Shameless Plug #2

Finnish love metallists H.I.M. have created a new album, and what with their now being signed for global distribution by Sire Records, this album, Dark Light, will be their proper American debut. For more information, check out their website at www.heartagram.com and witness the awesomeness. Dark Light hits U.S. stores September 27. Below, you should see streaming video for their new single, "Wings of a Butterfly."

HIM - "Wings of a Butterfly" -


HIM's">http://www.myspace.com/heartagram">HIM's MySpace Page

Blah blah blah...

This used to be a double post of the post after it. I tried to delete it, but it just came up with a Google map of the United States. Bad webmasters! No biscuit!

Holy Shit NO!!! They rejected my plea for dough!

Well, I tried to get some Google AdSense ads on my blog here so that it might make me a buck or two. (I may be a communist, but I need to make some dough to survive in this fucking country.) Here's some choice words from my rejection letter:

"Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Unfortunately, after
reviewing your application, we're unable to accept you into Google
AdSense at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.

Issues:

- Inappropriate language"

What the fuck?

"Further detail:

Inappropriate language: We've found that your website contains content
that isn't in compliance with our program policies. We don't allow
websites with excessive profanity or potentially offensive content to
participate in Google AdSense. Please review our policies
[their URL] for a complete list
of site content not allowed on web pages."

Come on, guys, it's not like I'm a porno site or something!

Well, fuck that shit. If I don't have the freedom of speech to take money for selling out my supposedly excessively profane or potentially offensive blog to the shitgods of Corporate America, then what is this world coming to? I'm offering to be a consumer whore, damnit, and they won't let me!

Well, hell. Don't have time to get all the documentation I need to sell plasma, Google AdSense doesn't like my foul mouth, and I still need some green. Better start looking for a fucking job.

Good evening and welcome to Hell's Garbage Masher.

I'm your host, Archibald Marco Jacques Empuu Cheryl Fungarelli Blatherington-Schmidt XVIII.

[Sound of channel changing]

...but for time and decency's sake, I won't go into that here. So anyway, I saw this billboard on the side of the Interstate today advertizing some snazzy subdivision, and, among other things, it said "Affordable Golf Course Living." What does this mean? Is your home cheaper if you live on the golf course? "Say, Jones, where do you hang your hat?" "Oh me, I live in that shack next to the sand trap on Hole 17." "Hole 17, oh you lucky bastard. I'm stuck in a bathysphere at the bottom of the Hole 11 Water Hazard." "Well at least you don't have golf balls flying through your windows all the time, Smith. My wife got hit pretty bad in the head the other day." "Really? I've got to go through a Triathlon to get out of the house, Jones. Showing up at work covered with pond water and sweat, rea--"

[Sound of channel changing]

And now, the weather.

[TV clicks off]

Bloody idiots. I just have to look out the window to see that.

The Difference Between Crap and Shit

It amuses the hell out of me that the word crap is acceptable on radio and television while its synonym shit isn't. Apparently, the FCC sees some kind of difference between these two words that somehow casts crap in a more favorable light than shit. I actually see it the other way 'round. Crap sounds like a much bigger mess than shit. Shit sounds streamlined and precise, whereas crap sounds scattered and splattered. Shit is like a laser; crap is like a thermos full of nitroglycerin. Maybe that's just my fucked up opinion. You don't care. I feel compelled to apologize for wasting the last minute or so of your life.

Just so you know I'm still alive...

Here's a shameless plug.


In other news, I'm spending my summer installing hardwood and laminate floors as an unofficial laborer for my dad. I am also reading the textbook for snake and loco government so that I don't have to take the class. It's central Texas, hotter than Hell, asshole of the universe. Nothing much to say, really, that I would want to tell some anonymous Internet person. Don't expect me to update anytime soon; I never do.

A Ritzy Affair, Indeed

Everybody has or will have a Prom Night Story. This is mine.

On Saturday, April 24, 2004, I came home from the regional UIL science competition somewhat shaken. I was expecting to deal out major pwnage in the biology portion and do pretty well on the chemistry, tanking the physics. What really happened was a bit different. As expected, I tanked the physics, mainly because the physics program at Georgetown High School wasn’t worth a damn until the year after I graduated. The bio was an absolute shocker: I was trounced. Too many questions about endocrinology, which was one of my weaker areas at the time. I was in a three-way tie for second in the chem, though, so the day wasn’t entirely lost.

