3-27-01

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, but can you believe that I’ve never been haunted by a ghost? Just once I want to enter my dorm room and find the books on my shelf mysteriously rearranged, or catch tiny globes of light in the corner of my eyes. I don’t know, either ghosts don’t really exist, or all of my dead relatives are just too lazy too scare me. If I died and became I ghost, I’m pretty sure that I’d be too lazy to scare anyone as well, so I guess I can relate, but still … I’d at least like a ghost to try and scare me.

Though if you ask me, ghosts aren’t even that scary. You never hear about them killing anyone—all they do is rearrange furniture or turn of people’s lights. “Ooh! My chair just moved back three feet. Now I have to scoot it back up to my desk. Thanks a lot, ghost, you asshole.” They’re not scary, they’re just really annoying. When I’m sitting down and a real person pulls my chair back, I’m not scared, I’m pissed off. If the person who moved it back was invisible, I don’t see how it would be any more frightening. The only difference is that you couldn’t really kick a ghost’s ass—you’d just kind of have to deal with it. Still, I don’t see how that’s scary.

But I’ll tell you who was scary: Freddie Krueger from the A Nightmare On Elm Street movies. He died at the end of every single movie, but he kept coming back. He was like the Energizer Bunny from hell. The last 5 movies he was in were all called something like “A Nightmare On Elm Street: The Final Nightmare,” or “A Nightmare On Elm Street: The Conclusion,” or “A Nightmare On Elm Street: Freddie Really Dies At the End of This One—Seriously,” but he just kept coming back to life for the next film in the series. You couldn’t kill that son of a bitch, you could only hope contain him. And even if you did that, he could still kill you—through your dreams. And that’s scary.

Here’s further evidence that Mark Trail is the world’s funniest comic strip. Every panel of Mark Trail includes some kind of violence towards small animals, which I guess in and of itself isn’t that funny. But when you have a rooster chasing a kitten, it’s impossible not to laugh.

3-24-01

Call me crazy, but when science cloned that sheep a few years ago, I had the impression that we’d soon be seeing some crazy kangaroo/turtle hybrid splices and wacky combinations like that. I guess I forgot how damned lazy science is. Since cloning that sheep, nobody’s even been trying to clone anything. They got to the Sheep Level, and then they quit. That’s so lame. I mean, if you’re just going to make one sheep, don’t even bother. Sheep have been making sheep for years, and nobody’s putting them on the cover of Time magazine. How do we even know they actually cloned that sheep? They could have gotten it from any farm in America. Those scientists can clone my ass.

The one bit of cloning news I heard about in the last few years was when it was released that they were planning to take DNA from a frozen wooly mammoth and then attempt to clone that. That’s perhaps the dumbest idea in the history of science. I can picture a guy in a white lab coat saying, “You know, there really aren’t that many animals above humans on the food chain. We could really use a bunch of giant furry elephant-type animals with giant tusks who could stampede over the human race and then feed us to their young.” Didn’t these people see Jurassic Park? This cloning extinct death-animals idea is only going to end in tragedy. I’d rather have them stick to sheep. Or better yet, cure a freaking disease.

3-20-01

Is it just me, or have ducks and squirrels and small animals like that stopped being afraid of people? Not to long ago, like in my lifetime, squirrels used to take one look at a person and then run for their lives, in case we felt like throwing rocks at them. Nobody ever threw any rocks at them, and so it didn’t really make any sense for them to run, but they were squirrels, and it was expected that they didn’t make any sense. Now, however, they’ve not only stopped fearing us, I think we have become an ongoing joke to them. When I’m walking down the sidewalk, I have to literally go out of my way and walk around them, because they are always sitting down in front of me and never feel like moving. All of a sudden, they’ve realized that we don’t throw rocks at them, and now they’ve capitalized on that. I’ve nearly killed myself dodging squirrels while riding my bike, and they know this. They think it’s pretty damn funny. And then you have ducks, which are even worse. There is a rampant duck problem at MSU that you don’t read about in any of the brochures. They’ll waddle right up to you, look you in the eye, and then laugh in your face. This happened to me the other day and I carefully side-stepped to the right of it so that I could walk past it, but it just moved right in front of again, and it had this intense look on its face, as though it were saying, “If you don’t give me a piece of that Pop-Tart you have in your backpack, I swear to God I will bite your foot.” I threw the entire pouch of Pop-Tarts down and I ran like hell.

I’m serious, if you walk up to a duck while waving a stick around and yelling like a lunatic, the duck still won’t be afraid of you. I’ve tested this out numerous times. They’ve come to learn that you’re not going to hit them with a stick and, furthermore, they’re pretty sure that you're going to feed them some bread. Nowadays I can’t walk to class without bringing a loaf of bread with me “just in case.” Pretty soon, the ducks are going to figure out that you can purchase bread at stores, and they’re going to start wanting cash. “Oh, so you need to cross the bridge to get to class? Five bucks, honky. And I don’t want to see any Canadian money—you can’t buy no bread with that shit.”

