I just received an unsolicited email which I felt strangely compelled to answer.  I don't usually respond to these things, but this one was so moving I just couldn't resist:

From: Mrs.Agnes Kanga
E_Mail: madam_agneskanga@yahoo.fr

My Dearest One,

I am the above named person from South Africa.I am married to Mr.Alponse Kanga who worked with South Africa embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before his death. We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $12.5 Million (Twelve Million Five Hundrend Thousand U.S. Dollars) Deposited in a prime bank here in Abidjan.

Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my H.B.P high blood pressure sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church or individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct here in. I want a church or Organisation that will use this fund for the help of orphanages,widows and the charities. The Bible made us to understand that Blessed is the hand that giveth .

I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision.

I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible.As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank here in Abidjan. I will also issue you an authority letter that will prove you the present beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shephard.

My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that
Wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life.

Contact me on the above E_mailaddress:(madam_agneskanga@yahoo.fr )  it,any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another members for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated here in.

Hoping to receive your reply.

Remain blessed in the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Mrs.Agnes Kanga

----------------------------------------------------------
 
Dear Agnes,

I'm very sorry to hear about your husband Alphonse.  After all the great work he did on the Ivory Coast—you know, at the Embassy—it's a shame for him to have met such a tragic end.

It's a shame about your H.B.P. High Blood Pressure Sickness and "cancer problem" too.

I'm also sorry (will the apologies ever end?) to hear that you are having such a hard time finding someone to accept your 12.5 million dollars.  I am truly am amazed by your selfless desire to "use this fund for the help of orphanages,widows and the charities," and find it unbelievable that it would be so hard to find someone!  Have you tried United Way or the Red Cross?  There are so many "the charities" to choose from—maybe you should contact them before sending this message to random email addresses.

I think you may be barking up the wrong tree here, to be honest.  I don't believe in God and I'm not crazy about babies.  And orphans--ugh.  Don't even get me started on orphans.  Given the opportunity, I would love for nothing more than to squander your 12.5 million dollars on cocaine, luxury cars, and paying world renowned chefs to attempt to make me the best sandwich that has ever existed in the history of mankind.  I would also like to pay people to do things for my amusement—ie punch themselves, eat gross things (bugs, inedibles), et al.  I would love nothing more than to waste the money that Alphonse worked so very hard to get for nine years.  I want to have nothing to show for it.  I want to use it to make the world a worse place to live.

Still, you picked me.  And I accept.  I have attached all of my bank account information as well all of my personal info including my social security number.  You didn't ask for any of this, but I figure it might have me snorting mountains of blow and paying people to eat bugs just a LITTLE BIT quicker, which makes it all worthwhile.  I will also honor your request for no phone contact.  I don't know why, Agnes, but I trust you.

 

Don't fuck me on this.

There's a website called Cap Alert that's totally tits.  CAP stands for "Childcare Action Program." Basically, they rate movies on a scale of 0 to 100 based on how closely they adhere to Fundamentalist Christian beliefs.  American Psycho, for example, received a big fat ZERO, while something called Who Gets The House scored a cool hundred. They even quote the fucking scriptures in the reviews sometimes. Awesome. I really like the one for the South Park Movie.

Anyway, about a month ago I wrote an email to the guy when I was bored. He never responded, but I just stumbled across it in my email box and figured I'd post it here because, you know, fuck it. So here:

To: cap@capalert.com
Date: Aug 11, 2005 12:06 PM
Subject: Movie Ratings and an Unholy Number
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to Contacts list | Trash this message | Report phishing | Show original

Hello-

I am writing to inform you of a potentially serious evil presence on your website. I was browsing the listings, preparing for a trip to Blockbuster, when I came upon The Legend of Bagger Vance. Well, needless to say I just LOVE that Will Smith (my two boys, Peter, and Tommy, have been known to get a little "jiggy with it" from time to time!), and realized I'd never seen that movie. Well, I was reading the review when I realized I was feasting my eyes upon a most unholy number, which I type now only in the hope that I can help eradicate it.

That number was 69.