I came home shaken, not so much by the day’s battle as by what I was going to do that night. That’s right, as implied earlier, it was Prom Night. My own efforts to attempt to get a date could be described as flimsy at best (needless to say they failed; I never had much luck with the ladies in high school what with being handsome, intelligent, gentlemanly, and carless) and I had been too proud to try to get someone to set me up; nevertheless, I had in my possession a ticket that felt like a grain of dirt under a hard contact lens.

This was thanks to my Spanish teacher, who saw in me something I never did see and still can’t identify to this date. On Monday, she had cornered me during the period of time after the lecture and asked me what my plans for Saturday were, and I said that I would probably come home from Regionals and cry myself to sleep.

“What if you had a magic piece of paper that could get you in?” she asked in the manner of a fairy godmother.

“Magic paper... oh,” I said. “I can already get my ticket free on account of my fundraiser participation last year. It’s just that I can’t go stag to the prom, can I?”

She then proceeded to relate the tale of how in her senior year, her boyfriend had dumped her shortly before the prom and how she ended up going with a friend who later turned out to be a lesbian, concluding, “But at least I have a story. If you don’t go, you won’t have a story; you won’t be able to look back on it years later and laugh at how stupid it was.”

On my way out the door at the end of the class, she slipped me an envelope containing a ticket with my name on it.

Anyway, all week, I had been pondering the events of those five minutes or so. On my way home from Regionals, I had discussed the situation with my friend Ben, who had been set up. His opinion was that I should go stag.

At home, I explained the situation to my parents, whose recommendations I followed. A little before midnight, I was honored with the designation of Best Dressed according to a poll taken a few weeks in advance. I still have the stupid little resin brick to prove it.

I picked up the brick the following week. While I wasn’t receiving it, I was dancing to cheesy electronica with an assortment of college girls. The college guys in the Ruta Maya were too busy standing around getting rat-assed to give a rat’s ass.

Later early Sunday morning, my parents and I walked through the door of the Continental Club, where a blues/rockabilly group called the LeRoi Brothers was playing. As we were paying the cover, singer Toni Price was finishing a set with them. My folks went into the back of the club and left me up front where the band was playing. In retrospect, the band was mediocre, but compared to the DJ I had experienced earlier, they were quite good. At about 2:30, I was approached on the dance floor by none other than an appreciably inebriated Toni Price. Her speech moderately slurring, she asked me, “Are you Johnny Depp?”

At the time, this threw me for a bit of a loop, but I later recalled that in the previews for Secret Window, Depp had looked kind of like me.

“No,” I said, thinking, Oh my god, she is tanked.

“Good!” said Price, taking longer to pronounce the “G” than the “ood”. I often wonder what would have happened had I said that I was Depp. She asked me my name; I answered; she said, “I’m Toni.” Indicating the band, “They rock, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said.

At that time, this potentially awkward situation of a sleep-deprived high school senior being chatted up by a drunken blues singer (there’s a strange joke in that somewhere; I know there is) was cut short by the interruption of my even more sleep-deprived parents. I often wonder what would have happened had they not rescued me.

So, um... yeah. My Spanish teacher can now rest assured that I've got a story.

Expect another update on the next cold night in the private hell of my mind.

What do you want from me?

Oh, wait. There's nobody out there to want anything from me. No one reads this. I hardly ever update it myself.

Holy crap. This thing still exists.

So, anyway, yeah. I feel really free. It's as though I can type any old thing I want in here and get away with it because there's no chance in Hell that anyone I know will actually read this. Tell ya wot, if you ever get hella depressed, watch Pink Floyd The Wall. If you've seen it, surely you must agree. If you haven't, then your first viewing of this opera should be alone, wide awake, during the middle of the afternoon, and stone cold sober. If this viewing does not have you in tears by the time it's over, you'd better check your pulse. In the long run, though, it cheers you up because, unless you're one screwed-up mofo, it makes you realize that your life could very definitely be worse.

A Deeper Meaning?

What could it possibly mean that someone lame enough to care about grammar, spelling, capitalization, and puctuation has started a blog?

Nothing.

If you're going to try to find some kind of deeper meaning in this, you won't have much luck. I'm still not sure why I'm doing this. I'm not sure whether I should make this a nerdy diary blog, a pathetic little emo kid's blog, or a load of existential babble.

First Post

Okay, so... Here's my blog... It's chilling.
I'm one of those people who has a lag time of about two to four years before picking up on most Internet fads. I only got an IM screenname a couple weeks ago. I still use correct grammar, syntax, and mechanics online (no stupid Internet acronyms.) Emoticons scare the ever-loving crap out of me. I am never going to stop being what I believe is known in the Online Vernacular as a "n00b."