It’s not just ducks and squirrels, though—this trend of dauntlessness is evident throughout the animal kingdom. In about two years, birds will start making nests on peoples heads, and we won’t be able to do anything about it. Hell, birds have already stopped flying south for the winter. They used to all flock down to Florida or whatever in the autumn, but now they’re like, “Oh, fuck it, let’s just wait up here.” They’ve become lazy and audacious, and I am fearful that they will soon become aggressive.

In other news, I’ve discovered that every single Capri Sun flavor tastes exactly the same. What the hell is Mountain Cooler supposed to taste like, anyway? A mountain? According to their official website, “Capri Sun Coolers are cool blends of fruit flavors.” I think they meant to say, “Capri Sun Coolers are all just cherry-flavored drinks with different retarded names.” But then, I guess I don’t really know that much about marketing. After all, they’re the brilliant revolutionaries who went with the pouch format at a time when all the other juice manufacturers were coming out with boxes. If it takes longer to open your drink than it does to actually drink it, you know it’s going to be good.

3-15-01

Hey, what the hell happened to Slacker Wannabes? I tried to log into my account but there was only one of their generic messages saying, “News Flash (I’m not kidding, they really did write that): slackerwannabes is no longer an authorized member of Tripod. This Tripod member has been removed because they violated our Terms of Service.” What? Then I read their Terms of Service and I realized something: I had violated every single one of their Term of Services. Even the crap that didn’t make any sense. And trust me: none of it made any sense. To quote: “Lycos will promptly process and investigate notices of alleged infringement and will take appropriate actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’) and other applicable intellectual property laws.” The Digital Millennium Copyright Act? Where the hell was I when Congress signed that? Tripod’s legal department is living in some weird fantasy world where there is such a thing as a Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and I think that I have somehow broken it.

But I think the only rule that they could have really got me on is their “Copyright Infringement” rule, even though I didn’t really infringe on anyone’s copyright (except for that guy who said that we were stealing his soul by filming him). Furthermore, it is possible—indeed, it is likely—that a third party reported such an infringement to Tripod, as I don’t think Tripod goes around looking for violations. Who was responsible for this? I don’t know, but that’s pretty weak of whoever did it. Furthermore, it’s pretty weak of Tripod for taking the site down. I paid good money for my space on their server. Alright, I didn’t technically pay them anything, but it’s the principal that’s important. Nice job, Tripod. Keep up the good work. Psyche.

Speaking of copyright infringement, how about that Napster controversy? I think that Napster should stay up—it is my legal right to steal copyrighted material. However, I do feel that they should ban the transfer of The Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” For the last time—I’m not sure who let the goddamned dogs out. I fucking give up.

3-12-01

I saw a stand-up comedian on the Spanish Channel and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what he was saying because the only Spanish I know are the words where they just stick an “o” at the end of English words, but I’m pretty sure he was being really, really funny. Then again, you could tell me that my dog died in Spanish and it would still sound hilarious. “‘Perro’? Haha! What the hell are you talking about? That’s not a real word!”

Then I saw a Public Service Announcement where the message was “Don’t gamble over the internet.” It shows some kid sitting at his Gateway and yelling, “Let it ride, baby! Yes! I’m having fun!” Then these guys come out and take away his furniture, and he’s all, “God, I’m an idiot! I can’t believe I gave them my parents’ credit card number! I feel like a complete jackass!” After I saw this commercial, I thought, Who the hell gambles over the internet? I mean, is this some kind of big issue kids are dealing with today? My guess is that the people who make PSAs are sick of kids ignoring them when they tell them not to smoke, so now they’re telling kids not to do something that they already don’t do. “Kids, please don’t … um, gamble ... over the internet. What’s that? You’re not gambling over the internet? Yes! The PSAs have paid off!”

Seriously, having a PSA warning about the dangers of internet gambling is a lot like having a PSA warning about the dangers of setting fire to your pants. “I thought I was pretty cool when I set fire to my pants. All my friends were laughing! But then I realized that my legs were on fire. When you set fire to your pants ... everyone gets burned.”

On a different note, in approximately seven years I’m going to finally have enough Kool-Aid points to win those plastic sunglasses I’ve been eyeing since I was six. Oh, yeah!

3-1-01

Spring break, so named because it takes place during the winter, begins tomorrow, and everyone is rejoicing. Spring break is truly a good type of thing. If you’re in high school or something and have to go to school next week, just picture me kicking back and relaxing while you wake up at 8am to attend class, and then everything will be OK. Well, at least it’ll be OK for me; you’ll probably just get really pissed off. But that’s your own fault for not having next week off. Psyche.

Ha, remember that slang? In elementary school you’d be all, “Hey let’s go play kickball . . . Psyche! I’m only kidding. I want to play dodgeball.” And then people who had thought that you had really wanted to play kickball would feel salty. Psyche. People didn’t start feeling salty until 1994-95. Salty meant “to be embarrassed,” but I never figured out why it was called being “salty” until I realized that when you are embarrassed, you start to sweat—which is a salty fluid. But by the time I’d figured that out, it was 1998, and nobody was calling anybody salty anymore, so I never had the chance to call somebody salty while truly knowing what I was talking about. That’s why I’m going to start using the term again, in hopes of bringing it back.

Psyche!