I understand that you rate your movies on a scale of 0 to 100, and that number happens fall within that set, but I see no reason to have to use it. 69, as I'm sure you're aware, is a deviant sex act wherein two people (it can even be two people of the same sex) perform oral sex on one another at the same time. It is called that because the 6 and the 9 symbolize the two peoples' heads and genitals, which are facing one another in the number 69 (as you can see). It actually applies primarily to homosexual men, because the top of the 6 and the bottom of the 9 look like penises. Sodomites have also been known to perform this act in large groups, wherein they tend to refer to it as 696, 6996, 69696, and so on. The different variations apply to different acts, none of which result in procreation.

So I didn't end up renting Bagger Vance, because I skipped to another title where I wouldn't have to look at that number. I found that other titles including Antz, Agent Cody Banks, and even The Passion of the Christ have all been rated 69 as well! Surely something can be done.

I woudl recommend that you skip from 68 straight to 70 on the review scale. If something is a firm 69, just round it up or down, please.

--

No Response yet.

this blog is fucking over!!!

i'm moving this shit over to my actual website because, well, myspace blogs are gay.

be sure to check in over there and comment and all that good stuff. it's gonna be... you know... whatever.

later.

i'm moving my page over to movable type and i don't know what the fuck i'm doing. i've got the actual software up and running but i don't really know anything about css. if anyone can help or knows someone who can help for cheap (a 12 pack of fancy beer? and some homemade brownies?) send me a message.

Consider part 1 the 101 - a crash course in Katrina and The Waves (did anyone pick up on the obvious Hurricane Katrina parable there, what with the waves and everything? whatever). It's time to move on to 102. The meat and potatoes that I initially wanted to blather on and on about in the first place. It boils down to a simple question: How much money would I have to pay you to listen to Walking On Sunshine constantly for one entire year? Let me tighten this proposal up a bit. It would be unreasonable to demand you listen constantly, and it would probably generally inane answers like "a million dollars" and nobody wants that. To be fair, I'll cut you some slack. The song would be played only during waking hours, assuming you don't pull a fast one and try to effectively sleep the entire year. Let's say the song would play 16 hours a day. That leaves you 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Should be more than enough, don't you think? As for the volume, that's a little trickier. I'm convinced that if you heard it at a constant level those wailing horns would eventually slide out of your consciousness, like living next to a train line or listening to minimal techno. To counteract this effect (if I were a scientist I would name this "the aural shift," which I think sounds pretty fancy), the volume would be constantly increasing in tiny increments. It would range from fairly audible to slightly less than comfortable, and it would increase either over the course of the day or over the course of the entire year - your choice. The sound would be coming from tiny headphones installed in your ear canals. Under these restrictions, how much would I have to pay you to listen to Katrina and The Waves' Walking On Sunshine for one year? The original recording of the song in question is 3 minutes and 57 seconds long, or 237 seconds long. That means that in a year you would listen to Walking On Sunshine 133,063 times, but if you subtract the 8 hours of sleep per day it would actually work out to only 88,708 times. It doesn't actually sound like that much when you work it out like that. Would I have to pay you more to listen to just the chorus for a year? What about the verse? I can tell you right now - there is absolutely no way I would attempt to do this. No amount of money could compensate me for the irreversible damage that year would do to my psyche. Fuck chinese water torture - this is the real deal. I would be a shell of my former self. Half the man I used to be. Would you do this for less money with a Stone Temple Pilots song? There is only one way I would even consider it, and it would still most likely end in failure. I would need a comfortable couch (going to work would be out of the question), a reputable dealer with a wide range of products and, perhaps most importantly, I would need a million fucking dollars.

So we're all on the same page from the very beginning, I encourage you to reacquaint yourself with the song in question:

Katrina and the Waves - Walking on Sunshine

Be advised: I'm not talking about listening to a midi version of this song. That would actually be palatable - the midi orchestration gives it a Kraftwerk-meets-childrens-song lilt that is almost charming. If I had a baby, and it was that baby's oh, I don't know, say, its third birthday, and a bunch of other parents brought their babies over to have some sort of party (I guess we could call it a "party," although we'd probably put a spin on it like "Diaper Jam 2K5" or something), I think we could probably pump up the stereo, flip on the midi version of Walking on Sunshine and bounce our toddlers around to the beat like fleshy, drooling beach balls until it's time for cake. That could be fun, even though punch doesn't go with cake and everybody knows it. That is one situation where I could see myself listening to the midi version of Walking on Sunshine in its entirety, but I don't want to talk about the midi version of the song. No. I want to talk about Katrina and the Waves.

