One Tree HIll%

(Image from images1.fanpop.com.)

Superman: The Movie

#24 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Superman: The Movie is about a young alien who looks just like a human and when he comes to visit Earth he ends up getting powers. Psyche, I know everybody on earth knows Superman's origin. This movie has a lot of hokey parts, like when he turns back time by pushing the Earth backwards on its axis, but it's probably without a doubt the most reverential and fun comic book movie ever made. Each of these movies got progressively worse, especially the special effects, but this one is "really great" (Donner, 56).

RATING: 93%

Ya'll

Outside of "reckon," "fixin' to," and "ain't", I don't know of another word Texans (and Southerners) catch more flak for than ya'll. I don't see why, though. Ya'll works wonderfully for one of English's most difficult (spoken) conundrums: the plural second person. I suppose you could say, "You all," but doing so makes you sound like an uptight prick (We cannot attend tonight's party. I cannot apologize enough. If it were not for...). You could use "yous all" (which is pretty embarrassing) or "you guys" and "yous guys," but come on, Eddie Haskell! The fifties are over! So in conclusion, if you ain't using ya'll, you're prolly a dumb sumbitch.


Rating: 88%

Martyrs

Martyrs is a French horror film from 2008, directed by Pascal Laugier. Horror movie nerds will tell you that Martyrs is part of the recent wave of extreme horror movies coming out of France, films like Frontier(s) and Inside. Martyrs has a somewhat original premise but is marred by a second half that devolves into lengthy torture sequences marked by an almost complete absence of dialogue. Not recommended for the squeamish. Expect an American remake of Martyrs in 2010.

Rating: 55%

(Image from amazon.ca)

As You Like It

All the world's a stage, and Shakespeare's most indomitable heroine is a woman playing a man playing a woman, played by a man. Still, it's kinda sexist that the women get married instead of becoming CEO's, and no one passes a law saying Rosalind can marry Celia or Phoebe if she wants, so I guess the Bard was a pretty big bastard after all.

RATING: Martha Stewart%

(Image from www.mythicjourneys.org.)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an insane charismatic douchebag who should not be in charge of a country. I'm not one to bat around Bushisms like "Axis of Evil" or whatever bullshit Jesus told W, but Ahmadinejad's regular denials of the Holocaust, assassination and torture of opponents, and constant attempts to build nuclear weapons are pretty major signs that he's a dangerous asshole. That said, take a look at this interview in Newsweek, and it becomes pretty clear that they're in over their heads. It's some kind of spectacle to see this guy totally take over the interview even as they try to get in the hard questions.

PS - Sorry to any readers we have in Iran; I guess this will be the last time you can probably read us.

RATING: 9%

little Krugy

little Krugy (sic) is a "delicious Vanilla-Caramel flavored cream-liqueur (alc 15% by vol)." It goes well with coffee and so forth. Oh yeah, and its bottle is shaped like a sperm cell. So, there's that.



Rating: wtf?%

Testosterones

Testosterones are like little tractors in our blood that climb up and down inside our arms and legs and our collarbones and heads. They make us yell and scream and slam the barbells down in their clanking slots like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains. When the guy behind me at Target got mad that I was taking so long putting my money in my wallet, my testosterones wanted to ask him if he'd ever picked his teeth up off the ground with broken fingers. They didn't, though, because my testosterones don't want to get fucked in jail. They're so homophobic like that.

RATING: Leviathan%

(Image from www.elitesavers.com.)

Satire

Satire is when you pretend to agree with something that you don't actually agree with and then talk about it like it's good and right in order to show that it's bad and wrong. Bad satire ends up helping bad ideas by mistake and subtle satire just makes people think it does on purpose. The difference between the two can be a matter of taste, like I think Wondershowzen is actually pretty racist but other people might think I'm Hitler or something. Other times people are just too stupid to get it, like when a dumb guy or girl in your class shows you an old Family Guy episode to prove that that sexism is rampant on TV. Anyway, a baby makes a pretty good stew.

RATING: 89%

(Image from www.woofkitty.co.uk.)