Katrina and the Waves formed in 1981, but didn't break up until 1999. They hailed from Cambridge, England and scored their first major label record in 1985. The record had two hit singles on it - in addition to the better known Walking on Sunshine (which peaked at number 9 in the US) was another single called Do You Want Crying (which peaked at number 32, and for which there is no midi file available on the internet. You can hear a clip of it here though). Billboard's Hot 100 of 1985 puts Walking On Sunshine at number 75. Not surprisingly, Do You Want Crying didn't place. And why would it? 2 of the top 3 spots for that year belonged to Wham!. It wasn't a year for crying - we're talking about the same year both Super Mario Bros. and New Coke came out. As a nation, we were walking on sunshine. It felt stupendous.

How quickly things change.

In the blink of an eye, all the market research data was proven wrong. People didn't like New Coke. "It's too sweet! Wah wah! I'm a big baby!" Coca Cola winced and rolled out the old, "classic" formula, but it was already too late. Kids across the country sucked down can after can of New Coke (it was being offered at a very generous discount, and what sensible shopper can resist a bargain like that?), playing Super Mario Bros. until their thumbs were raw. Far past bed times, Warp zones were discovered in levels 1-2 and 4-2. Bowser was a piece of cake - if you could get to him. Now, with the help of warp zones, kids crept past the mediocre boss, saving Princess Toadstool with an indifferent shrug. Second quests remained unconquered. Soda remained sugary (in either "new" or "original" formulas, really - they were both really fucking sweet). Which is all (of course) to say that America changed forever in 1985.

Now here we are, some twenty years later, and I am not walking on sunshine. I don't want to walk on sunshine, nor do I want a lollipop-lollipop-oh-lolly-lollypop, nor do I want any Sugar-Sugar-Oh-Honey-Honey. Not even a Bit-O-Honey. Nothing. I don't really like candy that much, and although I admittedly enjoy sunshine from time to time, it's not a freakishly manic kind of enjoyment that Katrina and the Waves were clearly experiencing. It's not electric. In the sunlight, my hair doesn't stand on end. Rainbows don't shoot out of my ass. I look up at the sun, let the rays warm my cheeks, and I think to myself, "Ahh." Then I go inside a building.

What I'm trying to get at here is that I'm not the type of guy who typically walks on sunshine.

I would like to quickly present to you a few choice lyrics for your consideration:

I used to think maybe you loved me now baby I'm sure
And I just cant wait till the day when you knock on my door
Now everytime I go for the mailbox , gotta hold myself down
Cuz I just wait till you write me you're coming around

I'm walking on sunshine , wooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
and don't it feel good!!!

If you're like me, you're hung up on the obvious problem: how can you "go for" the mailbox if you're holding yourself down? Get over that for a second and see the bigger picture here: this is a song about a girl who is finally sure that somebody loves her (probably her boyfriend, who I imagine looking a lot like that asshole skier in Better Off Dead). She's so excited that she's... well... walking on sunshine. It clearly feels fucking fantastic. So let me ask you this, Katrina: where the fuck is the guy? Maybe the next verse will shed some light on the subject:

I used to think maybe you loved me, now I know that its true
and I don't want to spend all my life , just in waiting for you
now I don't want you back for the weekend
not back for a day , no no no
I said baby I just want you back and I want you to stay...

I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I wouldn't get your hopes up, lady. From the sound of it, there are only a few possible explanations:

1. The guy is a travelling salesman.

2. The guy is in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Peace Corps. Or jail.

3. The guy just doesn't like her very much.

None of these options are very attractive. The life of a travelling salesman, while somewhat romanticized (like hitchhiking and farming), isn't that glamorous. You live out of a car and your survival is tethered to your commitment to what is, most likely, a shoddy product. You're on the road all the time, which actually could explain why she doesn't only want him "back for a day" - he's a travelling salesman. He's going to have to leave again and she knows it. It could work, but I'm not buying it. She doesn't strike me as the type to be walking on sunshine for a travelling salesman type.

Knowing that Katrina and the Waves were British helps nip option 2 in the bud. How many active troops were there in England in 1985? That's not a rhetorical question - I really don't know the answer. My creative googling keeps bringing up a fire at a soccer stadium in Bradford that killed 53, but that doesn't help us much. Forget the number active troops in England, 1985 - she says in verse 2 she doesn't want to "spend all [her] life" waiting for him. Why would she have to wait her whole life? Tours of active duty aren't generally more than, what, a few years maximum, right? Armed Services are out. Jail is more likely (as it would explain all the letters), but if she might have to wait her whole life we can assume that he's in for something pretty serious. Maybe she likes a bad boy. Maybe he's wrongfully accused of murder, or maybe he's rightfully accused of stock manipulation but sitting on a huge nestegg she just can't stop thinking about. Maybe she's an accomplice who could potentially face jail time herself, and she's using the song to suppress her guilt and project a cool front to her would-be prosectuors. Or maybe we should obey Occam's Razor and admit what we've suspected all along.

The guy just doesn't like her that much.

Who could blame him? She's more than a little pathetic. Even though he's gone and she has no idea when he will return, she's still walking on fucking sunshine. Maybe it's best for her health that he never come back - if she's this happy when he's not around, she would probably spontaneously combust if he ever came back. Think of the guitar line in the verse of the song - that obnoxious rhythmic strum, the tinny timbre of the guitar. Once you've got that looping in your head, throw the horns in on top of it, that joyous, brassy yelp best personified as a cheerleader on some kind of stimulant. Got it? Now imagine if they made a sequel to the song where the guy actually came back. Can you imagine how much happier the song would have to sound? They would have to record it behind four foot thick layers of steel and concrete. It would be so happy the mixing consoles would explode and the sound engineers would have to be hospitalized. It would be so happy it would cause irreversible nerve damage to hear it. We're talking weapons-grade pop. Maybe that's why there was never a sequel to it.

Or maybe Do You Want Crying, that obscure peaked-at-32 follow-up was the sequel. You can hear it in her voice. The excitement has died down a bit. She's keeping the tempo up, but her stiff upper lip isn't fooling anyone. There's a scratchiness to her voice that wasn't there before, maybe a touch of cynicism brought on by a newfound understanding of the way things work. It would be naive to assume the story would have a happy ending, wouldn't it? Anything can happen, yeah, but from the looks of things this romance is one-sided and hopeless, regardless of what the upbeat melody might lead you to believe. You have to remember that the song is, in all likelihood, being sung by a borderline personality clinging desperately to her own delusions. Would you come back to that? Think about it. After a moment or two of consideration, the opening lines to Do You Want Crying should come as no surprise:

So long now - since you walked and left me.
Why did your love grow cold ? Don't you think you need me ?
I see that smile
it's your face. I feel you holding on and on.
I hear your voice
it's saying: bye bye love.
I count my teardrops as they fall.
Do you want crying? Look.
I'm crying.

to be contined...

so i just spent a few minutes screwing around with the beta version of a sweet little prog called Recolored. You can use it to colorize black & white photos by just scribbling whatever color you want in the approximate area you want it. pretty sweet. I colorized the Goaticorn. It went from this: to this: pretty snazzy, eh? wizards love purple.

I didn't believe this when I heard it, but from what I can piece together it's totally true. Wow.



You're looking at Lancelot - billed by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as The Living Unicorn.

The two people responsible for creating this monstrosity are Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and his wife, Morning Glory. Go figure. Lancelot is apparently, in addition to being a GOAT, a very accurate representation of medieval unicorns. Forget what you THINK you know about unicorns. Yeah, I thought they were more like horses too. We were both wrong. Trust me. No, wait. What do I know? Don't trust me - trust Oberon Zell-Ravenheart.



That's right. The motherfucker is an actual wizard. Here's another one just os you know that one wasn't a screenshot from Final Fucking Fantasy.