Magna Carta

Once upon a time there was a such thing as kings and queens, and I guess there still is. But in merry old England some richos decided that it would probably be a good idea if kings and queens had to follow laws and shit, so they busted out a case of Keystone Light and drafted the hell out of the Magna Carta. This flimsy piece of paper also guaranteed certain inalienable rights for the citizens of England, so it turns out the Founding Fathers of America were just a bunch of plagiarizing assholes. Anyway, that doesn't matter because all the best countries don't even have kings, like Canada, USA, Afghanistan, Rwanda, East Timor, etc.

RATING: 83%

Perry Bible Fellowship

Perry Bible Fellowship is a online comic strip which has little, if anything, to do with the Bible. The comic can more or less be explained as like, the Far Side on acid, man. Using a variety of subject matter and artistic styles, Nicholas Gurewitch (the author/artist) has created a uniquely morbid and subversive comic. Though no longer actively updated, two collections have been published and an extensive archive of the comics remains available online.

Rating: Not Always Safe For Work%

(Image from warren-peace.blogspot.com)

People Who Can't Remember My Name When They're Drunk

Do me a favor: if you see me at the bar and can't remember my name, don't talk to me. Don't address me by whatever name first pops into your head. Don't try and be cute and say 'Hey there, [job title] guy!' I'm only passing through your field of vision because I'm going outside for a smoke. If you have to say something to me, play it cool, just talk to me like we're old pals. That way, I'll think I'm the asshole for not knowing what the fuck you're going on about.

Rating: Hey, Jason!%

(Image from blogs.babycenter.com)

R3 Classic's: Grammar

Them shits is stupid. First I dont like all sort of rulings everywhere saying Do This and Do That Too second I think we all think about words and such and then forget about the real things, Jesus, troops, Gods America. Look here dudos this isn't froofy froof england or something and who do I look like Shakespeare. Finally why can't we see, that spending so much time on words and there order are tearing us apart. Their is a fine balance, two on whether or not were being to critical or if they're is good in all this talky talk. So in conclusion grammar has it's fine points but I for one hate it and think its stupid.


RATING, 43%

(Originally published by Glenn, Friday, August 8, 2008)

Salt

Salt is pretty good for getting leeches off and also for making the ice melty on the sidewalk. On the other hand, it's pretty bad for you if you have high blood pressure and it stings when you get it on your fingers and then put them in your eye like I just did. The Russian word for hospitality is khlebsolny or хлебосольный or some shit and means "bread and salt" but don't believe it, they always really want Miracle Whip.

RATING: 70%

(Image from some dumb blog)

Rosemary's Baby

I don't care what Polanski says, I knew the bitch was hysterical the moment she got her hair cut short without asking her husband first.

RATING: 82%

(Image from www.horrorlair.com.)

Castle in the Sky

Bad dub, lame animation, zero-dimensional characters, cornball music, boring plot. Not sure why this scored so high on Rotten Tomatoes--the critics must've seen all the references to Swift and worried that they were missing some deep symbolical meaning or something. Well guess what fuckos there isn't.

RATING: 20%

(Image from www.flixray.com.)

What I'd Say About The Tempest after 2.5 Litres of [yellow tail] 2008 Shiraz

No, see the thing about Prospero is that it's all a game of fuckin make believe *hic*. NO. It's a game it's fuckin made UP. Faustus' magic acutually DOES somethin rihgt?, where as Propspero's magic just makes poeople THINK it's doing... [throws up slightly in mouth, frowns] Like the boat. The boat wasn't even fuckin, it wasn't even... it wasn't even fuckin DROWNED, OK? At the end it wasn even fuckin drowned and the sailors were still alive, how d you explain that then? That Minranda's a pieca ass eh? Fuckin pussy Ferdninand if he wasn a made up character n a play I'd grab his fuckin ponytail n I'd... I can't believe this shit. Can you believe this shit? I can't fuckin even BELIEVE this srhit. What dya mean... if I'm holdin 2 cigarettes? I'm smokin these fuckin things.

RATING: A flushed, emphatic 68%

(Pictures from I forget.)