Anyway, more accurately, the motherfucker is the founder of the Church of All Worlds, one of the "oldest incorporated Neo-Pagan churches in the United States." According to their website, The Church of All Worlds is dedicated to "lifestyles that support personal freedom and responsibility, environmental stewardship, progressive and cooperative social order and pluralistic democracy."

Speaking of personal responsibility and environmental stewardship, here's a picture of Oberon (a self-described "naturalist") with his freakish, man-made Goaticorn.



Some dream big. For Oberon, it wasn't enough to incorporate a church inspired by a science fiction novel. Nor was it enough to found a 5,600 acre "Pagan Retreat Center," or to get involved in countless Pagan initiatives (including, according to his website, "The Council of Themis, the Council of Earth Religions, the Covenant of the Goddess, the Universal Federation of Pagans, and the Papal Apology Project.") That would've been enough for most people, but not Oberon. So in 1977 Oberon and his wife Morning Glory co-founded the Ecosophical Research Association and got to work.

The Living Unicorn Project was born.

So Oberon made a Goaticorn. Several Goaticorns, actually. But a horn does not a Goaticorn make. In addition to totally fucking up the goats' domes, he also "conducted appropriate magical rites, invoking the spirits of Nature and the Horned God, and focusing the light of the waxing Moon onto their [the unicorns'] foreheads through a quartz crystal."

Then he sold one to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1980.

Then the ASPCA got really pissed.

They examined Lancelot: The Living Unicorn and determined that - get this - it was a GOAT. Good work, guys.

They also decided that the goat was pretty well taken care of, so they moved on and got pissed off about some other crap.

I'm not sure what happened to Lancelot or any of his Goaticorn kin, but if you're out there, guys, this blog's for you. May you carry on as freakishly as the pagan wizard from whence ye came.

howdy ya'll. it's been a minute.

i don't have too much to say right now, it being 10 am monday morning after a long weekend, but i wanted to share with you guys a news story that is really, really bizzare. You might have already seen it as it's been floating around the web for about a week already, but I just reread some parts of it. man. it's really fucked.

also, i thought it was kind of funny that a bunch of celebrities are begging a celebrity governor not to execute the founder of the Crips. Thanks, Chicago Redeye. You've got the cure for my information blues.

but enough about the news. let's talk about me and my super amazing friends and how awesome we are. particularly when we end up at Woodfield Mall. particularly when we end up at Woodfield Mall because we can't decide where to eat lunch and figure a food court would make it easier. what do you do at a mall, you ask? easy - get lots of 7 dollar cocktails at a shitty stir fry place (or one 23 dollar, 60 ounce one if youre Atomly), and take shirtless soft-focus photos at a portrait studio. yeah - apparently you can do that.







pause. yeah - any one of them would make a great desktop background. you know - for the holidays. but this one - geez. this next picture was taken at the exact fraction of a second that i looked the gayest i ever have in my entire life.  On the flipside, Rory and Spex both look retarded.

1. play video games 2. oil spill cleanup 3. mix stuff from the kitchen in a blender, drink it 4. lick the bottom of a shoe 5. file down a stick against the sidewalk 6. chew foil 7. drink whiskey 8. drink molten lava 9. take apart pens, examine mechanisms inside 10. fill out a FAFSA

bang gun shoot ladder climb wall building hammer nail finger stab (?) maul tiger bang to tiger. does that mean something weird? fuck it. starting over... shoe leather cow feed corn stalk alleys streets cars audis nintendo japanese kamikaze battleship sink drain hair this is dumb.

-The G6 coupe is a monster on the road.

-Lion and tigers and bears, oh my!

-Cleveland might not be much of a surfing city, but Pontiac thinks you deserve a little fun in the sun.

-On November 7th, ProGrade Milwaukee members are in for a real hoot—Hootie & the Blowfish, that is!

-Twin City nu-metal fans: this one’s for you.

my newest zine is available online at quimbys now. if you're not in chicago, or you're just too lazy to get off your ass and go there, you should buy one. seriously. it's easy. just use the "internet."

pick it up here.

oh - the other 2 are up there too. buy them.

hypocritical mass 1

hypocritical mass 2