The Abyss

#25 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

The Abyss is the highest movie on my list starring Chris Elliott. It is the story of some deep sea dudes who suddenly get contacted by a water tentacle (tentacle rap?) and realize there are sentient creatures living under the sea. It's James Cameron, so you know it's going to be high melodrama, but I often find his particular brand of cacophony to be strangely moving. The end is some typical 80s message about why people shouldn't nuke each other to bits, but that doesn't ruin it because I for one am against people nuking each other to bits.

RATING: 93%

Comic Three-In-One

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 3: Transfer Of Power

Bruce Banner gets framed for murder, but don't worry the victim turns out to be a zombie double agent so she wasn't really dead dead after all.

RATING: 13%




Amazing Spider-man: Until The Stars Turn Cold

Successful Spider-man formula: Fight joke fight, cry fight cry, joke fight serious talk.

RATING: 81%




New X-men Vol. 3: New Worlds

Introducing Fantomex, the mutant whose power is for a flying saucer to emerge from his mouth to fly him around. Thanks again, Grant Morrison!

RATING: 62%

General Onyx Snus

General Onyx comes in a fancy can and the little snus packets inside are arranged in the shape of a star. It's a "white portion" snus, meaning the little "teabags" are made out of a slightly less porous material so they (supposedly) leak less and keep longer. It also has 50% more nicotine than General Regular. Pretty much everything about this snus is fantastic except the taste--it's got the notes of pepper, citrus and salt common to most General products, but it has an underlying soupçon of burnt rubber or road tar that I don't like at all. Since there are only about 5 snus users in the whole world who don't live in Sweden, and none of them read this blog, I guess I might as well be writing this post on a sticky note, sealing it in a bottle and throwing it into the bay, except Dallas doesn't have a bay. Fucking Dallas.

RATING: Fancy 90%, Taste 20%

(Image from www.snuffexpress.com. They also make a General Onyx Carbon edition, which is like $40 a can and is packaged by the same people who make parts for Porsche. I think this is appropriate, since it tastes strongly of something you'd scrape off the underside of a car.)

The Anti-Obama Demonstration

Overheard at Anti-Obama demonstration:

"Nine-eleven was our borning!"

"Abortion is white slavery!"

At first I thought that maybe these champions of the free market were so busy boning up on their Austrian economics that they missed a spelling test or two, but then I just gave up. I kinda hope that Obama does outlaw freedom, and that his first big education reform involves a mandatory IQ test hooked up to an electric chair. Or at the very least a law that says Americans have to feed their kids something other than paint chips and gravy.

RATING: Free World%

(Image from lookatthisfuckingteabagger.com.)

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a terrific sci-fi RPG for the XBox 360, and I am once again the last to know about it. The story and characters are intricate and engrossing, the dialogue mechanic is the most natural of any I've seen in a game, and the game just feels epic (unlike Fallout 3, which just felt epic for like 10 minutes at the end). The plot is some future stuff with space and commandos - it's tough to explain, but they did a really great job of building up this new universe from scratch. Also there is a part where you can space do it with a space hermaphrodite.

RATING: 92%

El Dorado - 5 Year Old Amber Rum

Produced by distillers in Guyana, El Dorado is but one of several delightful golden rums available through the NSLC. The experience of drinking El Dorado rum is like giving your liver a nice, warm hug. The actual taste of the rum itself remains unknown to this reviewer, as custom dictates that this finely aged liquor is to be enjoyed with Big 8 Cola (or whatever is on sale at the time). Side effects of El Dorado consumption may include: cross-eyed vision, tolerable stumbling, verbal diarrhea, and vomiting in a ditch.

Rating: 80% (Your hangover may vary)

(Image from thedrinkshop.com)

District 9

I haven't seen social commentary this subtle since Romero's Dawn of the Dead (sarcasm). This movie is about a huge flying saucer that shows up over Johannesburg one day filled with starving aliens, so they decide to take them all in but they separate them from regular people, get it? The aliens are portrayed as filthy criminals who eat garbage and cat food although there are a couple smart ones out of two million. I know that you're supposed to draw a parallel between the aliens and apartheid, but if that's the case then this movie comes across as pretty racist even though you side with the aliens. On the other hand, the action is terrific and the special effects are amazing, so if you can ignore all the social implications it's a pretty fun movie (not sarcasm).

RATING: 75%

" ' ' 'GQ Rates 'America's 25 Douchiest Colleges,' Forgets Subscription Demographics' ' ' "

Baudrillard.

" ' 'GQ Rates 'America's 25 Douchiest Colleges,' Forgets Subscription Demographics' ' "

You're welcome.

RATING: You're Welcome%

" 'GQ Rates 'America's 25 Douchiest Colleges,' Forgets Subscription Demographics' "

I was just thinking that I should review Andrew's review, but then John beat me to it. Mine would have been more like, "Andrew is dreamy cute AND funny. Hehe." Or something to that effect. Not at all like the crazy stuff that John wrote. I guess John's version is pretty funny too, tho.

Rating: 76%

"GQ Rates 'America's 25 Douchiest Colleges,' Forgets Subscription Demographics"

Viking Andrew's latest is a mixed bag. It starts out strong with a conversational address to GQ that problematizes the phallogocentric subject-object relation characteristic of the traditional bourgeois consumer review by establishing common ground between (re)viewer and (re)viewed, but runs into trouble midway with a series of murky and evasive equivocations--"can't help but feel," "as if," "possibly"--that leave the reader wondering exactly how Viking Andrew really feels about unintentionally ironic time-wastes. The author caps his review with a creatively punctuated call-response trope that showcases his verbal skill and attentive knowledge of men's fashion, perhaps even raising the bar for the "branding" of subcultural identity in subsequent reviews. Indeed, even the "cowboy" image is a breath of fresh air after the tedious Powerpoint screen-captures that have marred much of the Viking's recent work, marrying stalwart Twainian regionalism and touching insecurity in typically understated homoironic flourish.

RATING: 79% (Amtard transposition->88%)

(Image from reviewsreviewsreviews.)

GQ Rates "America's 25 Douchiest Colleges," Forgets Subscription Demographics

Hey, I'm not a big fan of ASU either, but really, GQ? Aside from your article's unfunniness and general lack of reasoning, I can't help but feel as if this is possibly the most unintentionally ironic time-waste you've ever published. Hey. What's the difference between a douchebag and a Qouchebag? Prada glasses and an overuse of the term 'zeitgeist' in casual conversation.



Rating: 12%

Ponyo

Ponyo is an adorable movie about a little fish that wants to become a little girl so that she can live on land with the little boy who falls in love with her. Lighter and more kid-oriented than any of the other Hayao Miyazaki films that I've seen (including Castle in the Sky,
Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, especially Princess Mononoke, and even Kiki's Delivery Service). It's cute, fun, and great for kids or 20-something nerds who wish they were kids.

Rating: 85%

United States Postal Service

The post office sucks. Everybody who works there is a total dillrod, their hours are like fucking Brigadoon, and the lines during those fleeting hours are filled with the angriest, shootiest people America has to offer. But who can blame them? They are waiting in a 25 minute line to probably not get helped by the one surly asshole working the counter. In conclusion, few other places can brag of bringing into the lexicon a term for going insane and hurting people, except for maybe theme restaurant Medieval Times.

RATING: 23%

Travelling

Travelling is a great way to broaden your horizons and see how other cultures live differently than you do. For example, you could listen to some bands in Austin, the live music capital of the world, experience the exotic richness of Chinese culture in San Francisco, or have a cup of coffee in Seattle--the coffee capital of the world! You might even want to explore the cold, white North in Maine, but beware--the locals are insatiably curious about life in other lands, and will question you at length about your foreign customs and habits:

MAINE RESTAURANTEUR: So where are you from?

ME: We're from Canada.

MAINE RESTAURANTEUR [lowers voice]: I heard there's a place in Canada where everyone speaks English, just like we do here in Maine.

ME: ...

Good luck, and remember, the world is yours to explore!

RATING: Bon voyage%

(Image from travelhouseus.wordpress.com.)

"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler

Relax, human. The big, cuddly bug doesn't want to eat you, she just wants to lay her eggs in you (spoilers).

RATING: *wretch*%

(Image from iz.carnegiemnh.org.)